Personally, I think a lot of people (especially the "I know what's best for you" and the "Do it for the children" crowd) are missing the point. It's a sex scene that is disabled in the retail version. It was not meant to be played. Great. But more importantly, it's part of a *game* (and I can't emphasize that word enough) that requires the player to silently kill a bunch of people in order to get the lyrics of some song (I'm talking about the "Madd Dogg's Rhymes" mission).
Now, whether you have a problem with that or not is up to you. If you do: fine, that's an absolutely 100% valid point and I can see why people might be offended. But, please do yourself and everybody else a favor and simply don't buy or play the game. It really is that simple.
Worried about your kids? Don't allow them to play it. Exercise parental discretion. Spend some time with your kids. Be a parent. Problem solved.
But don't go on a crusade over some deleted mini-game in an M-rated game that's named after a felony. You don't take your 8-year-old to a movie called "1st Degree Murder - the Butcher's Chronicles" and complain afterwards, do you?
What it comes down to, and what, quite unfortunately, many of these advocacy groups are lacking is common sense.
... in essence, it's a next-generation, WiFi-enabled tamagotchi, right?
The screenshots (GIS) sure look interesting though. Very clean, polished PDA-like interface that sort of reminds me of an 'OS X' application. I thought they would market a game like this towards a younger target demograhic (ie. kids ages 4-14) but, judging from the UI, it doesn't appear the case.
As long as you are using an IP, there is no such thing as annonymity.
Actually, there is. It's called Onion Routing. It's a product of the US Navy Research Lab and has been around for quite a while. There were attempts to use this technology in P2P networks (namely I2P-BT, which is now defunct, as far as I can tell even though the generic I2P network layer project is still alive and kicking).
3) High price of games. $40-50 per game. Ouch.
Personally, I think that is going to be Sony's biggest problem down the road.
If you think about, $40-50 isn't really that much money for a game you'll get countless hours of enjoyment out of. Well, at least if you're a working adult, it isn't. That's especially true if you compare it to a night out a the movies or a decent meal for two. Both of those will cost you around, or upwards of $50. That is not how it works in the real world though.
Few people think rationally about a product's price tag. And people perceive $50 to be a lot of money (and rightfully so). Dropping fifty bucks on an item you need is okay, wasting fifty bucks on an item you know you or somebody else will enjoy (say a Christmas present or - to stay on topic - even a video game that allows you and your buddies to kick back, watch a football game and play before and after) - sure. Selling the idea of spending $50 on an item you're only using to amuse yourself for a short period of time is a whole lot harder because it doesn't quite feel right.
If games were, say, $30 a piece, it would feel more like picking up a CD on your way home after work. Something most people wouldn't feel guilty about at all - after all, you're rewarding yourself and it's "just $15". And whilst $30 is certainly more than most people would pay for a CD, it doesn't feel wrong for a portable video game because most average middle-class Americans still perceive $30 is "inexpensive", whereas $50 is still an investment of sorts (think about it: don't think twice before you hand someone a $50 bill whereas handing someone a $10 just feels natural).
Add financial constraints to the mix ("gotta pay the bills"), and $50 just doesn't like your getting your money's worth. Sure, a lot of hardcore gamers won't mind plucking down $50 for a game. But that's not necessarily Sony's target audience -- if they want to be profitable, they need to target a broader demographic. And a $50 a pop, people will think twice about buying your product. These days, very few people make $50 impulse buy decisions...
Would a sort of license work? This would save being rechecked for frequent flights.
To be honest, I don't quite see why would should impose any licensing restrictions for passengers.
I mean we don't require a people to be certified to drive a race car - you don't even need a driver's license to do so. And you can certainly injure or kill yourself in a race car. And even when there are restrictions on who can perform a given sport (eg. you need a certification to go scuba diving in most places), that's usually a self-imposed rule. As far as I know, there is nothing illegal about scuba diving without such a certification (I could very well be wrong though).
Requiring mandatory medical check ups for crew members - sure, I'm all for that. But if you're a passenger and you decide you want to shell out the money for a space flight, even though you're not really in good shape, then, well, that's your problem. As long as you understand what you're getting yourself into (and I'm quite sure they will make your sign a waiver), I don't see why the state or the federal government should get involved in that.
Look at it this way: if I'm an 80-year-old guy with a heart problem, I probably shouldn't ride any rollercoasters. But the government certainly isn't stepping in to prevent me from doing it (yet).
For a long time I've seen Yahoo as a vestige of the mid-to-late 90s with their cluttered UI, seemingly slow rate of change, and so forth, but I think that Yahoo 360, among other things, suggests that they're pulling themselves out of this.
You know, I've always kinda thought of Yahoo as another relict - something you look back to in nostalgia but don't really use any more.
To add some background: I registered my Yahoo account in or around '98. Back then, it was still the "Big Y!" and I, like most people, had set the MyYahoo site as my homepage (with all the news, stock market stuff, local weather and TV listings neatly organized in one place). And since everybody used Altavista and/or Yahoo as their search engine, using Yahoo as a portal seemed just natural.
Fast forward two years: Google is the new hotness. I still have my Yahoo account but don't use it anymore. Truth be told, I only kept it because of a few random Yahoo groups mailing lists. And since I had the emails forwarded to my POP3 (and later IMAP) server, there was really no need for me to ever log on to Yahoo again.
