Re:Like the UN would be any faster...
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ICANN Meets Annan
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I don't think these issues have any need for a fast paced organisation. I would rather prefer a stable, yet slow organasation to handle these issues.
I agree, but if you read the quote from the article I posted you'd see that one of the critics arguments is that ICANN is too slow, so the UN should take over. My point was that the UN is unlikely to be faster, so this particular criticism is unlikely to be resolved.
The language compatibility thing is interesting, and that could possibly turn out better when working through the U.N., but I'm skeptical.
While I don't know the specifics, given Verisign's past actions with Site Finder alone, I suspect the problems about multi-language Internet getting implemented are more Verisign than ICANN. Verisign is probably wanting to do it in a proprietary way that they can make money off of, and fighting any alternative methods that would be open standards.
I just hope that if the UN gets involved, they come in against Verisign and any other large businesses who wish to screw with things. I'm not all for the UN controlling things, mind you. But if they do have some say, I hope its on the side of reason and open standards and fair, reasonable practices.
Actually the real question would be would the UN have any actual POWER to enforce the rules they set. They don't have much power now, so UN mandates get ignored quite often when it's convenient, so Verisign would probably just do what it wanted and ignore the UN mandates. It could actually end up being much WORSE than it is now.
Like the UN would be any faster...
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ICANN Meets Annan
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Other critics say ICANN is too slow in making decisions and adopting new technology, like ways to transmit Chinese and Arabic characters. VeriSign has sued the organisation, saying it is standing in the way of lucrative new services.
I wonder if these same critics have paid any attention to just how quickly the UN moves on things. Yes it's an international body, but it also brings even more petty arguments to the table because of that. While ICANN's far from perfect, I doubt things would be any faster with the UN taking over, slower maybe, but not faster.
iMac is released and 4 seperate comapnies make a PC with EXACTLY the same design original iPod comes out and Dell and Rio make iPod clone that look EXACTLY like the iPod sans the good looking interface... one of them even uses Apples font!
Yes indeed, and Apple sued them quite quickly too. IIRC, one of the PCs wasn't in production yet (it was a proposed model) and ended up never getting produced. I don't recall the outcome of all the cases though.
Also IIRC, Apple sued MicroSoft over Windows as well. I've heard various tales about what happened next, but I believe the truth is they lost because they had based their interface off of work from XeroX Park and it was ruled that Apple didn't own the interface design because of that. (I've also heard the tale that Apple signed away the rights for MS to use it without compensation, but I don't believe that is the true story.)
Besides, this is a patent for a user interface, not the cool looking design of the product. Apple could still sue about that even without the patent, as the look-alike products could cause confusion with Apple's brand. Of course IANAL, so I don't claim know patent law, just this is what I understand to be true.
If a patent is granted and Apple has the common sense to only enforce it in obvious cases of someone copying the interface, then great. If they get the patent and then sue anyone and everyone who has something that sort of works like the iPod, then that sucks.
If they want to keep the patent considered valid in court they'll have to sue everyone and anyone who has something similar. If you don't enforce it in all cases, the courts have had a tendency historically to consider the patent invalid, since obviously (to the court anyway) you didn't care enough about it to enforce it agressively. This is (arguably probably) part of the problems the current patent system generates.
I am stupid when it comes to most things related to patents.
What does this mean, does Apple secure exclusive rights to the specific combination of all the features of the iPod or to the individual features?
If this patent is approved what would be the impact on the portable music player market?
If history is any indicator, the portable music player market could forget having a user interface even remotely similar to Apple's in any shape, form or fashion. If they did, Apple would unleash the lawyers and sue them into oblivion. Do you remember the whole thing with Amazon and 1-click ordering? Same process, just a different area. Apple has also shown interest in following up with lawsuits, remember the PC makers who got sued for making colored PCs that were just a bit too iMac looking? One of them basically asked for it (IIRC, it looked exactly like an iMac, just had a PC inside and a different company logo), but at least one of the others was more general, having a colored monitor/case.
Basically it'd be at best a major nuisance, and at worst force everyone else to have ungainly user interfaces. (At least accepting that iPod's UI is good and easy to use, my (admittedly limited) experience with it was one of great frustration personally.)
In any case since elements of the user interface have existed in other products prior to the iPod, prior art should invalidate the patent claim. The US Patent Office has issued many questionable patents where prior art existed, and the excuse so far has been the patent was written to obfuscate, or was confusing, so they didn't pick up on it. This time the patent is written clearly, so the interesting thing will be to see if the US Patent Office issues a patent in face of prior art when the patent isn't hard to understand. Many would consider their issuing this patent a sign that the whole patent process is broken beyond repair.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but don't you think any body of laws represents a moral code? Every law legislates morality in some form or another. Killing a man, stealing what he earned, etc are all wrong because we believe them to be morally reprehensible and thus created laws to punish those who do it. Does the belief that gambling is a vice have to be predicated on religion in everyone's mind? It clearly has roots there, but not everyone who opposes its legalization is religious.
Personally I've never felt that the laws outline a moral code for much of anyone. There are some we mostly all agree on (murder and rape are bad for instance), then others most of us just ignore when we feel like it (speed limit and most traffic laws). This is fairly universally recognized, I've never seen an employer ask about how many speeding tickets I've gotten (besides jobs where driving is a primary focus of the job), but they all ask if I've been convicted of a felony. I should note that there are those that see no moral problem in killing people as well, although those are thankfully in a minority (and tend to end up in prison because they act on it).
