Didn't somebody walk into a CompUSA with their iPod, plugged it into the display Mac unit, and download the entire operating system before the salespeople realized what was going on?
I guess we'll have to ban iPods from the stores that sell 'em too.
Entertainment Weekly - read completely within the first 24 hours of it arriving in the mailbox, and often within the first 30 minutes.
WIRED - can't read it fast enough; still have a stack of issues from a year ago that I haven't gotten to yet.
STUFF / MAXIM / FHM etc - about 1-2 weeks from when they arrive in the mailbox. Sometimes they get put on the back burner if something else comes in with a higher priority, which occasionally leads to a few back issues sitting around, especially if they all arrive at the same time.
GAMES - flipped through the moment it hits the mailbox, but set aside for downtime word-puzzle action!
The school's right to "poke" stops where the network cable meets my NIC card
no one, but me, logs into and uses my computer, period
And I would agree with you on these two points IF you knew what you were doing with your computer. (and I'm sure you already DO know your way around the keyboard, so this isn't aimed at you)
Unfortunately, while "today's kids" know how to USE a computer, they don't know how to MAINTAIN their system. This goes for many adults as well, but since we're talking college kids here, I'll stay on subject.
Schools' IT departments are swamped with calls from parents anxious to buy their kids 'the perfect college computer' to send them away with. Which is fine. But the kids then show up at school without any clue how to change their network settings to connect to the school's network... even when every student is given a guide specifically labelled "how to connect your computer to the network". Throw into the mix those kids who don't know how to run Windows Update/LiveUpdate (or even that they *should* be running these as standard operating procedure, along with changing the oil in their car every 3,000 miles), then you can see why schools dread the fall semester with the incoming students.
Besides, there are also those kids who load every P2P/spy/ad-supported program on their system and then go complaining to IT to 'fix it, my computer is slow'. The kids don't care. They just load up everything 'because it's free and I have a fast connection to the Internet. IT often *can't* touch the student's computer due to liability issues (what would happen if IT accidentally deleted the THESIS folder?).
Is requiring students to install specific virus/update software such a bad thing? Sure, your computer is your domain... but if you want to play on the school's network you have to play by the school's rules. (to use a car analogy - you can drive whatever vehicle you want, but it has to pass state inspection and follow the rules of the road.. but we won't randomly search your trunk for contraband)
by including it they could boost Xbox Live acceptance
Wha-huh? How would including a wireless adapter boost XBox Live participation?
If you currently have an XBox and are not using XBox Live at all, then you still wouldn't use it under XBox2 regardless of the type of connection.
If you currently have an XBox and a wireless network, just unplug the wireless adapter and plug it into the XBox2 machine. See? You're already saving money with "backwards compatibility"! Chances are these folks would already have been on XBox Live.
If you're running a wired home network, the inclusion of wireless into an XBox2 would certainly not make someone want to check out XBox Live if it meant having to get a new/different router to connect.
I'll grant you that there *may* be more people checking out XBox Live with the system if they currently have a wireless network and didn't already have an XBox or a wireless adapter available... but I don't see it as a major selling feature to gain new sales. ("Look mom! With this, we can be online from our rooms and dad doesn't have to run any extra cable drops! can we get it, huh, can we?")
Would it be nice to have wireless as an included feature? I guess so -- but I don't see a practical use for wireless connectivity for a product that is not intended to be moved around. Wireless for notebook computers? Sure. Wireless for a desktop computer? Silly, slower, and impractical. (fine -- people in apartments who share a connection with their roommates and don't feel like running cable get some benefit from wireless, but that doesn't mean that it's not silly and slower.)
Didn't Number 6 find one of those radios in his apartment in the first episode of The Prisoner? As soon as he smashed the radio, repairmen came and immediately replaced it with a new one -- so he just placed the babbling box into the dishwasher or the oven where he didn't have to listen to it.
Save money on screen material by simply painting the wall with Screen Goo. Hundreds of dollars less than a screen of the same size, and if you don't like the way it turns out, you can still go get a regular screen like everybody else. Besides, this way you can have a screen of whatever size you want instead of being forced to use a 'standard screen size'. I painted a wall for a 130" diagonal screen. Not exactly practical, and I'll probably crank it down by 20"-30", but for now it's great.
(sidenote: I agree, the Z2 is a great projector. And while others have recommended projectorcentral, I say you should pay a visit to projectorpeople as well. And the fine folks at AVSForum, but you already knew that.)
Perhaps my ears are not as sensitive as yours, but I have practically no fan noise from my LCD Sanyo Z2 projector, and I'm usually sitting right below the thing so if noise was an issue I'd be the first to be screaming about it.