Fast forward again - the year is 2005. I haven't used Yahoo since 2001 or so. I have Google set as my homepage. Despite generally and genuinely not liking webmail services, I almost exclusively use Gmail. I also use a web-based RSS aggregator (first a quick 'n' dirty PHP hack I put together one night, and now mostly Bloglines).
Now for the first time in 4 years, I actually logged into my old Yahoo account. To tell you the truth, I was a little surprised the account still worked. The email account had been deactivated (thank God for sparing me from almost half a decade old spam). Everything else still worked, and looked a lot sleaker than it used to.
Then I tried their Calendar and, much to my surprise, had no problem syncing it with my PDA. True - it doesn't measure up with Act! 2005, but I didn't really expect a free web-based calendar app to outperform a dedicated, $200 or so software solution.
Anyway, I have to say I'm somewhat impressed. Their interface is still a little bulky but it actually does what I want it to do.
Personally, I believe many average users will see the benefits of open standards because of competition from sites like Yahoo. If I find a superior RSS solution, I can just take my OPML file and switch without any effort whatsoever. Don't like your webmail provider? Just take your mbox file and move it to the webmail service you like (granted, you still have to jump through a few hoops to do this).
Competition really is a good thing, in my book. The important thing is that even if Yahoo doesn't outperform Google in the end, it's still the user who benefits.
Well, we went over this last night went the story hit Groklaw. To sum it up, from memory:
There is handwriting on at least one of the scanned documents. It's questionable whether that means that sufficient additional creative content has been added to the non-protected derivative work.
Personally, I think it doesn't. Comments might but we're talking about markings here. This is just my personal opinion though. This still doesn't rise beyond mechanical duplication, IMHO.
It could be argued that putting together individual filings, and organizing them qualifies as a copyrightable compilation. (For those who are interested, here's a good basic introduction to get you started).
This could also be a license violation as Groklaw's articles are covered by the Creative Commons License which requires attribution with republication.
I think it's questionable whether the PDF files count as a transcript which would be necessary since you would have to have a copyrightable work in the first place.
If memory serves me correctly, there was also a general consensus that
a) SCO sucks
b) C&D'ing SCO could prove to be a very interesting publicity stunt
c) SCO sucks.
No kidding. What happened to howstuffworks? Did they get bought out?
It used to be one of the best sites on the web - informative, interesting, mostly accurate and usually up-to-date. I realize it must cost a lot to run such a high traffic site and they feel the need to maxime their ad revenue but this just plain annoying.
That's why the PSP is looking to be such a winner. Sleek, elegant, simple..
I agree. I have to admit though, that my first reaction when I opened the PSP box for the first time wasn't anything like "wow", but more like "what the...".
For those of you who don't have press connections and haven't taken the plunge and imported one from overseas: the manual that comes with in the box is ridiculously huge - like the size of a phone book. Check out this picture over at Gamespy.
But, to tell you the truth, you really don't need it. The whole UI is pretty intuitive (aside from the fact that I don't speak Japanese, and some parts of Ridge Racer happen to be in Japanese - but that's hardly the PSP's fault). It's probably not so much "anyone can figure it out" (think Gameboy). But anyone who has ever played a PS2 game won't have a problem.
You less you put onto your "thin client" and the more you depend on the network for, the less you will be able to do when the network is down.
You make a very good point. Remember the reports about the Sidekick II's backend being down? And, basically, the Sidekick system isn't all that different from a thin client setup. All the data is stored in a central location, and any chances you make (regardless of whether you use the webinterface or your Sidekick) are automatically reflected in the database.
The big advantage is obviously that you don't have to worry about synching any more. Don't have your Sidekick with you? Well, you can use any browser anywhere on the planet and still have access to your information. Say your Sidekick breaks and you get a replacement unit. All you need to do is turn it on, and within seconds (well, actually it takes a little longer than that) you're good to go and have all your data in place.
I can tell you from experience that this works very well if things go smoothly. I can also tell you that as soon as you loose connectivity to your database backend, the crap really starts to hit the fan (that's why it's a bad idea to design a system along the lines of "if it works, it works , but if one part fails everything breaks").
In this case, people were mostly outraged with Danger/T-Mobile. (And you have to bear in mind that the Sidekick retains its data even when it can no longer connect to the database server. So people still had most of their information, unless they reset their units. And T-Mobile still has to deal with the bad publicity of this outage, on top of the whole Paris Hilton incident.)
My point being: if you're going to offer "thin client"-type services, you need to guarantee 100% uptime. 99% just ain't good enough.
data retention
I first tried Orkut when it was the "new hotness"(tm) and it was all good and fun. However, for some reason the novelty wore off rather quickly.
I think it had to do with their by-invitation-only policy. Just like GMail (which I love and still use on a daily basis, by the way), people wanted to use it really bad not because of its' features or out of curiosity but primarily because they couldn't. I guess, in a way, it's akin to a little child who wants something just for the sake of having it. After you have it, you use it for a while and move on to the next new thing.
And I have to admit I haven't logged into my Orkut account for about half a year (and that was only to see for myself what all those "Brazilians take over Orkut" blogs were about). It will be interesting to see where Google goes with this (afterall, it's still in beta and not very tightly integrated into Google's other services, if I'm not mistaken).
