Re:competition with PC games, then and now
on
Flashback NES
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· Score: 1
Errr, technologically speaking I don't think consoles have ever kept up with PCs. The Xbox has what, 64 megs of RAM? The 360 has 512, whereas most gamers today have at least a gig. The 360's video card is also quite pathetic compared to today's latest gaming cards. The 360 doesn't even come standard with a hard drive, which means slow loading times from the optical drive, no huge save game files or mods, etc. etc.
But specs really aren't that important, it's all about the games, right? I will agree that consoles continue to rule when it comes to fun and casual "hotseat" multiplayer games (a la Super Smash Brothers), and they still lead the way with platformers, though there are a few notable titles on the PC (Tomb Raider series, Alice.) However, despite the impact Halo had, the FPS scene is still very much the PC's dominion. RTS's are virtually non-existent on consoles--same goes for turn-based strategy (like the Civilization series.)
Finally, consoles still refuse to support modding. This is not a trivial complaint. I'm not talking about Harry Potter mods or Star Wars mods (although those do exist, and can be fun to play on occasion.) You can play Morrowind on a PC and it is not the game it was when it first came out. Popular (and easy to install) plug-ins and mods make the graphics positively gorgeous--character models in particular have gone from butt-ugly to rather nice looking. Fans have added all kinds of gameplay options that did not exist before--hirelings, pack animals, familiars and pets, romance mods, house mods, graphic mods, new quests, new weapons, new clothes (pointy wizard hats!), new races, new classes, new powers... There's one very simple mod in particular that makes cliff racers "neutral" so that they don't attack you on sight. Let me tell you, that simple tweak makes the game a LOT better, as you can now explore the world at a low level without constantly trying to fight them off. It doesn't completely remove the danger of traveling--far from it, there are still many dangerous creatures to encounter--but cliff racers in particular were numerous and could pursue you tirelessly over any terrain and in general made the game far more frustrating than it should have been.
But on the Xbox, they're still stuck with the crappy character graphics and magic items that look like they're made out of plastic and the neverending supply of cliff racers. When they reach a high level and want to "settle down", they can't download one of the many beautiful player-made houses complete with glass showcases and archery targets and sparring dummies. They can't download player-made patches that fix numerous minor (and a couple fairly major) bugs--heck, for that matter they can't even download the official patches. When they've finished with all the major quests, they can't download fan-made quests. And if there's anything they really wish Morrowind had, something small that's always bugged them, like a complete lack of children in town, or overly repetitive dialog, or that cheesy permanent underwear, in all probability someone out there has made a mod that fixes it--but they can't use it, because they're on an Xbox.
Oblivion, the 360's sequel to Morrowind, will have the same restriction. I would not for a moment entertain the notion of buying a copy of Oblivion for the 360. I can upgrade my video card for far less than it would cost to buy a 360 and have graphics that will far surpass the 360's. And within a couple months, I will have access to thousands mods. I will have a game custom tailored to my own tastes.
I dunno, I guess that could work for some people, but most of the time I say to myself "I think I'm in the mood for some System of a Down today" and so I copy over some System of a Down. It takes me maybe 5 seconds of effort and I am getting EXACTLY what I desire at that very moment. Compare that to plugging in and hoping that my ratings and preferences magically produce what I want to hear... if I want a surprise, I'll listen to the radio--which, of course, is an option on my MP3 player, but not on the iPod.
I'm also not really thrilled about the idea of reducing the bitrate. 128 (iTMS standard, IIRC) is as low as I'd want to go anyway.
Do people still use alkaline for their high-drain devices?
I use NiMH in mine and a single AAA lasts at least 5 hours. Rayovac IC-3 batteries are the bomb--even if I don't have a spare handy, they charge in 15 minutes or less.
The wheel is sounding nicer the more I hear about it. I will give you all that point. Variable speed scrolling would indeed be nice, but I'm not willing to spend $50 more and give up my FM tuner and voice recording features for it.
I don't think that syncing is worth anything at all--copying over the old playlist is just as easy and quicker. For a small, flash-based player, automatically copying over all new songs on my HD simply isn't an option. Also, the few-button menu system you describe is exactly how my Rave works. I understand how everything worked in less than a minute. It is as simple and intuitive as you can get...
Several people now have mentioned the "feature" that auto-sycronizes the music on my HD with the music in the iPod. I don't see how that's going to work at all for flash players. On my computer HD I have several dozen gigabytes of MP3s--on my MP3 player, I have 1.25 gigabytes. How does iTunes magically know which songs I want to copy over? I suspect that the answer is "it does not", and I would be forced to manually copy it over using a third party program instead of the file manager(s) I am already familiar with.
I'll give you the scroll wheel. I guess it would be a bit handier for scrolling through very long lists. However, I don't think it's +$50 handier...
Errr, I like ALL of the music that goes on my player, so I really don't see the point in rating it. If I want to organize, I can do so via folders or playlists, and I'd wager I can drag and drop into folders faster than you can individually rate each song.
Why does your average MP3 player need to be more intuitive? My Rave MP has up and down arrows instead of a virtual scroll wheel. The latter may be somewhat cooler, but it's not any more efficient. You can operate it just as fast, just as easily, with one hand. You have playlists, shuffle, etc. Fast forwarding through a song is as simple as--get this--holding down the fast forward/skip button. I use folders to organize my songs, and transfering them to the Rave is as easy as plugging it in and dragging and dropping from Windows Explorer (or more frequently, Nautilus. It auto-mounts just fine in Ubuntu.) Not having to run any extra client software at all is what I consider "integration."
And not only did it cost me well over $50 less than the equivalent iPod, it had features that the iPod lacked, like a digital FM tuner, the ability to record songs off of radio, and a built-in microphone for voice memos. And finally, looks: It's a deep cherry red and roundish instead of pure white and squarish. So? It looks just fine and even if you hated the color you could easily hide it in a shirt or pants pocket.
