which would imply that while Sony didn't seem to want porn on Beta, they did not actually forbid it. Indeed their blunder was that Beta was initially designed for a 1 hour format, which is fine for TV shows, but people were recording and watching a lot of movies, many pornographic. Sony was slow to come out with a longer format, so VHS won the day. They just guessed wrong on how people were going to use VCRs. An interesting thing to note here is that on both sides of the Beta-VHS issue, the engineers balked at longer tape formats for quality reasons. The JVC VHS engineers were overruled by parent company Matsushita, so there we are.
It's funny, but you make a good point. Pornography has definitely played a part in the history of media format wars and is credited in part for the win of VHS over Beta. Sony wouldn't allow porn on betamax. More recently, Sony initially refused to allow porn on the Blu-ray format, but I think they have quietly relented on that. So it is not too far fetched to say that DivX support may have something to do with porn. At the very least, the legacy DivX libraries other posters have mentioned may play some role in the decision of support. But, of course, a lot of those libraries probably contain a fair amount of, *ahem*, adult material. It certainly won't hurt PS3 sales!
In the end though, my guess is that adding DivX support is not a huge technological problem, and given the fierce battle Sony and Microsoft are engaged in, each wants as many bullet points as possible. In the end, competition is good for the consumer!
It sounds like EA Chicago kinda got the shaft. It'd be sweet vengeance if they formed their own company and beat their old employer with something fresh and new. It seems that developers everywhere need to be ready to take fate into their own hands because the corporations will boot you out the door without hesitation to meet some short term goal. Innovation doesn't generally blossom in the short term. Heck, given a chance, what they were trying to do in Def Jam might have evolved into something great. I mean people probably laughed at those quirky Japanese rhythm games when the ideas were first floated. Now I, and many others can hardly wait to spend $100USD to whoop it up with fake guitars and other instruments.
We've already seen this before. I used to think that with better tools, ordinary people could build their own stuff without the need to hire and pay pros. What I've actually seen over the years is the pros using the improved tools to build what ordinary people want. Even if so called Web 2.0 tools do gain prominence in the general population, someone will still have to maintain the things that are built. Anyone who wants to see what happens when the general populace gets a hold of Web 2.0 tools, needs look no farther than MySpace and Facebook. My eyes hurt just thinking about it, not to mention the stomach turning security holes underneath it all.
Web 2.0 tools may only allow outsourcing to spread to even cheaper and less skilled labor, but still paid labor. So, as usual, prepare for more highly exploitable crap!
One of the marks of a great civilization in these technological times is advanced space capability. So the Chinese and others are going into space for the same reasons the US did decades ago, national pride and to some extent national security. And what better distraction from local problems and lack of political freedom than lunar missions to stir up the bonds of nationalism?
In itself, space exploration is a good thing. But I don't think any of it would be happening without some national/political interest first, followed by commercial interests later. Going just for the science has always been a hard sell. Space exploration is the sport of great civilizations.
IANAL, but don't Comcast's actions jeopardize their common carrier status because they are monitoring traffic on their network in detail? So if Global Media Company A wants to sue them because of illegal Bit Torrent movie traffic, Comcast can hardly claim not to know what they are talking about. Perhaps this is why they have been so reluctant to admit that they were doing blocking and "shaping" of various kinds of traffic. Now that the cat's out of the bag, I expect some law suits to follow, from media companies. Comcast has demonstrated an interest in, and detailed knowledge of what traffic is on their network. So if they aren't blocking all of that illegal movie distribution, then they're liable too. There are plenty of lawyers out there who would be happy to make that argument.
First, I would say that 18000 is not too shabby for a first time effort. Second, I would say that Nintendo's appearance there makes me wonder about who the target audience really is. It's no secret that Nintendo is targeting the so called casual gamer very successfully with the Wii, DS, and a lot of kick ass 1st party software. I don't think that Nintendo hates hardcore gamers (at least not yet), but their attendance at E For All tells me that they were expecting a healthy showing of casual gamers.
PAX is a great event, but it seems pretty obvious that PAX is known by and driven by the hardcore gamer. Sure, plenty of casual gamers will show up too, but I don't think there will be many of these folks flying across the country for the event. They wouldn't be flying in just for E for All either, but they may be going to LA, a major tourist destination, for other reasons.
Scheduling E for All against PAX is stupid, but even with that, I think that if E for All cuts their ticket prices, and holds on to Nintendo and a few others, they should be able to grow. The hardcore will go to PAX, and everyone else to E for...well everyone else...