Fair enough. You're right. I guess in a way, I was comparing apples and oranges (harware mod vs. buffer overflow/software-only hack).
But you have to admit that judging by the hardware alone it almost seems like Microsoft wanted the XBox to be hacked (I mean, just look at the layout of the D0 points).
My second point still stands though. The XBox has its killer app: media center. It's going to be very interesting to see what the new portables (DS/PSP) can do, especially if developers get to take full advantage of their WiFi capabilities.
..., so let me get this straight. It took two and a half years and Michael Robertson's $100k challenge for the XBox's DRM mechanism to be circumvented (ie. broken without any hardware modification). And that's basically a modified PC build from off-the-shelf hardware we're talking about here (I'm working from memory here -- IIRC, the XBox was released in the US in November 2001 or so, and the challenge was completed around Feb/Mar/Apr 2003).
Now, the DS has been out for a little over 3 months. And this device basically allows anyone with a soldering iron, a somewhat steady hand and the right software to run DS code in DS mode from the GBA slot (at least as I understand it -- please correct me if I'm wrong).
And since both the DS and the PSP happen to be WiFi-capable, I'd assume that using proprietary media (cartriges and UMD discs, respectively) will only delay but not stop pirates in the long run. Looks like Nintendo has a problem.
On the other hand, I have to admit that I find this sort of exciting. Look at what happened with the XBox in just a little over a year: people are turning their $150 XBoxes into media players, thin clients, cluster nodes and full fledged Linux PCs. There's people out there who create homebrew XBox games from scratch. There's a whole community of people who actively develop for the XBox (my point being, there's cool stuff out there -- it goes way beyong being a software piracy thing).
I'd love to see what the DS and the PSP can really do.
Well, I don't work at Google and, frankly, have no idea what they pay their engineers so I can only speculate.
I imagine it has to do with three things though:
Options. I remember reading an article during the bubble about millionaire secretaries at Microsoft. Basically, they choose stock options over Christmas bonuses. So, those stock options might actually be worth a lot more than their salaries.
Benefits. The folks at Google pride themselves in making work indistinguishable from fun. Work is play. And if you really think about it: would you rather make $95k a year and wake up every single morning to go to a job you hate or make $75k (again, I have no idea how much Google pays their engineers) and do something you really enjoy. Personally, I'd rather have fun and enjoy my life, even if it means making less money.
Also, there's a lot of other stuff like good health insurance, vacation time, a good work environment, etc.
Location. IIRC, the salary you get at Google isn't just based on what you do and how well you do it, but also on where you do it. Remember the story about the Google facility they were building in rural OR. $70k in the Pacific NW goes a long way - at least compared to $70k in South Cali.
The Shuffle just doesn't keep track of date and time. I guess the engineers figured that it would be unnecessary to, for instance, get the date and time everytime the Shuffle is connected to a computer since there's no display. That's why the iTunes "last played" date and time do not change when you play a song on your shuffle. The Shuffle does, however, increment the play counter and it does communicate that back to iTunes.
Personally, I've found this to be sort of a non-issue when I use my laptop to sync since I have my entire music collection on there. So iTunes hardly ever selects the same song twice in a row anyway. I simply use the "hasn't been played in the last three days" rule to make sure that I don't end up with the same music on my Shuffle that I just listened to at the office.
I realize I'm a little late here but I did implement a system a while ago, that you may find interesting.
Basically, we needed a way keep track of what employee used what vehicle out of the company car pool at what times (some trusted employees are supposed to have access to the company cars for official business).
I had a safe installed in a dedicated room, inside the office. All employees have RFID and/or swipe cards for access control to the building. There's a seperate card reader that controls access to the room and a surveillance camera inside.
The system works basically by reading an ID number off of a swipe card, then prompting for a PIN (pretty much like an ATM would -- we used a standard PC for that but only the number pad is accessible). The ID # and the PIN are compared to what's stored in a database.
If the PIN matches what's on file for that ID number, the door of the safe opens and a the number is then logged to a read-only system (this is the logging host which is reasonably secure since it's not connected to any network and does nothing but append a logfile). Unsuccessful attempts are also logged. The account lockout counter is set to a reasonably low amount.
All the keys are on keychains that have a magnet on them. If you take a car key out of slot #1 (all the cars are assigned slots), the system logs it. When you return the key, you insert it into the same marked slot (ie. #1), the system registers and, consequently, logs it.
Bear in mind though, that this only works because we have a trusted group of users. You need to be inside the building and inside the safe room, to actually access the keypad. And there's nothing to stop an employee from taking all the keys at once except that the fact that they can easily be identified, terminated, sued and criminally prosecuted.
The system itself is pretty simple. Two old PCs (one database server that does the processing and one logging host). The safe is pretty standard (I don't remember who we bought that magnet system from though).
Or, alternatively, he could do what I do: use iTunes' smart playlist feature.
That way, you have a lot more control over what songs get selected and - to tell you the truth - it's a lot more flexible than the autofill feature (it's sort of like discovering perl for the first time -- yeah, it's a lot more clumsy than just whipping up a simple shell script but it's also so much more powerful).