Props to the Apple marketing department. Props to whomever put together the iTunes store. Props to whomever put together such a slick, minimalistic package and make it popular. I'm not knocking the iPod in any way, I'm just sick of people trying to convince me that all other MP3 players are ugly and nigh impossible to use. I select the folder (or the playlist), I select shuffle, I hit play--what can possibly be simpler than that? I drag and drop from the file manager I *already use* to organize my music--what proprietary client feature could make it easier than that?
What could possibly be worth an extra $50? I'm not going to pay it for the brand name just so I can impress my friends. I'm not going to pay it for an interface that's no more intuitive than scroll arrows. I'm not going to pay it for the software that cannot run natively in Linux and eats up more memory/CPU than Explorer alone in Windows. And I'm damn sure not going to pay it just for the white paint job.
I'm not trolling, I just genuinely don't get it. All the "features" that make the iPod so superior are either already present on many (most?) other MP3 players or just a matter of taste (white and square design vs. roundish and colored.)
You mean gratuitous taking offense. It would be a hell of a lot easier for everyone to just chill the fuck out than it would be for everyone to go around self-censoring so as to completely avoid offending anyone. Once people accept that God really doesn't give a shit if you call him a doody-head, then not only can they ignore the haters, they also spare those people who really did have intelligent arguments but were incorrectly catagorized as haters.
I do agree with much of what you said, but the blame for this cartoon horseshit lies solely on the shoulders of those who choose to turn a politcal cartoon published a thousand miles away into a reason to riot and kill and destroy. Granted, there are a lot of high tension issues that have been building up over time, etc. etc. but it's just ludicrous for anyone to expect people to stop being offensive. Hell, the majority of people in the USA offend me greatly almost every day regarding issues like the death penalty, gay rights, gun control (I'm anti, just in case you're tempted to pigeonhole me as a cliched liberal), the war on drugs, the war on sexuality and love, the (relatively new, or at least reborn) war on free speech and privacy, and the horribly violent, intolerant, arrogant, and IMO evil god they worship and try to force everyone else to worship. But I choose not to go apeshit, and thus I am able to deal with these offenses and even hold intelligent debates on occasion.
It is impossible for anyone to control (or even predict) everyone else's feelings.
It IS possible to control one's own feelings and choose NOT to be so offended that communication breaks down and violence ensues.
"They" is a pretty damn broad term. I would hazzard a guess that the vast majority of practicing Muslims do not practice this TRIBAL (not Islamic) custom.
I don't understand why people think that the virtual scroll wheel = "incredibly easy to use" while up/down scroll buttons (which is what most other players use) = "hopelessly complicated." Not saying that the ipod's way of doing things isn't neat, but scroll arrows are hardly rocket science.
I picked up my Rave MP with built-in 256MB flash memory for around $30. Toss in a 512 SD card for $25 (cheaper if you find a good after-rebate deal), and I have a $55 768MB flash MP3 player that came with a good built-in FM radio tuner and a kick ass equalizer (not sure if Shuffle has one of those or not.) It can also record songs (or talk) off of the radio. On top of that, it has a built-in microphone for recording your own messages. It has all this, plus all the important features of the Shuffle/Nano, including quality earbuds.
Of course, now that the lower end Rave MPs have been discontinued, they've risen in price considerably (apparently the word is out.) You can still buy one plus an SD card) for less than an ipod shuffle/nano, though. It's half the size of the palm of my hand, and it's a very nice shade of cherry-red with black edging.
Undoubtably some people will always love the virtual scroll wheel thingy and the pure-white minimalist (IMO boring) overall design of the ipod, but it's like you said--most people just want it to play music, nothing more. And again, I don't think the majority of the populace is so retarded as to not understand arrow keys. So yes, eventually they will realize that you can buy a cheaper MP3 player with more features, and most of them will. Ipod will always have a bit of a mystique, and the name may even be used generically to decribe any MP3 player (like Walkman is often used to describe any portable cassette player), but in time it will lose its market dominance unless Apple lowers the price.
What in the hell is with you people equating "looking at porn" with "wacking off"? You may find this to be nothing short of astounding but it is possible to look at a picture of a naked woman (or man) without sticking your hands down your pants. You should give it a try sometime.
"Anyone looking at porn in a library filled with kids is bad."
So what's your definition of porn? Hardcore only, or softcore too? All softcore, or just risque/suggestive softcore? Artistic nudes? What about medical pictures? Websites that explain and/or illustrate (in a non-erotic manner) human sexuality and anatomy? What about erotic stories and explicit text, that's porn too, right? So how about a 2000 year old book that contains some graphic descriptions of sex (and extreme violence too, though as an American chances are that doesn't bother you at all)? According to you, I guess anyone who's ever read the Bible in a library full of kids must be bad.
Oh wait, you don't like those definitions of porn? Well hey, here's a crazy idea, maybe it's all SUBJECTIVE. Maybe there isn't any hard and fast line. Maybe I'd be more comfortable with my kid seeing a picture of two people having consentual, loving sex than having her read about people getting torn apart by (an allegedly loving) god every other page.
I have my own right to decide what is and is not obscene and to me, human love is not obscene.
If these idiots came into my library and did that... well, the Police HQ is right behind us. We'd hear the goose steps before they got here.
You have no clue what they were looking at. It could have been anything from a girl in a slightly low cut blouse to hardcore necrophilia. Hell, it could have been perfectly innocent family photos at the beach. You, sir, scare the shit out of me. These DHS guys were clearly nutjobs, waaaaaaaay oversteping the bounds of the law and their jobs protecting us from terrorism, and yet even though the libraries AND the local PD disagreed with them, you're automatically willing to accept their assertion that whatever those partons were looking at, it was obscene and unacceptable.
