I have a bad ass home entertainment center and I haven't been to a theater since X-Files in 1998. I don't want to go to the theater and I don't want to pay $30 (plus tax) for a DVD/BluRay/HD-DVD. I also don't want to wait six months to a year for it.
Cable providers need to offer much larger varieties of "on-demand" content than they already do. I'm talking Net-Flix library quantities. Then, they need to release high definitely streaming on-demand movies the same day they are released to the theaters (which, it seemed last time I went a decade ago, had smaller movie screens than ever!). Charge me $5 or maybe even $10 for it and allow me to keep it for 24 or 48 hours.
Otherwise, you're going to find yourself losing a lot of money. People like myself who won't patronize a movie theater, but are excited about a movie will likely forget about the movie by the time it ever reaches our homes and you'll never get a dime from us in any form at all.
I don't see that there's anything wrong with an artist wanting monetary compensation for owning digital bits of their performances. The question is who is setting the price? The artist should be setting the price for their product, based on what they believe it is worth to consumers. If you think your album is worth $10 and I think your work is fucking fantastic, I'll probably buy it for $10 from you. Even if it's just digital. But for some lame ass corporation to tell me what your music is worth, based on the kind of profit *they* want and in relation to all *their* expenses which are completely unrelated to the actual art itself? Fuck that and fuck them. I'm a fan of artists; not labels.
That seems like a reasonable price. I'd also buy a lot more music. The question is whether or not the movement artists are slowly making to get away from the major distribution labels and moving into self-distribution (thanks, intarweb!), will result in artists dropping the price of their product significantly, while still managing to raise the amount they would receive from royalties with a corporate label? Or will they decide that if record labels can charge $20 for a CD and give them a buck, they should be able to charge $20 and keep it all?
See, here is the thing. How much is music worth? Well, it is worth whatever the artist is paid. The idiot anonymous coward who posted elsewhere here in reply to me suggesting that I am somehow obligated to buy music I don't even line for whatever value corporations place on them is completely off base.
How much does a VERY successful band get from a single $20 CD? A buck. Maybe two bucks if they are lucky. Therefore, the music is worth one or two dollars for an entire album of content. The other $18 is the price of advertising, distribution, lawyers, music videos, corporate revenue building. It has nothing to do with the value of the actual music to me as a consumer. Those are all added expenses by other people to get the music to me. It isn't needed anymore. Especially since I don't find out about music on the radio or television, but through friends and the internet. If a band is paid $2 for the royalty on each album, then $2 is what the album itself is worth. Do away with the middle man and sell me the product for $2. Or charge $4 if you like, as the artist.
So until the artist is the one dictating the price of their product, people like that anonymous coward who want CORPORATIONS to dictate the price of an artist's product can suck it.
The fact of the matter is that I'm not willing to spend a dollar for a song or ten bucks for an album. Most certainly not digital versions since I can get the full physical copy for not a lot more. Why would I pay that much for a lower quality non-physical version?
And I don't care what the value of your music is to you or anyone else's music is to them. I'm not your employer. I am a customer. A consumer. And if I don't want to buy your album, because I don't feel your music is worth my money, then I'm not going to buy it. When you reduce it to a price I consider worthwhile to me, then I will buy it.
Why are you suggesting that music is any different than any other product? By your logic, I should go to a restaurant that charges $100 for a meal, because it's worth $100 to the hard working chef. Maybe it's not worth $100 to *me*.
Your logic also fails in comparing what I'm willing to pay an artist for their music and what someone is willing to work for with an employer. By your logic, a better analogy would be if I worked for a boss who told customers "my software is worth a thousand dollars and you must buy it, because I worked hard to produce it!" and then potential customers said "sorry, I'd rather go without your software than pay $1,000 for it". If the customer doesn't think your product is worth buying, why should they be obligated to do so?
I suppose that you also feel anyone performing their music or other art for free or giving it away in some manner is fucking over every other artist by "devaluing" their products in the market place?
Your disregard for my choice to buy or not buy your product and decide at what price I will find myself willing to buy your product to be insulting. Especially since, as I mentioned, I very often buy music. I just don't buy it from the RIAA. I buy it from real musicians with real talent who are often also producing their own physical media and distributing it online and at shows. Sorry if I find it worth my while to spend $10 on an unsigned or small-label artist who is stuck working small venues and trying to book any gig they can get, but not spending $20 on some Epic / Universal / BMI signed band.
I'll buy music when it's a reasonable price. No song is worth a dollar. It's just music. And a dollar for much lower quality music compared to the uncompressed CD format? What a rip off.
