HDTV on games is like polishing a turd (if you'll excuse the crass analogy). It looks like a prettier turd, but it's still a turd.
Amusing anecdote, but I'd correct it just a bit: Standard-Def allows you to disguise the turd a lot easier, whereas HDTV illustrates the turd in all its bare turdliness.
They were talking about the malware itself. Please provide a quote in which Sony talks about the LGPL portion (which is what we're discussing here.)
And how do you know they didn't? Due dilligence generally doesn't include reverse-engineering software you're licensing
My point is simply that Sony cannot make the claim they are inculpable. They deliberately entered into an agreement with this malware company and deliberately produced product for sale with the rootkit. Whether or not Sony really understands what or how the software was developed, they are on the hook for distributing it on purpose. They are going to have to take the brunt of any legal action from their affected customers and aslo LGPL issues from copyright holders which arise.
That, good or bad, is how our legal system in the U.S. works. On their end, Sony now has to decide if they are going to go after First4Internet for reparations because of this fiasco, damaging Sony's image/brand (a stretch, but a possibility), and for licensing somebody else's IP as their own.
Except after the initial exposure of this rootkit in their products, Sony bigwigs were on NPR radio broadcast saying essentially (paraphrased) "What they don't know won't hurt them". I'd certainly content that constitutes delayed action, and possibly collusion. Plus the factoids coming out that this rootkit may have possibly been distributed by Sony for over a year now.
Regardless of who wrote it, Sony is still the one who deliberately distributed millions of CDs containing this malware. They should have done due diligence on their own product before shipping. They've supposedly stopped making CDs with XPC, but they haven't done any of the things a reputable company should be doing: Offering complete replacement discs (without foistware), coupons/credit for further Sony products ("Don't boycott our brand, please"), and promise not to abuse their actual customers again. Instead, they've done practically nothing (except some basic CYA by halting further production) and practically promised that they'll be trying this again in some form in the future. Hardly sounds like an 'innocent' party.
Sony certainly deserves to get their collective ass handed to them. Its just a shame it will have to happen through lawsuits and consumer boycotts, as you'd think they would learn not to abuse their own paying customers. I guess not.
P.S. Screw you Sony, your products, warranties, and service have been crap for years, but now I will actively avoid anything to do with you.
One of the things I didn't see addresses was how 'waterproof' the ink stuck to the paper. My sister has one of those HP portable photo printers, and I thought it did OK printing. She seems to like it. A few weeks later, I sneezed on a photo it had printed, and the ink literally blew off. Now there is a blank spot where her face should've been.
It makes me wonder how long they can last with sweaty hand or in humid climates, even with moderate handling. There is still the fading issue with a number of these photo printers, too.
I'm only looking forward to the 360 launch because I'm thinking of buying an XBox (original, not 360) and I know the price will go down
You might want to rethink that strategy. I just bought a second Xbox (original) because when softmodded they make nice XBMC sets (i.e. networked media players) and nice emulators for all the great older-generation games. [Be sure to pick up an Action Replay kit for your softmod, and possibly a large hard drive.]
With the huge losses Microsoft has taken with the first Xbox - word is they still lose money on every console sale - I wouldn't expect a price reduction. More likely in typical Microsoft style they'll simply end-of-life the original Xbox, most likely around new years.
Partly by weight. But also catorgorized by cockpit room. There are huge Bentleys classed as "compact" because despite the extremely large engine and length of the car, the passenger area is very small.
I would expect most of those soft/flexible optical cables are plastic and not real glass. Useful for short runs, but not for long runs. And they have different lightwave characeristics, so you'll see different light sources on those plasic cables (often LEDs instead of lasers).
I saw Star Wars (I suppose they're calling it "ANH" or Episode 4 these days, although there was no hint of that in the titles at the time)
I saw this first when I was about 9. It was a big deal to me because it was the first "PG" movie my folks ever let me go see. Anyways that aside, I remember being confused during to opening prologue scrolling text thingie, because it clearly showed something like "Episode 4, A New Hope" and in my 9 year-old mind I was all like "What? Did we miss 1 through 3, are we late to the theater or something???"
I agree that in its time it was The Best Thing Ever!!!111!!one and it is still a decent popcorn movie. But today I see it as B-grade fare, matched with still-impressive special FX. Lucas' dogmatic dedication to continually "clean up, fix up" the movie actually takes away from its original impressiveness. Still way better than the current Episodes 1-3 junk, of which I just began to watch III for the first time, and (literally) fell alseep halfway through because the acting is so wooden and the story is mostly boring. I have yet to see the end of III.
