Correct. And the blizzard guys have made this so. I was one of those people who wanted to hop on or hop off. Play solo, or do small quests with small groups of friends that would only take 30 minutes, 1 hour, or max 2 hours at a time.
But blizzard doesnt produce content like that, so a lot of the people like me, including me, stopped playing. The game is remarkably good at this type of content from levels 1-40. However, the developers seem to focus more on 20, 40, 60 man raid dungeons, and not single player quests. You cant really be functional and play WOW at high levels, unfortunately. High level WOW play requires 8 hour raids. It requires constantly running dungeons and PVP for items. And that sucks for me, but some people love it (the so called 'addicts'), and thats what they pay for.
And you're full of crap. It would be much better for Blizzard to have people who only played 10 hours a month and paid $15 than having everyone play a lot increase their server loads, bandwidth, and lag complaints. In fact they are specifically designing the new dungeons in The Burning Crusade to be smaller and easier to complete, as well as making other grinds (reputation and pvp honor) easier.
You're right, people have been leaving over this. But all indications are that they have listened and learned.
The problem with this rebuttal is that it's only anecdotal
I thought anecdotes were "I heard about a guy's cousin's neighbor's brother...". This is just a counter-point. One person says he was addicted, another says he wasn't. They both are relating to what happened to themselves. You are the one getting anecdotal with your unsubstantiated "i'd bet that there are more people pissing away their lives on WoW than their[sic] are people who can just hop on and off".
The reason (at least for me) for getting MP3s 'illegally' is because I have such a varying taste of music and munch through it so quickly, it's not economically viable for me to buy the amount of albums I actually download just to try out an artist.
I hear that, man. What I feel like driving changes from day to day. It's not economically viable for me to own every car model made so when I see a car I want to drive I just take it. If I like it enough maybe I'll buy it.
See how stupid that sounds? Throw in the fact that you can borrow music from libraries and you sound like a completely self-centered jerk with an entitlement complex. Everything else you purchase in life you get a brief chance to see if you'd like it - trying on clothes, looking at couches, test driving cars, buying books, house-hunting - why the hell would you be entitled to music before you pay for it?
If you want to argue music is too expensive that's a different argument entirely. I think Mustangs are too expensive; that doesn't mean I can just not pay if I want one.
I have a shortwave radio that is smaller than any iPod except for the Nano (and Shuffle). Along with the many bands it receives, it gets AM. Almost all of the case is taken up by the speaker, the visual tuning hardware, and the batteries. I have not opened it up, but I am guessing that the antenna hardware is smaller than a cap to a ball-point pen. Time to turn off the ol Philco in the wooden case. News in from Tokyo: there are miniature AM radios now.
News in from Cupertino: hard drives cause interference, and you've already pointed out the spaced-crammed flash-base Shuffle and Nano are already too small.
As a designer I tend to question Apple's practice of prototyping and testing hardware and software.
It would seem that time constraints and secrecy overshadow the cycle of design > prototype > data collection > design (repeat).
I can't imagine they're able to get enough real world data under such a vale of secrecy. They seem to test products in the market place... which means rev 1 Apple products are almost always questionable.
They could prototype the computers for a decade and it wouldn't help with issues from the production aspect, nor would it help with a bad supplier. A bad batch of batteries, screen connections, or even capacitors can give a good design a bad name.
If you are saying "mom" and it always comes back "aunt" you may want to cancel the presentation.
Or, in the very least, don't say 'mom'! I've had plenty of times where a salesperson tests something the day before a demo (usually after a week of knowing he had a demo, but that's a different rant) and finding something. Our usual response with that short of notice is 'well, don't show that' since we didn't have enough time to fix it. At best, we could send a version that had the error suppressed but not truly fixed.
What somebody needs to do is to devise a DVD player that can read a file delineating where the objectionable parts are on the particular DVD. Once the bad parts are known to the player the player simply skips them.
No, what someone needs to do is to hit these nut-jobs up the side of their heads repeatedly until they realize everyone has nipples and genitalia and they need to get over it already.
If I know a movie has Tom Cruise in it, I don't pay someone to edit Don Knotts over him in every scene. I watch a different freaking movie! Once you start changing a movie for nudity, where does it stop? Gone With the Wind where Rhett stays? Soylent Green where it's lettuce? Bambi where his parents show up again at the end of a movie?