Basically, what I have a bunch of custom smart playlists. The first randomly selects songs that are:
longer than 1:20
not comedy, spoken word or audio books (I enjoy listening to George Carlin's rants as much as the next guy but I really don't need to listen to them when I'm out running)
not longer than 8:00 (this excludes all jam songs etc.)
hasn't been played in three days (to keep things fresh)
are not named intro, interlude or skit (for obvious reasons), plus some very custom stuff.
Then I have a second smart playlist select some my favorite songs that I haven't listened to in a while (5 days).
I use the 1st playlist to fill my Shuffle up to 75% capacity. The second playlist gets to use the remaining 25%.
You know, I used to think of all these software jukeboxes as bloatware. And whilst iTunes is undoubtedly quite demanding ressource-wise, I really believe it's well worth it. It's powerful and fun to use at the same time.
I don't much about the situation in the UK (or even overseas in general), but around here online pizza ordering is pretty much useless unless you already know the place and have ordered from them in the past.
I think I ordered my first pizza online in 1999. Not because it offered any advantage over using the POTS - this was during the bubble so the general belief was that anything that could possibly be done online, should be done online.
Back then, they mostly used simple CGI-to-email scripts and it was a disaster because pizza places still mostly had dial-up connections and didn't check their email regularly. And even if they did, it wasn't nearly good enough (the whole point of ordering pizza is that you don't want to go out and grab food yourself -- you want food and you want it ASAP and not around noon the next day).
Within the last few years, most local pizza places (I don't order much from the big chains any more) transitioned either to IM-based or fax-based solutions. And they usually work pretty well. They're instantenous. But there's not really any advantage over picking up the phone, and ordering the old fashioned way.
And they don't seem to deliver to people who haven't ordered from them before. Apparently, there's a lot more online prank ordering going on compared to old-school over-the-phone prank ordering. I guess that has to do with the perceived anonymity the web offers.
Having said all that, I still use my local mom & pop pizza place's online ordering service every once in a while (it's a standard web-to-fax gateway form). Not because I'm too lazy to pick up the phone or because it's so much more convenient. But because it's a bit of nostalgia. And it really symbolizes the whole.com era -- sorta pointless but fun crap that you just had to try out for the heck of it.
Google and Map24 have teamed up in the past to provide in-line city map results for their European search engines (they briefly mention it on the Map24 site).
So, it appears they're already cooperating. I guess it wouldn't be a big surprise if they're using Map24's data for their own mapping service. If that's true, it shouldn't be all that hard to add a Google Maps Europe in the future.
What does being British have to do with Battlestar Galactica, seeing Battlestar Galactica, or the show being a fantastic show? Did I miss something?
Well, Sky One already aired the entire first season of Battlestar Galactica in the UK before the Sci Fi channel decided to pick it up and air it here (ie. in the US). So, I think he was pointing out that he has already seen the entire first season and, hence, can judge the show better than people who haven't.
Myself, I have to agree. I saw the last few episodes of Battlestar Galactica's first season. And I really hope they decide to pick it up for at least another season. Good acting, good and sometimes superb writing, decent sfx. Definitely a good show.
Just think, without having to worry about shipping charges _at all_, then I wouldn't have to worry about making a $5 order for a little kitchen gadget. I wouldn't have to run to the store for something, just go online, and it will be here in a couple of days.
Personally, I would love that. There's a lot of stuff that I need or like but don't need right away (actually, mostly anything outside of groceries).
The problem here is, however, that Amazon still has to pay for the shipping. And even if they can bring their own handling expenses way down, and get a great bulk rate by either buying a shipping company or at least cooperating with them, there's still a per shipping charge. And eventually someone is going to have to pick up the tab.
This sort of reminds me of 1999. Back then, during the bubble, when people thought it was actually a feasible business model to offer cat chow online. And consumers would pay $6.95 S&H on a two-dollar item.
Back then, we had this local grocery store that offered online orders. Really nothing out of the ordinary. They set up a basic webshopping system on a NT box and offered free deliveries (think: small grocery store chain & big, big city). The way they thought the whole thing would work was basically this: regulars customers would still come into the store but others would be able to conveniently do their regular grocery shopping online and have it delivered to their houses at a time of their choosing. That would have worked fairly well. The problem was that everybody and their mother literally started to order individual stick of gum and have it delivered (for free) to wherever the hell they happened to be. The company eventually went bankrupt because they refused to adjust (again, this was during the bubble).
My point is this: with all flat-fee models, someone eventually has to pick up the tab. Netflixx is awesome. I use it myself. It works because people do go on vacation. It works because people do forget about their memberships. It works because people do go out and do stuff during the summer. It's going to be tough to offer flat-fee pre-paid shipping on all items without either raising prices on individual items or attaching some strings if people pick up on this.
Amazon has such a broad inventory that I could easily order something from them every few days. And that could really come back to bite them in the a$$. A business model like that just might be feasible for a company like Amazon. It just might not work very well for a smaller company.
While MGM's position may be "balanced", there's always one thing that irks me about DRM: it makes it impossible to use in the public domain later.
I agree. However, there's a way around this - see this/. article from a few days ago. Basically, the Germans have a copyright system that's roughly comparable to what we have in the US. But there's a way to exempt certain entities that are supposed to serve the public. That's why the German national library (which is comparable to the Library of Congress in that it's sort of a national archive) can crack DRM'd audio, video or eBooks whenever the hell they feel like it.