I'm all for supporting artists, but I won't support the RIAA and bullshit business tactics to do it. I stick to music from people I know or discover and that I can buy directly from them or an outlet similar to CDBaby.
Of course, his point is still stupid, because companies are not getting "free bandwidth". They are trading content for bandwidth, so they can then in turn further distribute said content.
Besides, what are they whining about? They only give users a maximum 768kbps upstream (and that's if you pay the extra $10/mo -- other wise I think it's 256kbps). It's not like you're going to be taking out whole nodes on that pittance.
That doesn't seem to be what Cuban is saying at all. He seems to be saying that companies are investing in P2P as a distribution method for their content in an effort to pawn the bandwidth expense onto the users (and, then, the ISP) rather than paying the bandwidth costs for direct content transfers (via http, etc).
Of course, what about people who have high quality podcasts that come out to about 600mb, but they aren't a massive corporation? Does Mark Cuban think that only the big guys should get to have podcasts and create content on the internet? Because if you take P2P away, that's what is going to happen. Some guy with a popular podcast in high quality isn't going to be able to pay for the bandwidth to get 10,000 copies transferred at a total of six terabytes. But, break that six terabytes over about 10,000 connections and suddenly it's not a big deal for him and it has only a small impact on the individual ISP. Besides, they *already* throttle the hell out of uploads for everyone. 8mbps down and only 768kbps up? Damn.
Don't feel bad. I confuse the two sometimes, too -- and I certainly know the difference.
For those who can't keep track, Mark Cuban is the pissy little asshole who owns some basketball team and goes ballistic on the sidelines all the time and looks like a pudgy slightly pudgy little troll. He's also the guy that funded some Robert Redford Iraq "war" movie recently that tanked (I don't have any political opinion on the movie either way -- just saying...).
You know what the solution is to the whole cry-me-a-river-over-evil-p2p-ers thing? Give people more options than an expensive 8mbps/768kbps connection and give everyone fiber to the home. I think they currently get about 30mbps (bi-directional?!) for less money than Comcast charges for 8mbps/768kbps. What's more, I think we just had an article this week suggestiong that Verizon might soon be offering fiber in the range of 60mbps or more -- or something like that. For only a little more than what Comcast currently charges.
Or, if nothing else, at least offer me another fucking tier. You're the only god damn game in town. If ISPs offered a "bandwidth hog" service for double the price and no monthly transfer caps and you left me the hell alone and quit whining about how I'm wasting all this bandwidth downloading 600mb podcasts every day, I'd sure as hell drop the $120/mo on it. But you don't offer that. You offer a one size fits all solution and then tell me "no, 8mbps is just for super fast email access and you aren't supposed to use it for anything else!".
By his logic, we shouldn't be using the internet for VoIP, either. Or watching videos. Or listening to streaming radio stations. Or watching and listening to podcasts. After all, those all consume a lot of bandwidth, even if it's not over P2P. And of course, EVERYONE who uses P2P is a massive multinational corporation that can afford massive bills. Does he not realize that P2P allows a downloader to receive content in return for a small payment of bandwidth to help redistribute the same content to other users, instead of monetary compensation? P2P allows a significant number of small-time content producers to get their content out to a lot of people. Otherwise, they could never afford it and only the big guys would get to play the game.
And really, if you are only using the internet for shell access and to get your email account and refresh drudgereport, then what the hell are you bitching and moaning about needing high speed for in the first place?!
And really, if an internet provider wants to give HTTP, POP, IMAP and shell traffic top priority, that's fine with me. That way those packets will not be affected should a heavy load of other use throttle the connection -- and at the same time, a bunch of people just using HTTP and shell accounts isn't going to slow down your P2P or streaming activities by any noticeable amount.
I don't see why all of this is a big deal. And I don't see why my solution isn't good enough. It allows the content of the supposed majority of users to always get through unimpeded while allowing all other content to cross the wires as the remaining bandwidth (which is supposedly the other 90% of traffic) allows.
Call of Duty is not repetitive in the same way that Assassin's Creed is. Repetition doesn't have to be boring, but in Assassin's Creed, it is. Assassin's Creed says "look at these few things you can do -- aren't they rad?! So rad that we're going to make you do them 800 times! Yay!".
Call of Duty breaks things up. Introduces different strategies and tactics. Very different environments and goals . . . and while I wouldn't play it a second time, there was no point in the whole playthrough that I felt I was just being suckered into believing that doing something 500 times counts as "lots of content".
