Sorry, you sir need to get into a new business. The one you are currently in sucks for you, sucks for the game, and sucks for the people playing the games. MMORPG's are NOT a job. People who are spending real money for in-game advantage through third parties should be shot in the street for being so stupid.
From what I understand the site's a faciliator for others to do their trading on game goods. So it's rather odd you'd state that "MMORPG's are NOT a job" since no one in this story is making them one.
Personally all I got from your post was you hate those who buy money/goods/characters in MMORPGs so, ergo, everyone should and the people at this site deserved what they got. Bet you're a real joy to party with online, I've noticed over the years that those with attitudes such as yours tend to be real asses in-game too, thinking that they know the only "right" way to do anything and everything. Perhaps you enjoy your gaming, but I can assure you a LOT of people probably despise you behind your back. You might want to re-evaluate your attitudes on life and gaming.
Dumb comparison, one that people make pretty often. The DVD playback kit is about $20 for xbox, and is usually now included in bundles for less.
Now maybe, but not when the Xbox came out or in the time frame I was talking about (late 2002 - mid 2003). The playback kit was $39.96 at our store and during that timeframe we never had a single Xbox bundle that came with it.
More importantly, you can't use your PS2 for it's main purpose (playing games) without purchasing a memory card. Well, you could, but you wouldn't want to without having a place to save your games. Xbox has that covered with the built in hard drive. So at best, this comparison is a wash between systems. Personally, I'd rather have an external purchase required for the box's secondary function (DVD viewing) than its primary function (game playing).
You'd be surprised at how many people don't care about the memory card and will buy a PS2 and a stack of games without one. I have no clue why, but it happened regularly. The problem is you're viwing this as a gamer, not a non-gaming consumer who's wanting to get a console for their kid, or have decided they want one to play on. These folks have no set attitude going in as to which one they want, or about memory cards, etc. When they find out they can get a DVD player with the PS2 for no additional cost, that was generally a major selling point to them. (I'm guessing a lot of these folks didn't have DVD players as well.) Surprisingly the (much) larger game library for the PS2 didn't make up many people's minds.
My point was that why in the hell did MS decide to do things this way? It definitely cost them sales, I've seen it happen, and there doesn't appear to be much logic to it, especially when they knew their biggest competitor's product would be offering the DVD playback functionality for free.
But at this point in the game it's asinine to argue that the PS2 is a better buy on virtue of the hardware alone. It's not as powerful and it doesn't come with as much stuff (at least, stuff that matters). You can get one system equally set up with things like dvd and memory for the same cost as you could get the other. The real argument should revolve around the game libraries.
You didn't get the point of my post, in reality the difference DOES make a difference to undecided, non-hardcore gamers wanting to buy a console. MS could have easily included the ability to play DVDs without requiring the playback kit to offset that advantage in the undecided consumer's mind. I still have yet to think of a single logical reason for them doing this beyond simple greed. It HAS hurt their sales, I've personally sold PS2s to customers that came in undecide who were convinced by the "free" DVD player they got along with the PS2. In many cases the games library didn't matter as the kind of games these folks were wanting to play were multi-platform.
Since you were targeting most of this at me (the grandparent) I'll respond.
You quoted a WILDLY inaccurate price (twice the actual retail) for the Microsoft product and then bring up discounted third-party products for the Sony console
Wildly inaccurate? I quoted the price it cost at the time I worked at Wal-mart in Electronics. It was $39.96 to be exact. If it's dropped in price since then, great, but don't accuse me of something that's not true. I wasn't the person who brought up discounted products for Sony so I'll skip that one.
Just admit that you hate the Xbox (probably because it's from Microsoft) and prefer the PS2 and get it the hell over with.
Trolling are we? Hate to burst your rather shallow bubble but I don't hate the Xbox, in fact I plan to buy one when I can afford it. I bought a PS2 first because at the time it had one game I wanted to play (Kingdom Hearts) that was a PS2 exclusive. (The game's till a PS2 exclusive.) I want to play Knights of the Old Republic on the Xbox which is why I'm trying to save up to buy both the Xbox and the game. I was also wanting to play True Fantasy Live Online but since MS killed that I'll probably pass on a Xbox live subscription once I get one. (I don't have a network adaptor for my PS2 either, there's not many games I consider worthwhile playing online. I'm a Final Fantasy fan but I really can't see getting FFXI even.)
(not even noting that early third-party PS2 memory cards were garbage that wouldn't work more than half the time).
Granted I didn't buy a PS2 when they first came out but what few reports I heard about defective memory cards were isolated to specific runs. Sounds like you're hunting for a reason to bash the PS2 frankly.
PS- The stock PS2 DVD video quality was horrendous compared to that provided by the $20 Xbox kit, and if you wanted decent quality playback on the PS2 you had to shell out for THEIR remote (around $20) to get the firmware upgrade that would improve things.
Hmm, again I didn't buy a PS2 when they came out but I've never bought a remote and my playback looks just fine and dandy to me. Same quality as my stand-alone DVD player (and on the same TV). Again, you sure you're not just hunting for a reason to bash the PS2?
Most people won't fill their machines with bullshit. And the ones that do are pretty easy to detect, and those are the ones you can lock down.
Sorry, but in the years I've been a Sysadmin I've learned that the above is blatantly, totally false. The vast MAJORITY of users, even highly intelligent and technical users WILL install crap on their work computers. Why? Hell if I know, but I suspect there a bit of an attitude of "oh it's not my machine, so it's no big deal". My in this case meaning personally owning it.