And why in $DEITY's name should you bother giving a "head's up" to an evil corporation implementing these evil schemes. So that they have fair warning to try and hide such fiascos better in the future? Its not the buying public's responsibiility to explain these things, rather Sony had better be able to figure it out on their own. Hell, Sony hasn't even bothered to make basic ammends in this case (offering a non-crippled disc, for instance).
If you're going to say anything, its much better to do so in public, so that other companies thinking of doing similar tactics get wind of it. I don't care if Sony ever knows *why* they never get another dime from the people they've wronged, they are the ones who have already crossed the line which common sense says they should never have done. Let Sony flounder, so competitors will act saner.
Its like an invisible wall, where suddenly the same effort to win early customers no longer works but you can't understand why. The fact that you immediately write off 11-40% of your (possible) target doesn't dawn on most business owners.
The frustrating part, though, is that he's probably making good money in the meantime. Ignoring 11% of the market because you can save on hiring extra "FireFox" expertise probably makes sense to a lot of small -to -medium businesses. In fact, I'm sure some businesses are happy to take advantage of the masses stupid enough to keep with Microsoft, because 'smart' FireFox users are too difficult to sell/dupe.
Story: Once a few years ago I asked why a local ISP didn't (actively) support Apple Macintosh users. The answer was that the Mac market wasn't big enough to bring in much money, and at the same time the Apple users were the most support-needy and time-consuming -- In other words... profit wasting
I'm in a similar situation. My son is now almost 5 and he's had a wonderful creative gameplayer for awhile now: Color Pixter. Its portable, has a nice colorful backlit LCD screen, and the only "control" is a touch stylus attached by a strong rope (no "buttons"). Most of the games involve touching pictures on the screen or outright drawing. 4-to-6 years seems to be the ideal age for this device. I do warn you, though, it does tend to eat through its 4 AA batteries. [Don't bother with the camera cartridge though -- it doesn't work well, and its the only disappointing one we've found so far.]
I also bought an old Dell CPiA-366MHz laptop computer a couple years ago, and its been pretty much relegated to playing those boxed edu-tainment titles you find at Costco at 4-for-$15. Works great for that, and doesn't take a lot of room -- much better than a desktop PC with external monitor. They're available even cheaper now (just make sure you get the A/C adapter included). You can get tonnes of C-series modules (i.e. CD-ROM drives) and parts on eBay and the like.
I haven't bothered with the "learning systems" because those kind of things tend to release a few cartidges and then go belly-up. For just "fun stuff" we softmodded our Xbox and dropped in a large hard drive to hold all the kids games. UnleashX makes a nice launcher and they can pick all the games from the menu (instead of messing with each disc), with a password function to keep the kids out of Dad's games. All the movie tie-ins seem to be released on Xbox -- Madagascar is a particularly good one for the little ones. Also makes a good emulator for all those old Atari, NES, and Genesis games. My son even plays original PLaystation games like Spyro the Dragon on our Xbox.
There's nothing worse than having to wreck the casing just to get in and fix a few loose wires
I feel the same way. The good news is that companies in the far east have recently taken to making replacement cases in various colors for most of the consoles, if you can stand giving up the stock look.
Would you want to be employed by a firm whose products were projected to be worthless by year's end?
I think we already have similar types of businesses, I call them "fad businesses". Currently the cell phone market is full of fad businesses -- small retail outlets which exist as franchises for the carriers. There are also smaller fad businesses which market 'phone holsters', changable faceplates, extra batteries and other novelties. They'll eventually die off and be replaced with whatever the next fad might be.
Cell phones and accessories (current fad)
before that it was - Pagers (and accessories)
before that I remember Yogurt shops being all the rage
So, it seems fad businesses have been around for awhile already.
It's bad enough taking children to McDonald's for exercise on the playground AFTER a greasy Happy Meal. Now we're just taking out the exercise and letting the kids wallow with their WiFi and Nintendos after their Happy Meals.
This pretty much defines the big colorful Play Place sign on the front of the building.
And have you ever had a damaged/dirty VCR "eat" your tape? Impossible with DVDs.
