Libraries are the same way; if they were invented today the Author's Guild would probably be lobbying against them.
I actually read a quote by the head of a publisher's organization - she said that they would dearly love to go after libraries, but it wasn't a battle they could win, because libraries are seen as such a good thing. It would be like going after children's hospitals, or puppies, or something. I can't find the quote after a quick naive Google, but I think it was covered on Slashdot a while ago.
I wish they would go after libraries, because then people might realize what money-grubbing greedheads the various publishing businesses are.
Ogg is quite big in Asia, especially Korea, actually. And by a strange coincidence, Apple's sales suck in Korea, and most of the "alternative" MP3 player manufacturers are from Korea.
But for this country, you're right. However, I still think the iPod isn't great as a music player for people who like music because it can't correctly handle albums without gaps between tracks - not without gymnastics on the part of the user, at least. So if you're someone who listens to electronica, live concerts, Pink Floyd or Abbey Road, your experience will suffer using an iPod.
I will agree that they seem to have nailed the looks, marketing, and interface, though.
I think it's kind of sad that some people's first thoughts, when seeing something totally new is "Great! Now how can I get it to look and act exactly like my old one?"
I'm glad that Nintendo hasn't said a whole lot about "shells" for the controller. The potential is obviously there, and I'm positive that companies will make clones of dualshocks and wavebirds, but that's not the point. That's taking something flexible and molding it into the same old shape.
Ideally, the shells would be cheap enough that game developers could release them on a per-game basis. Instead of the old way of adapting your game to the controls that are offered, you get to imagine the ideal control scheme and provide that interface. I don't think this will actually happen, but hopefully it will at least lower the barrier to entry for exciting new game interfaces.
What would happen if some of these novels were re-written in cartoon/comic book form, with language that could be read by a 10 year old, and placed in the kid's section of the library/bookstore?
Well, of course as soon as something becomes cartoonish, it loses its First Amendment protection. I believe Jefferson put that clause in the Bill of Rights.
Seriously, this is a big problem. In Texas, someone was arrested for selling an adult comic book to an adult undercover officer. Why? Because since it's cartoony, it MUST appeal to children! Even though it was in an adult shop, surrounded by sex toys and porn videos.
Video Games, by their very nature, are mostly targeted toward children and teenagers, because that is what brings in the money.
This is false. The main market for the video game industry these days is the 18-35 market - that's the group of people who grew up playing games, who watches MTV, and who has enough disposable income to buy lots of $50 titles.
But the game industry is not doing a good job of self-regulation, either.
Actually, the game industry has been praised by the FCC for having the best media rating system - better than movies or TV, because of the content descriptors.
However, one of the problems with legislation like this is that it can have adverse effects beyond the seeming focus of the bill.
Faced with prospects of a 12,000 dollar fine for someone slipping up, game stores may choose not to carry M-rated games, or even (given the vague language of the bill) some T-rated games. If retailers won't carry them, then publishers won't sponsor those titles. If that happens, then developers won't make those titles.
And you end up with a situation where we, as adults, lose the ability to purchase certain games due to the chilling effect of the law. Or more likely, where all games are "dumbed down" instead of being outright cancelled. Regardless, we lose something we had before.
Anybody who's nostalgic for Starfox won't be touching a new Nintendo platform with a barge pole. After the cracking SNES title and the slightly-less-good-but-still-excellent N64 title, the franchise has been abused beyond belief in the current generation.
Well, my point was that you can play the SNES version on the Revolution - it's like an emulator box made easy.
That's very interesting. Will it allow separate songs within one large file to be played in shuffle mode, and so forth? If so, it's not perfect, but it's good enough. If not, it's useless.
Thanks for the information regardless, though, I'll do some research on what it lets me do.
I really like the way the iPod looks. I've never used one, but people say they're great to use.
But I won't own one until I can listen to Dark Side of the Moon without little pauses whenever there's a new track. Records do it. Tapes do it. CDs do it. Why is there only *ONE* mp3 player that can handle gapless playback?