In essence, the legislature is saying "we recognize that protecting IP is important but only within reasonable limits".
(I'm not saying that DRM is good. I think it's mostly not. I only mean to offer some perspective as to why this argument doesn't really hold any water.)
1. Nope, not that I know of 2. Nokia N-Gage 3. iPod has breakout 4. Some motorolla phones do this 5. Nokia N-Gage again 6. Not that I know of 7. Well, Nokia N-Gage.
1. Me neither. Bad since most new cell phones have a built-in camera, and since there's already 3 megapixel cam/cell phones available (with 4 MP just around the corner) with storage becoming increasingly cheaper, I think it's only a matter of time before we cross from "cell phone with a camera gizzmo" into "full fledged digital camera that also takes phone calls".
Sure, professionell photographers won't ditch their equipment and anyone who's serious about taking pictures still won't bother with these. But there's a point where a cell phone cam is "just enough" for the average Joe. And that point, there's just no point in carrying an extra digital camera. So, in essence, you the digital camera and the cell phone become indistinguishable.
4. True. There's quite a few other cell phones that have MP3 playback capabilities (I know Siemens and Samsung make some, plus there's the smartphones and PDA/cell phone clones). And since the ringtone business is pretty lucrative and kids definitely do want MP3-like ringtones, it's just a matter of time before MP3-like audio playback becomes a standard.
5. See above. Most business phones have Java. And those handsets that are marketed towards the 14-23 crowd, do definitely support games (usually through Java and on-demand GPRS downloads which are - again - big money makers).
Of course, if I actually ever attempted to build something like that I would probably blow the whole house up. Hence, I'll stick with my regular old-school fridge.
Slashdot Mirror
As a matter of fact, it does.
Personally, I think a lot of people (especially the "I know what's best for you" and the "Do it for the children" crowd) are missing the point. It's a sex scene that is disabled in the retail version. It was not meant to be played. Great. But more importantly, it's part of a *game* (and I can't emphasize that word enough) that requires the player to silently kill a bunch of people in order to get the lyrics of some song (I'm talking about the "Madd Dogg's Rhymes" mission).
Now, whether you have a problem with that or not is up to you. If you do: fine, that's an absolutely 100% valid point and I can see why people might be offended. But, please do yourself and everybody else a favor and simply don't buy or play the game. It really is that simple.
Worried about your kids? Don't allow them to play it. Exercise parental discretion. Spend some time with your kids. Be a parent. Problem solved.
But don't go on a crusade over some deleted mini-game in an M-rated game that's named after a felony. You don't take your 8-year-old to a movie called "1st Degree Murder - the Butcher's Chronicles" and complain afterwards, do you?
What it comes down to, and what, quite unfortunately, many of these advocacy groups are lacking is common sense.
The screenshots (GIS) sure look interesting though. Very clean, polished PDA-like interface that sort of reminds me of an 'OS X' application. I thought they would market a game like this towards a younger target demograhic (ie. kids ages 4-14) but, judging from the UI, it doesn't appear the case.
Actually, there is. It's called Onion Routing. It's a product of the US Navy Research Lab and has been around for quite a while. There were attempts to use this technology in P2P networks (namely I2P-BT, which is now defunct, as far as I can tell even though the generic I2P network layer project is still alive and kicking).
Yeah. At least the PodShave comes in pink and white.
3) High price of games. $40-50 per game. Ouch.
Personally, I think that is going to be Sony's biggest problem down the road.
If you think about, $40-50 isn't really that much money for a game you'll get countless hours of enjoyment out of. Well, at least if you're a working adult, it isn't. That's especially true if you compare it to a night out a the movies or a decent meal for two. Both of those will cost you around, or upwards of $50. That is not how it works in the real world though.
Few people think rationally about a product's price tag. And people perceive $50 to be a lot of money (and rightfully so). Dropping fifty bucks on an item you need is okay, wasting fifty bucks on an item you know you or somebody else will enjoy (say a Christmas present or - to stay on topic - even a video game that allows you and your buddies to kick back, watch a football game and play before and after) - sure. Selling the idea of spending $50 on an item you're only using to amuse yourself for a short period of time is a whole lot harder because it doesn't quite feel right.
If games were, say, $30 a piece, it would feel more like picking up a CD on your way home after work. Something most people wouldn't feel guilty about at all - after all, you're rewarding yourself and it's "just $15". And whilst $30 is certainly more than most people would pay for a CD, it doesn't feel wrong for a portable video game because most average middle-class Americans still perceive $30 is "inexpensive", whereas $50 is still an investment of sorts (think about it: don't think twice before you hand someone a $50 bill whereas handing someone a $10 just feels natural).
Add financial constraints to the mix ("gotta pay the bills"), and $50 just doesn't like your getting your money's worth. Sure, a lot of hardcore gamers won't mind plucking down $50 for a game. But that's not necessarily Sony's target audience -- if they want to be profitable, they need to target a broader demographic. And a $50 a pop, people will think twice about buying your product. These days, very few people make $50 impulse buy decisions...
To be honest, I don't quite see why would should impose any licensing restrictions for passengers.