At the last place I worked we started gradually phasing in locked-down systems with users having no software install rights. Yes there was much grumbling and complaining at first, then something amazing happened. Those same complainers discovered they weren't having to call me to fix something on their machine every day, that they could leave the systems on (password protected of course) overnight and they'd still work fine the next day, etc. In fact user productivity soared and the complaints went completely away. I was accomodating and would install any reasonable software (within policy and security reason) for folks so that helped. I think a lot of the users found they really didn't NEED crap like Gator, etc.
One last thing to note, our viral/trojan problem on the systems that were locked down went from weekly (or daily on some machines) to non-existant. We kept them patched regularly, but the number one factor was that users didn't have the rights to infect themselves from E-mail worms. I already knew who the offenders were, but this proved who they were.:)
The point about the mouse and keyboards are very correct, and i whould like to add double points for a cordless mouse (and enough batteries).
From both a business and user perspective go with rechargeables. (Hell, even the environment wins a bit.:) You can either go with a central charger or extra points for putting a small one in each office with at LEAST 2 sets of batteries, but preferably 3 or more.
I'm sorry -- I am usually the civil libertarian type myself but I don't see any valid reason you would have to refuse to tell somebody (law enforcement or not) what your name is. You aren't required to carry a national id card or "papers" -- despite what the tin-foil hat crowd would have you believe.
I concur, I also tend to be a civil libertarian but this issue seems to be blown up way beyond the facts. If the tin-foil hat crowd had RTFA, they'd see that the court said that you only had to provide your name, not any identification. That's am important distinction, and it doesn't harm anonymity. You can always lie about your name since the court has said you don't have to produce ID. How will they know if you're lying or not?
In any case this seems to me to be mainly a non-issue. I've never had a problem telling an officer my name or showing my driver's license (for instance when they do random drunk-driving check points).
Just because you release a platform before a competitor doesn't automatically make it better.
True, and the converse can be true (releasing one later so you know the competition's strategy). One of the things that has never ceased to amaze me about the Xbox vs. the PS2 is that if you want to play DVDs on the Xbox, you have to pay about $40 more to get the DVD playback kit (a remote, an infrared receiver for it and software to install). That's have to, you can't do without it, it won't play DVDs without one. On the PS2 you pop in your DVD and can play it using your controller instead of a remote. You can get a remote if you want (around $20), but it's not a requirement.
While I worked at a Wal-mart in Electronics a while back that was a BIG selling point along with their being more games available. If a customer asked us about the systems we'd tell them the facts. The Gamecube wasn't even considered (even at the $149 vs. $199 price at the time) unless the customer wanted one in the first place because it couldn't even play audio CDs, let alone DVDs at all. In the small town I was in, in right around a year of part-time work, I personally saw hundreds of sales go to Sony partly, or solely, because of the DVD playback issue. The available games could be overcome to some extent, depending on what kinds of games a person might like, but that "free DVD player" bit for the PS2 was an awfully big deal, especially to folks who didn't have a DVD player in the house already.
It's also interesting to note that we rarely ever sold the DVD playback kits for the Xbox. We did sell the PS2 remote fairly regular, maybe 10 or so a month. (Versus maybe 10 or so a YEAR for the Xbox DVD playback kits.)
Unfortunately given the way the media companies are approaching piracy in the digital age the saying "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you" applies all too well.
I hope there are some senators who realize that "He took away your VCR" won't go well on the campaign trail.
Then again perhaps we should hope it would pass, the above should make it fairly easy to kill off all incumbents in the next election(s) and the law itself would likely never get enforced since it would be challenged immediately by the EFF, ACLU, etc.
I go out and buy BFV and install it. Keep in mind that I could have easily obtained a copy (and had actually already done so). I click the icon and I get some nonsense about the right drive or cd (I forget the specifics).
An email to tech support goes unanswered (obviously) and it takes the knowledge of my peers on IRC to figure it out.
Keep in mind that nowhere on the EA site does it reference the virtual drive thing. Besides that, who the hell decided that this accomplishes something? I don't think it's a stretch to assume that someone using somewhat obscure cd burning software like clonecd or alcohol 120% probably has a CD-R and/or DVD-R and isn't afraid to use it.
Imagine your experience if you were a non-technical user. The company won't respond to tell you why, their website doesn't mention anything that applies to you, and the game you paid for just won't work. You then try to return it and find out you can't. Well, if you're lucky you can, but most places won't allow you to return an unopened game. I know at Wal-mart the official policy is 30 days on unopened games. If it's opened, even if it's the same day, you can only exchange it for the same thing. That sure as hell won't help when the fault is intentional (the use of copy protection that breaks on detecting certain software)!
I used to work at a Wal-mart so I'm perhaps more familiar with the return policy, but I can also tell you that the change in it was not because Wal-mart didn't want to let people return things, it was because the publishers started refusing to credit Wal-mart unless it was a defective game, so only exchanges are allowed if it's opened. Same goes for movies on DVD or VHS and CDs as well.
Frankly I just can't see how these companies can justify this. In the case of Macrovision's latest copy-protection they KNOW that the game will fail to install on some subset of computers. Yet they still won't credit a retailer for a return on that game. It seems to me to be a sort of self-fulfilling prohecy at that point. Those smart enough to have things like CloneCD are probably going to find a way to copy that sucker once they get refused installing a legit copy!
I really don't get the point to this, this will only increase piracy. People like to own stuff they buy. If you make them think they don't own it, they won't buy it if there is an alternative (even an illegal one) available.
The studios seem to have very little hind-sight as well, DivX (the rental format, not the codec) failed miserably because people wanted to own their discs. This is just DivX all over again with fancier technology that allows it to work in all DVD players.