Assassin's Creed reminded me that I should not always be so eager for $60 games to have a lot of play time. If a game lasts 40 hours, but never varies, it's less enjoyable than a game like Bioshock where there is a lot of variety, great story, fun gameplay and it's all over in a couple sittings.
The one thing the game does well is the fighting. It's very smooth and the transitions are amazing. It's exciting to fight four or five or eight people at a time and be able to hack one guy, slash another with your blade's return, shove a third and then chop the first guy through his chest.
But it is definitely not "hard" and it's very difficult to die in a large fight. The reason this game is such a let-down is that you can see there is such a potentially rich world and a wealth of toys you could be playing with, but they have reduced it to a very mediocre set that you actually get to have and made it an extremely linear game. I think that many people who are overly thrilled with the game are just swayed by the relatively nice graphics and the fact that they can "climb tall stuff" (by the way, how many dozens of times do you have to climb to the top of a perch to expand your view of the map before the stupid circle-eagle-sky-cam-pan thing gets old?!).
So it's that there *could* be so much more, but isn't, that the result is so frustrating.
And of course, the story is pretty stupid. I was excited when I heard about a game based on the crusades in the 12th century. But then they crammed that awesomeness into a stupid sci-fi DNA-memory story. *snoooore*
The experience is definitely worth dropping $30 on a used copy in a couple months. As someone who bought it at full price . . . meh. I haven't finished the game, even. I played about half way through and then found myself not even interested in popping the disc back in for a few days. Maybe I'll get back to it next week.
I would say Assassin's Creed is exactly the *opposite* of a sandbox game. There are literally only three or four parts to the game and every instance of each part is always exactly the same. Unless you can get some sort of thrill for countless hours by hopping around roof tops to engage in pointless fights with the same guards you've fought a thousand times.
You can't pick-pocket or interrogate at will. These are only to be performed on a few specific targets.
There are a couple dozen citizens to save in each city. Always for the same reasons. Always by fighting the same half dozen guards in the same way with the same weapons and then running away before you're caught.
And that is the whole content of the game, until you are ready to go after the "boss" each time and assassinate him.
I would expect a sandbox game to have more to do both in the game construct itself and freely as part of the world's flexibility. This game is exactly the opposite. Even if hopping around buildings ala Crackdown gets a person off, it has to get boring eventually when they realize they aren't actually *doing* anything.
I don't know that you can get any tackier than the cheap-feeling (though reasonably useful) default kicker in 3.5.8.
Anyway, no sense in me getting all eager for this. I'm not going to bother installing 4x until it's part of my preferred distro and I don't expect it to become part of stable distro branches for at least another year.
I'm sure the fanboys will mark me as a troll, but as someone who eagerly anticipated Assassin's Creed, forked out the $65 for it and then sat right down to play it -- it doesn't deserve all the hype.
It looks pretty good. It has a couple interesting gameplay mechanics. But the story is terrible. They could have done away with all of the "your ancestor's memory lives in your DNA and we're going to stick you in a machine that sends your brain back in time to re-enact your ancestor's life". They could have added more content, too. The entire game consists of three things: Climbing high things to see new parts of the map, fighting a few guards to save citizens (who are ALWAYS in trouble for theft and the citizen saving is always 100% the same), pick pocketing (again, pointless and always exactly the same) one or two interrogations (you punch a guy a few times -- always the same) and then assassinating the "final boss".
Not only is the game utterly boring (because it is so repetitive), but even the main character (Altair) says it's boring when he's talking to the head assassin guy who takes all of Altair's weapons and special abilities away in the beginning. If your fictitious game character thinks the game is boring, then how the hell do you think the player feels?!
I wanted to love this game so damn much, but there just isn't enough actual variety and content to it. And while every game entails some degree of repetition, Assassin's Creed has to be right up there with Pac-Man -- only without all the fun. I won't be buying the other two games in the trilogy unless I get them at used prices and even then, only if I have absolutely nothing else left to play and am so utterly bored that doing the same three or four things a few hundred times just to see the long, drawn-out blab-blab-blab cut-scenes (seriously, it's like fucking Dragon Ball Z or something).
Well, depending on what limitations I'm getting with that. Can I back it up? When I'm done reading it, can I give it to someone else? We have to remember that in this process we are also talking about the elimination of possible reselling, which benefits the publisher since instead of having two or four or ten people over the life of a book read a single copy for the single price the publisher was paid, every person who reads it will now have paid that $10. So it probably ends up as a bonus in their eyes.
Didn't the government already provide them with a steady injection of financing to boost their broadband infrastructure in the last decade or so? I seem to recall we did. And did they ever actually use that money for the intended purpose? As I recall, they did not.