And on top of that, you very wrongly assumed that they were masturbating, too (the article indicates that they were not, otherwise the local PD would have arrested them.) What_the_fuck?
You know how on some older laptop screens, if you view it at an angle the picture fades dramatically? Well, someone realized that this could be rather useful, and invented a stick-on polarizing filter. If you're not sitting directly in front of the monitor, all you see is black. I wish I had a link handy for you, but unfortunately I do not...
And my point is that if iTunes is not currently significantly profitable, they could charge an extra $0.10 per song and turn a tidy little profit. Their overhead is practically zero--they're selling bandwidth, for Christ's sake! Unless the labels refuse to agree to anything that would allow iTunes to make real money (and I suppose this isn't too far fetched), there's no reason why iTunes couldn't find a profitable price point.
I don't know why you think iTMS can never be profitable. Huge revenue + nearly nonexistent overhead = very, very large profit potential. Even with RIAA's royalties, I don't see how it could not be very profitable. If Apple chooses to sacrifice all of these potential profits just to sell iPods, well that's their own stupid decision. Sooner or later people are going to realize that you can get an mp3 player with more features at half the cost of an ipod. When that day comes (just like it came for Sony's Walkman), Apple is going to wish they had designed iTMS to be profitable.
If this oft-repeated fact is true, then Jobs has turned completely retarded. Even a few cents per song download should provide Apple with a healthy margin, and you're trying to tell us that they have no margin at all?
Unfortunately, if you plan on ever buying a prebuilt computer ever again, you probably don't have that choice. Microsoft's monopolistic practices have made it virtually impossible to buy a desktop or laptop computer from a major retailer without also paying for a preinstalled copy of Windows. In those few instances that you are offered the option, the computer without Windows doesn't cost any less--you're still paying for a copy, you're just not getting it.
"Silly abuse arguments?" Well if you've made up your mind that any examples of potential of abuse are silly, even in the face of countless historical examples, then I guess there's no changing your mind. But, I shall try anyway...
The problem is the government will always gravitate towards what is easiest, and ultimately what is easiest for them is to gain as much power as they can and use it however they can. Many (most?) are not aware of what they are doing. They believe that they are serving the greater good; they honestly believe that they are helping to defend freedom. What happens is in carrying out their jobs "defending freedom" they look for shortcuts, ways to fight more efficiently, but ultimately it is by these shortcuts they have taken that freedom begins to die.
A good example is racial profiling. If you are black and you are an American, stastically you are more likely to commit felonies--particularly violent and drug related felonies. It's as simple as that. Doesn't matter how good or evil any particular black person is; the police, the ones who have to deal with criminals on a day to day basis, notice these trends and quite naturally take them into account. If police in this country had the right to arbitrarily detain and search black people and their homes, we would see very dramatic drops in violent and drug related crime.
But this is a horrible horrible horrible thing for them to do. We can't treat all black people this way; we can't make their lives a living hell just in the name of safety, just in the name of efficient law enforcement. Yet police officers continue to take race into account when viewing a potential subject, whether they admit to it or not.
Large databases of cross-referenced information presents the opportunity for law enforcement to profile like never before. They will be able to look at where you live, where you shop, where you went to school, where you travel, the histories of your friends and family, and they will be able to calculate a percentage chance showing the possibility that you are a terrorist/criminal/whatever. This is an extraordinarily dangerous power for law enforcement to be given. Now they can and will hassle perfectly law abiding citizens who're indicated to have, say, a 60% chance of being a criminal. And if financial agencies get their hands on your data, you'll find that living a life that is in any way unique or exciting will make your insurence and interest rates skyrocket. In short, such databases allow both law enforcement and corporations to declare war on every minority conceivable. And they will indeed do this, not because they hate gays and Latinos and System of a Down fans and anyone living in a trailer park, but because it makes their jobs easier. Following statistical trends simply makes life easier for them, yet we must rail against this tendency with all our might because our safer, more efficient society will come at a terrible price--our uniqueness, our individuality, our soul.
There exists another danger, one more subtle and one you're less likely to agree with or even understand, but I believe that it is even more dangerous than our loss of individuality, though it is strongly related. Simply put, it's a bad thing if it becomes impossible to break the law. Crime must be fought, but it must not be completely prevented. To do so gives absolute power to our government, and even if you agree 100% of the laws of today and believe that it's OK if they're enforced with an iron fist, you cannot guarantee that the government of tomorrow will not pass laws that you strenuously disagree with. When rebellion becomes impossible because the government controls and/or monitors all methods of communication, when potential criminals are put under surveillence and locked away the moment they do so much as jaywalk, the government ceases to serve its citizens and its citizens will live only to serve the government.
There probably won't be a huge demand for 10+ megapixel cameras, but they aren't entirely useless, either. Walgreens.com offers the option of turning your digital photos into posters, at at those very large sizes even 8 MP might not be as clear as you'd hope. Also, having insane resolution could be kinda neat. Imagine taking a group shot of a few dozen people and being able to zoom in on each face without losing clarity.
I don't think I agree with you here. There is a thing called pure science research, i.e. non-goal oriented research, and if anything I feel that it is this type of research that needs the most government funding. Why do you need to give out a huge prize for, say, curing AIDS? Any company that manages to do such a thing will patent it and become richer than their wildest dreams. An extra prize thrown on top doesn't really sweet the pot enough to make a different.
In other words, if your practical science idea is good enough to merit an award, it's also probably good enough to make you bucketloads of money.