And why stop there? Why don't we start editing books for libraries? Why fight Origin of the Species when we can just re-write it? Surely Of Mice and Men would be better with a happy ending? If someone had edited Satanic Verses it might have saved Salman Rushdie a lot of trouble.
If someone doesn't want to see something, they should just not look at it. If they aren't going to watch/read the 'controversial' part then why are they bothering?
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error." -- On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
How can we forget the amazing plot twists of Pac-Man, not to mention the surprise ending! And no other game tells the story of the futility of mankind's survival like Asteroids.
I thought it was Pac-man the described the futility of modern life.
Search for Page 12; I couldn't find a direct link.
You know, I'd put my entire Karma on the line to say that if this was M$, instead of "Yawn, is this news?" posts, this entire story would be "M$ Anti-trust! Evil! Screwing their workers!" posts.
No, it would be 'Holy shit! Microsoft is taking responsibility for something!"
If you have the option to switch formats, you are not 'locked'. It's a semantics argument at this point. If Apple loses this one as far as I can tell Microsoft is open to a 'locked-in' suit regarding Access and MSSQL, and it just snowballs from there to where no company can produce anything new that doesn't work with everything that already exists in the world. What's next, suing Nintendo because the game I bought for my Nintendo won't work in my Playstation?
And yes, I'm exaggerating to over-amplify my point, but it's still valid. I can't run all Windows '95 games under Windows XP, so I'm effectively locked-in by your argument to Windows '95. It just seems to me that lock-in is a possible side effect of any technological advance, and in fact is directly tied to having a patent system. I could see the anger if Apple was being deceptive, but a) they aren't and b) they easily allow this to be overcome, despite complaints about its perceived difficulty or supposed sound quality loss*. I mean, it's not like the CDs you buy magically place their songs on your other MP3 players; why should the songs you buy from iTunes have to?
* If you are using such an expensive sound system and quiet setting that you can notice the sound quality going from Pretty Good(AAC) -> Lossless(CD) -> OK(MP3), you shouldn't be buying your music off of iTunes in the first place.
Now where Apple's DRM scheme fails the usability metric is in that music protected by it is unusable with other music players/systems
Given that it's the easiest (if not only) DRM method to burn non-encumbered CDs from, it's not like it completely fails. It just hits the 'Annoyingly Inconvenient' mark instead of 'Blatantly Impossible' that most do.
I'll never understand the 'locked-in' complaint. Music has always been locked into the media - it's not exactly easy to play an 8-track on a record player, and don't get me started on getting music off of those old cylinders. Having to manually burn bought songs is really not much different than taping off CDs or albums in the old days*. Would it be nice if there was no DRM at all? Of course; and it is available from independent artists and even some major artists if you look, but that's not realistic to expect from RIAA at this point in time.
* Yes, I'm using 'old days' to refer to taping songs off of vinyl. Heck, I remember we had one player that could stack maybe a dozen albums. Of course, this was also back in the day when most albums would have at least one side worth listening all the way through.
More like 'How can we see how people will react to this idea but maintain deniability if they hate it?' If it's liked, fine. If it isn't the story will be 'oh that was an old plan - here's what we're really doing.'
Blindness is a recognized disability and can happen by accident. Should all games be blindness-friendly, or should gamers that become blind accept that they probably can't play First Person Shooters any more?
I see things differently from you, in that I see different games. Be realistic - are they going to use one game as an escape from their pain for the rest of their life? If so, they might as well switch to crack or just some good pain-killers. I can accept a game as a temporary escape from one's life, but if they are depending on one game only and can't move on when it's gone then they are addicted and need help.
Leaving public buildings out, regular businesses are forced to add ramps/parking spaces/etc, because they'd have no economic incentive to and not having them severely impairs the disabled. But it is a constant expense for all businesses: a couple of blue signs, some paint, a little less cement for a sidewalk ramp, and that bar in the bathroom. To require every game to be playable by a single mouse and button is excessively restrictive - there are enough that can be naturally that there is no need to force all games to offer it. If the game you want to play doesn't work for you, you need new wants as there exist many games that naturally fit many disabilities.