I mean we don't require a people to be certified to drive a race car - you don't even need a driver's license to do so. And you can certainly injure or kill yourself in a race car. And even when there are restrictions on who can perform a given sport (eg. you need a certification to go scuba diving in most places), that's usually a self-imposed rule. As far as I know, there is nothing illegal about scuba diving without such a certification (I could very well be wrong though).
Requiring mandatory medical check ups for crew members - sure, I'm all for that. But if you're a passenger and you decide you want to shell out the money for a space flight, even though you're not really in good shape, then, well, that's your problem. As long as you understand what you're getting yourself into (and I'm quite sure they will make your sign a waiver), I don't see why the state or the federal government should get involved in that.
Look at it this way: if I'm an 80-year-old guy with a heart problem, I probably shouldn't ride any rollercoasters. But the government certainly isn't stepping in to prevent me from doing it (yet).
You know, I've always kinda thought of Yahoo as another relict - something you look back to in nostalgia but don't really use any more.
To add some background: I registered my Yahoo account in or around '98. Back then, it was still the "Big Y!" and I, like most people, had set the MyYahoo site as my homepage (with all the news, stock market stuff, local weather and TV listings neatly organized in one place). And since everybody used Altavista and/or Yahoo as their search engine, using Yahoo as a portal seemed just natural.
Fast forward two years: Google is the new hotness. I still have my Yahoo account but don't use it anymore. Truth be told, I only kept it because of a few random Yahoo groups mailing lists. And since I had the emails forwarded to my POP3 (and later IMAP) server, there was really no need for me to ever log on to Yahoo again.
Fast forward again - the year is 2005. I haven't used Yahoo since 2001 or so. I have Google set as my homepage. Despite generally and genuinely not liking webmail services, I almost exclusively use Gmail. I also use a web-based RSS aggregator (first a quick 'n' dirty PHP hack I put together one night, and now mostly Bloglines).
Now for the first time in 4 years, I actually logged into my old Yahoo account. To tell you the truth, I was a little surprised the account still worked. The email account had been deactivated (thank God for sparing me from almost half a decade old spam). Everything else still worked, and looked a lot sleaker than it used to.
Then I tried their Calendar and, much to my surprise, had no problem syncing it with my PDA. True - it doesn't measure up with Act! 2005, but I didn't really expect a free web-based calendar app to outperform a dedicated, $200 or so software solution.
Anyway, I have to say I'm somewhat impressed. Their interface is still a little bulky but it actually does what I want it to do.
Personally, I believe many average users will see the benefits of open standards because of competition from sites like Yahoo. If I find a superior RSS solution, I can just take my OPML file and switch without any effort whatsoever. Don't like your webmail provider? Just take your mbox file and move it to the webmail service you like (granted, you still have to jump through a few hoops to do this).
Competition really is a good thing, in my book. The important thing is that even if Yahoo doesn't outperform Google in the end, it's still the user who benefits.
Personally, I think it doesn't. Comments might but we're talking about markings here. This is just my personal opinion though. This still doesn't rise beyond mechanical duplication, IMHO.
I think it's questionable whether the PDF files count as a transcript which would be necessary since you would have to have a copyrightable work in the first place.
If memory serves me correctly, there was also a general consensus that
a) SCO sucks b) C&D'ing SCO could prove to be a very interesting publicity stunt c) SCO sucks.
It used to be one of the best sites on the web - informative, interesting, mostly accurate and usually up-to-date. I realize it must cost a lot to run such a high traffic site and they feel the need to maxime their ad revenue but this just plain annoying.
I agree. I have to admit though, that my first reaction when I opened the PSP box for the first time wasn't anything like "wow", but more like "what the...".
For those of you who don't have press connections and haven't taken the plunge and imported one from overseas: the manual that comes with in the box is ridiculously huge - like the size of a phone book. Check out this picture over at Gamespy.
But, to tell you the truth, you really don't need it. The whole UI is pretty intuitive (aside from the fact that I don't speak Japanese, and some parts of Ridge Racer happen to be in Japanese - but that's hardly the PSP's fault). It's probably not so much "anyone can figure it out" (think Gameboy). But anyone who has ever played a PS2 game won't have a problem.
You make a very good point. Remember the reports about the Sidekick II's backend being down? And, basically, the Sidekick system isn't all that different from a thin client setup. All the data is stored in a central location, and any chances you make (regardless of whether you use the webinterface or your Sidekick) are automatically reflected in the database.
The big advantage is obviously that you don't have to worry about synching any more. Don't have your Sidekick with you? Well, you can use any browser anywhere on the planet and still have access to your information. Say your Sidekick breaks and you get a replacement unit. All you need to do is turn it on, and within seconds (well, actually it takes a little longer than that) you're good to go and have all your data in place.
I can tell you from experience that this works very well if things go smoothly. I can also tell you that as soon as you loose connectivity to your database backend, the crap really starts to hit the fan (that's why it's a bad idea to design a system along the lines of "if it works, it works , but if one part fails everything breaks").
In this case, people were mostly outraged with Danger/T-Mobile. (And you have to bear in mind that the Sidekick retains its data even when it can no longer connect to the database server. So people still had most of their information, unless they reset their units. And T-Mobile still has to deal with the bad publicity of this outage, on top of the whole Paris Hilton incident.)