Imagine if after every 3 minutes, the audio dropped out of your music - just for a tenth of a second, but you'd notice it. Can you imagine buying an MP3 player that did that?
I also have a lot of Ogg music, but I can't seriously hold that against Apple (even though it would be free and easy to implement) since there's no market share.
But I can't buy the "you pay more for quality" argument until I can listen to albums the way they're meant to be heard, not with jarring gaps in playback.
I think you're mistaking the ability to pirate whatever the fuck you want with 'freedom'.
Actually, I think the two are intertwined. It's impossible for a computer to decide, after all, when you're pirating something. There's no distinction between ripping a CD you bought to put on your iPod and ripping one you borrowed to put up on p2p networks. The only way to prevent the second is to prevent the first.
And let's see... Can I play a DVD on Linux legally yet? Without the ability to pirate, that causes me to lose my freedom.
Or if there is a "Trusted Computing" Linux, will I be able to write software on it that rips CDs, or emulates a Sega Genesis? Will I even be able to run my own software at all?
It's really odd how every time a new medium arrives, certain people run around like headless chickens. The point of things like the constitution and the court interpretations of the First Amendment is that they're meant to be general principles, applicable to a variety of situations - once we decided that books shouldn't be banned, the question should have been (mostly) settled.
Of course, it's possible that I'm seeing confusion where in fact there's malice - perhaps the people who wish books could be banned see a new opportunity to assert their values with each new medium. I wouldn't be surprised.
From TFA: The report goes on to warn. "Executives who believe that enticing casual gamers to new machines is the secret to industry profit and market-share gains, [cannot] expect widespread consumer adoption of new platforms until 2007."
I guess that is meant to be a warning for Nintendo, since their stated strategy is growing the market by appealing to women and casual gamers. It's certainly a risk, but someone has to try and find new gamers, and competing head-to-head with MS and Sony didn't work out so well for them before.
On the other hand, part of what Nintendo is doing is not so much getting brand-new gamers, as trying to draw old gamers back into the fold - the people whose last console was an NES or SNES, and will be nostalgic for SMB3, Star Fox, and Bayou Billy. As long as they price and market it right, it might work out.
I've lost faith in pirates, actually. I used to believe that a small army of people working in their free time would easily defeat a few people writing defenses 9-5, but it seems like on some fronts the companies are winning. The biggest one I can think of is streaming WMV - it seems like it hasn't been cracked at all.
Then there's the fact that DRM is successfully being sold as a feature - an MP3 player is considered better if it supports "PlaysForSure" technology. Since when do I want to pay extra to give up my rights?
Anyway, I think it's probably pretty likely that OSX will be cracked eventually. But I don't have the faith in crackers I once had. I think that Trusted Computing will probably lock up our freedoms forever.
The thing about these operations is that there's probably about as much demand for them in every developed country. Why don't we have to wait in line in the US? Because many people who need that surgery can't afford it.
If everyone in the US had medical insurance, then our waiting lines would be as long as in a country with government-provided healthcare.
Basically, you get your quick operations at the cost of all those who can't afford them.
Also, I call bullshit on the 6-month waiting period - I have relatives in Norway and they're all very happy with the health care system.
One of the most valuable courses my University had was a required survey course that exposed everyone to important ideas, and the "big questions". Essentially a philosophy course, but more accessible.
The only time you're going to encounter anything like that - something to change people's opinions, force them to come to terms with their beliefs, and learn something about everyone else and other fields of study, is in an academic setting. You'd be doing yourself a disservice if you went to a college and only ended up with the ability to be a good 9-to-5er for some corporation. A lack of respect for knowledge is common these days, but being well-rounded and exploring all your options will give you a fuller, richer life.
Major in CS or CIS, but take courses in literature, biology, history, philosophy, education, interpretive dance, or whatever else you can. You'll be happier for it.
The limitations on other forms of entertainment, generally, are voluntarily enforced (movie ratings and so on). This is a legal enforcement, so it's different. If for no other reason, I'd argue that it's bad for that alone - it makes games a "special" medium, and puts games at least partially under the control of government.