While the law outlaws many things most people find morally reprehensible, it does not DEFINE the moral code, it's just occured in reaction to the moral code of the majority at the time the law was passed. The law changes too, while murder has pretty much always been outlawed, you can't hang someone for it anymore (at least in most of the US). Why? Because the majority decided that hanging was "cruel and unusual punishment" and that alternative methods like lethal injection were to be the method.
As far as people feeling objection to gambling = religious views, it's because that's about the ONLY argument against it you hear. I am aware of others (increased crime for instance), but you never hear about that in the news. Perhaps the news media is more to blame for this perception than any reality, but that's why it exists.
Interesting that you should say that. As someone who grew up with DOS and uses the linux console extensively, I still subconciously consider the mouse a secondary input device. Even under Windows, I tend to use the keyboard a lot to get around. ctrl-esc/win_key + r then type a command, etc. The mouse is invaluable for graphics editing (or for quickly setting focus under any application) and other uses (post-Doom FPSes which have free-look, etc.)
Curously enough I prefer keyboard/command-line interaction with my OS's, but I don't particularly like a game that makes me memorize so many keyboard commands that it feels like I'm studying for a test.:) I think flight-simulators are probably the best example of this, but then again that's an awfully complex thing to simulate, so it's a bit understandable.
Other games, particularly the MMORPG types, continue to be popular because you can actually type in multiple channels and chat back and forth about any subject you want. I've yet to see a console game that does much more than allow you to either select from a set of canned messages or offer an unwieldy "typewriter" that you use the joystick to select letters and fire button to use the letter. "Typing" arbitrary messages this way is extremely slow and "unnatural" (in that it takes concentration to do it, rather than touch-typing style ease).
As Blakey Rat said in his reply to you, the PS2 will accept (at least most) USB keyboards, and there are games that support it. I'm not sure all of them that do off-hand though. I expect the PS3 will definitely continue to support this, and the Xbox 2 probably will (if the current Xbox doesn't already). The gap between PCs and Consoles as far as typing stuff in is shrinking pretty fast because of this. Heck you can get a Logitech keyboard that has a controller built in so you can use it to play + type all in one. It's not terribly useful as a general controller though, but your console comes with at least one regular controller.
and with a really decent gaming PC as low as $500 (everyone already had an existing monitor no?) the console is not much cheaper.
Well your first statement isn't quantifiable, there are many ways consoles are better than PCs (especially for developers who don't have to worry about supporting anything except a certain set of hardware, so hardware compatibility problems are rare), and plenty where PCs are better than consoles. Saying one is better no matter what shows a horrid bias to what you're saying, especially when backed up with no facts. Not trying to rip you, but think about these things and people will pay more attention to your posts. (Of course you're posting anonymously so you might not care about whether anyone pays much attention to your posts.)
As far as a decent gaming rig being $500, umm, yeah, and it'll not be able to play the latest games in about a year tops, unless you start turning so many features off to get a decent frame-rate that it looks awful. A decent one that can (hopefully) last you three years (standard industry turn-over rate on computers for businesses at least) will set you back at least $2000, perhaps less if you have a kick-ass monitor & speakers already. Even then unless you have the latest and greatest video card in it (~$500), you may find yourself needing at least a video card upgrade (another ~$500 for the latest and greatest) before three years are up.
The expense with PC gaming is that games continue to push the latest hardware, requiring you to buy the latest and greatest hardware regularly or you get left behind. Yes, they'll still run, but you have to turn a lot of stuff off, or your frame-rate makes it look like a slide-show. Then you're not getting all the spiffy visuals and resolution you're wanting. With the consoles the hardware is fixed. Yes, that means as the console's life wears on it's abilites seem to pale, but then again about 2-3 years into a console's life has historically been when games start appearing that really push the abilities of it. Right now the PS2 has a few coming out (Gran Turismo 4 for instance) that have graphics many thought were impossible for the console.
In any case, the console's a LOT cheaper since you don't have to worry about upgrading the hardware in it over its life cycle. Even when you buy the next-gen console, they've traditionally been no more than ~$300 when they first come out, a good $200 less than the PC price you mention (which I still doubt would be capable of keeping up with gaming demands for more than a year). You can also do like I do and wait till the price drops to get one and also have a huge library of games ready by that time.
I guess my problem with consoles is the low resolution. My TV has ~640x480 resolution (I don't remember what NTSC actually is) My computer, no the other hand, goes up to 1600x1200.
I know this is true and it's something that people comment on quite often, but to me the comparison isn't totally fair. When you're playing a console ON the TV, it's displaying it at the resolution you're used to seeing. I myself have found many of the cinematics in console games (FFX and FFX-2 comes to mind, especially the whole Thousand Words CGI from X-2) to look stunning on my TV. I'm sure the PC versions would look great on my PC as well, but unless I have them side-by-side I don't notice.
So the resolution thing isn't as big an issue as many think it is. Of course I'm sure there are those that do notice, but to me most of my console games look great on the TV and I'm happy with that.
"...whether or not you can actually get any gaming done on your PC. I know myself that I have a tendency to want to check my E-mail, oh and then there's a website I need to read, and I need to burn this CD, etc. until all of a sudden it's too late to do any gaming"
Are you serious? You make it sound like gaming is work, a task that has to be performed. For 99% of the population it's the outher way araound. I find it hard to get any actual work done on my PC.