True. And you should open your doors to police searches without notification or justification whenever they want, because if you have nothing to hide, why do you care? The only people who should exercise their liberties are those who have things to hide. That way we can outlaw all liberties as merely tools of criminals. Good thinking, sport.
. . . And what if people rely on MySpace.com for their entire email, communications and contact services, thereby relegating their entire existence to a single third party point of failure!
However, so far, with past implementations the e-book cost as much as the real live paper version. So they convert all that cost of manufacturing into profit, not into a lower price for the consumer.
Not sure if it will change with these, but when I experimented with eBooks on my Palm Pilot about 5 or more years ago with peanut press that was what you found. And that is what I fear will end up happening. You don't see digital download versions of videogames selling for a discount. You can pay $50 for a PC game that comes in a box, on a set of CDs with a manual and a map and that has been through the whole manufacturing, shipping, store shelf process . . . or you can pay $50 for a PC game that you downloaded over the internet . . . obviously one is more expensive for the maker than the other. But they pocket the difference instead of returning it to the customer (even when they don't have a publisher as the middle man sucking out a huge portion of the profit, too).
One might be able to justify $50 for a paperback technical book, but it's hard to justify $10 or $20 or even $30 for a book of fiction. If prices were more reasonable, I would be all over a digital reader like this. Especially since I could theoretically carry my entire library on a single "sheet".
Of course, the real boon will be when you have wifi access on such a "paper reader" and you can access every known work in existence from the Library of Congress, including things like Wikipedia. All in a little device that looks like a notepad -- and easier on the eyes than a monitor.
But again, it all hinges on price and DRM limitations . . .
From the interview I watched earlier in the week, this is exactly what the parents intend to do. The law won't do anything criminally (or at least, they couldn't be bothered over the past year until it gained media attention with the victim's parents went public), but they can certainly take them to civil court. Unfortunately, there is nothing a civil judgment can do that would even approach justice. Was with OJ Simpson, you can be found criminally innocent, but civilly guilty. Meaning you won't have to do any time for causing or contributing to someone's death, but you can be forced to pay money. And since the family responsible for this probably aren't exactly wealthy, the victim's parents are unlikely to ever see a dime.
I like the idea of ebooks on physical "epaper". I like the idea of not having to pay ten to fifty dollars for a fucking paperback book, because I'll now be able to buy it in digital form, without the expense of manufacturing and distributing. I like the idea of having the data available to myself for use in different formats and as part of my collection forever, instead of having to buy another copy if I lose my book or spill a soda on it.
However, what is more likely to happen is that you'll pay just as much as you would for the real thing, be severely limited by crippling DRM, have to pay all over again to re-download the data should you ever need to and also be bound by all sorts of limitations that only benefit the publishing industry. For instance, now you won't be able to sell your book back to a store for them to sell on-the-cheap as used to another reader. The publishing industry HATES the used-book trade and they'd even love to see it criminalized. Not to mention how this could affect libraries.
So yes, the idea is great. Just like the idea of an immense online collection of videos that I can cheaply download and watch any time I want to with some sort of subscription service. Sounds great, but every implementation sucks and is more limiting than anything else.
Um . . . wouldn't the person's lawyer know about it? And, if they were held without their due process, wouldn't said lawyer then go public with your situation and information to help you out?
Not having your private information open to the public is not the same as being disappeared by the stasi.
The reason people seem to react with the "they should be named and shamed" response is in two parts. First, the family is clearly getting away with what they did and haven't even been looked at by the law. And probably never will be -- so people are frustrated and angry. The other part is that *ACCUSED* people are almost *ALWAYS* named. Just read a newspaper or watch the news on television and you'll see that names and often street home addresses are given out ALL the time for people who are merely accused. Sometimes they aren't even accused by the police, but only accused by the *media* (think of all the missing white girls on cable news and the hours and hours of discussion by the talking heads who quickly point fingers at and name the people in their lives that they're sure are culpable for their having gone missing or been killed).
The question is - why are the names and even addresses of accused people put out there ALL THE TIME by the police and news media alike for a wide variety of alleged crimes (and if it involves a child, they usually give you some tar and and a board with nails through the end). . . but then in this case, it's all hush hush?
I don't think anyone's information should be made public until they're actually convicted of something. However, I also don't think that if the policy of news organizations and law divisions is to make this kind of information public in every case . . . to suddenly be mum about it in one particular instance. Where's the consistency?