Pure science research, on the other hand, does lead to very tangible benefits by increasing our general knowledge and discovering things we need that we didn't even know existed, yet corporations rarely do this kind of thing. The potential for short-term profit is very low, and even if they do manage to find something exciting, they will not have a working implementation and another company could beat them to the patent. We desperately need the government to fund this type of research, because no one else is going to (other than the occasional university or nonprofit foundation.)
There's a wider variety of opinion on Slashdot than virtually any other webforum I've frequented.
That said, there is a HUGE difference between the genetically modified crops industry and genetic medical research. Very very very few slashdotters oppose GM crops in principle. Only a science-fearing luddite would be against such a thing. HOWEVER, if you take a good look at what's happened with companies like Monsanto, you'll see why many slashdotters are against GM food companies. Monsanto makes GM seeds, farmer A plants them, next door farmer B's fields get contaminated with GM seeds deposited by animals, Monsanto successfully sues farmer B for patent infringment. I think a lot of geeks around here are against patenting genes, especially the ones who are against computer code patents. Few here object to Bush's stance against patenting human embryos. Short-term (e.g. 14 years or less) copyright, sure, but patenting code, be it genetic or computer, is just messed up. On top of this, Monsanto has developed GM seeds with terminator genes and while they have yet to put these seeds on the market, it could lead to many small-time farmers being put out of business in addition to rising food prices. It might even affect the evironment quite drastically if cross-pollinated plants turn out to be sterile or stunted.
A lot of geeks here loved it when Bush made the declaration that we were going to Mars (though they were very rightly skeptical.) A lot of geeks here love corporations like Apple, Novel, Red Hat, even IBM. I'm all for fighting groupthink, but that doesn't mean exaggerating or inventing groupthink where none exists.
The abilities to start a fire or build a computer or even care for under human being are not arbitrary in the least.
>Try making small talk with your patients instead of brow-beating them with heavy moral issues.
You (as well as one of those ACs) misread my post. I don't bring up moral issues when people want to small talk. Point is, often times small talk is just to fill the silence in the air, and that I find to be especially irritating and pointless. It's not that I can't or don't want to have casual conversations, it's that I object to some people using them to think out loud thereby drowning out the thoughts of all those around them.
My other point (which you confused with the previous point) was that when it comes to the heavy moral issues, my definition of "heavy" tends to be whatever is causing the greatest suffering, the greatest loss of human life. OTOH, most other people's definition of "heavy" is whatever the evening news tells them to worry about. Witness that most people think school violence (and violence in general) was skyrocketing during the 90's, when actually both were declining... or, of course, the people think that it is vitally important that we spend hundreds of billions of dollars making sure 9/11 never happens again while other social ills (many allocated a few million dollars at best) claim the lives of millions.
>That would be the result of, err, evolution then. Apparently evolution didn't create a world full of you.
Oh, so you think that evolution is completely done? This is the pinnacle of human development? Good God, I hope you're wrong. I'm not arrogant enough to think that the world should be full of me, but even that sentiment wouldn't be half as arrogant as *anyone* saying that our social and biological evolution is anywhere near complete.
Also, you seem to be assuming that I'm referring to the human race as a whole--many of my complaints are fairly America-centric. Surely when I say "society", you're not assuming I'm referring to all human society everywhere? A few other cultures in Europe and Asia are considerably more "evolved" in the sense of being more rational. They've got their own problems to deal with, of course...
Finally, evolution does not always do what is best for a species. Sexual selection and Dawkin's "selfish" genes can often lead a species to evolve into a weaker (i.e. more prone to death and extinction) species. Homo Sapien's unprecedented powers of communication throws a major kink into the system. Arguably, our social evolution is now much more important than our biological evolution, and I think that social evolution follows its own set of rules that bear only somewhat of a resemblance to biological evolution. Look at all the fallen nations of the world--Greece, Rome, Nazi Germany, Indus Valley, the Egyptians... social evolution is definitely not as predictable as the biological kind. In light of those civilizations, You can't just say that present day society must be good or useful or superior simply because it has evolved to its current state.
But all of these pesky facts and observations and deductions are beside the point, right? If anything, I've proven your point (in your eyes) because I've responded to your shallow attacks with insight and logic. What was the socially expected thing of me to say? "Eh, maybe you're right, I am a bit of a dork" ?
I guess it's fortunate for me that I have enough friends who think like I do, and a girlfriend who can finish my sentences. Maybe if I was completely alone in the world I'd give your pro-irrational bullshit a second thought, but very very very fortunately for me, I am not.
Social "skills" are mostly just memorization of arbitrary customs, many of which actively hinder society. I am I highly empathetic person--I care what other people feel. I work with the developmentally delayed, in fact, so I suspect I have a good deal more insight into them than you do. I try to listen when people talk and I try to take their feelings into consideration when I make decisions. But, according to you and much of society, I have poor social skills because I don't like to small talk about the weather or whomever the crappy hip hop artist of the moment is, and I'd rather talk about the 50,000 Americans who die in car accidents every year than the 3,000 that died on September 11.
So, here's my message to you: Fucking evolve, and realize that your definition of "grown-up" is pretty fucking pathetic. The only time I ever feel like my social skills are poor is when I'm surrounded by selfish, intellectually-deficient, emotionally-dominated (not driven. Emotionally driven is ok) people. Unfortunately, these people do indeed appear to be the majority, at least in the good old USA.
I said behaving more analytically and rationally, not behaving like computers. There's a difference between having emotion and letting your emotions completely dominate all of your decisions. The latter is no better than acting like a computer, yet the vast majority of our problems stem from people making politically correct (or "emotionally correct") decisions instead of rational ones.
Oh yes, and the other step to getting that client well would be to re-fit her for dentures, taking extra care that they are comfortable. Duh. Only no one wants to pay for that...