Not impossible. Obviously you've never had the joy of dealing with a CD or DVD player where the focusing element goes bonkers and jams the laser head up into the spinning disc's surface, leaving a deep round gouge. Makes me cringe when I hear people talk about the misleading 'forever' factor of disc formats, because it is usually the mechanical player you need worry about.
Not to mention planned obsolescence. There was a slashdot article a few weeks ago asking about CD archives and if there would even be any red laser mechanisms available to read those discs in a few decades.
You can take my comment with a huge grain of salt, because I have no inside info or anything. But:
I suspect later revisions to the DS will drop the GBA cartridge support. The newest Gameboy-micro already dropped older Gameboy support. So spending a lot of time working on clever GBA button-remapping features probably isn't worth Nintendo's effort, which would be better spent trying to get as many people upgraded to DS titles (like with all the old Gameboy and NES titles re-made for the GBA).
Compaq's business line (now HP) comes with something they call "Business Sound."
For the past couple of years (at least), Dell has also offered something similar, at least on the Optiplex lines. I pay $9 extra per box for Dell's "Business Audio", which consists of a small, mono case speaker which is normally absent. Nice to have the email arrived sounds and all, but makes it a nuisance for those darn loud web ads.
The funny thing, I remember back in the IBM XT days, when a case speaker was standard fare. You would never find a case which didn't have a speaker.
As I said before, if this info is publicized or shared, it's a completely other problem and I do believe it shouldn't be shared.
And no, I wouldn't mind the store I shop from knowing my drinking habits.
I have nothing to hide, I'm no alcoholic, if they see I indeed prefer a brand of beer over any cider, big deal?
There was recently a case in my state where a fellow slipped and fell in a store and ended up needing to sue for medical treatment. It seemed like a pretty clear-cut case, but the store was trying to weasel out of responsibility and decided to pull up his "customer loyalty card" info and tried to use a defense implying that the guy was a drunkard based upon his alcohol purchases -- on the public record in court! Anyway, it didn't save their case and the guy won. And as I recall, he bought a lot for hosted parties and the like, and didn't drink much of it himself but irregardless he should never have been put in a position to defned his purchases let alone even needing to explain himself.
Anyway, it was the first time I actually saw the media show concern about all this personal data collection. And that was just with a store card. I stopped using all my store loyalty cards after that expose. RFID seems more insidious if anyone (think: lawyers) can scan your car, house, or trash trying to establish patterns for whatever reason. The old 'I have nothing to hide' argument doesn't mean we should allow any of this, because it will be abused. No one should have to actively think or worry about how their shopping purchases might look to uninvolved RFID observers after the fact, especially when it can be so easily twisted against you.
The point is, if I own a product, be it cellphone, printer, or razor, it is mine. The courts ultimately ruled against Lexmark in this matter
But the court upheld Lexmark in the toner suit (EULA issue), where Lexmark provides a discount to people who bought the "cheaper" box on condition of returning it back only to Lexmark for recycling. Due consideration, in the court's opinion, was the cheaper price.
Since the phones are subsidized by the service providers I can easily see a court siding with them, also due to the 'cheaper price' consideration. The court would see the cheaper price as due consideration.
If you like yahoo's interface, go with yahoo, if you like google's interface then go with them. They're both free for chrissake...
I like whatever interface comes with my preferred POP-mail software. Google supports POP3 for free, Yahoo does not.
I can pretty much get Yahoo's Outlook-style interface with, well, Outlook using Google's POP service. Yahoo locks me into using Yahoo only (can't even use Outlook with it).
/me likes Thunderbird much better lately, anyways.
"...other companies have done worse than Microsoft ...practically all companies look to 'dominate' the market by gaining as much market share and therefore revenue."
I'd guess that you are young. I'll speak as one of the older farts around here about the animosity towards Microsoft.
Back in the day - say 1979 - Microsoft was still a small, growing software startup. I remember one of their big products was MS BASIC, which Microsoft spent a lot of effort to make sure ran on just about any piece of silicon under the sun. And at the time there were a lot of small comuting vendors popping up all ovre. I even had MS-BASIC for the Atari 800 home computer. The idea was, and still much today, that you could write to MS-BASIC on any hardware and your program would run on any other hardware (with MS-BASIC, cha-ching). Even back then Microsoft had the idea of being the "glue" between hardware and software. It also meant that Microsoft had to make headway into any platform which looked like it might stick around.