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I have a bad ass home entertainment center and I haven't been to a theater since X-Files in 1998. I don't want to go to the theater and I don't want to pay $30 (plus tax) for a DVD/BluRay/HD-DVD. I also don't want to wait six months to a year for it.
Cable providers need to offer much larger varieties of "on-demand" content than they already do. I'm talking Net-Flix library quantities. Then, they need to release high definitely streaming on-demand movies the same day they are released to the theaters (which, it seemed last time I went a decade ago, had smaller movie screens than ever!). Charge me $5 or maybe even $10 for it and allow me to keep it for 24 or 48 hours.
Otherwise, you're going to find yourself losing a lot of money. People like myself who won't patronize a movie theater, but are excited about a movie will likely forget about the movie by the time it ever reaches our homes and you'll never get a dime from us in any form at all.
I don't see that there's anything wrong with an artist wanting monetary compensation for owning digital bits of their performances. The question is who is setting the price? The artist should be setting the price for their product, based on what they believe it is worth to consumers. If you think your album is worth $10 and I think your work is fucking fantastic, I'll probably buy it for $10 from you. Even if it's just digital. But for some lame ass corporation to tell me what your music is worth, based on the kind of profit *they* want and in relation to all *their* expenses which are completely unrelated to the actual art itself? Fuck that and fuck them. I'm a fan of artists; not labels.
That seems like a reasonable price. I'd also buy a lot more music. The question is whether or not the movement artists are slowly making to get away from the major distribution labels and moving into self-distribution (thanks, intarweb!), will result in artists dropping the price of their product significantly, while still managing to raise the amount they would receive from royalties with a corporate label? Or will they decide that if record labels can charge $20 for a CD and give them a buck, they should be able to charge $20 and keep it all?
See, here is the thing. How much is music worth? Well, it is worth whatever the artist is paid. The idiot anonymous coward who posted elsewhere here in reply to me suggesting that I am somehow obligated to buy music I don't even line for whatever value corporations place on them is completely off base.
How much does a VERY successful band get from a single $20 CD? A buck. Maybe two bucks if they are lucky. Therefore, the music is worth one or two dollars for an entire album of content. The other $18 is the price of advertising, distribution, lawyers, music videos, corporate revenue building. It has nothing to do with the value of the actual music to me as a consumer. Those are all added expenses by other people to get the music to me. It isn't needed anymore. Especially since I don't find out about music on the radio or television, but through friends and the internet. If a band is paid $2 for the royalty on each album, then $2 is what the album itself is worth. Do away with the middle man and sell me the product for $2. Or charge $4 if you like, as the artist.
So until the artist is the one dictating the price of their product, people like that anonymous coward who want CORPORATIONS to dictate the price of an artist's product can suck it.
Concert tickets often go for $500 or more per seat. How does that justify placing the value of a CD at $500, too?
The fact of the matter is that I'm not willing to spend a dollar for a song or ten bucks for an album. Most certainly not digital versions since I can get the full physical copy for not a lot more. Why would I pay that much for a lower quality non-physical version?
And I don't care what the value of your music is to you or anyone else's music is to them. I'm not your employer. I am a customer. A consumer. And if I don't want to buy your album, because I don't feel your music is worth my money, then I'm not going to buy it. When you reduce it to a price I consider worthwhile to me, then I will buy it.
Why are you suggesting that music is any different than any other product? By your logic, I should go to a restaurant that charges $100 for a meal, because it's worth $100 to the hard working chef. Maybe it's not worth $100 to *me*.
Your logic also fails in comparing what I'm willing to pay an artist for their music and what someone is willing to work for with an employer. By your logic, a better analogy would be if I worked for a boss who told customers "my software is worth a thousand dollars and you must buy it, because I worked hard to produce it!" and then potential customers said "sorry, I'd rather go without your software than pay $1,000 for it". If the customer doesn't think your product is worth buying, why should they be obligated to do so?
I suppose that you also feel anyone performing their music or other art for free or giving it away in some manner is fucking over every other artist by "devaluing" their products in the market place?
Your disregard for my choice to buy or not buy your product and decide at what price I will find myself willing to buy your product to be insulting. Especially since, as I mentioned, I very often buy music. I just don't buy it from the RIAA. I buy it from real musicians with real talent who are often also producing their own physical media and distributing it online and at shows. Sorry if I find it worth my while to spend $10 on an unsigned or small-label artist who is stuck working small venues and trying to book any gig they can get, but not spending $20 on some Epic / Universal / BMI signed band.