My point being: if you're going to offer "thin client"-type services, you need to guarantee 100% uptime. 99% just ain't good enough. data retention
I first tried Orkut when it was the "new hotness"(tm) and it was all good and fun. However, for some reason the novelty wore off rather quickly.
I think it had to do with their by-invitation-only policy. Just like GMail (which I love and still use on a daily basis, by the way), people wanted to use it really bad not because of its' features or out of curiosity but primarily because they couldn't. I guess, in a way, it's akin to a little child who wants something just for the sake of having it. After you have it, you use it for a while and move on to the next new thing.
And I have to admit I haven't logged into my Orkut account for about half a year (and that was only to see for myself what all those "Brazilians take over Orkut" blogs were about). It will be interesting to see where Google goes with this (afterall, it's still in beta and not very tightly integrated into Google's other services, if I'm not mistaken).
But you have to admit that judging by the hardware alone it almost seems like Microsoft wanted the XBox to be hacked (I mean, just look at the layout of the D0 points).
My second point still stands though. The XBox has its killer app: media center. It's going to be very interesting to see what the new portables (DS/PSP) can do, especially if developers get to take full advantage of their WiFi capabilities.
Now, the DS has been out for a little over 3 months. And this device basically allows anyone with a soldering iron, a somewhat steady hand and the right software to run DS code in DS mode from the GBA slot (at least as I understand it -- please correct me if I'm wrong).
And since both the DS and the PSP happen to be WiFi-capable, I'd assume that using proprietary media (cartriges and UMD discs, respectively) will only delay but not stop pirates in the long run. Looks like Nintendo has a problem.
On the other hand, I have to admit that I find this sort of exciting. Look at what happened with the XBox in just a little over a year: people are turning their $150 XBoxes into media players, thin clients, cluster nodes and full fledged Linux PCs. There's people out there who create homebrew XBox games from scratch. There's a whole community of people who actively develop for the XBox (my point being, there's cool stuff out there -- it goes way beyong being a software piracy thing). I'd love to see what the DS and the PSP can really do.
I imagine it has to do with three things though:
Also, there's a lot of other stuff like good health insurance, vacation time, a good work environment, etc.
The Shuffle just doesn't keep track of date and time. I guess the engineers figured that it would be unnecessary to, for instance, get the date and time everytime the Shuffle is connected to a computer since there's no display. That's why the iTunes "last played" date and time do not change when you play a song on your shuffle. The Shuffle does, however, increment the play counter and it does communicate that back to iTunes.
Personally, I've found this to be sort of a non-issue when I use my laptop to sync since I have my entire music collection on there. So iTunes hardly ever selects the same song twice in a row anyway. I simply use the "hasn't been played in the last three days" rule to make sure that I don't end up with the same music on my Shuffle that I just listened to at the office.
Basically, we needed a way keep track of what employee used what vehicle out of the company car pool at what times (some trusted employees are supposed to have access to the company cars for official business).
I had a safe installed in a dedicated room, inside the office. All employees have RFID and/or swipe cards for access control to the building. There's a seperate card reader that controls access to the room and a surveillance camera inside.
The system works basically by reading an ID number off of a swipe card, then prompting for a PIN (pretty much like an ATM would -- we used a standard PC for that but only the number pad is accessible). The ID # and the PIN are compared to what's stored in a database.
If the PIN matches what's on file for that ID number, the door of the safe opens and a the number is then logged to a read-only system (this is the logging host which is reasonably secure since it's not connected to any network and does nothing but append a logfile). Unsuccessful attempts are also logged. The account lockout counter is set to a reasonably low amount.
All the keys are on keychains that have a magnet on them. If you take a car key out of slot #1 (all the cars are assigned slots), the system logs it. When you return the key, you insert it into the same marked slot (ie. #1), the system registers and, consequently, logs it.
Bear in mind though, that this only works because we have a trusted group of users. You need to be inside the building and inside the safe room, to actually access the keypad. And there's nothing to stop an employee from taking all the keys at once except that the fact that they can easily be identified, terminated, sued and criminally prosecuted.
The system itself is pretty simple. Two old PCs (one database server that does the processing and one logging host). The safe is pretty standard (I don't remember who we bought that magnet system from though).
HTH a bit. :)
That way, you have a lot more control over what songs get selected and - to tell you the truth - it's a lot more flexible than the autofill feature (it's sort of like discovering perl for the first time -- yeah, it's a lot more clumsy than just whipping up a simple shell script but it's also so much more powerful).
Basically, what I have a bunch of custom smart playlists. The first randomly selects songs that are :
- longer than 1:20
- not comedy, spoken word or audio books (I enjoy listening to George Carlin's rants as much as the next guy but I really don't need to listen to them when I'm out running)
- not longer than 8:00 (this excludes all jam songs etc.)
- hasn't been played in three days (to keep things fresh)
- are not named intro, interlude or skit (for obvious reasons), plus some very custom stuff.
Then I have a second smart playlist select some my favorite songs that I haven't listened to in a while (5 days).I use the 1st playlist to fill my Shuffle up to 75% capacity. The second playlist gets to use the remaining 25%.
You know, I used to think of all these software jukeboxes as bloatware. And whilst iTunes is undoubtedly quite demanding ressource-wise, I really believe it's well worth it. It's powerful and fun to use at the same time.