The funny thing is, all of these copy protection schemes never stop the real pirates. You can find a cracked version of any popular piece of software.
I think the best proof of this was the TurboTax activation debacle in 2003. Despite Intuit updating the code as the tax season passed along, new cracks kept coming out within days (if not hours) of each update. No one who wanted TurboTax free paid for it, but Intuit found out the hard way that they had pissed off a LOT of customers. Seems they underestimated badly the number of their customers who installed TurboTax on more than one computer for various reasons. It was so bad that Intuit not only declared they'd never use activation again, they took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to let customers know. They said they did that because customers were so mad that they doubted they'd read any mail or E-mail from Intuit, so the ad was their only hope of getting the message across.
To make it worse, 2003 was when TaxCut software debuted, I'd say Intuit caused a large exodus to their new competitor.
Moral is, copy protection and activation stuff only hurts the legit customers. People who want it free will get it free, they're willing to hunt for the means to do so.
Go ahead game companies. Use macrovisions latest "security" feature that end up pissing off all your paying customers (thousands and millions) so that you can delay crackers for an extra 5 minutes.
The latest version of Macrovision for games may have finally gone too far. It checks to see if you have certain "bad" software installed such as CloneCD. (There are others, I forget which though.) If it finds one of them installed, the installation fails, and without telling you properly why. Worse yet, if the software's not still on your computer, but the registry entries didn't get all removed it assumes the software's installed and fails.
Now aside from the fact that the copy protection software is trying to tell you what other software you can and can't own to play the game is how I found out about this. The letter from the Editor in the latest copy of Computer Games. It happened to him on a new game, and he was quite unhappy about it. While other magazines might not be quite as bold about reporting this fact, it's not going to go over well with them either. Pissing off the gaming press is a really great way to get the gaming market in general riled up.
In any case I know that thanks to Macrovision and this latest idiocy I refuse to buy any more new PC games. I'll still pick up games for my PS2, since I don't have to worry about the copy protection making them unplayable, but for the PC I'll pass. Neat how they lost my business even without it affecting me directly ehh?
Why don't you tell the capitalist you can do it in 24 hours?
I don't know which is scarier, that the did create a dotcom in 24 hours or that someone actually bid over $2000 to win it on Ebay! Maybe/. should get into this, we'd never need ads to pay for the hosting if it was done regularly.:)
So, it's quite do-able for a motivated student to write a relatively simple kernel in the amount of time that Linus took. Just ask the CS452 students--they had to build their kernels in just six weeks, plus they had other courses and limited resources in the lab.
My apologies that I didn't make it clear that I do indeed believe Linux wrote it all himself, I've never doubted it in fact. I was just trying to go along the lines of even if all that we say are just conspiracy theories, the fact is that Ken Brown's own consultant has basically proven that his allegations of code theft from Minix are false.
I had a friend take an operating systems course while we were going through the CS degree, he (and all class members) basically wrote an OS using an emulator (emulated the machine hardware archetecture) in the one semester class. A semester's considerably less than a year too, so there's even further contradiction for KB's theories.:)
Its always been interesting that when somebody (or a group of people) don't want to hear a certain answer, it often goes in one ear and out the other just in time for another "listener" to ask the same basic question phrased slightly differently in hopes of obtaining a reply closer to the desired view. It seems that many times the media in general has this practice almost molded into an art.
Actually law enforcement in general, but the FBI in particular has honed this one to a fine art. They will ask you the same question a million different ways over and over and over and over and over hoping to trip you up to get the answer they want. That's why you should never talk to the FBI at least without a lawyer present, for any reason.
Are you kidding? He's trying to sell a book, it's 100% in his best interest to stay in the spotlight as long as possible no matter what that takes. Who's the greater fool, KB with his million dollars in book revenue or the people who laugh at him on/. all day, confident in their superiority.
Personally I think KB may turn out to be the bigger fool in the end. We can conspire about why he's so driven to his (repeatedly refuted) belief that Linus couldn't have written Linux without ripping someone else's code off all day, but the fact remains that KB's own consultants have contradicted him! Frankly I would suspect continuing to go to print with such a claim (even though it's his opinions, accusing someone of theft when your own research (e.g. consultants repots) have told you your opinion is wrong will probably not pass freedom of speech muster. KB may find himself on the wrong (and losing) end of a libel suit once his book is published. I doubt he'll have much left from his proceeds even after the legal battle's over, whomever wins.
Yes I could be wrong, but there is so much out there already refuting, disproving, contradicting everything that we know KB's got in his book so far that I just can't see HOW it couldn't be considered anything but libel when it goes to print at this point. I also hope Linus follows up on it, I'm sure there are plenty of folks willing to help support a Linus vs. KB libel suit out there.
If KB's really doing this because MS is paying him and/or his institute to do it, I sure hope he got a good price for completely and utterly destroying himself.
What about a picture of a 12 year old girl in her underwear? That can't ever be right! Except in the Sears catalog. But only pedophiles read that section right? Is Sears contributing to the lust of pedophiles? Boycot them!
Kudos to you for not only putting together an extremely well written and intelligent post, but having the guts to post what (as you noted) could get you branded as a pedophile, simply because you refuse to have knee-jerk reactions.
A bit of real-life perspective to your comment above I quoted. Just last week we had a man convicted on child pornagraphy charges. For video taping willing teenagers he had met, fully clothed. Yep, FULLY clothed. Not a one was even partially unclad. The prosecution argued that because he zoomed in on their breasts at points in his videos that it was child pornagraphy.