In these days of instant gratification, I'm not sure waiting ten hours to get a movie is fast enough. I can walk to and from my video store in twenty minutes, and they likely have the movie I want.
You forget one "feature" that TiVo is already capable of: downloading programs to the TiVo without user interaction (the much maligned "ads" that some TiVo users complain about).
All TiVo has to do (for a start) is to start automatically downloading movies to subscribers. Call it the "weekend movie special" and send it down in chunks over the course of Thurs/Fri. Subscribers would have a 'coming attraction' to view all week, indicate that they want it to be downloaded by pressing Thumbs Up, and presto! An instant date night ready and waiting for you come the weekend.
Yes, instant gratification would be swell -- so maybe that option would be to have the movie be streamed across the 'net from a TiVo server (and allow the viewer access to pause the program, and ff/rew through maybe 10 minutes tops).
... now that TiVo has made the Home Media Option features available for free, what will they do to those folks who ponied up the $99 (or $59 during the 'special promotion period') for it originally?
Sure, that's the price early adopters pay, but TiVo should do more for them beyond mailing out a few dozen cute stuffed TiVo characters to those folks.
Assuming they haven't fixed it yet: the Windows version of the TiVo Desktop software has a hard limit of around 400 songs that it can handle. And every once in a while, I run across an MP3 that causes the TiVo to reboot. (Re-ripping the song fixes the problem.)
Just use the PS2's EYETOY controller. You point at an object on the screen (using your on-screen avatar) and can influence it that way.
EYETOY Groove is one of the silliest adult/drinking party games ever! (especially since the game replays your "dancing" moves without the associated interacting graphics.) Great, great silly fun and highly recommended.
At the preview screenings for MINORITY REPORT, the print was continually under a watchful eye of a security guard, who sat with the print in the projection booth, and took the print with him after the screening was completed.
As for what happens after a movie is in regular release, that's a different issue.
...but not to play games (although I could if I chose to).
The CD add-on reads CD+G discs. And this was back in the early 90's, when nobody really knew what CD+G was.
It means that today, the TG16 can be used as a basic karaoke player, assuming you have a microphone breakout box (available at the local Radio Shack) to attach the audio cables to your stereo system. (think XBox's Music Mixer without the $2 per download song charge)
And for those of you who have regular karaoke players, you might want to throw in one of these CDs just to see what might be on the disc:
Information Society "Information Society" (if I remember correctly, one of the songs displays a recipe for chili)
First, EA doesn't own NFL Blitz. That would be the good folks over at Midway.
Also, to clarify a point. Let's use the Madden 2003 version as an example. According to NPD, the PS2 version of Madden 2003 was the #1 selling video game for all of 2003, yet the game was released in August 2003 (giving it just a scant 4+ months of sales compared to other titles on the list). Pretty significant for a single title on a single platform (add to it what the XB/GC/PC/etc versions pulled in as well).
Let's backtrack a little bit: From the day it was released through the end of September, Madden NFL 2003 moved approximately 1.7 million units in the U.S. at $50 each. That would be $85m in sales just for that timeframe.
Digging further, GameDaily said that Madden sold "3.8 million to date", which would be around the time that Sega pulled out of the sports market a few weeks ago -- still not looking at a full year yet. 3.8m games @ $50 comes out to $190m. Extrapolate these numbers over the course of a year and I can definitely see where EA can afford to spend $250m per year on this title alone.
disclaimer: i hope i carried the one when calculating those figures. i was never the best at math
Let's say that the term "googol" WAS trademarked. I'd guess that it was never trademarked in the area of "computerized search engine" (whatever trademark category that would fall under).
There is precedence, though: the whole "Microsoft vs Mike Rowe Software" thing. Granted, in this case Mr Rowe's computer-oriented company name sounded just like the larger and more well-known computer-oriented company's name, and there is a potential for confusion. Certainly, there was no malice intended by Mr Rowe, and MSFT offered goodwill items (an Xbox, etc) for the name trade.
Should Google pay for use of a word that sounds similar? Some would say not... if it weren't for Google's claim on the origin of the Google name:
Google is a play on the word googol, which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, "Mathematics and the Imagination" by Kasner and James Newman. It refers to the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google's use of the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite amount of information available on the web.
Does this fall under fair use? A lawyer might see this as cause for more financial recognition than just a blurb on the history page.
Caltrans experimented with better, more reflective, paint but was unable to overcome the substance's inherent shortcoming of not being reflective enough in the rain or when a layer of water obscured lane markings after a rainfall. Improved paint wasn't the solution -- it was time to think outside the box.