The other reason is that it will have a chilling effect on the types of games that are made - publishers will be unwilling to take risks with content that will get banned, and so will concentrate even more on "safe" content. There's also the fragmentation of the retail market and the stigma that will come with buying mature games - it's not possible to find X-rated movies in normal retail stores, and to purchase one you have to deal with social stigma. It also makes it impossible for studios to make something artistic and adult - just like you'll never see an X-rated cinematic masterpiece.
Some of these problems would also arise from industry self-regulation, but they'd have more potential to change with mores in the future.
Prior to the Shuffle's release, the Rio DJ feature on the Karma would play your most popular music, newest music, "old favorites" and so forth. No rating system, it used the number of times the song was played. But still, a very similar system.
Well, in order to verify that you don't have an account, just send them your SSN, date of birth, full name, driver's license number, checking account number, and your mother's maiden name.
The thing that scares me most about Katrina is the behavior of people involved.
I have lived for a few years in an earthquake-prone area (the SF Bay area). I know that, eventually, there's going to be a big earthquake here. I don't own property, I don't drive a lot, and I'm pretty confident in the buildings in which I spend most of my time. (Although I've never really been in an earthquake before - maybe I'm just naive).
However, I'm not at all confident about the people around me - not any more. I can't believe that all it takes is a little chaos to make people start turning mean. I can undertand and even to some level condone looting food and medicine. But raping people? Shooting at rescue workers and fellow citizens? It's like the only thing keeping some people from being bestial is the veneer of soceity. Strip that away, and anything goes.
I'm even more worried about larger disasters - peak oil? I don't know if it's going to happen, but if it does it will be nation- or world-wide. Nowhere to go to escape the chaos. The only thing we can count on is people behaving rationally and morally - but it looks like that's not going to occur.
What about the rise of the sea level? If that happens, it's going to make cities all over the world worse than New Orleans right now. We'll have more warning, but it will still be ugly, as masses of people try to adjust to being packed in a smaller space.
What if we do hear of a meteor headed our way? I'd like to think that everyone would hunker down and figure out ways to divert or destroy it. But I suspect even if we did, the devastation from people's actions would be horrific.
I guess I've lost what little faith I had in humanity's ability to pull together in a disaster, and in the fundamental moral compass. I'm starting to understand the survivalist nuts.
If by "restrict" you mean "make it a two-step process," then yeah. Burn to CD. Re-rip. Done. And you say that as if any other online music store (other than certain Russian stores of questionable legality) that sells RIAA-label music makes this any easier. To the best of my knowledge, they do not.
There are a couple problems with this: First, just because it is the best there is, doesn't mean we can't ask for better.
Second, burning compressed music to a CD and ripping it to a different compression format will make your music suffer. It will sound worse than the original music - so it's not as painless as you suggest. I'd much rather have the option to download uncompressed, or losslessly compressed, music and encode it to my desires.
As you point out, this isn't Apple's fault, but unless consumers recognize the flaws in the system and complain, it isn't going to improve.
The one thing Nintendo has to worry about most now is that their offering isn't going to be as cool as the fan-made controllers.
In fact, it won't, if only because of the Nintendo ON virtual-reality video. Everyone _knows_ virtual reality isn't possible, but they'll still be disappointed when it doesn't happen.
The worst thing would be if someone guessed close to the truth - people will look and say "Oh, that's neat, I guess, but we already thought and talked about it. And why doesn't it have X?". The best thing Nintendo could do is come up with something surprising enough that people forget it's not as cool as virtual reality.
And, of course, it has to be weird enough to get major news sources to pick up on it, so Nintendo can fulfill their goal of attracting non-hardcore gamers. Even if it disappoints, if it's strange enough people will hear about the Revolution. "Game maker Nintendo revealed today that their vision of the future controller for video games is a dead cat on a string. Nintendo's system, which costs $4.99 and comes in 43 colors, can play all video games made between 1980 and 2000."
Slashdot Mirror
Libraries are the same way; if they were invented today the Author's Guild would probably be lobbying against them.