OK, so the guy's definitely creepy (he also has prior convictions on sex crimes, so he's not just an innocent, at least not in previos cases) but all he did was arrange to meet these girls, in public places in exchange for something (I forget what, but it wasn't drugs or anything definitely illegal). He than used a camcorder to videotape them for a bit. I still can't see that he committed any real crime, and child porn? Well that's right out there, even using the most losely based definitions of it, I just can't see what he created as being child porn.
Now I'm sure some of you will say "Yeah, but he was a creep and had a history so it's best he's off the streets." Well, how long will that be? This is a case ripe for appeal, and considering that they chose to charge and prosectute him solely on child porn charges, he will at some point likely find an appeals court that tosses this out. Even the local news was questioning this case, and you know how the news is about not questioning anything to do with child porn. So this guy will end up back on the streets, the charge stricken from his record. He very well may do something worse later on. Seems to me it'd have been best to have watched him, and waited till he attempted to commit a real crime, one that could stick, than doing what they did.
In fact most PHBs would probably see the ads and not bother reading the article.
What really, REALLY is gonna promote Linux in a positive light is patronizing attitudes like yours.
I hope my sarcasm is apparent.
Quite frankly it's not being condescending or patronizing. If you have a boss that you need to send to read articles about Linux to try to get them to let you use it, then they most likely aren't a technically inclined person. Hell, I've worked in IT departments with bosses who'd been in computers since the mid to early 70s (while I was just a wee kid) and they'd qualify as PHBs in this sense. (Of course that's partly because they hadn't bothered to learn anything since the mid-80s.)
So no patronizing there, just pointing out a much too true reality for most of us in regards to our bosses.
They're not always illegal copies. I've known a number of techs who, at their jobs, used the Devil's Own key to install purchased installations of WinXP from their corporate CDs, often because they could not, for one reason or another, find the company's actual key, though sometimes it was out of sheer laziness.
Additionally don't forget all the techies who don't want product activation popping up everytime they change hardware around (or they think it'll do that) who have a legit copy but use a downloaded corporate no-activation install with a generated key. Technically you could make a case for it being an illegal copy (they bought XP Pro, this is XP Pro Corporate), but they DO own a copy, they just don't want to be hassled using their legit copy.
At one place I used to work we used to re-install every machine that came in with a clean, no-OEM crap install based off our MSDN version of Windows 2K. We did this because Dell doesn't really provide a "clean" image to install from. All our machines ended up with the MSDN install key (it wouldn't take the legit keys we had for the machines), but each one had a sticker on them showing a legit copy was owned and the key for it. Of course this can't be done with MSDN XP, so I suspect there are departments using slightly illicit corporate images to do essentially the same thing.
No, you don't have to be silent about your disagreeing with one person's representation of the truth, but asking an entire community to boycott a website due to the advertisements which it runs is a dangerous, dangerous slide into the sort of polarity we see in the United States today.
Bullshit, people ask communities to boycott all kinds of things all the time. The sheer fact that you're disagreeing with all the people supporting the boycott undermines you own argument. Asking a community to support a boycott is not a problem, now if someone forced that community to go along then we'd be sliding down a very dangerous slope.
As it is, he presents his opinion of why Linux Today should be boycotted and asks you to go along with it. You are perfectly free to choose not to. This is democracy in action. If enough people boycott Linux Today because of the MS ads, then they'll either stop running them or go out of business. If enough don't, they'll continue to do whatever they damn well please. It's a lot like voting, only instead of casting a ballot you're choosing whether to visit a site or not.
You're also muddying the issue a bit on the freedom of speech with Microsoft in an ad. Advertisements do not enjoy full freedom of speech, they must not claim and/or imply something that's false is true. Using biased research is one way to get around this, but if the bottom falls out of the research (say you get a whistle-blower who comes out and reports the results were completely made up and Microsoft knew about it) then MS would get in trouble for the ads. Corporations cannot just say anything they want in an ad, laws against false advertising exist for a reason.
Are we so unsure of the superiority of Linux that we believe that a simple banner ad could derail that process of testing and deciding?
You're missing the point, we're not scared of the TCO studies, we know them to be FUD, and could easily explain how and why to a boss/etc. The problem is that having ads that promote Microsoft at the cost of Linux on a Linux news site gives the impression of lack of confidence in the content on that site. If you were a pointy-haired boss and your IT guys wanted you to read an article on Linux Today and you see those ads panning Linux are you going to be swayed by the article any at all? Most likely not, as the ads have given you the preconceived notion going into the article that Linux costs more than the Microsoft stuff you're already using.
In fact most PHBs would probably see the ads and not bother reading the article.
But the person who walks into a game shop and shells out $99 for two used games would otherwise have spent that money on a brand new game and given that money to the publisher instead of the shop owner.
Well, as a person who buys pretty much nothing but used games (from a game-rental service that works like Netflix except for games), I'd have to say you're wrong. I'm not interested in spending that kind of money on one new game. If there wasn't a used market, I'd wait until the price dropped considerably before buying it. I doubt that would help the "problem" game publishers think this is.
Simply put I just can't tell you of more than 2-3 games I feel are worth $50 (US). Perhaps I'm just overly picky, but I kind of doubt it. I have a few games I picked up used that weren't worth what little I paid for them! (Ephermal Fantasy for PS2 comes to mind, ugg, wish I hadn't wasted money on that load of crap.)
Also keep in mind gamers with older computers for PC gaming. Simcity 2000 might not look as pretty as Simcity 3000 (or whatever the latest is), but it'll actually run decent on a slower computer. I tried out Simcity 3000 and it made my PC crawl (433Mhz Pentium MMX at the time). It was quickly removed and an older version I had put on instead.