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Errr, technologically speaking I don't think consoles have ever kept up with PCs. The Xbox has what, 64 megs of RAM? The 360 has 512, whereas most gamers today have at least a gig. The 360's video card is also quite pathetic compared to today's latest gaming cards. The 360 doesn't even come standard with a hard drive, which means slow loading times from the optical drive, no huge save game files or mods, etc. etc.
But specs really aren't that important, it's all about the games, right? I will agree that consoles continue to rule when it comes to fun and casual "hotseat" multiplayer games (a la Super Smash Brothers), and they still lead the way with platformers, though there are a few notable titles on the PC (Tomb Raider series, Alice.) However, despite the impact Halo had, the FPS scene is still very much the PC's dominion. RTS's are virtually non-existent on consoles--same goes for turn-based strategy (like the Civilization series.)
Finally, consoles still refuse to support modding. This is not a trivial complaint. I'm not talking about Harry Potter mods or Star Wars mods (although those do exist, and can be fun to play on occasion.) You can play Morrowind on a PC and it is not the game it was when it first came out. Popular (and easy to install) plug-ins and mods make the graphics positively gorgeous--character models in particular have gone from butt-ugly to rather nice looking. Fans have added all kinds of gameplay options that did not exist before--hirelings, pack animals, familiars and pets, romance mods, house mods, graphic mods, new quests, new weapons, new clothes (pointy wizard hats!), new races, new classes, new powers... There's one very simple mod in particular that makes cliff racers "neutral" so that they don't attack you on sight. Let me tell you, that simple tweak makes the game a LOT better, as you can now explore the world at a low level without constantly trying to fight them off. It doesn't completely remove the danger of traveling--far from it, there are still many dangerous creatures to encounter--but cliff racers in particular were numerous and could pursue you tirelessly over any terrain and in general made the game far more frustrating than it should have been.
But on the Xbox, they're still stuck with the crappy character graphics and magic items that look like they're made out of plastic and the neverending supply of cliff racers. When they reach a high level and want to "settle down", they can't download one of the many beautiful player-made houses complete with glass showcases and archery targets and sparring dummies. They can't download player-made patches that fix numerous minor (and a couple fairly major) bugs--heck, for that matter they can't even download the official patches. When they've finished with all the major quests, they can't download fan-made quests. And if there's anything they really wish Morrowind had, something small that's always bugged them, like a complete lack of children in town, or overly repetitive dialog, or that cheesy permanent underwear, in all probability someone out there has made a mod that fixes it--but they can't use it, because they're on an Xbox.
Oblivion, the 360's sequel to Morrowind, will have the same restriction. I would not for a moment entertain the notion of buying a copy of Oblivion for the 360. I can upgrade my video card for far less than it would cost to buy a 360 and have graphics that will far surpass the 360's. And within a couple months, I will have access to thousands mods. I will have a game custom tailored to my own tastes.
I dunno, I guess that could work for some people, but most of the time I say to myself "I think I'm in the mood for some System of a Down today" and so I copy over some System of a Down. It takes me maybe 5 seconds of effort and I am getting EXACTLY what I desire at that very moment. Compare that to plugging in and hoping that my ratings and preferences magically produce what I want to hear... if I want a surprise, I'll listen to the radio--which, of course, is an option on my MP3 player, but not on the iPod. I'm also not really thrilled about the idea of reducing the bitrate. 128 (iTMS standard, IIRC) is as low as I'd want to go anyway.
Do people still use alkaline for their high-drain devices?
I use NiMH in mine and a single AAA lasts at least 5 hours. Rayovac IC-3 batteries are the bomb--even if I don't have a spare handy, they charge in 15 minutes or less.
520 megs? Congradulations for finding the elusive 260 megabyte DIMM...
The wheel is sounding nicer the more I hear about it. I will give you all that point. Variable speed scrolling would indeed be nice, but I'm not willing to spend $50 more and give up my FM tuner and voice recording features for it.
I don't think that syncing is worth anything at all--copying over the old playlist is just as easy and quicker. For a small, flash-based player, automatically copying over all new songs on my HD simply isn't an option. Also, the few-button menu system you describe is exactly how my Rave works. I understand how everything worked in less than a minute. It is as simple and intuitive as you can get...
Several people now have mentioned the "feature" that auto-sycronizes the music on my HD with the music in the iPod. I don't see how that's going to work at all for flash players. On my computer HD I have several dozen gigabytes of MP3s--on my MP3 player, I have 1.25 gigabytes. How does iTunes magically know which songs I want to copy over? I suspect that the answer is "it does not", and I would be forced to manually copy it over using a third party program instead of the file manager(s) I am already familiar with.
I'll give you the scroll wheel. I guess it would be a bit handier for scrolling through very long lists. However, I don't think it's +$50 handier...
Errr, I like ALL of the music that goes on my player, so I really don't see the point in rating it. If I want to organize, I can do so via folders or playlists, and I'd wager I can drag and drop into folders faster than you can individually rate each song.
Why does your average MP3 player need to be more intuitive? My Rave MP has up and down arrows instead of a virtual scroll wheel. The latter may be somewhat cooler, but it's not any more efficient. You can operate it just as fast, just as easily, with one hand. You have playlists, shuffle, etc. Fast forwarding through a song is as simple as--get this--holding down the fast forward/skip button. I use folders to organize my songs, and transfering them to the Rave is as easy as plugging it in and dragging and dropping from Windows Explorer (or more frequently, Nautilus. It auto-mounts just fine in Ubuntu.) Not having to run any extra client software at all is what I consider "integration." And not only did it cost me well over $50 less than the equivalent iPod, it had features that the iPod lacked, like a digital FM tuner, the ability to record songs off of radio, and a built-in microphone for voice memos. And finally, looks: It's a deep cherry red and roundish instead of pure white and squarish. So? It looks just fine and even if you hated the color you could easily hide it in a shirt or pants pocket.