I actually read a quote by the head of a publisher's organization - she said that they would dearly love to go after libraries, but it wasn't a battle they could win, because libraries are seen as such a good thing. It would be like going after children's hospitals, or puppies, or something. I can't find the quote after a quick naive Google, but I think it was covered on Slashdot a while ago.
I wish they would go after libraries, because then people might realize what money-grubbing greedheads the various publishing businesses are.
Ogg is quite big in Asia, especially Korea, actually. And by a strange coincidence, Apple's sales suck in Korea, and most of the "alternative" MP3 player manufacturers are from Korea.
But for this country, you're right. However, I still think the iPod isn't great as a music player for people who like music because it can't correctly handle albums without gaps between tracks - not without gymnastics on the part of the user, at least. So if you're someone who listens to electronica, live concerts, Pink Floyd or Abbey Road, your experience will suffer using an iPod.
I will agree that they seem to have nailed the looks, marketing, and interface, though.
I think it's kind of sad that some people's first thoughts, when seeing something totally new is "Great! Now how can I get it to look and act exactly like my old one?"
I'm glad that Nintendo hasn't said a whole lot about "shells" for the controller. The potential is obviously there, and I'm positive that companies will make clones of dualshocks and wavebirds, but that's not the point. That's taking something flexible and molding it into the same old shape.
Ideally, the shells would be cheap enough that game developers could release them on a per-game basis. Instead of the old way of adapting your game to the controls that are offered, you get to imagine the ideal control scheme and provide that interface. I don't think this will actually happen, but hopefully it will at least lower the barrier to entry for exciting new game interfaces.
Kris Kristofferson?!?
Janis Joplin, I think you mean
Shoot for the mooooon!
What would happen if some of these novels were re-written in cartoon/comic book form, with language that could be read by a 10 year old, and placed in the kid's section of the library/bookstore?
Well, of course as soon as something becomes cartoonish, it loses its First Amendment protection. I believe Jefferson put that clause in the Bill of Rights.
Seriously, this is a big problem. In Texas, someone was arrested for selling an adult comic book to an adult undercover officer. Why? Because since it's cartoony, it MUST appeal to children! Even though it was in an adult shop, surrounded by sex toys and porn videos.
Video Games, by their very nature, are mostly targeted toward children and teenagers, because that is what brings in the money.
This is false. The main market for the video game industry these days is the 18-35 market - that's the group of people who grew up playing games, who watches MTV, and who has enough disposable income to buy lots of $50 titles.
But the game industry is not doing a good job of self-regulation, either.
Actually, the game industry has been praised by the FCC for having the best media rating system - better than movies or TV, because of the content descriptors.
However, one of the problems with legislation like this is that it can have adverse effects beyond the seeming focus of the bill.
Faced with prospects of a 12,000 dollar fine for someone slipping up, game stores may choose not to carry M-rated games, or even (given the vague language of the bill) some T-rated games. If retailers won't carry them, then publishers won't sponsor those titles. If that happens, then developers won't make those titles.
And you end up with a situation where we, as adults, lose the ability to purchase certain games due to the chilling effect of the law. Or more likely, where all games are "dumbed down" instead of being outright cancelled. Regardless, we lose something we had before.
Not protected WMV, though, like from VOD sites.
At least, not that I know about.
Anybody who's nostalgic for Starfox won't be touching a new Nintendo platform with a barge pole. After the cracking SNES title and the slightly-less-good-but-still-excellent N64 title, the franchise has been abused beyond belief in the current generation.
Well, my point was that you can play the SNES version on the Revolution - it's like an emulator box made easy.
That's true, but it breaks the benefits of single files - per-track ID3 info, shuffle mode, and so forth. Why can't Apple just implement gapless?
That's very interesting. Will it allow separate songs within one large file to be played in shuffle mode, and so forth? If so, it's not perfect, but it's good enough. If not, it's useless.
Thanks for the information regardless, though, I'll do some research on what it lets me do.
I really like the way the iPod looks. I've never used one, but people say they're great to use.
But I won't own one until I can listen to Dark Side of the Moon without little pauses whenever there's a new track. Records do it. Tapes do it. CDs do it. Why is there only *ONE* mp3 player that can handle gapless playback?