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Sorry, you sir need to get into a new business. The one you are currently in sucks for you, sucks for the game, and sucks for the people playing the games. MMORPG's are NOT a job. People who are spending real money for in-game advantage through third parties should be shot in the street for being so stupid.
From what I understand the site's a faciliator for others to do their trading on game goods. So it's rather odd you'd state that "MMORPG's are NOT a job" since no one in this story is making them one.Personally all I got from your post was you hate those who buy money/goods/characters in MMORPGs so, ergo, everyone should and the people at this site deserved what they got. Bet you're a real joy to party with online, I've noticed over the years that those with attitudes such as yours tend to be real asses in-game too, thinking that they know the only "right" way to do anything and everything. Perhaps you enjoy your gaming, but I can assure you a LOT of people probably despise you behind your back. You might want to re-evaluate your attitudes on life and gaming.
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Dumb comparison, one that people make pretty often. The DVD playback kit is about $20 for xbox, and is usually now included in bundles for less.
Now maybe, but not when the Xbox came out or in the time frame I was talking about (late 2002 - mid 2003). The playback kit was $39.96 at our store and during that timeframe we never had a single Xbox bundle that came with it.-
More importantly, you can't use your PS2 for it's main purpose (playing games) without purchasing a memory card. Well, you could, but you wouldn't want to without having a place to save your games. Xbox has that covered with the built in hard drive. So at best, this comparison is a wash between systems. Personally, I'd rather have an external purchase required for the box's secondary function (DVD viewing) than its primary function (game playing).
You'd be surprised at how many people don't care about the memory card and will buy a PS2 and a stack of games without one. I have no clue why, but it happened regularly. The problem is you're viwing this as a gamer, not a non-gaming consumer who's wanting to get a console for their kid, or have decided they want one to play on. These folks have no set attitude going in as to which one they want, or about memory cards, etc. When they find out they can get a DVD player with the PS2 for no additional cost, that was generally a major selling point to them. (I'm guessing a lot of these folks didn't have DVD players as well.) Surprisingly the (much) larger game library for the PS2 didn't make up many people's minds.My point was that why in the hell did MS decide to do things this way? It definitely cost them sales, I've seen it happen, and there doesn't appear to be much logic to it, especially when they knew their biggest competitor's product would be offering the DVD playback functionality for free.
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But at this point in the game it's asinine to argue that the PS2 is a better buy on virtue of the hardware alone. It's not as powerful and it doesn't come with as much stuff (at least, stuff that matters). You can get one system equally set up with things like dvd and memory for the same cost as you could get the other. The real argument should revolve around the game libraries.
You didn't get the point of my post, in reality the difference DOES make a difference to undecided, non-hardcore gamers wanting to buy a console. MS could have easily included the ability to play DVDs without requiring the playback kit to offset that advantage in the undecided consumer's mind. I still have yet to think of a single logical reason for them doing this beyond simple greed. It HAS hurt their sales, I've personally sold PS2s to customers that came in undecide who were convinced by the "free" DVD player they got along with the PS2. In many cases the games library didn't matter as the kind of games these folks were wanting to play were multi-platform.-
You quoted a WILDLY inaccurate price (twice the actual retail) for the Microsoft product and then bring up discounted third-party products for the Sony console
Wildly inaccurate? I quoted the price it cost at the time I worked at Wal-mart in Electronics. It was $39.96 to be exact. If it's dropped in price since then, great, but don't accuse me of something that's not true. I wasn't the person who brought up discounted products for Sony so I'll skip that one.-
Just admit that you hate the Xbox (probably because it's from Microsoft) and prefer the PS2 and get it the hell over with.
Trolling are we? Hate to burst your rather shallow bubble but I don't hate the Xbox, in fact I plan to buy one when I can afford it. I bought a PS2 first because at the time it had one game I wanted to play (Kingdom Hearts) that was a PS2 exclusive. (The game's till a PS2 exclusive.) I want to play Knights of the Old Republic on the Xbox which is why I'm trying to save up to buy both the Xbox and the game. I was also wanting to play True Fantasy Live Online but since MS killed that I'll probably pass on a Xbox live subscription once I get one. (I don't have a network adaptor for my PS2 either, there's not many games I consider worthwhile playing online. I'm a Final Fantasy fan but I really can't see getting FFXI even.)-
(not even noting that early third-party PS2 memory cards were garbage that wouldn't work more than half the time).
Granted I didn't buy a PS2 when they first came out but what few reports I heard about defective memory cards were isolated to specific runs. Sounds like you're hunting for a reason to bash the PS2 frankly.-
PS- The stock PS2 DVD video quality was horrendous compared to that provided by the $20 Xbox kit, and if you wanted decent quality playback on the PS2 you had to shell out for THEIR remote (around $20) to get the firmware upgrade that would improve things.
Hmm, again I didn't buy a PS2 when they came out but I've never bought a remote and my playback looks just fine and dandy to me. Same quality as my stand-alone DVD player (and on the same TV). Again, you sure you're not just hunting for a reason to bash the PS2?-
Most people won't fill their machines with bullshit. And the ones that do are pretty easy to detect, and those are the ones you can lock down.
Sorry, but in the years I've been a Sysadmin I've learned that the above is blatantly, totally false. The vast MAJORITY of users, even highly intelligent and technical users WILL install crap on their work computers. Why? Hell if I know, but I suspect there a bit of an attitude of "oh it's not my machine, so it's no big deal". My in this case meaning personally owning it.At the last place I worked we started gradually phasing in locked-down systems with users having no software install rights. Yes there was much grumbling and complaining at first, then something amazing happened. Those same complainers discovered they weren't having to call me to fix something on their machine every day, that they could leave the systems on (password protected of course) overnight and they'd still work fine the next day, etc. In fact user productivity soared and the complaints went completely away. I was accomodating and would install any reasonable software (within policy and security reason) for folks so that helped. I think a lot of the users found they really didn't NEED crap like Gator, etc.