Yes I'm serious, but you're taking it wrong. I enjoy reading my E-mail, checking our websites, etc. so they tend to distract me from actually gaming. Gaming relaxes me more, and like I said I'm already in front of a computer all day at work, so getting away from it helps too.
Try to port something like Neverwinter Nights to a console and you'll see just how "minimal" the differences can get. Or if you want a real-world example, just compare Deus Ex to Deus Ex Invisible War.
I didn't mention PC -> Console conversions on purpose, what you say is very true. For whatever reason companies doing a console port of a PC game can't seem to figure out a way to do a decent console control interface. It can be done (IIRC, Max Payne was PC first, then went to console, but the PS2 version is quite easy to control, at least for me) but either a lack of knowledge of console UI, or a lack of interest causes it not to happen. I know it happens in both directions but PC -> console ports seem to suffer worse than the opposite.
The converse, Console -> PC, that I mentioned isn't just FFX. There are quite a few games that have ported over to PC and are easy to control on them too. Unfortunately there are still plenty that ignore the PC interface and aren't really playable without a gamepad either. (As I mentioned in my original post.)
I think it boils down to companies need to look at the target for the game (or port of a game) and spend time making sure that the UI is designed (or redesigned) to work with it. You can have a game that plays great on a console and the PC it just takes a bit of effort.
I love to be able to play against my console-loving nephews with a mouse-keyboard setup. Maybe I'd finally stop giving them the boundless amusement of slapping around Uncle Jim!
Once FF XI is released here for the PS2 it's one that is playable by both PS2 and PC games. Currently it's only available for the PC since Sony is delaying the PS2 hard drive launch (required by FF XI) for some reason. The hard drive's been out in Japan for at least a year now, so I'm not sure what the issues are.
I'd personally rather play on my PC because of the extra control that having a keyboard and mouse gives you. There's only so many buttons you can put on a controller, and a mouse gives you an accuracy in just about anything that involves aiming that a joystick cannot and will never be able to match.
This of course depends on what type of game you're playing. From what you say, I'm guessing you have FPS games in mind, and all of that is very true. However, when it comes to playing a RPG like FFX, the difference is minimal. I personally find it easier to control the game on a console than on the PC. YMMV of course. Not to mention that many developers use far too many keyboard commands and the interface gets so complicated the game's a bear to play. There is something to be said for simpler designs on user interfaces to games.
I think the thing is that there are quite a bit of games out there designed with the console controller in mind and they do a fine job making the controls work great. Then they port it to the PC and the game's annoying as hell to play without a gamepad. In that case I'd rather just stick to the console.
One thing no one ever mentions when the whole console vs. PC gaming debate comes up is whether or not you can actually get any gaming done on your PC. I know myself that I have a tendency to want to check my E-mail, oh and then there's a website I need to read, and I need to burn this CD, etc. until all of a sudden it's too late to do any gaming. If I go to the living room the PC's not there and I can actually forget about it and play games on my PS2 for hours on end. I actually game more since I bought the PS2 than I did before on my PC, even back when I was in college and had more free time. I really doubt I'm the only person out there who has found this to be true. Thanks to discovering this I'm pretty much just a console gamer, at least I'll actually play games and relax that way, and I'm on the PC at work all day anyway, not like I really miss being on it another 4-6 hours in the evening.:)
Of course it probably helps that I have never liked FPS games, and have found I prefer the cinematic-style RPGs on the consoles (like Xenosaga, with 22 hours or so of cinematics).
I think you've done all you can. I would even go so far as to say that you've answered your own question. Call AOL, make sure they know you're legit, and wait for the next version of AOL to fix what turned out to be a bad design choice. In the meantime, maybe add a note to one of your mailings suggesting that they make sure to be careful about that. It's not like you can do anything else.
Perhaps instead of noting to be careful state that AOL users persistantly reporting order confirmations as spam will be required to provide a non-AOL E-mail address to order in the future. I know as a business you hate to lose a customer, but when a customer is causing you to get black-listed from their ISP and making you jump through hoops and spends hours on the phone trying to fix that, then you're LOSING MONEY on them because of all the extra work. Then it's just not worth it, make the idiots who do this consistantly over and over get an address somewhere else to continue to order, so you can cut down you support expenses. I would imagine it would be fairly simple to setup a black-list of sorts that would reject E-mail addresses from a list of known idiots. A bonus is you could word this generally and use it for any spam-reporting-happy customers from any ISP as well.
Before someone flames me saying many AOL users aren't total idiots and this would penalize them, notice I'm saying only those AOL users who consistantly report your order confirmations as spam. All the ones with at least half a brain won't be affected at all, just the idiots.
Becuase if they were they wouldn't be settling - they'd stick it to 'em.
I agree with your post, but regarding this one sentence. I remember being a college student paying my own way (or rather having to take out loans to pay my own way) and a $3000 settlement is much more than sticking it to a college student. Depending on their school that's a semester or more of tuition/books/living expenses. I think the fact that the RIAA has made it clear that if you try to fight the minimum settlement amount they'll accept will go up (way up if I recall what they said correctly) shows this is at least partially about the money. Yeah they're scared of P2P because it represents a new way to distribute music and a new way for people to encounter good music (something the RIAA really doesn't seem to have a clue about, as you said), but there's some serious greed there too. Remember the settlements (and judgements) the RIAA gets go to the RIAA. Not to the artists, not to the recording companies, not to the poor innocent workers the RIAA has tried to hype as the real people hurt by piracy -- only to the already over-paid lawyers that make up the RIAA.