Extreme future possibility: wouldn't a law have to apply to all software to avoid classification issues? And if certain handicapped equipment only works with Windows, would that mean that suddenly Linux and OS X have to run under windows? I've admitted I'm going to an extreme there, but the point remains.
It's more like being in a brick house with a thousand blowing wolves running around. It doesn't matter if they all blow at once, it's a brick house! Is susceptible to other attacks that know one is trying yet? Possibly, but Symantec's wolf traps aren't going to help with a completely new style of attack.
And even if Mac's share got up to 50% if the difference is still Brick vs. Straw then it will still be more profitable and easier to just go after Windows users.
There are a lot of iPods out there, and a lot of people using iTunes. There is a lot of music on iTunes that isn't controlled by RIAA members. If RIAA leaves, Apple would put out a press release along the lines of "RIAA pulled their music because they're greedy bastards, but we still have plenty of music." People would go to iTunes and find out they do in fact still have plenty of music, and frown upon the already beleaguered RIAA who are being counter-sued and charged with racketeering for their threats of lawsuits.
Will people slow down on iTunes? Naturally; there are always those that only follow mainstream. But there are quite a few that would not, and even more that would just do both. The RIAA's greatest fear should be people finding independent music, but it doesn't look like they know that yet.
The problem most non-religious sciencey-types is that the religious ones seem to ignore this huge, glaring assumption they are making that there is not only any god at all, but one and only one god and furthermore that he prefers their religion to all the others on the planet. I'll grant that the grandparent post was provocative. However, the point is that while science will always adjust itself if the evidence warrants it*, religion never does.
* Yes, sometimes you have to wait for a generation of curmudgeons to die out before progress can be made, but it's pretty much inevitable that theories will be adjusted for reproducible evidence.
Double interesting because Apple also makes their own browser. Safari is free as well, but still, FireFox is a direct competitor to one of Apple's own applications. Yet Apple still sees the value in helping them out.
But, they know that Firefox is a cross-platform browser with growing support that is helping to pressure sites into being standards-compliant beyond just loading in Exploder. Since Mac I.E. hasn't been updated since OS X Beta, this is a Good Thing for all Mac users. Realistically speaking, new OS X users are going to use Safari whether there are two or two thousand other browsers, and will only need the others if sites don't work with the default browser.
If you want to be cynical, you could just say that they used Firefox because it is open source, so whomever they were demonstrating the porting to could see the before and after without seeing proprietary code, and they only sent their notes back to avoid another 'Apple uses Open Source and doesn't give back' debacle.
Slashdot Mirror
(Though it's interesting to note that one of their 11-song albums is $5.99, but each track is still $.99.)
* Warning - an iTunes link.
Go to hell. A lot of people put a lot of work into resolving a real problem. We'd sure as hell have heard about it if we hadn't.
One of those damned if you do, damned if you don't things I guess.
You're right, people have been leaving over this. But all indications are that they have listened and learned.
I thought anecdotes were "I heard about a guy's cousin's neighbor's brother...". This is just a counter-point. One person says he was addicted, another says he wasn't. They both are relating to what happened to themselves. You are the one getting anecdotal with your unsubstantiated "i'd bet that there are more people pissing away their lives on WoW than their[sic] are people who can just hop on and off".
"Should we trust him?"
"All I know is my gut says 'Maybe.'"
"If I don't survive, tell my wife I said 'Hello.'"
The reason (at least for me) for getting MP3s 'illegally' is because I have such a varying taste of music and munch through it so quickly, it's not economically viable for me to buy the amount of albums I actually download just to try out an artist.
I hear that, man. What I feel like driving changes from day to day. It's not economically viable for me to own every car model made so when I see a car I want to drive I just take it. If I like it enough maybe I'll buy it.
See how stupid that sounds? Throw in the fact that you can borrow music from libraries and you sound like a completely self-centered jerk with an entitlement complex. Everything else you purchase in life you get a brief chance to see if you'd like it - trying on clothes, looking at couches, test driving cars, buying books, house-hunting - why the hell would you be entitled to music before you pay for it?