Oddly enough, EA contributed greatly to the demise of the Dreamcast by refusing to support it with their sports titles. Sega was already fairly weak by that time, but this time the three console holders are all fairly strong. So it'll be somewhat harder for them to play king maker this time.
I'm not really sure who's going to buy this though. The casual market it may be aimed at would likely still go for a Wii for $30 less and a pack in game that all of their friends are already playing. The hardcore gamers would balk at a system without a hard drive and are probably starting to eye the PS3 a little more now as the price drops. So I'm not sure where this fits in. I can only guess, that like the core system before it, it sits there to give a lower price point on the books in time for Christmas, when you can bet Wii's will be scarce.
I agree and suspect that many copyright owners will just blindly demand that everything be blocked that uses any of their content because that's the easiest thing to do. As someone who enjoys making anime music videos, I can only wonder how things are going to shake out. If the things I make are just summarily blocked, I'll probably stop using YouTube altogether. I should note that I've bought more than a few songs after watching user created music videos that featured them. In each case, I would never have heard of the song any other way.
I just turned 40 and am a well paid system administrator. Is it really feasible to work in technology past the age of 50?
I'll let you know when I get there! Seriously, if we older tech guys want to stay in the business and are performing well, then I don't think age should be an issue. For this, having some kids is an advantage, they're helping me ride the wave of new technology and even stay out ahead of it a little. And BTW, happy birthday!
Is it just coincidence that the affected players are from Samsung and LG, two Korean electronics giants that happen to be among Sony's biggest competitors? I'm just sayin...that's all...
This is just plain ridiculous! Is carpool lane cheating such an earthshaking problem that there is a need to employ high tech imaging technology to catch the cheaters? Oh please, there will always be some asshats who will cheat any system put in place. It isn't a big deal. I'd rather be employing technology to solve real problems like disease, and famine.
I don't think the notion of having one's text messages screened/monitored would sit well with most Americans any more than something similar would for voice messages. So it looks like the law will need to catch up again. Unfortunately, before that can happen I wouldn't be surprised to learn of other "controversial" text messages being quietly screened out by carriers. Obligatory dig: But of course all messages from Fox News get through! Just kidding, riiiiight?
Sadly, for the vast majority of Windows users, the patronizing attitude is probably the least painful approach. Like most here on/., I don't take too kindly to MS slipping unauthorized patches onto my systems. But for mom, pop, and grandma, well what they don't know might be good for them. Telling them too much would just confuse them and result in expensive tech support calls. So MS rolls the dice that most won't have a problem with the update and won't care to know the details anyway.
I'm not saying people should be like this, but it is often the case.
Exactly! If they want they could just add a basic player profile where you have to indicate your real body's gender. With that any player could then check to see the if the other person behind the character is really a man or a woman. I wouldn't mind having to indicate my real age and gender, if that means I could be whoever I wanted to be in the game.
Actually, revealing age scares me even more! I still love video games and mmorpg's in particular, but skew significantly older than the core demographic. What does that mean? It means getting party invites becomes one hell of a lot harder when you're old enough to be the party leader's dad! Online games are a great way to have fun with others who share a common interest, but too many details from real life would just get in the way of that. I have to be an old guy in real life everyday, do I have to do that in online games too? I hope not!
I wonder if they just want to shut down this MMO altogether? Jokes about tits or gtfo aside, while webcam verification can be defeated, few are going to bother. The males playing as females will probably just leave the game. And the females playing as females will also just leave the game rather than submit to an insulting and degrading verification scheme. I would guess that this could be a loss on the order of 40% assuming that the in game world is 40% female.
After the initial exodus, the friends of those who left will probably leave too. A certain portion that remain will leave just on principal. If the remaining players have only a very sparsely populated in game world, the game probably won't survive. All of this seems rather obvious to me, so either Aurora is stupid, or somebody really wants to kill off this game. This definitely not a strategy that attracts new business.
My guess is that the behind the scenes stuff involved advertisers wanting to renegotiate ad rates for the shows pulled from iTMS, renegotiate them down. Why? Because even if the iTMS shows don't have ads in them, they help build audience for the show, ie, ratings. Pulling them from iTMS would probably result in a dip in ratings (or not) which means that rates should arguably be reduced. I know if I were an advertiser who paid up before all of this, I'd be looking for a better deal.
For the government to require DNA samples will likely sound very much like being numbered by the beast to people of a conservative, fundamentalist, Christian mindset. So it is very likely that they would not sit still for the govt attempting to do that in the US. I suspect those feelings are also behind some of the opposition to a national id card as well.