Given that fact alone, you can understand why the RIAA won't back down from cases, even when it's apparent they've really screwed up (suing 12yo girls for instance). They want the money to pad their already overstuffed pockets. This kind of falls under "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely", except in this case it's greed instead of power.
There are lots of alternative players. I prefer winamp, personally and that plays video with playlists just fine. How about Blaze Media Pro? Have you tried that?
I've tried Winamp, I like it for music, hate it for video myself. I hadn't heard of Blaze Media Pro, I'll give it a loot. My main concern is that all the alternate video players seem to be nothing more than skins over WMP, so you still aren't getting rid of it.
Ummm what does this refer to. I hear this crap a lot, but there is ussually no hard findings to back it up. All I normally get is IE vs. Netscape, or some reference to "The Pirates of Silicon Valley". Hard facts from a made for TV movie. lol.
Well IE vs. Netscape isn't from a TV show, it's reality. Perhaps you weren't paying attention when it all happenned, or weren't on the net then, but MS really did leverage their Windows monopoly and IE to drive Netscape's business into the gutter. It wasn't just giving IE away for free, after all a free product that sucks won't always win the market-place. It was exclusive deals with OEMs not allowing them to have Netscape pre-installed on machines, it was Windows making it easier and easier to use IE, at the same time making it harder to use Netscape. Sometimes you had to hold your tounge right and hope it was the correct phase of the moon to get Netscape to be the default browser, and even then every time you applied a security update of any kind you were likely to find IE had been mysteriously changed to your default browser again. Windows at least seemed to become less tolerant of Netscape running on it, while IE was unstable and crashed a lot, Netscape started crashing MORE after MS decided they wanted the browser market. Can I PROVE that MS intentionally made Windows crash more if it saw Netscape running? No, but I witnessed the events, and found myself eventually forced to give up on running Netscape because IE crashed my computers less, not because I thought it was a superior browser. I seriously doubt that Netscape started coding their browser worse after IE was competing with them.
There's also the current issue with Windows Media Player. Tried to find anything else out there to compete with it? Quicktime and Real both don't work quite right with formats outside their native ones. I spent a week hunting for an alternative media player with AVI and Mpeg files that I could do playlists with at one point. Even though I found one to meet my needs, it amounted to nothing more than a skin over Windows Media Player, as WMP did all the decoding and playback underneath. Media Player also conveniently doesn't support codecs other than MS-approved ones. While it will play DivX, XviD, etc, you have to put in the work yourself to find the codecs, install them, and so on. Not surprisingly most mainstream sites don't use those codecs for any video. (And I'm talking about the current versions of DivX which are legit and not hacked versions.) This quite effectively kills the market for alternate codecs. When's the last time you saw a computer from an OEM arrive with RealOne and/or Quicktime already installed? I haven't seen one yet myself, and given past history, I would not be surprised to find that MS is making sure it doesn't happen with their OEM agreements. Again I can't prove that, since OEM agreements are subject to confidentiality agreements. Handy how that works.
Microsoft also has used its OEM agreements to try to stifle Linux, at least in the past. It did come out during the whole DOJ trial process that MS had forbid OEMs to have computers dual-boot on shipment at one point. Even if an OEM wanted to install dual OSs, the customer would have to put in the work to make it possible to boot into anything other than Windows. XP will (at least sometimes) overwrite your MBR where LILO (or whatever loader you use) is, forcing your computer back to single-boot, MS-only status.
And try to buy a computer from an OEM, even a local one, without the OS on. You can get Windows on it for around $100, or you can pay around $100 labor. Either way you pay the same price for the computer, effectively making you pay for Windows even if you don't get it. I ran into this first back around 1998. The guy at the place admitted to me it was due to their MS OEM agreement. I ended up getting Windows on the machine and wiping it, I figured I might as well get the bloody software if I had to pay for it no matter what, even if I didn't use
For christ's sakes, must absolutely _everything_ be turned into some anti-MS rant?! Someone gets Gate's CC info and people try to spin it into being MS's fault. This is totally and completely bullshit.
A tad overreacting to what I said aren't we? I said "perhaps" as in this is a possibility to consider, but I did NOT say that "oh it's MS's fault these guys stole Bill Gates' credit card." I offered up what I had as an interesting perspective to consider, one I hadn't seen, nor thought of before. Personally I like to consider new perspectives, look at things from a different light. If you're on such a hair-trigger that a simple "perhaps" statement qualified with I'm not defending the idiots nor wanting to MS-Bash makes you react like this, I really would hate to see your reaction to an actual assertation.
Chill out man, you're the only one sounding like any kind of zealot here.
Why do all the rich schools get all the money? It really pisses of because our poor, which is quite a good school in terms of education it provides, is always in need of money. Hay Mr. Gates, spread the wealth and give a little to poor schools.
Because mostly those that end up successful enough to give large donations to schools generally were already well-off and went to the rich schools to start with. That's not to say poorer schools offer lesser education, just that that's why things happen the way they do.
And to top if off, he's now the most generous philanthropist too. His foundation, focused on fighting disease and promoting education will leave a bigger and longer lasting legacy than his business accomplishments.
I hesitate to call Gates a true philanthropist, as I remember how he was highly criticized by others for not doing much. Finally he started doing more philanthropy, but it took a lot of public humiliation to get him to. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the way it all came about it looks like Gates is just giving away money to save face, not because he truly believes in or cares about any of the causes he gives to.