If you want to argue music is too expensive that's a different argument entirely. I think Mustangs are too expensive; that doesn't mean I can just not pay if I want one.
I have a shortwave radio that is smaller than any iPod except for the Nano (and Shuffle). Along with the many bands it receives, it gets AM. Almost all of the case is taken up by the speaker, the visual tuning hardware, and the batteries. I have not opened it up, but I am guessing that the antenna hardware is smaller than a cap to a ball-point pen. Time to turn off the ol Philco in the wooden case. News in from Tokyo: there are miniature AM radios now.
News in from Cupertino: hard drives cause interference, and you've already pointed out the spaced-crammed flash-base Shuffle and Nano are already too small.
Must everything be a bubble now?
Don't worry - top analysts have predicted that the Bubble Bubble is about to burst any time now.
If your tubes leak get them tied up.
But what if you're a Catholic? Is there a rhythm method for leaking internet tubes?
Yep. 'Buy an iPod'.
If you are saying "mom" and it always comes back "aunt" you may want to cancel the presentation.
Or, in the very least, don't say 'mom'! I've had plenty of times where a salesperson tests something the day before a demo (usually after a week of knowing he had a demo, but that's a different rant) and finding something. Our usual response with that short of notice is 'well, don't show that' since we didn't have enough time to fix it. At best, we could send a version that had the error suppressed but not truly fixed.
If I know a movie has Tom Cruise in it, I don't pay someone to edit Don Knotts over him in every scene. I watch a different freaking movie! Once you start changing a movie for nudity, where does it stop? Gone With the Wind where Rhett stays? Soylent Green where it's lettuce? Bambi where his parents show up again at the end of a movie?
And why stop there? Why don't we start editing books for libraries? Why fight Origin of the Species when we can just re-write it? Surely Of Mice and Men would be better with a happy ending? If someone had edited Satanic Verses it might have saved Salman Rushdie a lot of trouble.
If someone doesn't want to see something, they should just not look at it. If they aren't going to watch/read the 'controversial' part then why are they bothering?
I thought it was Pac-man the described the futility of modern life. Search for Page 12; I couldn't find a direct link.
You know, I'd put my entire Karma on the line to say that if this was M$, instead of "Yawn, is this news?" posts, this entire story would be "M$ Anti-trust! Evil! Screwing their workers!" posts.
No, it would be 'Holy shit! Microsoft is taking responsibility for something!"
Well, next time try a clip-on joke; those are easy to pull off.
Thank you! I'm here all week! Tip your wait-staff!
If you have the option to switch formats, you are not 'locked'. It's a semantics argument at this point. If Apple loses this one as far as I can tell Microsoft is open to a 'locked-in' suit regarding Access and MSSQL, and it just snowballs from there to where no company can produce anything new that doesn't work with everything that already exists in the world. What's next, suing Nintendo because the game I bought for my Nintendo won't work in my Playstation?
And yes, I'm exaggerating to over-amplify my point, but it's still valid. I can't run all Windows '95 games under Windows XP, so I'm effectively locked-in by your argument to Windows '95. It just seems to me that lock-in is a possible side effect of any technological advance, and in fact is directly tied to having a patent system. I could see the anger if Apple was being deceptive, but a) they aren't and b) they easily allow this to be overcome, despite complaints about its perceived difficulty or supposed sound quality loss*. I mean, it's not like the CDs you buy magically place their songs on your other MP3 players; why should the songs you buy from iTunes have to?
* If you are using such an expensive sound system and quiet setting that you can notice the sound quality going from Pretty Good(AAC) -> Lossless(CD) -> OK(MP3), you shouldn't be buying your music off of iTunes in the first place.
Now where Apple's DRM scheme fails the usability metric is in that music protected by it is unusable with other music players/systems
Given that it's the easiest (if not only) DRM method to burn non-encumbered CDs from, it's not like it completely fails. It just hits the 'Annoyingly Inconvenient' mark instead of 'Blatantly Impossible' that most do.
I'll never understand the 'locked-in' complaint. Music has always been locked into the media - it's not exactly easy to play an 8-track on a record player, and don't get me started on getting music off of those old cylinders. Having to manually burn bought songs is really not much different than taping off CDs or albums in the old days*. Would it be nice if there was no DRM at all? Of course; and it is available from independent artists and even some major artists if you look, but that's not realistic to expect from RIAA at this point in time.