I'll buy music when it's a reasonable price. No song is worth a dollar. It's just music. And a dollar for much lower quality music compared to the uncompressed CD format? What a rip off.
I'm all for supporting artists, but I won't support the RIAA and bullshit business tactics to do it. I stick to music from people I know or discover and that I can buy directly from them or an outlet similar to CDBaby.
Of course, his point is still stupid, because companies are not getting "free bandwidth". They are trading content for bandwidth, so they can then in turn further distribute said content.
Besides, what are they whining about? They only give users a maximum 768kbps upstream (and that's if you pay the extra $10/mo -- other wise I think it's 256kbps). It's not like you're going to be taking out whole nodes on that pittance.
That doesn't seem to be what Cuban is saying at all. He seems to be saying that companies are investing in P2P as a distribution method for their content in an effort to pawn the bandwidth expense onto the users (and, then, the ISP) rather than paying the bandwidth costs for direct content transfers (via http, etc).
Of course, what about people who have high quality podcasts that come out to about 600mb, but they aren't a massive corporation? Does Mark Cuban think that only the big guys should get to have podcasts and create content on the internet? Because if you take P2P away, that's what is going to happen. Some guy with a popular podcast in high quality isn't going to be able to pay for the bandwidth to get 10,000 copies transferred at a total of six terabytes. But, break that six terabytes over about 10,000 connections and suddenly it's not a big deal for him and it has only a small impact on the individual ISP. Besides, they *already* throttle the hell out of uploads for everyone. 8mbps down and only 768kbps up? Damn.
Don't feel bad. I confuse the two sometimes, too -- and I certainly know the difference.
For those who can't keep track, Mark Cuban is the pissy little asshole who owns some basketball team and goes ballistic on the sidelines all the time and looks like a pudgy slightly pudgy little troll. He's also the guy that funded some Robert Redford Iraq "war" movie recently that tanked (I don't have any political opinion on the movie either way -- just saying...).
You know what the solution is to the whole cry-me-a-river-over-evil-p2p-ers thing? Give people more options than an expensive 8mbps/768kbps connection and give everyone fiber to the home. I think they currently get about 30mbps (bi-directional?!) for less money than Comcast charges for 8mbps/768kbps. What's more, I think we just had an article this week suggestiong that Verizon might soon be offering fiber in the range of 60mbps or more -- or something like that. For only a little more than what Comcast currently charges.
Or, if nothing else, at least offer me another fucking tier. You're the only god damn game in town. If ISPs offered a "bandwidth hog" service for double the price and no monthly transfer caps and you left me the hell alone and quit whining about how I'm wasting all this bandwidth downloading 600mb podcasts every day, I'd sure as hell drop the $120/mo on it. But you don't offer that. You offer a one size fits all solution and then tell me "no, 8mbps is just for super fast email access and you aren't supposed to use it for anything else!".
By his logic, we shouldn't be using the internet for VoIP, either. Or watching videos. Or listening to streaming radio stations. Or watching and listening to podcasts. After all, those all consume a lot of bandwidth, even if it's not over P2P. And of course, EVERYONE who uses P2P is a massive multinational corporation that can afford massive bills. Does he not realize that P2P allows a downloader to receive content in return for a small payment of bandwidth to help redistribute the same content to other users, instead of monetary compensation? P2P allows a significant number of small-time content producers to get their content out to a lot of people. Otherwise, they could never afford it and only the big guys would get to play the game.
And really, if you are only using the internet for shell access and to get your email account and refresh drudgereport, then what the hell are you bitching and moaning about needing high speed for in the first place?!
And really, if an internet provider wants to give HTTP, POP, IMAP and shell traffic top priority, that's fine with me. That way those packets will not be affected should a heavy load of other use throttle the connection -- and at the same time, a bunch of people just using HTTP and shell accounts isn't going to slow down your P2P or streaming activities by any noticeable amount.
I don't see why all of this is a big deal. And I don't see why my solution isn't good enough. It allows the content of the supposed majority of users to always get through unimpeded while allowing all other content to cross the wires as the remaining bandwidth (which is supposedly the other 90% of traffic) allows.
Cuban is a hot-headed little prick.
Call of Duty is not repetitive in the same way that Assassin's Creed is. Repetition doesn't have to be boring, but in Assassin's Creed, it is. Assassin's Creed says "look at these few things you can do -- aren't they rad?! So rad that we're going to make you do them 800 times! Yay!".
Call of Duty breaks things up. Introduces different strategies and tactics. Very different environments and goals . . . and while I wouldn't play it a second time, there was no point in the whole playthrough that I felt I was just being suckered into believing that doing something 500 times counts as "lots of content".