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I don't think these issues have any need for a fast paced organisation. I would rather prefer a stable, yet slow organasation to handle these issues.
I agree, but if you read the quote from the article I posted you'd see that one of the critics arguments is that ICANN is too slow, so the UN should take over. My point was that the UN is unlikely to be faster, so this particular criticism is unlikely to be resolved.-
The language compatibility thing is interesting, and that could possibly turn out better when working through the U.N., but I'm skeptical.
While I don't know the specifics, given Verisign's past actions with Site Finder alone, I suspect the problems about multi-language Internet getting implemented are more Verisign than ICANN. Verisign is probably wanting to do it in a proprietary way that they can make money off of, and fighting any alternative methods that would be open standards.-
I just hope that if the UN gets involved, they come in against Verisign and any other large businesses who wish to screw with things. I'm not all for the UN controlling things, mind you. But if they do have some say, I hope its on the side of reason and open standards and fair, reasonable practices.
Actually the real question would be would the UN have any actual POWER to enforce the rules they set. They don't have much power now, so UN mandates get ignored quite often when it's convenient, so Verisign would probably just do what it wanted and ignore the UN mandates. It could actually end up being much WORSE than it is now.-
Other critics say ICANN is too slow in making decisions and adopting new technology, like ways to transmit Chinese and Arabic characters. VeriSign has sued the organisation, saying it is standing in the way of lucrative new services.
I wonder if these same critics have paid any attention to just how quickly the UN moves on things. Yes it's an international body, but it also brings even more petty arguments to the table because of that. While ICANN's far from perfect, I doubt things would be any faster with the UN taking over, slower maybe, but not faster.-
iMac is released and 4 seperate comapnies make a PC with EXACTLY the same design original iPod comes out and Dell and Rio make iPod clone that look EXACTLY like the iPod sans the good looking interface... one of them even uses Apples font!
Yes indeed, and Apple sued them quite quickly too. IIRC, one of the PCs wasn't in production yet (it was a proposed model) and ended up never getting produced. I don't recall the outcome of all the cases though.Also IIRC, Apple sued MicroSoft over Windows as well. I've heard various tales about what happened next, but I believe the truth is they lost because they had based their interface off of work from XeroX Park and it was ruled that Apple didn't own the interface design because of that. (I've also heard the tale that Apple signed away the rights for MS to use it without compensation, but I don't believe that is the true story.)
Besides, this is a patent for a user interface, not the cool looking design of the product. Apple could still sue about that even without the patent, as the look-alike products could cause confusion with Apple's brand. Of course IANAL, so I don't claim know patent law, just this is what I understand to be true.
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If a patent is granted and Apple has the common sense to only enforce it in obvious cases of someone copying the interface, then great. If they get the patent and then sue anyone and everyone who has something that sort of works like the iPod, then that sucks.
If they want to keep the patent considered valid in court they'll have to sue everyone and anyone who has something similar. If you don't enforce it in all cases, the courts have had a tendency historically to consider the patent invalid, since obviously (to the court anyway) you didn't care enough about it to enforce it agressively. This is (arguably probably) part of the problems the current patent system generates.-
I am stupid when it comes to most things related to patents.
If history is any indicator, the portable music player market could forget having a user interface even remotely similar to Apple's in any shape, form or fashion. If they did, Apple would unleash the lawyers and sue them into oblivion. Do you remember the whole thing with Amazon and 1-click ordering? Same process, just a different area. Apple has also shown interest in following up with lawsuits, remember the PC makers who got sued for making colored PCs that were just a bit too iMac looking? One of them basically asked for it (IIRC, it looked exactly like an iMac, just had a PC inside and a different company logo), but at least one of the others was more general, having a colored monitor/case.What does this mean, does Apple secure exclusive rights to the specific combination of all the features of the iPod or to the individual features?
If this patent is approved what would be the impact on the portable music player market?
Basically it'd be at best a major nuisance, and at worst force everyone else to have ungainly user interfaces. (At least accepting that iPod's UI is good and easy to use, my (admittedly limited) experience with it was one of great frustration personally.)
In any case since elements of the user interface have existed in other products prior to the iPod, prior art should invalidate the patent claim. The US Patent Office has issued many questionable patents where prior art existed, and the excuse so far has been the patent was written to obfuscate, or was confusing, so they didn't pick up on it. This time the patent is written clearly, so the interesting thing will be to see if the US Patent Office issues a patent in face of prior art when the patent isn't hard to understand. Many would consider their issuing this patent a sign that the whole patent process is broken beyond repair.
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Anybody running Windows & IE is already gambling every time they go online!
You forgot reading their E-mail with Outlook or Outlook Express as well.-
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but don't you think any body of laws represents a moral code? Every law legislates morality in some form or another. Killing a man, stealing what he earned, etc are all wrong because we believe them to be morally reprehensible and thus created laws to punish those who do it. Does the belief that gambling is a vice have to be predicated on religion in everyone's mind? It clearly has roots there, but not everyone who opposes its legalization is religious.