We're all familiar with the jokes about your online sweetheart turning out the be some old guy or teenage nerd, etc. etc.. And we laugh at the "horror" of discovering that your image is false. But surely there must be some stories where these odd couples in real life become friends/lovers despite that, and not just the ones involving people getting arrested for statutory rape. For reference, I'm thinking more along the lines of the relationship between Tsukasa and Subaru in the anime series.hack//Sign. That series is somewhat vague about what happens after they meet in real life, but clearly they did not recoil in horror at the discovery that they were both women, one confined to a wheelchair no less.
If indeed online relationships are real, then it is highly likely that eventually they are going to profoundly change the nature of real life relationships and what are and are not acceptable pairings. Indeed, the pair could conceivably cease to be the base unit.
This reminds me a bit of the OS/2 days when I would hunt around for hardware whose vendors provided good OS/2 drivers. I think that maybe AMD's decision has more to do with more big company support and demand for Linux, like Dell and Google, and perhaps a good number of those hardware hunting geeks of old are now the decision makers for major purchases. In any case, they don't want to lock themselves out of potential sales from big customers. It would be nice if this really was something to do with wanting to support Linux gaming, but alas, it is probably just business as usual. And given AMD's current set of woes, they definitely don't need to lose any more business.
Maybe it has reached critical mass, as it doesn't seem that JT is getting as much press these days as he used to. It must really hurt to crave the attention of the spotlight once the spectators have moved on. Maybe he's just a little lonely...
It seems to me that the real dispute boils down to NBC Universal wanting to charge more for shows and bundle popular shows with other, presumably not so popular, shows. I don't really want to pay more for shows, don't they get enough via my cable fees already? And I don't want to have to download some other, probably horrid, show to get the one I really want. So I guess that makes Apple the hero in my book for standing up for what I, the customer, wants. Granted, Apple wants to sell more iPods, but I think NBC Universal is clearly ignoring what their customers really want.
I personally don't want to resort to means of dubious legality to watch the shows I like, so I simply won't be watching if seeing what I want becomes an unpalatable experience. I remember a number of years ago having a problem with my cable service, but once I threatened to cancel the service altogether, they quickly came around and fixed the problem. I suppose NBC Universal will have to learn this the hard way.
Slashdot Mirror
I did a little more digging and came up with this
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197004081
which would imply that while Sony didn't seem to want porn on Beta, they did not actually forbid it. Indeed their blunder was that Beta was initially designed for a 1 hour format, which is fine for TV shows, but people were recording and watching a lot of movies, many pornographic. Sony was slow to come out with a longer format, so VHS won the day. They just guessed wrong on how people were going to use VCRs. An interesting thing to note here is that on both sides of the Beta-VHS issue, the engineers balked at longer tape formats for quality reasons. The JVC VHS engineers were overruled by parent company Matsushita, so there we are.
It's funny, but you make a good point. Pornography has definitely played a part in the history of media format wars and is credited in part for the win of VHS over Beta. Sony wouldn't allow porn on betamax. More recently, Sony initially refused to allow porn on the Blu-ray format, but I think they have quietly relented on that. So it is not too far fetched to say that DivX support may have something to do with porn. At the very least, the legacy DivX libraries other posters have mentioned may play some role in the decision of support. But, of course, a lot of those libraries probably contain a fair amount of, *ahem*, adult material. It certainly won't hurt PS3 sales!
In the end though, my guess is that adding DivX support is not a huge technological problem, and given the fierce battle Sony and Microsoft are engaged in, each wants as many bullet points as possible. In the end, competition is good for the consumer!
It sounds like EA Chicago kinda got the shaft. It'd be sweet vengeance if they formed their own company and beat their old employer with something fresh and new. It seems that developers everywhere need to be ready to take fate into their own hands because the corporations will boot you out the door without hesitation to meet some short term goal. Innovation doesn't generally blossom in the short term. Heck, given a chance, what they were trying to do in Def Jam might have evolved into something great. I mean people probably laughed at those quirky Japanese rhythm games when the ideas were first floated. Now I, and many others can hardly wait to spend $100USD to whoop it up with fake guitars and other instruments.
We've already seen this before. I used to think that with better tools, ordinary people could build their own stuff without the need to hire and pay pros. What I've actually seen over the years is the pros using the improved tools to build what ordinary people want. Even if so called Web 2.0 tools do gain prominence in the general population, someone will still have to maintain the things that are built. Anyone who wants to see what happens when the general populace gets a hold of Web 2.0 tools, needs look no farther than MySpace and Facebook. My eyes hurt just thinking about it, not to mention the stomach turning security holes underneath it all.