Assassin's Creed reminded me that I should not always be so eager for $60 games to have a lot of play time. If a game lasts 40 hours, but never varies, it's less enjoyable than a game like Bioshock where there is a lot of variety, great story, fun gameplay and it's all over in a couple sittings.
The one thing the game does well is the fighting. It's very smooth and the transitions are amazing. It's exciting to fight four or five or eight people at a time and be able to hack one guy, slash another with your blade's return, shove a third and then chop the first guy through his chest.
But it is definitely not "hard" and it's very difficult to die in a large fight. The reason this game is such a let-down is that you can see there is such a potentially rich world and a wealth of toys you could be playing with, but they have reduced it to a very mediocre set that you actually get to have and made it an extremely linear game. I think that many people who are overly thrilled with the game are just swayed by the relatively nice graphics and the fact that they can "climb tall stuff" (by the way, how many dozens of times do you have to climb to the top of a perch to expand your view of the map before the stupid circle-eagle-sky-cam-pan thing gets old?!).
So it's that there *could* be so much more, but isn't, that the result is so frustrating.
And of course, the story is pretty stupid. I was excited when I heard about a game based on the crusades in the 12th century. But then they crammed that awesomeness into a stupid sci-fi DNA-memory story. *snoooore*
The experience is definitely worth dropping $30 on a used copy in a couple months. As someone who bought it at full price . . . meh. I haven't finished the game, even. I played about half way through and then found myself not even interested in popping the disc back in for a few days. Maybe I'll get back to it next week.
I would say Assassin's Creed is exactly the *opposite* of a sandbox game. There are literally only three or four parts to the game and every instance of each part is always exactly the same. Unless you can get some sort of thrill for countless hours by hopping around roof tops to engage in pointless fights with the same guards you've fought a thousand times.
You can't pick-pocket or interrogate at will. These are only to be performed on a few specific targets.
There are a couple dozen citizens to save in each city. Always for the same reasons. Always by fighting the same half dozen guards in the same way with the same weapons and then running away before you're caught.
And that is the whole content of the game, until you are ready to go after the "boss" each time and assassinate him.
I would expect a sandbox game to have more to do both in the game construct itself and freely as part of the world's flexibility. This game is exactly the opposite. Even if hopping around buildings ala Crackdown gets a person off, it has to get boring eventually when they realize they aren't actually *doing* anything.
I don't know that you can get any tackier than the cheap-feeling (though reasonably useful) default kicker in 3.5.8.
Anyway, no sense in me getting all eager for this. I'm not going to bother installing 4x until it's part of my preferred distro and I don't expect it to become part of stable distro branches for at least another year.
I'm sure the fanboys will mark me as a troll, but as someone who eagerly anticipated Assassin's Creed, forked out the $65 for it and then sat right down to play it -- it doesn't deserve all the hype.
It looks pretty good. It has a couple interesting gameplay mechanics. But the story is terrible. They could have done away with all of the "your ancestor's memory lives in your DNA and we're going to stick you in a machine that sends your brain back in time to re-enact your ancestor's life". They could have added more content, too. The entire game consists of three things: Climbing high things to see new parts of the map, fighting a few guards to save citizens (who are ALWAYS in trouble for theft and the citizen saving is always 100% the same), pick pocketing (again, pointless and always exactly the same) one or two interrogations (you punch a guy a few times -- always the same) and then assassinating the "final boss".
Not only is the game utterly boring (because it is so repetitive), but even the main character (Altair) says it's boring when he's talking to the head assassin guy who takes all of Altair's weapons and special abilities away in the beginning. If your fictitious game character thinks the game is boring, then how the hell do you think the player feels?!
I wanted to love this game so damn much, but there just isn't enough actual variety and content to it. And while every game entails some degree of repetition, Assassin's Creed has to be right up there with Pac-Man -- only without all the fun. I won't be buying the other two games in the trilogy unless I get them at used prices and even then, only if I have absolutely nothing else left to play and am so utterly bored that doing the same three or four things a few hundred times just to see the long, drawn-out blab-blab-blab cut-scenes (seriously, it's like fucking Dragon Ball Z or something).
Well, depending on what limitations I'm getting with that. Can I back it up? When I'm done reading it, can I give it to someone else? We have to remember that in this process we are also talking about the elimination of possible reselling, which benefits the publisher since instead of having two or four or ten people over the life of a book read a single copy for the single price the publisher was paid, every person who reads it will now have paid that $10. So it probably ends up as a bonus in their eyes.