Which brings up one major complaint that I have when driving in bad weather: why is it that some states use high-quality reflective paint to mark roads and other states do not? Sure, the road nubbies are helpful to a point, but at night in the rain it's much better to have something solid to look at instead of an intermittent doo-dad.
And what happens when the disc in question is lost by young/irresponsible kids?
It's not the RIAA/MPAA/??AA's job to teach you and/or your kids how to be responsible for keeping track of (and take care of) your own purchased items. If you lose a DVD or it is stolen, then go to your insurance company or something like the AMEX Buyer Protection service for replacement. We're talking replacing a disc that is defective/cracked -- something you physically have ownership of.
As for the costs involved, media postal rates are dirt cheap. Look at how NetFlix handles it. So why not go into a partnership with The UPS Store? eBay already has a deal with them (or one of those package stores) and they're already comfortable handling packages.
Let's say it costs $1 to mail a DVD each way. Go in to the store and pay $2.50 for a 2-way DVD mailer and mail your broken DVD to the replacement center. They turn around and mail the pack back to you with the new disc (using your prepaid postage and the same mailer that you addressed yourself).
I'll even go along with your estimate of $5 to cover mailing and duplication costs. (Certainly $10 is out of the question for all parties involved.) But $5 is not an unreasonable fee to get a replacement disc.
Replacing a cracked disc that's out of print -- that's another story entirely.
Would the RIAA or MPAA be willing to offer life-time (human life not media life) warranties? It would need full unconditional replacement of any damaged CD or DVD at any time in the life of the original purchaser. Unfortunately, this would require some sort of registration (or keeping of the original receipts). I highly doubt that they would do this willingly.
Do what some software companies do when a CD gets cracked. If the DVD is defective for any reason, just send it back for replacement. No need to prove ownership as long as the disc is an original disc.
While the "tree view" in Google Groups is nice to have, they still have a ways to go from a usability standpoint.
Messages are not posted in the order that they were received or sent, and we're seeing lots of duplicate messages for some reason. Add to that a timing issue with the sending/forwarding of emails and I'd say that Google Groups has a way to go before it's ready to come out of beta. (2-4 hours turnaround time for an email? a bit ridiculous)
Not to say that MS's sports games were particularly good -- they weren't
Wha-what? Top Spin is considered to be one of the best tennis games out there, with many reviews comparing it favorably to (what was it, the Sega Genesis?) old games. I've played it with tennis experts who concur that the ball physics and gameplay are exactly what they teach on the court. And Links is also well done. As for the other sports titles? They weren't awful, and in some cases they were "just fine" by themselves and held their own.
Any game that can be played just fine on a cellphone is not worth playing on an Xbox (or PS2, or GC, etc) and a 46" hi-def screen with surround sound. What's the point?
Nothing against Popcap, who make wonderfully entertaining games. I just don't see it being worthwhile to play 'em on a console system.
You've got to be kidding me. You might as well just go out and buy the freakin' Xbox straight off the shelf instead.
Mountain Dew is awarding 6 points per 12-pack, and figuring that you're buying your 12-packs on sale at $2 apiece, you're still looking at...
[clickity-clackity click, carry the 2, and...]
92 12-packs? That can't be right. There's no way that you'd spend a total of $184 to get an XBox with your sugar buzz.
Heck, let's say you started today -- you're looking at drinking (or at least buying) 1104 Dews before the game ends on 8/18/04... which (lucky for you) is just 96 days away. Drinking just a shade over 12 Dews per day.
Even at your 315 points, you still need to get [clackity clack] 40 more 12-packs (worth $80 on sale). It's a bit more realistic to see you drink 5 Dews a day until the end of the promotion, but even so...
This Mountain Dew promotion is almost as good as the comedian who pointed out that the "Marlboro Miles" promotion had you smoking 10 packs a day for 5 years just to get the fake-leather fanny pack.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess we'll have to ban iPods from the stores that sell 'em too.
Unfortunately, while "today's kids" know how to USE a computer, they don't know how to MAINTAIN their system. This goes for many adults as well, but since we're talking college kids here, I'll stay on subject.
Schools' IT departments are swamped with calls from parents anxious to buy their kids 'the perfect college computer' to send them away with. Which is fine. But the kids then show up at school without any clue how to change their network settings to connect to the school's network... even when every student is given a guide specifically labelled "how to connect your computer to the network". Throw into the mix those kids who don't know how to run Windows Update/LiveUpdate (or even that they *should* be running these as standard operating procedure, along with changing the oil in their car every 3,000 miles), then you can see why schools dread the fall semester with the incoming students.