Web 2.0 tools may only allow outsourcing to spread to even cheaper and less skilled labor, but still paid labor. So, as usual, prepare for more highly exploitable crap!
One of the marks of a great civilization in these technological times is advanced space capability. So the Chinese and others are going into space for the same reasons the US did decades ago, national pride and to some extent national security. And what better distraction from local problems and lack of political freedom than lunar missions to stir up the bonds of nationalism?
In itself, space exploration is a good thing. But I don't think any of it would be happening without some national/political interest first, followed by commercial interests later. Going just for the science has always been a hard sell. Space exploration is the sport of great civilizations.
IANAL, but don't Comcast's actions jeopardize their common carrier status because they are monitoring traffic on their network in detail? So if Global Media Company A wants to sue them because of illegal Bit Torrent movie traffic, Comcast can hardly claim not to know what they are talking about. Perhaps this is why they have been so reluctant to admit that they were doing blocking and "shaping" of various kinds of traffic. Now that the cat's out of the bag, I expect some law suits to follow, from media companies. Comcast has demonstrated an interest in, and detailed knowledge of what traffic is on their network. So if they aren't blocking all of that illegal movie distribution, then they're liable too. There are plenty of lawyers out there who would be happy to make that argument.
First, I would say that 18000 is not too shabby for a first time effort. Second, I would say that Nintendo's appearance there makes me wonder about who the target audience really is. It's no secret that Nintendo is targeting the so called casual gamer very successfully with the Wii, DS, and a lot of kick ass 1st party software. I don't think that Nintendo hates hardcore gamers (at least not yet), but their attendance at E For All tells me that they were expecting a healthy showing of casual gamers.
PAX is a great event, but it seems pretty obvious that PAX is known by and driven by the hardcore gamer. Sure, plenty of casual gamers will show up too, but I don't think there will be many of these folks flying across the country for the event. They wouldn't be flying in just for E for All either, but they may be going to LA, a major tourist destination, for other reasons.
Scheduling E for All against PAX is stupid, but even with that, I think that if E for All cuts their ticket prices, and holds on to Nintendo and a few others, they should be able to grow. The hardcore will go to PAX, and everyone else to E for...well everyone else...
Oddly enough, EA contributed greatly to the demise of the Dreamcast by refusing to support it with their sports titles. Sega was already fairly weak by that time, but this time the three console holders are all fairly strong. So it'll be somewhat harder for them to play king maker this time.
I'm not really sure who's going to buy this though. The casual market it may be aimed at would likely still go for a Wii for $30 less and a pack in game that all of their friends are already playing. The hardcore gamers would balk at a system without a hard drive and are probably starting to eye the PS3 a little more now as the price drops. So I'm not sure where this fits in. I can only guess, that like the core system before it, it sits there to give a lower price point on the books in time for Christmas, when you can bet Wii's will be scarce.
I agree and suspect that many copyright owners will just blindly demand that everything be blocked that uses any of their content because that's the easiest thing to do. As someone who enjoys making anime music videos, I can only wonder how things are going to shake out. If the things I make are just summarily blocked, I'll probably stop using YouTube altogether. I should note that I've bought more than a few songs after watching user created music videos that featured them. In each case, I would never have heard of the song any other way.
I just turned 40 and am a well paid system administrator. Is it really feasible to work in technology past the age of 50?
I'll let you know when I get there! Seriously, if we older tech guys want to stay in the business and are performing well, then I don't think age should be an issue. For this, having some kids is an advantage, they're helping me ride the wave of new technology and even stay out ahead of it a little. And BTW, happy birthday!
Is it just coincidence that the affected players are from Samsung and LG, two Korean electronics giants that happen to be among Sony's biggest competitors? I'm just sayin...that's all...
This is just plain ridiculous! Is carpool lane cheating such an earthshaking problem that there is a need to employ high tech imaging technology to catch the cheaters? Oh please, there will always be some asshats who will cheat any system put in place. It isn't a big deal. I'd rather be employing technology to solve real problems like disease, and famine.
I don't think the notion of having one's text messages screened/monitored would sit well with most Americans any more than something similar would for voice messages. So it looks like the law will need to catch up again. Unfortunately, before that can happen I wouldn't be surprised to learn of other "controversial" text messages being quietly screened out by carriers. Obligatory dig: But of course all messages from Fox News get through! Just kidding, riiiiight?