Personally I've never felt that the laws outline a moral code for much of anyone. There are some we mostly all agree on (murder and rape are bad for instance), then others most of us just ignore when we feel like it (speed limit and most traffic laws). This is fairly universally recognized, I've never seen an employer ask about how many speeding tickets I've gotten (besides jobs where driving is a primary focus of the job), but they all ask if I've been convicted of a felony. I should note that there are those that see no moral problem in killing people as well, although those are thankfully in a minority (and tend to end up in prison because they act on it).While the law outlaws many things most people find morally reprehensible, it does not DEFINE the moral code, it's just occured in reaction to the moral code of the majority at the time the law was passed. The law changes too, while murder has pretty much always been outlawed, you can't hang someone for it anymore (at least in most of the US). Why? Because the majority decided that hanging was "cruel and unusual punishment" and that alternative methods like lethal injection were to be the method.
As far as people feeling objection to gambling = religious views, it's because that's about the ONLY argument against it you hear. I am aware of others (increased crime for instance), but you never hear about that in the news. Perhaps the news media is more to blame for this perception than any reality, but that's why it exists.
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Interesting that you should say that. As someone who grew up with DOS and uses the linux console extensively, I still subconciously consider the mouse a secondary input device. Even under Windows, I tend to use the keyboard a lot to get around. ctrl-esc/win_key + r then type a command, etc. The mouse is invaluable for graphics editing (or for quickly setting focus under any application) and other uses (post-Doom FPSes which have free-look, etc.)
Curously enough I prefer keyboard/command-line interaction with my OS's, but I don't particularly like a game that makes me memorize so many keyboard commands that it feels like I'm studying for a test.-
Other games, particularly the MMORPG types, continue to be popular because you can actually type in multiple channels and chat back and forth about any subject you want. I've yet to see a console game that does much more than allow you to either select from a set of canned messages or offer an unwieldy "typewriter" that you use the joystick to select letters and fire button to use the letter. "Typing" arbitrary messages this way is extremely slow and "unnatural" (in that it takes concentration to do it, rather than touch-typing style ease).
As Blakey Rat said in his reply to you, the PS2 will accept (at least most) USB keyboards, and there are games that support it. I'm not sure all of them that do off-hand though. I expect the PS3 will definitely continue to support this, and the Xbox 2 probably will (if the current Xbox doesn't already). The gap between PCs and Consoles as far as typing stuff in is shrinking pretty fast because of this. Heck you can get a Logitech keyboard that has a controller built in so you can use it to play + type all in one. It's not terribly useful as a general controller though, but your console comes with at least one regular controller.-
the console pales in every imaginable way.
Well your first statement isn't quantifiable, there are many ways consoles are better than PCs (especially for developers who don't have to worry about supporting anything except a certain set of hardware, so hardware compatibility problems are rare), and plenty where PCs are better than consoles. Saying one is better no matter what shows a horrid bias to what you're saying, especially when backed up with no facts. Not trying to rip you, but think about these things and people will pay more attention to your posts. (Of course you're posting anonymously so you might not care about whether anyone pays much attention to your posts.)and with a really decent gaming PC as low as $500 (everyone already had an existing monitor no?) the console is not much cheaper.
As far as a decent gaming rig being $500, umm, yeah, and it'll not be able to play the latest games in about a year tops, unless you start turning so many features off to get a decent frame-rate that it looks awful. A decent one that can (hopefully) last you three years (standard industry turn-over rate on computers for businesses at least) will set you back at least $2000, perhaps less if you have a kick-ass monitor & speakers already. Even then unless you have the latest and greatest video card in it (~$500), you may find yourself needing at least a video card upgrade (another ~$500 for the latest and greatest) before three years are up.
The expense with PC gaming is that games continue to push the latest hardware, requiring you to buy the latest and greatest hardware regularly or you get left behind. Yes, they'll still run, but you have to turn a lot of stuff off, or your frame-rate makes it look like a slide-show. Then you're not getting all the spiffy visuals and resolution you're wanting. With the consoles the hardware is fixed. Yes, that means as the console's life wears on it's abilites seem to pale, but then again about 2-3 years into a console's life has historically been when games start appearing that really push the abilities of it. Right now the PS2 has a few coming out (Gran Turismo 4 for instance) that have graphics many thought were impossible for the console.
In any case, the console's a LOT cheaper since you don't have to worry about upgrading the hardware in it over its life cycle. Even when you buy the next-gen console, they've traditionally been no more than ~$300 when they first come out, a good $200 less than the PC price you mention (which I still doubt would be capable of keeping up with gaming demands for more than a year). You can also do like I do and wait till the price drops to get one and also have a huge library of games ready by that time.
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I guess my problem with consoles is the low resolution. My TV has ~640x480 resolution (I don't remember what NTSC actually is) My computer, no the other hand, goes up to 1600x1200.
I know this is true and it's something that people comment on quite often, but to me the comparison isn't totally fair. When you're playing a console ON the TV, it's displaying it at the resolution you're used to seeing. I myself have found many of the cinematics in console games (FFX and FFX-2 comes to mind, especially the whole Thousand Words CGI from X-2) to look stunning on my TV. I'm sure the PC versions would look great on my PC as well, but unless I have them side-by-side I don't notice.So the resolution thing isn't as big an issue as many think it is. Of course I'm sure there are those that do notice, but to me most of my console games look great on the TV and I'm happy with that.
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"...whether or not you can actually get any gaming done on your PC. I know myself that I have a tendency to want to check my E-mail, oh and then there's a website I need to read, and I need to burn this CD, etc. until all of a sudden it's too late to do any gaming"
Yes I'm serious, but you're taking it wrong. I enjoy reading my E-mail, checking our websites, etc. so they tend to distract me from actually gaming. Gaming relaxes me more, and like I said I'm already in front of a computer all day at work, so getting away from it helps too.Are you serious? You make it sound like gaming is work, a task that has to be performed. For 99% of the population it's the outher way araound. I find it hard to get any actual work done on my PC.