So fast forward to 1983 and the IBM PC/XT. Microsoft wins a juicy contract for MS-DOS on the PeeCee. Then come in Leading Edge, and the rest of the clones. To maintain their "glue", Microsoft bends over backwards to make sure MS-DOS runs on all the knock-offs, as well as the real IBM desktop machines. If MS-DOS runs everywhere, you don't need to fidget with your program for every hunk of silicon, just run MS-DOS on it.
After years of working hard to make sure their software ran on just about anything, Microsoft has been able to grow to dominance by being 'the best choice' and 'runs on everything'. Still today, Microsoft with the Windows OS is still the glue between software and hardware. They've also become so dominant, that they can now dictate terms to how they will implement APIs (see DirectX) and define minimum PC hardware specs (such as PC audio). The tables have turned a bit, in that now hardware makers are trying to make sure their product now works with Microsoft instead of MS needing to sweat making thier software work with the various hardware. This of course has now led to higher software prices and lock-in. Today, Microsoft is so dominant that most software we buy at the office only works on the Windows platform. Plus the fact that Microsoft likes to maintain their dominance by crushing other companies (a whole 'nother story there). As a developer, MS is well known for "looking at" your projects if you "need support" and then all your stealing your ideas. Microsoft has decided not only to be the "glue" but also be the entire, exclusive software supplier. So, many of us don't like their dominant position (raises costs) and their almost maniacal push to destroy competitors.
/epilogue: Also, many of us old guys came from the vestiges of the IBM mainframe lock-in days [thank you DEC, for saving us] and many of us don't want to see those days again no matter who the 'new' overlord may be.
Great way rebutt -- highlight the one outlying data point to argue against.:-P
I never said I bought Rez for half price, just my regular purchases. Currently I'm waiting for Resident Evil 4 to hit the bargain bins. My point was that shelf-life is no longer a strong factor in moving console purchases.
/sidenote: Besides, half.com usually doesn't have the best deals anyways. I say this as an experienced half.commer, where my eBay ID was actually assimilated (from half.com) during half.com's big buyout.
//sidenote: As a male, I don't need a game with a special 'vibrator' attachment.
On the one hand you've got the beautiful but expensive Vaio notebooks, complete with LCDs that put nearly anything else I've seen to shame
Until you find that beautiful Viao screen suddenly stops working one day, and its damn near impossible to get Sony to fix it, even if it does happen to still be under Sony's ridiculously short warranty. Or until they come out with the next model four months from now and you'll never ever see an updated driver for your particular Vaio. [Howard did say he would be reducing the number of models per year.]
Sorry, but from what I've seen none of Sony's products are built nor supported the way they should be for the price they ask. It's a shame really, because once upon a time they used to be such a reliable brand.
Given the chance I'd tell Howard to put the quality back into the brand, and maybe they'll be able to start picking up sales (revenue) again if enough people haven't already written off the Sony name like I have. But, looks like Mr.Media-guy is banking on the content-side of the company instead of the electronics side.
/predicting I'll continue to be Sony free for the next few years at least...
Slashdot Mirror
Amusing anecdote, but I'd correct it just a bit: Standard-Def allows you to disguise the turd a lot easier, whereas HDTV illustrates the turd in all its bare turdliness.
My point is simply that Sony cannot make the claim they are inculpable. They deliberately entered into an agreement with this malware company and deliberately produced product for sale with the rootkit. Whether or not Sony really understands what or how the software was developed, they are on the hook for distributing it on purpose. They are going to have to take the brunt of any legal action from their affected customers and aslo LGPL issues from copyright holders which arise.
That, good or bad, is how our legal system in the U.S. works. On their end, Sony now has to decide if they are going to go after First4Internet for reparations because of this fiasco, damaging Sony's image/brand (a stretch, but a possibility), and for licensing somebody else's IP as their own.
Except after the initial exposure of this rootkit in their products, Sony bigwigs were on NPR radio broadcast saying essentially (paraphrased) "What they don't know won't hurt them". I'd certainly content that constitutes delayed action, and possibly collusion. Plus the factoids coming out that this rootkit may have possibly been distributed by Sony for over a year now.
Regardless of who wrote it, Sony is still the one who deliberately distributed millions of CDs containing this malware. They should have done due diligence on their own product before shipping. They've supposedly stopped making CDs with XPC, but they haven't done any of the things a reputable company should be doing: Offering complete replacement discs (without foistware), coupons/credit for further Sony products ("Don't boycott our brand, please"), and promise not to abuse their actual customers again. Instead, they've done practically nothing (except some basic CYA by halting further production) and practically promised that they'll be trying this again in some form in the future. Hardly sounds like an 'innocent' party.