Didn't the government already provide them with a steady injection of financing to boost their broadband infrastructure in the last decade or so? I seem to recall we did. And did they ever actually use that money for the intended purpose? As I recall, they did not.
True. And you should open your doors to police searches without notification or justification whenever they want, because if you have nothing to hide, why do you care? The only people who should exercise their liberties are those who have things to hide. That way we can outlaw all liberties as merely tools of criminals. Good thinking, sport.
. . . And what if people rely on MySpace.com for their entire email, communications and contact services, thereby relegating their entire existence to a single third party point of failure!
Oh wait . . .
Not sure if it will change with these, but when I experimented with eBooks on my Palm Pilot about 5 or more years ago with peanut press that was what you found. And that is what I fear will end up happening. You don't see digital download versions of videogames selling for a discount. You can pay $50 for a PC game that comes in a box, on a set of CDs with a manual and a map and that has been through the whole manufacturing, shipping, store shelf process . . . or you can pay $50 for a PC game that you downloaded over the internet . . . obviously one is more expensive for the maker than the other. But they pocket the difference instead of returning it to the customer (even when they don't have a publisher as the middle man sucking out a huge portion of the profit, too).
One might be able to justify $50 for a paperback technical book, but it's hard to justify $10 or $20 or even $30 for a book of fiction. If prices were more reasonable, I would be all over a digital reader like this. Especially since I could theoretically carry my entire library on a single "sheet".
Of course, the real boon will be when you have wifi access on such a "paper reader" and you can access every known work in existence from the Library of Congress, including things like Wikipedia. All in a little device that looks like a notepad -- and easier on the eyes than a monitor.
But again, it all hinges on price and DRM limitations . . .
Nothing really beats giving your nephew a hooker for Christmas.
From the interview I watched earlier in the week, this is exactly what the parents intend to do. The law won't do anything criminally (or at least, they couldn't be bothered over the past year until it gained media attention with the victim's parents went public), but they can certainly take them to civil court. Unfortunately, there is nothing a civil judgment can do that would even approach justice. Was with OJ Simpson, you can be found criminally innocent, but civilly guilty. Meaning you won't have to do any time for causing or contributing to someone's death, but you can be forced to pay money. And since the family responsible for this probably aren't exactly wealthy, the victim's parents are unlikely to ever see a dime.
I like the idea of ebooks on physical "epaper". I like the idea of not having to pay ten to fifty dollars for a fucking paperback book, because I'll now be able to buy it in digital form, without the expense of manufacturing and distributing. I like the idea of having the data available to myself for use in different formats and as part of my collection forever, instead of having to buy another copy if I lose my book or spill a soda on it.
However, what is more likely to happen is that you'll pay just as much as you would for the real thing, be severely limited by crippling DRM, have to pay all over again to re-download the data should you ever need to and also be bound by all sorts of limitations that only benefit the publishing industry. For instance, now you won't be able to sell your book back to a store for them to sell on-the-cheap as used to another reader. The publishing industry HATES the used-book trade and they'd even love to see it criminalized. Not to mention how this could affect libraries.
So yes, the idea is great. Just like the idea of an immense online collection of videos that I can cheaply download and watch any time I want to with some sort of subscription service. Sounds great, but every implementation sucks and is more limiting than anything else.
Um . . . wouldn't the person's lawyer know about it? And, if they were held without their due process, wouldn't said lawyer then go public with your situation and information to help you out?
Not having your private information open to the public is not the same as being disappeared by the stasi.
The reason people seem to react with the "they should be named and shamed" response is in two parts. First, the family is clearly getting away with what they did and haven't even been looked at by the law. And probably never will be -- so people are frustrated and angry. The other part is that *ACCUSED* people are almost *ALWAYS* named. Just read a newspaper or watch the news on television and you'll see that names and often street home addresses are given out ALL the time for people who are merely accused. Sometimes they aren't even accused by the police, but only accused by the *media* (think of all the missing white girls on cable news and the hours and hours of discussion by the talking heads who quickly point fingers at and name the people in their lives that they're sure are culpable for their having gone missing or been killed).
The question is - why are the names and even addresses of accused people put out there ALL THE TIME by the police and news media alike for a wide variety of alleged crimes (and if it involves a child, they usually give you some tar and and a board with nails through the end). . . but then in this case, it's all hush hush?
I don't think anyone's information should be made public until they're actually convicted of something. However, I also don't think that if the policy of news organizations and law divisions is to make this kind of information public in every case . . . to suddenly be mum about it in one particular instance. Where's the consistency?