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Try to port something like Neverwinter Nights to a console and you'll see just how "minimal" the differences can get. Or if you want a real-world example, just compare Deus Ex to Deus Ex Invisible War.
I didn't mention PC -> Console conversions on purpose, what you say is very true. For whatever reason companies doing a console port of a PC game can't seem to figure out a way to do a decent console control interface. It can be done (IIRC, Max Payne was PC first, then went to console, but the PS2 version is quite easy to control, at least for me) but either a lack of knowledge of console UI, or a lack of interest causes it not to happen. I know it happens in both directions but PC -> console ports seem to suffer worse than the opposite.The converse, Console -> PC, that I mentioned isn't just FFX. There are quite a few games that have ported over to PC and are easy to control on them too. Unfortunately there are still plenty that ignore the PC interface and aren't really playable without a gamepad either. (As I mentioned in my original post.)
I think it boils down to companies need to look at the target for the game (or port of a game) and spend time making sure that the UI is designed (or redesigned) to work with it. You can have a game that plays great on a console and the PC it just takes a bit of effort.
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I love to be able to play against my console-loving nephews with a mouse-keyboard setup. Maybe I'd finally stop giving them the boundless amusement of slapping around Uncle Jim!
Once FF XI is released here for the PS2 it's one that is playable by both PS2 and PC games. Currently it's only available for the PC since Sony is delaying the PS2 hard drive launch (required by FF XI) for some reason. The hard drive's been out in Japan for at least a year now, so I'm not sure what the issues are.-
I'd personally rather play on my PC because of the extra control that having a keyboard and mouse gives you. There's only so many buttons you can put on a controller, and a mouse gives you an accuracy in just about anything that involves aiming that a joystick cannot and will never be able to match.
This of course depends on what type of game you're playing. From what you say, I'm guessing you have FPS games in mind, and all of that is very true. However, when it comes to playing a RPG like FFX, the difference is minimal. I personally find it easier to control the game on a console than on the PC. YMMV of course. Not to mention that many developers use far too many keyboard commands and the interface gets so complicated the game's a bear to play. There is something to be said for simpler designs on user interfaces to games.I think the thing is that there are quite a bit of games out there designed with the console controller in mind and they do a fine job making the controls work great. Then they port it to the PC and the game's annoying as hell to play without a gamepad. In that case I'd rather just stick to the console.
One thing no one ever mentions when the whole console vs. PC gaming debate comes up is whether or not you can actually get any gaming done on your PC. I know myself that I have a tendency to want to check my E-mail, oh and then there's a website I need to read, and I need to burn this CD, etc. until all of a sudden it's too late to do any gaming. If I go to the living room the PC's not there and I can actually forget about it and play games on my PS2 for hours on end. I actually game more since I bought the PS2 than I did before on my PC, even back when I was in college and had more free time. I really doubt I'm the only person out there who has found this to be true. Thanks to discovering this I'm pretty much just a console gamer, at least I'll actually play games and relax that way, and I'm on the PC at work all day anyway, not like I really miss being on it another 4-6 hours in the evening. :)
Of course it probably helps that I have never liked FPS games, and have found I prefer the cinematic-style RPGs on the consoles (like Xenosaga, with 22 hours or so of cinematics).
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I think you've done all you can. I would even go so far as to say that you've answered your own question. Call AOL, make sure they know you're legit, and wait for the next version of AOL to fix what turned out to be a bad design choice. In the meantime, maybe add a note to one of your mailings suggesting that they make sure to be careful about that. It's not like you can do anything else.
Perhaps instead of noting to be careful state that AOL users persistantly reporting order confirmations as spam will be required to provide a non-AOL E-mail address to order in the future. I know as a business you hate to lose a customer, but when a customer is causing you to get black-listed from their ISP and making you jump through hoops and spends hours on the phone trying to fix that, then you're LOSING MONEY on them because of all the extra work. Then it's just not worth it, make the idiots who do this consistantly over and over get an address somewhere else to continue to order, so you can cut down you support expenses. I would imagine it would be fairly simple to setup a black-list of sorts that would reject E-mail addresses from a list of known idiots. A bonus is you could word this generally and use it for any spam-reporting-happy customers from any ISP as well.Before someone flames me saying many AOL users aren't total idiots and this would penalize them, notice I'm saying only those AOL users who consistantly report your order confirmations as spam. All the ones with at least half a brain won't be affected at all, just the idiots.
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Becuase if they were they wouldn't be settling - they'd stick it to 'em.
I agree with your post, but regarding this one sentence. I remember being a college student paying my own way (or rather having to take out loans to pay my own way) and a $3000 settlement is much more than sticking it to a college student. Depending on their school that's a semester or more of tuition/books/living expenses. I think the fact that the RIAA has made it clear that if you try to fight the minimum settlement amount they'll accept will go up (way up if I recall what they said correctly) shows this is at least partially about the money. Yeah they're scared of P2P because it represents a new way to distribute music and a new way for people to encounter good music (something the RIAA really doesn't seem to have a clue about, as you said), but there's some serious greed there too. Remember the settlements (and judgements) the RIAA gets go to the RIAA. Not to the artists, not to the recording companies, not to the poor innocent workers the RIAA has tried to hype as the real people hurt by piracy -- only to the already over-paid lawyers that make up the RIAA.Given that fact alone, you can understand why the RIAA won't back down from cases, even when it's apparent they've really screwed up (suing 12yo girls for instance). They want the money to pad their already overstuffed pockets. This kind of falls under "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely", except in this case it's greed instead of power.