Sadly, for the vast majority of Windows users, the patronizing attitude is probably the least painful approach. Like most here on /., I don't take too kindly to MS slipping unauthorized patches onto my systems. But for mom, pop, and grandma, well what they don't know might be good for them. Telling them too much would just confuse them and result in expensive tech support calls. So MS rolls the dice that most won't have a problem with the update and won't care to know the details anyway.
I'm not saying people should be like this, but it is often the case.
Exactly! If they want they could just add a basic player profile where you have to indicate your real body's gender. With that any player could then check to see the if the other person behind the character is really a man or a woman. I wouldn't mind having to indicate my real age and gender, if that means I could be whoever I wanted to be in the game.
Actually, revealing age scares me even more! I still love video games and mmorpg's in particular, but skew significantly older than the core demographic. What does that mean? It means getting party invites becomes one hell of a lot harder when you're old enough to be the party leader's dad! Online games are a great way to have fun with others who share a common interest, but too many details from real life would just get in the way of that. I have to be an old guy in real life everyday, do I have to do that in online games too? I hope not!
I wonder if they just want to shut down this MMO altogether? Jokes about tits or gtfo aside, while webcam verification can be defeated, few are going to bother. The males playing as females will probably just leave the game. And the females playing as females will also just leave the game rather than submit to an insulting and degrading verification scheme. I would guess that this could be a loss on the order of 40% assuming that the in game world is 40% female.
After the initial exodus, the friends of those who left will probably leave too. A certain portion that remain will leave just on principal. If the remaining players have only a very sparsely populated in game world, the game probably won't survive. All of this seems rather obvious to me, so either Aurora is stupid, or somebody really wants to kill off this game. This definitely not a strategy that attracts new business.
My guess is that the behind the scenes stuff involved advertisers wanting to renegotiate ad rates for the shows pulled from iTMS, renegotiate them down. Why? Because even if the iTMS shows don't have ads in them, they help build audience for the show, ie, ratings. Pulling them from iTMS would probably result in a dip in ratings (or not) which means that rates should arguably be reduced. I know if I were an advertiser who paid up before all of this, I'd be looking for a better deal.
obligatory, great minds, yadda yadda yadda!
Insert obligatory, "Spidey Sense Made In Japan", joke here...
For the government to require DNA samples will likely sound very much like being numbered by the beast to people of a conservative, fundamentalist, Christian mindset. So it is very likely that they would not sit still for the govt attempting to do that in the US. I suspect those feelings are also behind some of the opposition to a national id card as well.
We're all familiar with the jokes about your online sweetheart turning out the be some old guy or teenage nerd, etc. etc.. And we laugh at the "horror" of discovering that your image is false. But surely there must be some stories where these odd couples in real life become friends/lovers despite that, and not just the ones involving people getting arrested for statutory rape. For reference, I'm thinking more along the lines of the relationship between Tsukasa and Subaru in the anime series .hack//Sign. That series is somewhat vague about what happens after they meet in real life, but clearly they did not recoil in horror at the discovery that they were both women, one confined to a wheelchair no less.
If indeed online relationships are real, then it is highly likely that eventually they are going to profoundly change the nature of real life relationships and what are and are not acceptable pairings. Indeed, the pair could conceivably cease to be the base unit.
This reminds me a bit of the OS/2 days when I would hunt around for hardware whose vendors provided good OS/2 drivers. I think that maybe AMD's decision has more to do with more big company support and demand for Linux, like Dell and Google, and perhaps a good number of those hardware hunting geeks of old are now the decision makers for major purchases. In any case, they don't want to lock themselves out of potential sales from big customers. It would be nice if this really was something to do with wanting to support Linux gaming, but alas, it is probably just business as usual. And given AMD's current set of woes, they definitely don't need to lose any more business.
Maybe it has reached critical mass, as it doesn't seem that JT is getting as much press these days as he used to. It must really hurt to crave the attention of the spotlight once the spectators have moved on. Maybe he's just a little lonely...
It seems to me that the real dispute boils down to NBC Universal wanting to charge more for shows and bundle popular shows with other, presumably not so popular, shows. I don't really want to pay more for shows, don't they get enough via my cable fees already? And I don't want to have to download some other, probably horrid, show to get the one I really want. So I guess that makes Apple the hero in my book for standing up for what I, the customer, wants. Granted, Apple wants to sell more iPods, but I think NBC Universal is clearly ignoring what their customers really want.
I personally don't want to resort to means of dubious legality to watch the shows I like, so I simply won't be watching if seeing what I want becomes an unpalatable experience. I remember a number of years ago having a problem with my cable service, but once I threatened to cancel the service altogether, they quickly came around and fixed the problem. I suppose NBC Universal will have to learn this the hard way.