I think I ordered my first pizza online in 1999. Not because it offered any advantage over using the POTS - this was during the bubble so the general belief was that anything that could possibly be done online, should be done online.
Back then, they mostly used simple CGI-to-email scripts and it was a disaster because pizza places still mostly had dial-up connections and didn't check their email regularly. And even if they did, it wasn't nearly good enough (the whole point of ordering pizza is that you don't want to go out and grab food yourself -- you want food and you want it ASAP and not around noon the next day).
Within the last few years, most local pizza places (I don't order much from the big chains any more) transitioned either to IM-based or fax-based solutions. And they usually work pretty well. They're instantenous. But there's not really any advantage over picking up the phone, and ordering the old fashioned way.
And they don't seem to deliver to people who haven't ordered from them before. Apparently, there's a lot more online prank ordering going on compared to old-school over-the-phone prank ordering. I guess that has to do with the perceived anonymity the web offers.
Having said all that, I still use my local mom & pop pizza place's online ordering service every once in a while (it's a standard web-to-fax gateway form). Not because I'm too lazy to pick up the phone or because it's so much more convenient. But because it's a bit of nostalgia. And it really symbolizes the whole .com era -- sorta pointless but fun crap that you just had to try out for the heck of it.
So, it appears they're already cooperating. I guess it wouldn't be a big surprise if they're using Map24's data for their own mapping service. If that's true, it shouldn't be all that hard to add a Google Maps Europe in the future.
Well, Sky One already aired the entire first season of Battlestar Galactica in the UK before the Sci Fi channel decided to pick it up and air it here (ie. in the US). So, I think he was pointing out that he has already seen the entire first season and, hence, can judge the show better than people who haven't.
Myself, I have to agree. I saw the last few episodes of Battlestar Galactica's first season. And I really hope they decide to pick it up for at least another season. Good acting, good and sometimes superb writing, decent sfx. Definitely a good show.
Personally, I would love that. There's a lot of stuff that I need or like but don't need right away (actually, mostly anything outside of groceries).
The problem here is, however, that Amazon still has to pay for the shipping. And even if they can bring their own handling expenses way down, and get a great bulk rate by either buying a shipping company or at least cooperating with them, there's still a per shipping charge. And eventually someone is going to have to pick up the tab.
This sort of reminds me of 1999. Back then, during the bubble, when people thought it was actually a feasible business model to offer cat chow online. And consumers would pay $6.95 S&H on a two-dollar item.
Back then, we had this local grocery store that offered online orders. Really nothing out of the ordinary. They set up a basic webshopping system on a NT box and offered free deliveries (think: small grocery store chain & big, big city). The way they thought the whole thing would work was basically this: regulars customers would still come into the store but others would be able to conveniently do their regular grocery shopping online and have it delivered to their houses at a time of their choosing. That would have worked fairly well. The problem was that everybody and their mother literally started to order individual stick of gum and have it delivered (for free) to wherever the hell they happened to be. The company eventually went bankrupt because they refused to adjust (again, this was during the bubble).
My point is this: with all flat-fee models, someone eventually has to pick up the tab. Netflixx is awesome. I use it myself. It works because people do go on vacation. It works because people do forget about their memberships. It works because people do go out and do stuff during the summer.
It's going to be tough to offer flat-fee pre-paid shipping on all items without either raising prices on individual items or attaching some strings if people pick up on this.
Amazon has such a broad inventory that I could easily order something from them every few days. And that could really come back to bite them in the a$$. A business model like that just might be feasible for a company like Amazon. It just might not work very well for a smaller company.
I agree. However, there's a way around this - see this /. article from a few days ago. Basically, the Germans have a copyright system that's roughly comparable to what we have in the US. But there's a way to exempt certain entities that are supposed to serve the public. That's why the German national library (which is comparable to the Library of Congress in that it's sort of a national archive) can crack DRM'd audio, video or eBooks whenever the hell they feel like it.
In essence, the legislature is saying "we recognize that protecting IP is important but only within reasonable limits".
(I'm not saying that DRM is good. I think it's mostly not. I only mean to offer some perspective as to why this argument doesn't really hold any water.)
1. Me neither. Bad since most new cell phones have a built-in camera, and since there's already 3 megapixel cam/cell phones available (with 4 MP just around the corner) with storage becoming increasingly cheaper, I think it's only a matter of time before we cross from "cell phone with a camera gizzmo" into "full fledged digital camera that also takes phone calls".
Sure, professionell photographers won't ditch their equipment and anyone who's serious about taking pictures still won't bother with these. But there's a point where a cell phone cam is "just enough" for the average Joe. And that point, there's just no point in carrying an extra digital camera. So, in essence, you the digital camera and the cell phone become indistinguishable.
4. True. There's quite a few other cell phones that have MP3 playback capabilities (I know Siemens and Samsung make some, plus there's the smartphones and PDA/cell phone clones). And since the ringtone business is pretty lucrative and kids definitely do want MP3-like ringtones, it's just a matter of time before MP3-like audio playback becomes a standard.
5. See above. Most business phones have Java. And those handsets that are marketed towards the 14-23 crowd, do definitely support games (usually through Java and on-demand GPRS downloads which are - again - big money makers).
Of course, if I actually ever attempted to build something like that I would probably blow the whole house up. Hence, I'll stick with my regular old-school fridge.