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There are lots of alternative players. I prefer winamp, personally and that plays video with playlists just fine. How about Blaze Media Pro? Have you tried that?
I've tried Winamp, I like it for music, hate it for video myself. I hadn't heard of Blaze Media Pro, I'll give it a loot. My main concern is that all the alternate video players seem to be nothing more than skins over WMP, so you still aren't getting rid of it.-
Yes, yes, let's all make fun of the person who forgot to read the article before posting
:S
Sorry if you felt it was making fun of you, but you have to admit it does help to read the article before posting about it.Well IE vs. Netscape isn't from a TV show, it's reality. Perhaps you weren't paying attention when it all happenned, or weren't on the net then, but MS really did leverage their Windows monopoly and IE to drive Netscape's business into the gutter. It wasn't just giving IE away for free, after all a free product that sucks won't always win the market-place. It was exclusive deals with OEMs not allowing them to have Netscape pre-installed on machines, it was Windows making it easier and easier to use IE, at the same time making it harder to use Netscape. Sometimes you had to hold your tounge right and hope it was the correct phase of the moon to get Netscape to be the default browser, and even then every time you applied a security update of any kind you were likely to find IE had been mysteriously changed to your default browser again. Windows at least seemed to become less tolerant of Netscape running on it, while IE was unstable and crashed a lot, Netscape started crashing MORE after MS decided they wanted the browser market. Can I PROVE that MS intentionally made Windows crash more if it saw Netscape running? No, but I witnessed the events, and found myself eventually forced to give up on running Netscape because IE crashed my computers less, not because I thought it was a superior browser. I seriously doubt that Netscape started coding their browser worse after IE was competing with them.
There's also the current issue with Windows Media Player. Tried to find anything else out there to compete with it? Quicktime and Real both don't work quite right with formats outside their native ones. I spent a week hunting for an alternative media player with AVI and Mpeg files that I could do playlists with at one point. Even though I found one to meet my needs, it amounted to nothing more than a skin over Windows Media Player, as WMP did all the decoding and playback underneath. Media Player also conveniently doesn't support codecs other than MS-approved ones. While it will play DivX, XviD, etc, you have to put in the work yourself to find the codecs, install them, and so on. Not surprisingly most mainstream sites don't use those codecs for any video. (And I'm talking about the current versions of DivX which are legit and not hacked versions.) This quite effectively kills the market for alternate codecs. When's the last time you saw a computer from an OEM arrive with RealOne and/or Quicktime already installed? I haven't seen one yet myself, and given past history, I would not be surprised to find that MS is making sure it doesn't happen with their OEM agreements. Again I can't prove that, since OEM agreements are subject to confidentiality agreements. Handy how that works.
Microsoft also has used its OEM agreements to try to stifle Linux, at least in the past. It did come out during the whole DOJ trial process that MS had forbid OEMs to have computers dual-boot on shipment at one point. Even if an OEM wanted to install dual OSs, the customer would have to put in the work to make it possible to boot into anything other than Windows. XP will (at least sometimes) overwrite your MBR where LILO (or whatever loader you use) is, forcing your computer back to single-boot, MS-only status. And try to buy a computer from an OEM, even a local one, without the OS on. You can get Windows on it for around $100, or you can pay around $100 labor. Either way you pay the same price for the computer, effectively making you pay for Windows even if you don't get it. I ran into this first back around 1998. The guy at the place admitted to me it was due to their MS OEM agreement. I ended up getting Windows on the machine and wiping it, I figured I might as well get the bloody software if I had to pay for it no matter what, even if I didn't use
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For christ's sakes, must absolutely _everything_ be turned into some anti-MS rant?! Someone gets Gate's CC info and people try to spin it into being MS's fault. This is totally and completely bullshit.
A tad overreacting to what I said aren't we? I said "perhaps" as in this is a possibility to consider, but I did NOT say that "oh it's MS's fault these guys stole Bill Gates' credit card." I offered up what I had as an interesting perspective to consider, one I hadn't seen, nor thought of before. Personally I like to consider new perspectives, look at things from a different light. If you're on such a hair-trigger that a simple "perhaps" statement qualified with I'm not defending the idiots nor wanting to MS-Bash makes you react like this, I really would hate to see your reaction to an actual assertation.Chill out man, you're the only one sounding like any kind of zealot here.
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Why do all the rich schools get all the money? It really pisses of because our poor, which is quite a good school in terms of education it provides, is always in need of money. Hay Mr. Gates, spread the wealth and give a little to poor schools.
Because mostly those that end up successful enough to give large donations to schools generally were already well-off and went to the rich schools to start with. That's not to say poorer schools offer lesser education, just that that's why things happen the way they do.-
And to top if off, he's now the most generous philanthropist too. His foundation, focused on fighting disease and promoting education will leave a bigger and longer lasting legacy than his business accomplishments.
I hesitate to call Gates a true philanthropist, as I remember how he was highly criticized by others for not doing much. Finally he started doing more philanthropy, but it took a lot of public humiliation to get him to. Perhaps I'm wrong, but the way it all came about it looks like Gates is just giving away money to save face, not because he truly believes in or cares about any of the causes he gives to.