Imagine if after every 3 minutes, the audio dropped out of your music - just for a tenth of a second, but you'd notice it. Can you imagine buying an MP3 player that did that?
I also have a lot of Ogg music, but I can't seriously hold that against Apple (even though it would be free and easy to implement) since there's no market share.
But I can't buy the "you pay more for quality" argument until I can listen to albums the way they're meant to be heard, not with jarring gaps in playback.
I think you're mistaking the ability to pirate whatever the fuck you want with 'freedom'.
Actually, I think the two are intertwined. It's impossible for a computer to decide, after all, when you're pirating something. There's no distinction between ripping a CD you bought to put on your iPod and ripping one you borrowed to put up on p2p networks. The only way to prevent the second is to prevent the first.
And let's see... Can I play a DVD on Linux legally yet? Without the ability to pirate, that causes me to lose my freedom.
Or if there is a "Trusted Computing" Linux, will I be able to write software on it that rips CDs, or emulates a Sega Genesis? Will I even be able to run my own software at all?
It's really odd how every time a new medium arrives, certain people run around like headless chickens. The point of things like the constitution and the court interpretations of the First Amendment is that they're meant to be general principles, applicable to a variety of situations - once we decided that books shouldn't be banned, the question should have been (mostly) settled.
Of course, it's possible that I'm seeing confusion where in fact there's malice - perhaps the people who wish books could be banned see a new opportunity to assert their values with each new medium. I wouldn't be surprised.
From TFA:
The report goes on to warn. "Executives who believe that enticing casual gamers to new machines is the secret to industry profit and market-share gains, [cannot] expect widespread consumer adoption of new platforms until 2007."
I guess that is meant to be a warning for Nintendo, since their stated strategy is growing the market by appealing to women and casual gamers. It's certainly a risk, but someone has to try and find new gamers, and competing head-to-head with MS and Sony didn't work out so well for them before.
On the other hand, part of what Nintendo is doing is not so much getting brand-new gamers, as trying to draw old gamers back into the fold - the people whose last console was an NES or SNES, and will be nostalgic for SMB3, Star Fox, and Bayou Billy. As long as they price and market it right, it might work out.
I've lost faith in pirates, actually. I used to believe that a small army of people working in their free time would easily defeat a few people writing defenses 9-5, but it seems like on some fronts the companies are winning. The biggest one I can think of is streaming WMV - it seems like it hasn't been cracked at all.
Then there's the fact that DRM is successfully being sold as a feature - an MP3 player is considered better if it supports "PlaysForSure" technology. Since when do I want to pay extra to give up my rights?
Anyway, I think it's probably pretty likely that OSX will be cracked eventually. But I don't have the faith in crackers I once had. I think that Trusted Computing will probably lock up our freedoms forever.
The thing about these operations is that there's probably about as much demand for them in every developed country. Why don't we have to wait in line in the US? Because many people who need that surgery can't afford it.
If everyone in the US had medical insurance, then our waiting lines would be as long as in a country with government-provided healthcare.
Basically, you get your quick operations at the cost of all those who can't afford them.
Also, I call bullshit on the 6-month waiting period - I have relatives in Norway and they're all very happy with the health care system.
...not just a better employee.
One of the most valuable courses my University had was a required survey course that exposed everyone to important ideas, and the "big questions". Essentially a philosophy course, but more accessible.
The only time you're going to encounter anything like that - something to change people's opinions, force them to come to terms with their beliefs, and learn something about everyone else and other fields of study, is in an academic setting. You'd be doing yourself a disservice if you went to a college and only ended up with the ability to be a good 9-to-5er for some corporation. A lack of respect for knowledge is common these days, but being well-rounded and exploring all your options will give you a fuller, richer life.
Major in CS or CIS, but take courses in literature, biology, history, philosophy, education, interpretive dance, or whatever else you can. You'll be happier for it.
The limitations on other forms of entertainment, generally, are voluntarily enforced (movie ratings and so on). This is a legal enforcement, so it's different. If for no other reason, I'd argue that it's bad for that alone - it makes games a "special" medium, and puts games at least partially under the control of government.