Besides, there are also those kids who load every P2P/spy/ad-supported program on their system and then go complaining to IT to 'fix it, my computer is slow'. The kids don't care. They just load up everything 'because it's free and I have a fast connection to the Internet. IT often *can't* touch the student's computer due to liability issues (what would happen if IT accidentally deleted the THESIS folder?).
Is requiring students to install specific virus/update software such a bad thing? Sure, your computer is your domain... but if you want to play on the school's network you have to play by the school's rules. (to use a car analogy - you can drive whatever vehicle you want, but it has to pass state inspection and follow the rules of the road.. but we won't randomly search your trunk for contraband)
All it did was remind me of how bad I was at throwing rocks at rats on screens 2 and 3.
(if somebody happens to have the URL available and can post it before I dig it up, I promise that you'll ruin my productivity for the weekend)
- If you currently have an XBox and are not using XBox Live at all, then you still wouldn't use it under XBox2 regardless of the type of connection.
- If you currently have an XBox and a wireless network, just unplug the wireless adapter and plug it into the XBox2 machine. See? You're already saving money with "backwards compatibility"! Chances are these folks would already have been on XBox Live.
- If you're running a wired home network, the inclusion of wireless into an XBox2 would certainly not make someone want to check out XBox Live if it meant having to get a new/different router to connect.
I'll grant you that there *may* be more people checking out XBox Live with the system if they currently have a wireless network and didn't already have an XBox or a wireless adapter available... but I don't see it as a major selling feature to gain new sales. ("Look mom! With this, we can be online from our rooms and dad doesn't have to run any extra cable drops! can we get it, huh, can we?")Would it be nice to have wireless as an included feature? I guess so -- but I don't see a practical use for wireless connectivity for a product that is not intended to be moved around. Wireless for notebook computers? Sure. Wireless for a desktop computer? Silly, slower, and impractical. (fine -- people in apartments who share a connection with their roommates and don't feel like running cable get some benefit from wireless, but that doesn't mean that it's not silly and slower.)
Didn't Number 6 find one of those radios in his apartment in the first episode of The Prisoner? As soon as he smashed the radio, repairmen came and immediately replaced it with a new one -- so he just placed the babbling box into the dishwasher or the oven where he didn't have to listen to it.
(sidenote: I agree, the Z2 is a great projector. And while others have recommended projectorcentral, I say you should pay a visit to projectorpeople as well. And the fine folks at AVSForum, but you already knew that.)
Perhaps my ears are not as sensitive as yours, but I have practically no fan noise from my LCD Sanyo Z2 projector, and I'm usually sitting right below the thing so if noise was an issue I'd be the first to be screaming about it.
All TiVo has to do (for a start) is to start automatically downloading movies to subscribers. Call it the "weekend movie special" and send it down in chunks over the course of Thurs/Fri. Subscribers would have a 'coming attraction' to view all week, indicate that they want it to be downloaded by pressing Thumbs Up, and presto! An instant date night ready and waiting for you come the weekend.
Yes, instant gratification would be swell -- so maybe that option would be to have the movie be streamed across the 'net from a TiVo server (and allow the viewer access to pause the program, and ff/rew through maybe 10 minutes tops).
Other folks are being handled on a case-by-prorated-case basis. So it's possible that some HM users may get a few of their bucks back. Some won't.
Sure, that's the price early adopters pay, but TiVo should do more for them beyond mailing out a few dozen cute stuffed TiVo characters to those folks.
Assuming they haven't fixed it yet: the Windows version of the TiVo Desktop software has a hard limit of around 400 songs that it can handle. And every once in a while, I run across an MP3 that causes the TiVo to reboot. (Re-ripping the song fixes the problem.)
EYETOY Groove is one of the silliest adult/drinking party games ever! (especially since the game replays your "dancing" moves without the associated interacting graphics.) Great, great silly fun and highly recommended.
As for what happens after a movie is in regular release, that's a different issue.
The CD add-on reads CD+G discs. And this was back in the early 90's, when nobody really knew what CD+G was.
It means that today, the TG16 can be used as a basic karaoke player, assuming you have a microphone breakout box (available at the local Radio Shack) to attach the audio cables to your stereo system. (think XBox's Music Mixer without the $2 per download song charge)
And for those of you who have regular karaoke players, you might want to throw in one of these CDs just to see what might be on the disc:
MUDDA: The Magnificent Union of Digitally Downloading Artists
Also, to clarify a point. Let's use the Madden 2003 version as an example. According to NPD, the PS2 version of Madden 2003 was the #1 selling video game for all of 2003, yet the game was released in August 2003 (giving it just a scant 4+ months of sales compared to other titles on the list). Pretty significant for a single title on a single platform (add to it what the XB/GC/PC/etc versions pulled in as well).