Sony certainly deserves to get their collective ass handed to them. Its just a shame it will have to happen through lawsuits and consumer boycotts, as you'd think they would learn not to abuse their own paying customers. I guess not.
P.S. Screw you Sony, your products, warranties, and service have been crap for years, but now I will actively avoid anything to do with you.
One of the things I didn't see addresses was how 'waterproof' the ink stuck to the paper. My sister has one of those HP portable photo printers, and I thought it did OK printing. She seems to like it. A few weeks later, I sneezed on a photo it had printed, and the ink literally blew off. Now there is a blank spot where her face should've been.
It makes me wonder how long they can last with sweaty hand or in humid climates, even with moderate handling. There is still the fading issue with a number of these photo printers, too.
You might want to rethink that strategy. I just bought a second Xbox (original) because when softmodded they make nice XBMC sets (i.e. networked media players) and nice emulators for all the great older-generation games. [Be sure to pick up an Action Replay kit for your softmod, and possibly a large hard drive.]
With the huge losses Microsoft has taken with the first Xbox - word is they still lose money on every console sale - I wouldn't expect a price reduction. More likely in typical Microsoft style they'll simply end-of-life the original Xbox, most likely around new years.
Partly by weight. But also catorgorized by cockpit room. There are huge Bentleys classed as "compact" because despite the extremely large engine and length of the car, the passenger area is very small.
I would expect most of those soft/flexible optical cables are plastic and not real glass. Useful for short runs, but not for long runs. And they have different lightwave characeristics, so you'll see different light sources on those plasic cables (often LEDs instead of lasers).
I saw this first when I was about 9. It was a big deal to me because it was the first "PG" movie my folks ever let me go see. Anyways that aside, I remember being confused during to opening prologue scrolling text thingie, because it clearly showed something like "Episode 4, A New Hope" and in my 9 year-old mind I was all like "What? Did we miss 1 through 3, are we late to the theater or something???"
I agree that in its time it was The Best Thing Ever!!!111!!one and it is still a decent popcorn movie. But today I see it as B-grade fare, matched with still-impressive special FX. Lucas' dogmatic dedication to continually "clean up, fix up" the movie actually takes away from its original impressiveness. Still way better than the current Episodes 1-3 junk, of which I just began to watch III for the first time, and (literally) fell alseep halfway through because the acting is so wooden and the story is mostly boring. I have yet to see the end of III.
And why in $DEITY's name should you bother giving a "head's up" to an evil corporation implementing these evil schemes. So that they have fair warning to try and hide such fiascos better in the future? Its not the buying public's responsibiility to explain these things, rather Sony had better be able to figure it out on their own. Hell, Sony hasn't even bothered to make basic ammends in this case (offering a non-crippled disc, for instance).
If you're going to say anything, its much better to do so in public, so that other companies thinking of doing similar tactics get wind of it. I don't care if Sony ever knows *why* they never get another dime from the people they've wronged, they are the ones who have already crossed the line which common sense says they should never have done. Let Sony flounder, so competitors will act saner.
It's not our job to save Sony.
Its like an invisible wall, where suddenly the same effort to win early customers no longer works but you can't understand why. The fact that you immediately write off 11-40% of your (possible) target doesn't dawn on most business owners.
The frustrating part, though, is that he's probably making good money in the meantime. Ignoring 11% of the market because you can save on hiring extra "FireFox" expertise probably makes sense to a lot of small -to -medium businesses. In fact, I'm sure some businesses are happy to take advantage of the masses stupid enough to keep with Microsoft, because 'smart' FireFox users are too difficult to sell/dupe.
Story: Once a few years ago I asked why a local ISP didn't (actively) support Apple Macintosh users. The answer was that the Mac market wasn't big enough to bring in much money, and at the same time the Apple users were the most support-needy and time-consuming -- In other words... profit wasting
With Dell's recent quarters slipping and Apple's recent quarters showing growth there can only be one conclusion:
Apple is dying!