Props to the Apple marketing department. Props to whomever put together the iTunes store. Props to whomever put together such a slick, minimalistic package and make it popular. I'm not knocking the iPod in any way, I'm just sick of people trying to convince me that all other MP3 players are ugly and nigh impossible to use. I select the folder (or the playlist), I select shuffle, I hit play--what can possibly be simpler than that? I drag and drop from the file manager I *already use* to organize my music--what proprietary client feature could make it easier than that?
What could possibly be worth an extra $50? I'm not going to pay it for the brand name just so I can impress my friends. I'm not going to pay it for an interface that's no more intuitive than scroll arrows. I'm not going to pay it for the software that cannot run natively in Linux and eats up more memory/CPU than Explorer alone in Windows. And I'm damn sure not going to pay it just for the white paint job.
I'm not trolling, I just genuinely don't get it. All the "features" that make the iPod so superior are either already present on many (most?) other MP3 players or just a matter of taste (white and square design vs. roundish and colored.)
You mean gratuitous taking offense. It would be a hell of a lot easier for everyone to just chill the fuck out than it would be for everyone to go around self-censoring so as to completely avoid offending anyone. Once people accept that God really doesn't give a shit if you call him a doody-head, then not only can they ignore the haters, they also spare those people who really did have intelligent arguments but were incorrectly catagorized as haters.
I do agree with much of what you said, but the blame for this cartoon horseshit lies solely on the shoulders of those who choose to turn a politcal cartoon published a thousand miles away into a reason to riot and kill and destroy. Granted, there are a lot of high tension issues that have been building up over time, etc. etc. but it's just ludicrous for anyone to expect people to stop being offensive. Hell, the majority of people in the USA offend me greatly almost every day regarding issues like the death penalty, gay rights, gun control (I'm anti, just in case you're tempted to pigeonhole me as a cliched liberal), the war on drugs, the war on sexuality and love, the (relatively new, or at least reborn) war on free speech and privacy, and the horribly violent, intolerant, arrogant, and IMO evil god they worship and try to force everyone else to worship. But I choose not to go apeshit, and thus I am able to deal with these offenses and even hold intelligent debates on occasion.
It is impossible for anyone to control (or even predict) everyone else's feelings.
It IS possible to control one's own feelings and choose NOT to be so offended that communication breaks down and violence ensues.
"They" is a pretty damn broad term. I would hazzard a guess that the vast majority of practicing Muslims do not practice this TRIBAL (not Islamic) custom.
I don't understand why people think that the virtual scroll wheel = "incredibly easy to use" while up/down scroll buttons (which is what most other players use) = "hopelessly complicated." Not saying that the ipod's way of doing things isn't neat, but scroll arrows are hardly rocket science.
I picked up my Rave MP with built-in 256MB flash memory for around $30. Toss in a 512 SD card for $25 (cheaper if you find a good after-rebate deal), and I have a $55 768MB flash MP3 player that came with a good built-in FM radio tuner and a kick ass equalizer (not sure if Shuffle has one of those or not.) It can also record songs (or talk) off of the radio. On top of that, it has a built-in microphone for recording your own messages. It has all this, plus all the important features of the Shuffle/Nano, including quality earbuds.
Of course, now that the lower end Rave MPs have been discontinued, they've risen in price considerably (apparently the word is out.) You can still buy one plus an SD card) for less than an ipod shuffle/nano, though. It's half the size of the palm of my hand, and it's a very nice shade of cherry-red with black edging.
Undoubtably some people will always love the virtual scroll wheel thingy and the pure-white minimalist (IMO boring) overall design of the ipod, but it's like you said--most people just want it to play music, nothing more. And again, I don't think the majority of the populace is so retarded as to not understand arrow keys. So yes, eventually they will realize that you can buy a cheaper MP3 player with more features, and most of them will. Ipod will always have a bit of a mystique, and the name may even be used generically to decribe any MP3 player (like Walkman is often used to describe any portable cassette player), but in time it will lose its market dominance unless Apple lowers the price.
What in the hell is with you people equating "looking at porn" with "wacking off"? You may find this to be nothing short of astounding but it is possible to look at a picture of a naked woman (or man) without sticking your hands down your pants. You should give it a try sometime.
"Anyone looking at porn in a library filled with kids is bad."
So what's your definition of porn? Hardcore only, or softcore too? All softcore, or just risque/suggestive softcore? Artistic nudes? What about medical pictures? Websites that explain and/or illustrate (in a non-erotic manner) human sexuality and anatomy? What about erotic stories and explicit text, that's porn too, right? So how about a 2000 year old book that contains some graphic descriptions of sex (and extreme violence too, though as an American chances are that doesn't bother you at all)? According to you, I guess anyone who's ever read the Bible in a library full of kids must be bad.
Oh wait, you don't like those definitions of porn? Well hey, here's a crazy idea, maybe it's all SUBJECTIVE. Maybe there isn't any hard and fast line. Maybe I'd be more comfortable with my kid seeing a picture of two people having consentual, loving sex than having her read about people getting torn apart by (an allegedly loving) god every other page.
I have my own right to decide what is and is not obscene and to me, human love is not obscene.
If these idiots came into my library and did that... well, the Police HQ is right behind us. We'd hear the goose steps before they got here.
You have no clue what they were looking at. It could have been anything from a girl in a slightly low cut blouse to hardcore necrophilia. Hell, it could have been perfectly innocent family photos at the beach. You, sir, scare the shit out of me. These DHS guys were clearly nutjobs, waaaaaaaay oversteping the bounds of the law and their jobs protecting us from terrorism, and yet even though the libraries AND the local PD disagreed with them, you're automatically willing to accept their assertion that whatever those partons were looking at, it was obscene and unacceptable.