One last thing to note, our viral/trojan problem on the systems that were locked down went from weekly (or daily on some machines) to non-existant. We kept them patched regularly, but the number one factor was that users didn't have the rights to infect themselves from E-mail worms. I already knew who the offenders were, but this proved who they were. :)
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The point about the mouse and keyboards are very correct, and i whould like to add double points for a cordless mouse (and enough batteries).
From both a business and user perspective go with rechargeables. (Hell, even the environment wins a bit.-
Hell, for me, getting naked is part of everyday life because I have to shower in the morning. Does that mean that cops can strip-search me on a whim?
Only if you're in a porn video...-
I'm sorry -- I am usually the civil libertarian type myself but I don't see any valid reason you would have to refuse to tell somebody (law enforcement or not) what your name is. You aren't required to carry a national id card or "papers" -- despite what the tin-foil hat crowd would have you believe.
I concur, I also tend to be a civil libertarian but this issue seems to be blown up way beyond the facts. If the tin-foil hat crowd had RTFA, they'd see that the court said that you only had to provide your name, not any identification. That's am important distinction, and it doesn't harm anonymity. You can always lie about your name since the court has said you don't have to produce ID. How will they know if you're lying or not?In any case this seems to me to be mainly a non-issue. I've never had a problem telling an officer my name or showing my driver's license (for instance when they do random drunk-driving check points).
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Just because you release a platform before a competitor doesn't automatically make it better.
True, and the converse can be true (releasing one later so you know the competition's strategy). One of the things that has never ceased to amaze me about the Xbox vs. the PS2 is that if you want to play DVDs on the Xbox, you have to pay about $40 more to get the DVD playback kit (a remote, an infrared receiver for it and software to install). That's have to, you can't do without it, it won't play DVDs without one. On the PS2 you pop in your DVD and can play it using your controller instead of a remote. You can get a remote if you want (around $20), but it's not a requirement.While I worked at a Wal-mart in Electronics a while back that was a BIG selling point along with their being more games available. If a customer asked us about the systems we'd tell them the facts. The Gamecube wasn't even considered (even at the $149 vs. $199 price at the time) unless the customer wanted one in the first place because it couldn't even play audio CDs, let alone DVDs at all. In the small town I was in, in right around a year of part-time work, I personally saw hundreds of sales go to Sony partly, or solely, because of the DVD playback issue. The available games could be overcome to some extent, depending on what kinds of games a person might like, but that "free DVD player" bit for the PS2 was an awfully big deal, especially to folks who didn't have a DVD player in the house already.
It's also interesting to note that we rarely ever sold the DVD playback kits for the Xbox. We did sell the PS2 remote fairly regular, maybe 10 or so a month. (Versus maybe 10 or so a YEAR for the Xbox DVD playback kits.)
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Boy, do I hope that I'm just being paranoid.
Unfortunately given the way the media companies are approaching piracy in the digital age the saying "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you" applies all too well.-
I hope there are some senators who realize that "He took away your VCR" won't go well on the campaign trail.
Then again perhaps we should hope it would pass, the above should make it fairly easy to kill off all incumbents in the next election(s) and the law itself would likely never get enforced since it would be challenged immediately by the EFF, ACLU, etc.-
I go out and buy BFV and install it. Keep in mind that I could have easily obtained a copy (and had actually already done so). I click the icon and I get some nonsense about the right drive or cd (I forget the specifics).
Imagine your experience if you were a non-technical user. The company won't respond to tell you why, their website doesn't mention anything that applies to you, and the game you paid for just won't work. You then try to return it and find out you can't. Well, if you're lucky you can, but most places won't allow you to return an unopened game. I know at Wal-mart the official policy is 30 days on unopened games. If it's opened, even if it's the same day, you can only exchange it for the same thing. That sure as hell won't help when the fault is intentional (the use of copy protection that breaks on detecting certain software)!An email to tech support goes unanswered (obviously) and it takes the knowledge of my peers on IRC to figure it out.
Keep in mind that nowhere on the EA site does it reference the virtual drive thing. Besides that, who the hell decided that this accomplishes something? I don't think it's a stretch to assume that someone using somewhat obscure cd burning software like clonecd or alcohol 120% probably has a CD-R and/or DVD-R and isn't afraid to use it.
I used to work at a Wal-mart so I'm perhaps more familiar with the return policy, but I can also tell you that the change in it was not because Wal-mart didn't want to let people return things, it was because the publishers started refusing to credit Wal-mart unless it was a defective game, so only exchanges are allowed if it's opened. Same goes for movies on DVD or VHS and CDs as well.
Frankly I just can't see how these companies can justify this. In the case of Macrovision's latest copy-protection they KNOW that the game will fail to install on some subset of computers. Yet they still won't credit a retailer for a return on that game. It seems to me to be a sort of self-fulfilling prohecy at that point. Those smart enough to have things like CloneCD are probably going to find a way to copy that sucker once they get refused installing a legit copy!
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I really don't get the point to this, this will only increase piracy. People like to own stuff they buy. If you make them think they don't own it, they won't buy it if there is an alternative (even an illegal one) available.