I'm in a similar situation. My son is now almost 5 and he's had a wonderful creative gameplayer for awhile now: Color Pixter. Its portable, has a nice colorful backlit LCD screen, and the only "control" is a touch stylus attached by a strong rope (no "buttons"). Most of the games involve touching pictures on the screen or outright drawing. 4-to-6 years seems to be the ideal age for this device. I do warn you, though, it does tend to eat through its 4 AA batteries. [Don't bother with the camera cartridge though -- it doesn't work well, and its the only disappointing one we've found so far.]
I also bought an old Dell CPiA-366MHz laptop computer a couple years ago, and its been pretty much relegated to playing those boxed edu-tainment titles you find at Costco at 4-for-$15. Works great for that, and doesn't take a lot of room -- much better than a desktop PC with external monitor. They're available even cheaper now (just make sure you get the A/C adapter included). You can get tonnes of C-series modules (i.e. CD-ROM drives) and parts on eBay and the like.
I haven't bothered with the "learning systems" because those kind of things tend to release a few cartidges and then go belly-up. For just "fun stuff" we softmodded our Xbox and dropped in a large hard drive to hold all the kids games. UnleashX makes a nice launcher and they can pick all the games from the menu (instead of messing with each disc), with a password function to keep the kids out of Dad's games. All the movie tie-ins seem to be released on Xbox -- Madagascar is a particularly good one for the little ones. Also makes a good emulator for all those old Atari, NES, and Genesis games. My son even plays original PLaystation games like Spyro the Dragon on our Xbox.
I feel the same way. The good news is that companies in the far east have recently taken to making replacement cases in various colors for most of the consoles, if you can stand giving up the stock look.
So the next big thing will be... Appleworks* for my Apple IIe?
*which originally used bracketed functions for document formatting long before HTML or this wiz-bang XML you speak of.
I think we already have similar types of businesses, I call them "fad businesses". Currently the cell phone market is full of fad businesses -- small retail outlets which exist as franchises for the carriers. There are also smaller fad businesses which market 'phone holsters', changable faceplates, extra batteries and other novelties. They'll eventually die off and be replaced with whatever the next fad might be.
Cell phones and accessories (current fad) before that it was - Pagers (and accessories) before that I remember Yogurt shops being all the rageSo, it seems fad businesses have been around for awhile already.
This pretty much defines the big colorful Play Place sign on the front of the building.
Not impossible. Obviously you've never had the joy of dealing with a CD or DVD player where the focusing element goes bonkers and jams the laser head up into the spinning disc's surface, leaving a deep round gouge. Makes me cringe when I hear people talk about the misleading 'forever' factor of disc formats, because it is usually the mechanical player you need worry about.
Not to mention planned obsolescence. There was a slashdot article a few weeks ago asking about CD archives and if there would even be any red laser mechanisms available to read those discs in a few decades.
You can take my comment with a huge grain of salt, because I have no inside info or anything. But:
I suspect later revisions to the DS will drop the GBA cartridge support. The newest Gameboy-micro already dropped older Gameboy support. So spending a lot of time working on clever GBA button-remapping features probably isn't worth Nintendo's effort, which would be better spent trying to get as many people upgraded to DS titles (like with all the old Gameboy and NES titles re-made for the GBA).
For the past couple of years (at least), Dell has also offered something similar, at least on the Optiplex lines. I pay $9 extra per box for Dell's "Business Audio", which consists of a small, mono case speaker which is normally absent. Nice to have the email arrived sounds and all, but makes it a nuisance for those darn loud web ads.
The funny thing, I remember back in the IBM XT days, when a case speaker was standard fare. You would never find a case which didn't have a speaker.
There was recently a case in my state where a fellow slipped and fell in a store and ended up needing to sue for medical treatment. It seemed like a pretty clear-cut case, but the store was trying to weasel out of responsibility and decided to pull up his "customer loyalty card" info and tried to use a defense implying that the guy was a drunkard based upon his alcohol purchases -- on the public record in court! Anyway, it didn't save their case and the guy won. And as I recall, he bought a lot for hosted parties and the like, and didn't drink much of it himself but irregardless he should never have been put in a position to defned his purchases let alone even needing to explain himself.
Anyway, it was the first time I actually saw the media show concern about all this personal data collection. And that was just with a store card. I stopped using all my store loyalty cards after that expose. RFID seems more insidious if anyone (think: lawyers) can scan your car, house, or trash trying to establish patterns for whatever reason. The old 'I have nothing to hide' argument doesn't mean we should allow any of this, because it will be abused. No one should have to actively think or worry about how their shopping purchases might look to uninvolved RFID observers after the fact, especially when it can be so easily twisted against you.