And on top of that, you very wrongly assumed that they were masturbating, too (the article indicates that they were not, otherwise the local PD would have arrested them.) What_the_fuck?
You know how on some older laptop screens, if you view it at an angle the picture fades dramatically? Well, someone realized that this could be rather useful, and invented a stick-on polarizing filter. If you're not sitting directly in front of the monitor, all you see is black. I wish I had a link handy for you, but unfortunately I do not...
And my point is that if iTunes is not currently significantly profitable, they could charge an extra $0.10 per song and turn a tidy little profit. Their overhead is practically zero--they're selling bandwidth, for Christ's sake! Unless the labels refuse to agree to anything that would allow iTunes to make real money (and I suppose this isn't too far fetched), there's no reason why iTunes couldn't find a profitable price point.
I don't know why you think iTMS can never be profitable. Huge revenue + nearly nonexistent overhead = very, very large profit potential. Even with RIAA's royalties, I don't see how it could not be very profitable. If Apple chooses to sacrifice all of these potential profits just to sell iPods, well that's their own stupid decision. Sooner or later people are going to realize that you can get an mp3 player with more features at half the cost of an ipod. When that day comes (just like it came for Sony's Walkman), Apple is going to wish they had designed iTMS to be profitable.
If this oft-repeated fact is true, then Jobs has turned completely retarded. Even a few cents per song download should provide Apple with a healthy margin, and you're trying to tell us that they have no margin at all?
Unfortunately, if you plan on ever buying a prebuilt computer ever again, you probably don't have that choice. Microsoft's monopolistic practices have made it virtually impossible to buy a desktop or laptop computer from a major retailer without also paying for a preinstalled copy of Windows. In those few instances that you are offered the option, the computer without Windows doesn't cost any less--you're still paying for a copy, you're just not getting it.
"Silly abuse arguments?" Well if you've made up your mind that any examples of potential of abuse are silly, even in the face of countless historical examples, then I guess there's no changing your mind. But, I shall try anyway...
The problem is the government will always gravitate towards what is easiest, and ultimately what is easiest for them is to gain as much power as they can and use it however they can. Many (most?) are not aware of what they are doing. They believe that they are serving the greater good; they honestly believe that they are helping to defend freedom. What happens is in carrying out their jobs "defending freedom" they look for shortcuts, ways to fight more efficiently, but ultimately it is by these shortcuts they have taken that freedom begins to die.
A good example is racial profiling. If you are black and you are an American, stastically you are more likely to commit felonies--particularly violent and drug related felonies. It's as simple as that. Doesn't matter how good or evil any particular black person is; the police, the ones who have to deal with criminals on a day to day basis, notice these trends and quite naturally take them into account. If police in this country had the right to arbitrarily detain and search black people and their homes, we would see very dramatic drops in violent and drug related crime.
But this is a horrible horrible horrible thing for them to do. We can't treat all black people this way; we can't make their lives a living hell just in the name of safety, just in the name of efficient law enforcement. Yet police officers continue to take race into account when viewing a potential subject, whether they admit to it or not.
Large databases of cross-referenced information presents the opportunity for law enforcement to profile like never before. They will be able to look at where you live, where you shop, where you went to school, where you travel, the histories of your friends and family, and they will be able to calculate a percentage chance showing the possibility that you are a terrorist/criminal/whatever. This is an extraordinarily dangerous power for law enforcement to be given. Now they can and will hassle perfectly law abiding citizens who're indicated to have, say, a 60% chance of being a criminal. And if financial agencies get their hands on your data, you'll find that living a life that is in any way unique or exciting will make your insurence and interest rates skyrocket. In short, such databases allow both law enforcement and corporations to declare war on every minority conceivable. And they will indeed do this, not because they hate gays and Latinos and System of a Down fans and anyone living in a trailer park, but because it makes their jobs easier. Following statistical trends simply makes life easier for them, yet we must rail against this tendency with all our might because our safer, more efficient society will come at a terrible price--our uniqueness, our individuality, our soul.
There exists another danger, one more subtle and one you're less likely to agree with or even understand, but I believe that it is even more dangerous than our loss of individuality, though it is strongly related. Simply put, it's a bad thing if it becomes impossible to break the law. Crime must be fought, but it must not be completely prevented. To do so gives absolute power to our government, and even if you agree 100% of the laws of today and believe that it's OK if they're enforced with an iron fist, you cannot guarantee that the government of tomorrow will not pass laws that you strenuously disagree with. When rebellion becomes impossible because the government controls and/or monitors all methods of communication, when potential criminals are put under surveillence and locked away the moment they do so much as jaywalk, the government ceases to serve its citizens and its citizens will live only to serve the government.
Very few people today set out to destroy liberty
There probably won't be a huge demand for 10+ megapixel cameras, but they aren't entirely useless, either. Walgreens.com offers the option of turning your digital photos into posters, at at those very large sizes even 8 MP might not be as clear as you'd hope. Also, having insane resolution could be kinda neat. Imagine taking a group shot of a few dozen people and being able to zoom in on each face without losing clarity.
I don't think I agree with you here. There is a thing called pure science research, i.e. non-goal oriented research, and if anything I feel that it is this type of research that needs the most government funding. Why do you need to give out a huge prize for, say, curing AIDS? Any company that manages to do such a thing will patent it and become richer than their wildest dreams. An extra prize thrown on top doesn't really sweet the pot enough to make a different.
In other words, if your practical science idea is good enough to merit an award, it's also probably good enough to make you bucketloads of money.