* Yes, I'm using 'old days' to refer to taping songs off of vinyl. Heck, I remember we had one player that could stack maybe a dozen albums. Of course, this was also back in the day when most albums would have at least one side worth listening all the way through.
More like 'How can we see how people will react to this idea but maintain deniability if they hate it?' If it's liked, fine. If it isn't the story will be 'oh that was an old plan - here's what we're really doing.'
Blindness is a recognized disability and can happen by accident. Should all games be blindness-friendly, or should gamers that become blind accept that they probably can't play First Person Shooters any more?
I see things differently from you, in that I see different games. Be realistic - are they going to use one game as an escape from their pain for the rest of their life? If so, they might as well switch to crack or just some good pain-killers. I can accept a game as a temporary escape from one's life, but if they are depending on one game only and can't move on when it's gone then they are addicted and need help.
Leaving public buildings out, regular businesses are forced to add ramps/parking spaces/etc, because they'd have no economic incentive to and not having them severely impairs the disabled. But it is a constant expense for all businesses: a couple of blue signs, some paint, a little less cement for a sidewalk ramp, and that bar in the bathroom. To require every game to be playable by a single mouse and button is excessively restrictive - there are enough that can be naturally that there is no need to force all games to offer it. If the game you want to play doesn't work for you, you need new wants as there exist many games that naturally fit many disabilities.
Extreme future possibility: wouldn't a law have to apply to all software to avoid classification issues? And if certain handicapped equipment only works with Windows, would that mean that suddenly Linux and OS X have to run under windows? I've admitted I'm going to an extreme there, but the point remains.
It's more like being in a brick house with a thousand blowing wolves running around. It doesn't matter if they all blow at once, it's a brick house! Is susceptible to other attacks that know one is trying yet? Possibly, but Symantec's wolf traps aren't going to help with a completely new style of attack.
And even if Mac's share got up to 50% if the difference is still Brick vs. Straw then it will still be more profitable and easier to just go after Windows users.
There are a lot of iPods out there, and a lot of people using iTunes. There is a lot of music on iTunes that isn't controlled by RIAA members. If RIAA leaves, Apple would put out a press release along the lines of "RIAA pulled their music because they're greedy bastards, but we still have plenty of music." People would go to iTunes and find out they do in fact still have plenty of music, and frown upon the already beleaguered RIAA who are being counter-sued and charged with racketeering for their threats of lawsuits.
Will people slow down on iTunes? Naturally; there are always those that only follow mainstream. But there are quite a few that would not, and even more that would just do both. The RIAA's greatest fear should be people finding independent music, but it doesn't look like they know that yet.
"God did it! I'd like to find out how!"
Before or after tackling which one?
The problem most non-religious sciencey-types is that the religious ones seem to ignore this huge, glaring assumption they are making that there is not only any god at all, but one and only one god and furthermore that he prefers their religion to all the others on the planet. I'll grant that the grandparent post was provocative. However, the point is that while science will always adjust itself if the evidence warrants it*, religion never does.
* Yes, sometimes you have to wait for a generation of curmudgeons to die out before progress can be made, but it's pretty much inevitable that theories will be adjusted for reproducible evidence.
The poster's nickname kind of kills the objectivity on this one.
So sayeth SwiftWind! The fastest flatulence in the West!
Double interesting because Apple also makes their own browser. Safari is free as well, but still, FireFox is a direct competitor to one of Apple's own applications. Yet Apple still sees the value in helping them out.
But, they know that Firefox is a cross-platform browser with growing support that is helping to pressure sites into being standards-compliant beyond just loading in Exploder. Since Mac I.E. hasn't been updated since OS X Beta, this is a Good Thing for all Mac users. Realistically speaking, new OS X users are going to use Safari whether there are two or two thousand other browsers, and will only need the others if sites don't work with the default browser.
If you want to be cynical, you could just say that they used Firefox because it is open source, so whomever they were demonstrating the porting to could see the before and after without seeing proprietary code, and they only sent their notes back to avoid another 'Apple uses Open Source and doesn't give back' debacle.