The studios seem to have very little hind-sight as well, DivX (the rental format, not the codec) failed miserably because people wanted to own their discs. This is just DivX all over again with fancier technology that allows it to work in all DVD players.-
The funny thing is, all of these copy protection schemes never stop the real pirates. You can find a cracked version of any popular piece of software.
I think the best proof of this was the TurboTax activation debacle in 2003. Despite Intuit updating the code as the tax season passed along, new cracks kept coming out within days (if not hours) of each update. No one who wanted TurboTax free paid for it, but Intuit found out the hard way that they had pissed off a LOT of customers. Seems they underestimated badly the number of their customers who installed TurboTax on more than one computer for various reasons. It was so bad that Intuit not only declared they'd never use activation again, they took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to let customers know. They said they did that because customers were so mad that they doubted they'd read any mail or E-mail from Intuit, so the ad was their only hope of getting the message across.To make it worse, 2003 was when TaxCut software debuted, I'd say Intuit caused a large exodus to their new competitor.
Moral is, copy protection and activation stuff only hurts the legit customers. People who want it free will get it free, they're willing to hunt for the means to do so.
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Go ahead game companies. Use macrovisions latest "security" feature that end up pissing off all your paying customers (thousands and millions) so that you can delay crackers for an extra 5 minutes.
The latest version of Macrovision for games may have finally gone too far. It checks to see if you have certain "bad" software installed such as CloneCD. (There are others, I forget which though.) If it finds one of them installed, the installation fails, and without telling you properly why. Worse yet, if the software's not still on your computer, but the registry entries didn't get all removed it assumes the software's installed and fails.Now aside from the fact that the copy protection software is trying to tell you what other software you can and can't own to play the game is how I found out about this. The letter from the Editor in the latest copy of Computer Games. It happened to him on a new game, and he was quite unhappy about it. While other magazines might not be quite as bold about reporting this fact, it's not going to go over well with them either. Pissing off the gaming press is a really great way to get the gaming market in general riled up.
In any case I know that thanks to Macrovision and this latest idiocy I refuse to buy any more new PC games. I'll still pick up games for my PS2, since I don't have to worry about the copy protection making them unplayable, but for the PC I'll pass. Neat how they lost my business even without it affecting me directly ehh?
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Why don't you tell the capitalist you can do it in 24 hours?
I don't know which is scarier, that the did create a dotcom in 24 hours or that someone actually bid over $2000 to win it on Ebay! Maybe-
So, it's quite do-able for a motivated student to write a relatively simple kernel in the amount of time that Linus took. Just ask the CS452 students--they had to build their kernels in just six weeks, plus they had other courses and limited resources in the lab.
My apologies that I didn't make it clear that I do indeed believe Linux wrote it all himself, I've never doubted it in fact. I was just trying to go along the lines of even if all that we say are just conspiracy theories, the fact is that Ken Brown's own consultant has basically proven that his allegations of code theft from Minix are false.I had a friend take an operating systems course while we were going through the CS degree, he (and all class members) basically wrote an OS using an emulator (emulated the machine hardware archetecture) in the one semester class. A semester's considerably less than a year too, so there's even further contradiction for KB's theories. :)
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Its always been interesting that when somebody (or a group of people) don't want to hear a certain answer, it often goes in one ear and out the other just in time for another "listener" to ask the same basic question phrased slightly differently in hopes of obtaining a reply closer to the desired view. It seems that many times the media in general has this practice almost molded into an art.
Actually law enforcement in general, but the FBI in particular has honed this one to a fine art. They will ask you the same question a million different ways over and over and over and over and over hoping to trip you up to get the answer they want. That's why you should never talk to the FBI at least without a lawyer present, for any reason.-
Are you kidding? He's trying to sell a book, it's 100% in his best interest to stay in the spotlight as long as possible no matter what that takes. Who's the greater fool, KB with his million dollars in book revenue or the people who laugh at him on
/. all day, confident in their superiority.
Personally I think KB may turn out to be the bigger fool in the end. We can conspire about why he's so driven to his (repeatedly refuted) belief that Linus couldn't have written Linux without ripping someone else's code off all day, but the fact remains that KB's own consultants have contradicted him! Frankly I would suspect continuing to go to print with such a claim (even though it's his opinions, accusing someone of theft when your own research (e.g. consultants repots) have told you your opinion is wrong will probably not pass freedom of speech muster. KB may find himself on the wrong (and losing) end of a libel suit once his book is published. I doubt he'll have much left from his proceeds even after the legal battle's over, whomever wins.Yes I could be wrong, but there is so much out there already refuting, disproving, contradicting everything that we know KB's got in his book so far that I just can't see HOW it couldn't be considered anything but libel when it goes to print at this point. I also hope Linus follows up on it, I'm sure there are plenty of folks willing to help support a Linus vs. KB libel suit out there.
If KB's really doing this because MS is paying him and/or his institute to do it, I sure hope he got a good price for completely and utterly destroying himself.
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What about a picture of a 12 year old girl in her underwear? That can't ever be right! Except in the Sears catalog. But only pedophiles read that section right? Is Sears contributing to the lust of pedophiles? Boycot them!
Kudos to you for not only putting together an extremely well written and intelligent post, but having the guts to post what (as you noted) could get you branded as a pedophile, simply because you refuse to have knee-jerk reactions.A bit of real-life perspective to your comment above I quoted. Just last week we had a man convicted on child pornagraphy charges. For video taping willing teenagers he had met, fully clothed. Yep, FULLY clothed. Not a one was even partially unclad. The prosecution argued that because he zoomed in on their breasts at points in his videos that it was child pornagraphy.