The other reason is that it will have a chilling effect on the types of games that are made - publishers will be unwilling to take risks with content that will get banned, and so will concentrate even more on "safe" content. There's also the fragmentation of the retail market and the stigma that will come with buying mature games - it's not possible to find X-rated movies in normal retail stores, and to purchase one you have to deal with social stigma. It also makes it impossible for studios to make something artistic and adult - just like you'll never see an X-rated cinematic masterpiece.
Some of these problems would also arise from industry self-regulation, but they'd have more potential to change with mores in the future.
Prior to the Shuffle's release, the Rio DJ feature on the Karma would play your most popular music, newest music, "old favorites" and so forth. No rating system, it used the number of times the song was played. But still, a very similar system.
BS Zelda? I wonder why that never made it to the US.
Well, in order to verify that you don't have an account, just send them your SSN, date of birth, full name, driver's license number, checking account number, and your mother's maiden name.
That should stop the emails.
The thing that scares me most about Katrina is the behavior of people involved.
I have lived for a few years in an earthquake-prone area (the SF Bay area). I know that, eventually, there's going to be a big earthquake here. I don't own property, I don't drive a lot, and I'm pretty confident in the buildings in which I spend most of my time. (Although I've never really been in an earthquake before - maybe I'm just naive).
However, I'm not at all confident about the people around me - not any more. I can't believe that all it takes is a little chaos to make people start turning mean. I can undertand and even to some level condone looting food and medicine. But raping people? Shooting at rescue workers and fellow citizens? It's like the only thing keeping some people from being bestial is the veneer of soceity. Strip that away, and anything goes.
I'm even more worried about larger disasters - peak oil? I don't know if it's going to happen, but if it does it will be nation- or world-wide. Nowhere to go to escape the chaos. The only thing we can count on is people behaving rationally and morally - but it looks like that's not going to occur.
What about the rise of the sea level? If that happens, it's going to make cities all over the world worse than New Orleans right now. We'll have more warning, but it will still be ugly, as masses of people try to adjust to being packed in a smaller space.
What if we do hear of a meteor headed our way? I'd like to think that everyone would hunker down and figure out ways to divert or destroy it. But I suspect even if we did, the devastation from people's actions would be horrific.
I guess I've lost what little faith I had in humanity's ability to pull together in a disaster, and in the fundamental moral compass. I'm starting to understand the survivalist nuts.
If by "restrict" you mean "make it a two-step process," then yeah. Burn to CD. Re-rip. Done. And you say that as if any other online music store (other than certain Russian stores of questionable legality) that sells RIAA-label music makes this any easier. To the best of my knowledge, they do not.
There are a couple problems with this: First, just because it is the best there is, doesn't mean we can't ask for better.
Second, burning compressed music to a CD and ripping it to a different compression format will make your music suffer. It will sound worse than the original music - so it's not as painless as you suggest. I'd much rather have the option to download uncompressed, or losslessly compressed, music and encode it to my desires.
As you point out, this isn't Apple's fault, but unless consumers recognize the flaws in the system and complain, it isn't going to improve.
The one thing Nintendo has to worry about most now is that their offering isn't going to be as cool as the fan-made controllers.
In fact, it won't, if only because of the Nintendo ON virtual-reality video. Everyone _knows_ virtual reality isn't possible, but they'll still be disappointed when it doesn't happen.
The worst thing would be if someone guessed close to the truth - people will look and say "Oh, that's neat, I guess, but we already thought and talked about it. And why doesn't it have X?". The best thing Nintendo could do is come up with something surprising enough that people forget it's not as cool as virtual reality.
And, of course, it has to be weird enough to get major news sources to pick up on it, so Nintendo can fulfill their goal of attracting non-hardcore gamers. Even if it disappoints, if it's strange enough people will hear about the Revolution. "Game maker Nintendo revealed today that their vision of the future controller for video games is a dead cat on a string. Nintendo's system, which costs $4.99 and comes in 43 colors, can play all video games made between 1980 and 2000."
It'll get people's attention, anyway.