Pure science research, on the other hand, does lead to very tangible benefits by increasing our general knowledge and discovering things we need that we didn't even know existed, yet corporations rarely do this kind of thing. The potential for short-term profit is very low, and even if they do manage to find something exciting, they will not have a working implementation and another company could beat them to the patent. We desperately need the government to fund this type of research, because no one else is going to (other than the occasional university or nonprofit foundation.)
There's a wider variety of opinion on Slashdot than virtually any other webforum I've frequented.
That said, there is a HUGE difference between the genetically modified crops industry and genetic medical research. Very very very few slashdotters oppose GM crops in principle. Only a science-fearing luddite would be against such a thing. HOWEVER, if you take a good look at what's happened with companies like Monsanto, you'll see why many slashdotters are against GM food companies. Monsanto makes GM seeds, farmer A plants them, next door farmer B's fields get contaminated with GM seeds deposited by animals, Monsanto successfully sues farmer B for patent infringment. I think a lot of geeks around here are against patenting genes, especially the ones who are against computer code patents. Few here object to Bush's stance against patenting human embryos. Short-term (e.g. 14 years or less) copyright, sure, but patenting code, be it genetic or computer, is just messed up. On top of this, Monsanto has developed GM seeds with terminator genes and while they have yet to put these seeds on the market, it could lead to many small-time farmers being put out of business in addition to rising food prices. It might even affect the evironment quite drastically if cross-pollinated plants turn out to be sterile or stunted.
A lot of geeks here loved it when Bush made the declaration that we were going to Mars (though they were very rightly skeptical.) A lot of geeks here love corporations like Apple, Novel, Red Hat, even IBM. I'm all for fighting groupthink, but that doesn't mean exaggerating or inventing groupthink where none exists.
Stop modding this shit up! It's just not true.
wtf? *another, not under.
>So are all skills, whatever.
The abilities to start a fire or build a computer or even care for under human being are not arbitrary in the least.
>Try making small talk with your patients instead of brow-beating them with heavy moral issues.
You (as well as one of those ACs) misread my post. I don't bring up moral issues when people want to small talk. Point is, often times small talk is just to fill the silence in the air, and that I find to be especially irritating and pointless. It's not that I can't or don't want to have casual conversations, it's that I object to some people using them to think out loud thereby drowning out the thoughts of all those around them.
My other point (which you confused with the previous point) was that when it comes to the heavy moral issues, my definition of "heavy" tends to be whatever is causing the greatest suffering, the greatest loss of human life. OTOH, most other people's definition of "heavy" is whatever the evening news tells them to worry about. Witness that most people think school violence (and violence in general) was skyrocketing during the 90's, when actually both were declining... or, of course, the people think that it is vitally important that we spend hundreds of billions of dollars making sure 9/11 never happens again while other social ills (many allocated a few million dollars at best) claim the lives of millions.
>That would be the result of, err, evolution then. Apparently evolution didn't create a world full of you.
Oh, so you think that evolution is completely done? This is the pinnacle of human development? Good God, I hope you're wrong. I'm not arrogant enough to think that the world should be full of me, but even that sentiment wouldn't be half as arrogant as *anyone* saying that our social and biological evolution is anywhere near complete.
Also, you seem to be assuming that I'm referring to the human race as a whole--many of my complaints are fairly America-centric. Surely when I say "society", you're not assuming I'm referring to all human society everywhere? A few other cultures in Europe and Asia are considerably more "evolved" in the sense of being more rational. They've got their own problems to deal with, of course...
Finally, evolution does not always do what is best for a species. Sexual selection and Dawkin's "selfish" genes can often lead a species to evolve into a weaker (i.e. more prone to death and extinction) species. Homo Sapien's unprecedented powers of communication throws a major kink into the system. Arguably, our social evolution is now much more important than our biological evolution, and I think that social evolution follows its own set of rules that bear only somewhat of a resemblance to biological evolution. Look at all the fallen nations of the world--Greece, Rome, Nazi Germany, Indus Valley, the Egyptians... social evolution is definitely not as predictable as the biological kind. In light of those civilizations, You can't just say that present day society must be good or useful or superior simply because it has evolved to its current state.
But all of these pesky facts and observations and deductions are beside the point, right? If anything, I've proven your point (in your eyes) because I've responded to your shallow attacks with insight and logic. What was the socially expected thing of me to say? "Eh, maybe you're right, I am a bit of a dork" ?
I guess it's fortunate for me that I have enough friends who think like I do, and a girlfriend who can finish my sentences. Maybe if I was completely alone in the world I'd give your pro-irrational bullshit a second thought, but very very very fortunately for me, I am not.
Social "skills" are mostly just memorization of arbitrary customs, many of which actively hinder society. I am I highly empathetic person--I care what other people feel. I work with the developmentally delayed, in fact, so I suspect I have a good deal more insight into them than you do. I try to listen when people talk and I try to take their feelings into consideration when I make decisions. But, according to you and much of society, I have poor social skills because I don't like to small talk about the weather or whomever the crappy hip hop artist of the moment is, and I'd rather talk about the 50,000 Americans who die in car accidents every year than the 3,000 that died on September 11.
So, here's my message to you: Fucking evolve, and realize that your definition of "grown-up" is pretty fucking pathetic. The only time I ever feel like my social skills are poor is when I'm surrounded by selfish, intellectually-deficient, emotionally-dominated (not driven. Emotionally driven is ok) people. Unfortunately, these people do indeed appear to be the majority, at least in the good old USA.
I said behaving more analytically and rationally, not behaving like computers. There's a difference between having emotion and letting your emotions completely dominate all of your decisions. The latter is no better than acting like a computer, yet the vast majority of our problems stem from people making politically correct (or "emotionally correct") decisions instead of rational ones.
Oh yes, and the other step to getting that client well would be to re-fit her for dentures, taking extra care that they are comfortable. Duh. Only no one wants to pay for that...