Let's backtrack a little bit: From the day it was released through the end of September, Madden NFL 2003 moved approximately 1.7 million units in the U.S. at $50 each. That would be $85m in sales just for that timeframe.
Digging further, GameDaily said that Madden sold "3.8 million to date", which would be around the time that Sega pulled out of the sports market a few weeks ago -- still not looking at a full year yet. 3.8m games @ $50 comes out to $190m. Extrapolate these numbers over the course of a year and I can definitely see where EA can afford to spend $250m per year on this title alone.
disclaimer: i hope i carried the one when calculating those figures. i was never the best at math
There is precedence, though: the whole "Microsoft vs Mike Rowe Software" thing. Granted, in this case Mr Rowe's computer-oriented company name sounded just like the larger and more well-known computer-oriented company's name, and there is a potential for confusion. Certainly, there was no malice intended by Mr Rowe, and MSFT offered goodwill items (an Xbox, etc) for the name trade.
Should Google pay for use of a word that sounds similar? Some would say not... if it weren't for Google's claim on the origin of the Google name:
Does this fall under fair use? A lawyer might see this as cause for more financial recognition than just a blurb on the history page.Snopes talks about it here
Caltrans experimented with better, more reflective, paint but was unable to overcome the substance's inherent shortcoming of not being reflective enough in the rain or when a layer of water obscured lane markings after a rainfall. Improved paint wasn't the solution -- it was time to think outside the box.
Which brings up one major complaint that I have when driving in bad weather: why is it that some states use high-quality reflective paint to mark roads and other states do not? Sure, the road nubbies are helpful to a point, but at night in the rain it's much better to have something solid to look at instead of an intermittent doo-dad.
It's not the RIAA/MPAA/??AA's job to teach you and/or your kids how to be responsible for keeping track of (and take care of) your own purchased items. If you lose a DVD or it is stolen, then go to your insurance company or something like the AMEX Buyer Protection service for replacement. We're talking replacing a disc that is defective/cracked -- something you physically have ownership of.
As for the costs involved, media postal rates are dirt cheap. Look at how NetFlix handles it. So why not go into a partnership with The UPS Store? eBay already has a deal with them (or one of those package stores) and they're already comfortable handling packages.
Let's say it costs $1 to mail a DVD each way. Go in to the store and pay $2.50 for a 2-way DVD mailer and mail your broken DVD to the replacement center. They turn around and mail the pack back to you with the new disc (using your prepaid postage and the same mailer that you addressed yourself).
I'll even go along with your estimate of $5 to cover mailing and duplication costs. (Certainly $10 is out of the question for all parties involved.) But $5 is not an unreasonable fee to get a replacement disc.
Replacing a cracked disc that's out of print -- that's another story entirely.
Do what some software companies do when a CD gets cracked. If the DVD is defective for any reason, just send it back for replacement. No need to prove ownership as long as the disc is an original disc.
Messages are not posted in the order that they were received or sent, and we're seeing lots of duplicate messages for some reason. Add to that a timing issue with the sending/forwarding of emails and I'd say that Google Groups has a way to go before it's ready to come out of beta. (2-4 hours turnaround time for an email? a bit ridiculous)
Wha-what? Top Spin is considered to be one of the best tennis games out there, with many reviews comparing it favorably to (what was it, the Sega Genesis?) old games. I've played it with tennis experts who concur that the ball physics and gameplay are exactly what they teach on the court. And Links is also well done. As for the other sports titles? They weren't awful, and in some cases they were "just fine" by themselves and held their own.
Nothing against Popcap, who make wonderfully entertaining games. I just don't see it being worthwhile to play 'em on a console system.
Mountain Dew is awarding 6 points per 12-pack, and figuring that you're buying your 12-packs on sale at $2 apiece, you're still looking at...
[clickity-clackity click, carry the 2, and...]
92 12-packs? That can't be right. There's no way that you'd spend a total of $184 to get an XBox with your sugar buzz.
Heck, let's say you started today -- you're looking at drinking (or at least buying) 1104 Dews before the game ends on 8/18/04... which (lucky for you) is just 96 days away. Drinking just a shade over 12 Dews per day.
Even at your 315 points, you still need to get [clackity clack] 40 more 12-packs (worth $80 on sale). It's a bit more realistic to see you drink 5 Dews a day until the end of the promotion, but even so...
This Mountain Dew promotion is almost as good as the comedian who pointed out that the "Marlboro Miles" promotion had you smoking 10 packs a day for 5 years just to get the fake-leather fanny pack.