But the court upheld Lexmark in the toner suit (EULA issue), where Lexmark provides a discount to people who bought the "cheaper" box on condition of returning it back only to Lexmark for recycling. Due consideration, in the court's opinion, was the cheaper price.
Since the phones are subsidized by the service providers I can easily see a court siding with them, also due to the 'cheaper price' consideration. The court would see the cheaper price as due consideration.
I like whatever interface comes with my preferred POP-mail software. Google supports POP3 for free, Yahoo does not.
I can pretty much get Yahoo's Outlook-style interface with, well, Outlook using Google's POP service. Yahoo locks me into using Yahoo only (can't even use Outlook with it)./me likes Thunderbird much better lately, anyways.
I'd guess that you are young. I'll speak as one of the older farts around here about the animosity towards Microsoft.
Back in the day - say 1979 - Microsoft was still a small, growing software startup. I remember one of their big products was MS BASIC, which Microsoft spent a lot of effort to make sure ran on just about any piece of silicon under the sun. And at the time there were a lot of small comuting vendors popping up all ovre. I even had MS-BASIC for the Atari 800 home computer. The idea was, and still much today, that you could write to MS-BASIC on any hardware and your program would run on any other hardware (with MS-BASIC, cha-ching). Even back then Microsoft had the idea of being the "glue" between hardware and software. It also meant that Microsoft had to make headway into any platform which looked like it might stick around.
So fast forward to 1983 and the IBM PC/XT. Microsoft wins a juicy contract for MS-DOS on the PeeCee. Then come in Leading Edge, and the rest of the clones. To maintain their "glue", Microsoft bends over backwards to make sure MS-DOS runs on all the knock-offs, as well as the real IBM desktop machines. If MS-DOS runs everywhere, you don't need to fidget with your program for every hunk of silicon, just run MS-DOS on it.
After years of working hard to make sure their software ran on just about anything, Microsoft has been able to grow to dominance by being 'the best choice' and 'runs on everything'. Still today, Microsoft with the Windows OS is still the glue between software and hardware. They've also become so dominant, that they can now dictate terms to how they will implement APIs (see DirectX) and define minimum PC hardware specs (such as PC audio). The tables have turned a bit, in that now hardware makers are trying to make sure their product now works with Microsoft instead of MS needing to sweat making thier software work with the various hardware. This of course has now led to higher software prices and lock-in. Today, Microsoft is so dominant that most software we buy at the office only works on the Windows platform. Plus the fact that Microsoft likes to maintain their dominance by crushing other companies (a whole 'nother story there). As a developer, MS is well known for "looking at" your projects if you "need support" and then all your stealing your ideas. Microsoft has decided not only to be the "glue" but also be the entire, exclusive software supplier. So, many of us don't like their dominant position (raises costs) and their almost maniacal push to destroy competitors.
/epilogue: Also, many of us old guys came from the vestiges of the IBM mainframe lock-in days [thank you DEC, for saving us] and many of us don't want to see those days again no matter who the 'new' overlord may be.
Great way rebutt -- highlight the one outlying data point to argue against. :-P
I never said I bought Rez for half price, just my regular purchases. Currently I'm waiting for Resident Evil 4 to hit the bargain bins. My point was that shelf-life is no longer a strong factor in moving console purchases.
/sidenote: Besides, half.com usually doesn't have the best deals anyways. I say this as an experienced half.commer, where my eBay ID was actually assimilated (from half.com) during half.com's big buyout.
//sidenote: As a male, I don't need a game with a special 'vibrator' attachment.
Until you find that beautiful Viao screen suddenly stops working one day, and its damn near impossible to get Sony to fix it, even if it does happen to still be under Sony's ridiculously short warranty. Or until they come out with the next model four months from now and you'll never ever see an updated driver for your particular Vaio. [Howard did say he would be reducing the number of models per year.]
Sorry, but from what I've seen none of Sony's products are built nor supported the way they should be for the price they ask. It's a shame really, because once upon a time they used to be such a reliable brand.
Given the chance I'd tell Howard to put the quality back into the brand, and maybe they'll be able to start picking up sales (revenue) again if enough people haven't already written off the Sony name like I have. But, looks like Mr.Media-guy is banking on the content-side of the company instead of the electronics side.
/predicting I'll continue to be Sony free for the next few years at least...