OK, so the guy's definitely creepy (he also has prior convictions on sex crimes, so he's not just an innocent, at least not in previos cases) but all he did was arrange to meet these girls, in public places in exchange for something (I forget what, but it wasn't drugs or anything definitely illegal). He than used a camcorder to videotape them for a bit. I still can't see that he committed any real crime, and child porn? Well that's right out there, even using the most losely based definitions of it, I just can't see what he created as being child porn.
Now I'm sure some of you will say "Yeah, but he was a creep and had a history so it's best he's off the streets." Well, how long will that be? This is a case ripe for appeal, and considering that they chose to charge and prosectute him solely on child porn charges, he will at some point likely find an appeals court that tosses this out. Even the local news was questioning this case, and you know how the news is about not questioning anything to do with child porn. So this guy will end up back on the streets, the charge stricken from his record. He very well may do something worse later on. Seems to me it'd have been best to have watched him, and waited till he attempted to commit a real crime, one that could stick, than doing what they did.
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In fact most PHBs would probably see the ads and not bother reading the article.
Quite frankly it's not being condescending or patronizing. If you have a boss that you need to send to read articles about Linux to try to get them to let you use it, then they most likely aren't a technically inclined person. Hell, I've worked in IT departments with bosses who'd been in computers since the mid to early 70s (while I was just a wee kid) and they'd qualify as PHBs in this sense. (Of course that's partly because they hadn't bothered to learn anything since the mid-80s.)What really, REALLY is gonna promote Linux in a positive light is patronizing attitudes like yours. I hope my sarcasm is apparent.
So no patronizing there, just pointing out a much too true reality for most of us in regards to our bosses.
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They're not always illegal copies. I've known a number of techs who, at their jobs, used the Devil's Own key to install purchased installations of WinXP from their corporate CDs, often because they could not, for one reason or another, find the company's actual key, though sometimes it was out of sheer laziness.
Additionally don't forget all the techies who don't want product activation popping up everytime they change hardware around (or they think it'll do that) who have a legit copy but use a downloaded corporate no-activation install with a generated key. Technically you could make a case for it being an illegal copy (they bought XP Pro, this is XP Pro Corporate), but they DO own a copy, they just don't want to be hassled using their legit copy.At one place I used to work we used to re-install every machine that came in with a clean, no-OEM crap install based off our MSDN version of Windows 2K. We did this because Dell doesn't really provide a "clean" image to install from. All our machines ended up with the MSDN install key (it wouldn't take the legit keys we had for the machines), but each one had a sticker on them showing a legit copy was owned and the key for it. Of course this can't be done with MSDN XP, so I suspect there are departments using slightly illicit corporate images to do essentially the same thing.
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No, you don't have to be silent about your disagreeing with one person's representation of the truth, but asking an entire community to boycott a website due to the advertisements which it runs is a dangerous, dangerous slide into the sort of polarity we see in the United States today.
Bullshit, people ask communities to boycott all kinds of things all the time. The sheer fact that you're disagreeing with all the people supporting the boycott undermines you own argument. Asking a community to support a boycott is not a problem, now if someone forced that community to go along then we'd be sliding down a very dangerous slope.As it is, he presents his opinion of why Linux Today should be boycotted and asks you to go along with it. You are perfectly free to choose not to. This is democracy in action. If enough people boycott Linux Today because of the MS ads, then they'll either stop running them or go out of business. If enough don't, they'll continue to do whatever they damn well please. It's a lot like voting, only instead of casting a ballot you're choosing whether to visit a site or not.
You're also muddying the issue a bit on the freedom of speech with Microsoft in an ad. Advertisements do not enjoy full freedom of speech, they must not claim and/or imply something that's false is true. Using biased research is one way to get around this, but if the bottom falls out of the research (say you get a whistle-blower who comes out and reports the results were completely made up and Microsoft knew about it) then MS would get in trouble for the ads. Corporations cannot just say anything they want in an ad, laws against false advertising exist for a reason.
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Are we so unsure of the superiority of Linux that we believe that a simple banner ad could derail that process of testing and deciding?
You're missing the point, we're not scared of the TCO studies, we know them to be FUD, and could easily explain how and why to a boss/etc. The problem is that having ads that promote Microsoft at the cost of Linux on a Linux news site gives the impression of lack of confidence in the content on that site. If you were a pointy-haired boss and your IT guys wanted you to read an article on Linux Today and you see those ads panning Linux are you going to be swayed by the article any at all? Most likely not, as the ads have given you the preconceived notion going into the article that Linux costs more than the Microsoft stuff you're already using.In fact most PHBs would probably see the ads and not bother reading the article.
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But the person who walks into a game shop and shells out $99 for two used games would otherwise have spent that money on a brand new game and given that money to the publisher instead of the shop owner.
Well, as a person who buys pretty much nothing but used games (from a game-rental service that works like Netflix except for games), I'd have to say you're wrong. I'm not interested in spending that kind of money on one new game. If there wasn't a used market, I'd wait until the price dropped considerably before buying it. I doubt that would help the "problem" game publishers think this is.Simply put I just can't tell you of more than 2-3 games I feel are worth $50 (US). Perhaps I'm just overly picky, but I kind of doubt it. I have a few games I picked up used that weren't worth what little I paid for them! (Ephermal Fantasy for PS2 comes to mind, ugg, wish I hadn't wasted money on that load of crap.)
Also keep in mind gamers with older computers for PC gaming. Simcity 2000 might not look as pretty as Simcity 3000 (or whatever the latest is), but it'll actually run decent on a slower computer. I tried out Simcity 3000 and it made my PC crawl (433Mhz Pentium MMX at the time). It was quickly removed and an older version I had put on instead.