Artificial as it is, I think it makes at least a bit of sense to sell a movie for far less in a dirt poor country. If that's not possible, the poor folks are the ones that get screwed, because the studios will just revert back to high price.
I actually am fairly certain region locking is meant to curtail bootleging, particularly in the blu-ray version, which has much larger regions (that imply that movies will no longer be cheap in Nigeria, for example). By offering one set of supercheap movies to bootleg-friendly nations, which is contained in its own region, there's less incentive to rip it, and there's at least some negligible difficult in getting that stuff to the other markets.
Hey, I didn't say it was smart or that it had any chance of working! I know it's dumb as dirt, and it's extremely crappy for consumers who can't get movies from overseas. But there is an antipiracy motive to it (that is linked to the motivation you mention, which is diverse price).
Again, the real problem is how shitty much of the world is. I'm playing on a 360 elite, I've got a PS3 folding, and my kids are bowling on the wii. Meanwhile, some dad out there is trying to get some food for his kid. The problem isn't distribution of wealth, it's tolerance for awful governments. I don't know the answer,and I know we can't just topple those shitty governments, but as long as they last we will have huge problems with media distribution and more importantly, human dignity.
Well, I'm apparently flamebait right now. Not sure why. My nick should have indicated I'm in the states. I guess I found it more obvious than it was. Sony seems to get an unduly harsh analysis from you. It's very easy to get content on the playstation store, albeit it's boring and inferior to the XBOX system. The minidisc made a ton of money (more than all xbox profits over the entire lifespan of that system) and you consider it a failure. The PS3 is dramatically outselling the XBOX outside of the US, and you think the PS3 only beats the xbox in Japan,and that only because of xenophobia. Sony has obviously failed in one key way, they have let an enormous segment of the US market hate their guts.
Note that the potential to selling movies online is absolutely dominated by East Asia and Western Europe, where fast internet connections are cheap and reliable. Sony has an advantage, then. Do you understand how slow the rural DSL implementations are in the states? You cannot download at 6mbs with the kind of DSL most folks get in Kansas. That is not going to happen for many years. In the US, there is no chance in hell, even in your urban centers, of downloads seriously competing with physical rentals. There will be a small niche market, and that's it. The US infrastructure is not going to get any better for a fair amount of time, and the average person does not want to tie up their internet connection for an entire day to get a mere movie that looks and sounds awful next to a blu-ray. Americans can wait a few days for a much better movie to come from netflix without nearly as much effort.
You're right, the XBOX Live implementation, when it works, is nice in comparison to the lame Playstation store, PSN is obviously just a bandaid until Home is implemented. Which is taking forever. But remember, the PSN is free. There's a reason it's more bland. XBOX live is very expensive when you think about what you're getting, the opportunity to play demos and buy games. It should be better.
Betting against the US economy isn't what Sony is doing. Another very twisted way of seeing things. Sony only has so much investment to make in marketing, and they are betting on the Asian and Eurpoean economies a lot more than they are the US over the next ten years. Frankly, a very wise proposition. The US isn't just losing pace right now, they are losing to the tune of 200% to many european economies, and if you check your history, wartime will do that. The US will have an enormous boom once this war effort begins to wind down, but for the next many years, the other markets are sure to outperform considerably. Every dollar that Sony has made in 2006 is worth less than 75 cents in Japan. Microsoft has failed to do well where it really needs to. And that's something of a shock, because if anything, the weak dollar has actually boosted 360 sales, but they are simply not selling outside the US. The 360 has the best games, but something is missing. My general point is that we all know what Sony was up to with the PS3, they were trying to save the blu-ray format. And they probably did, and will make a ton of money as a result.
You're largely wrong about the 360's status today. The system is still very crummy today, as many are noting. I think you might just not have an open mind as far as these things are concerned, but Sony's free system is simply more reliable, particularly once you are playing an actual multiplayer game. I spend 90% of my time playing games on my 360. MS is already dealing with non-frivolous lawsuits and giving apologies and promises to fix what you apparently don't think is even broken. I love my 360, and it's got the best games, but your glasses are rose colored. MS is obviously not able to predict when their system will be overwhelmed, and theirs is the paid service.
Anyway, the 360 is the best system to own from a game perspective, and MS will get Live working again soon enough, though they still have that lawsuit and the profits lost from that free game to ans
First: good point about CDs and DVDs needing no successor. You're right about that, I suspect, albeit you may have exaggerated. Maybe not to the same extent, but for most people, DVD is actually very good. There is a multibillion dollar market for next generation discs, but it probably will never beat DVD.
Second: Why the hell would you want Toshiba to go royalty free? Is this some sort of "I really hate Sony" thing? Lots of money was invested into that format. Money that will never come back. Same for Blu-ray. Toshiba actually stands to make money from either format, though obviously would make far more from HD DVD. Your idea would destroy all profits from both HD DVD and Bluray development, costing thousands of jobs and stifling innovation. I fail to see how anyone benefits from such a measure.
You already have open formats. Just use your computer and upload your stuff or burn it to data discs in whatever file format you want. You already have what you want. Maybe not 25 gb discs, but so what? The real problem is that you don't have any content worth putting on these discs. Everyone who does is desperate to get them as DRMd as possible. That's a major reason why blu0ray is both winning and sucking for the owners of early players.
You said that HD players were cheaper. You actually said it twice. But you do realize they were loss leaders? Toshiba sold them for a loss, just as Sony does with the PS3.
WB chose blu-ray because it was on the other side, giving it no other logical move. Warner couldn't help HD DVD win, because they already were helping it as much as possible. They needed this idiotic format war to end if it's going to be adopted at all and Warner is going to make the kind of money they ought to be making, so they did the only thing they could do to end it by harming HD DVD. With the WGA strike, now is a great time to shift the customers over to anew format. They always want something new and interesting, and TV isn't there right now.
I don't think many people bought a PS3 just for the games. The PS3 is a cool little toy, but it's not exactly the best gaming system to own today.
Why get either if you're happy with DVD? The late adopter always wins. If you wait five years, these players will be cheaper. If you have an HDTV, and can't see the difference, your money is better spent at the optometrist. Even if you stick with DVDs, the PS3 is one of the best DVD players you can get, since it upconverts DVDs very well, streams content from your computer and can broadcast it to your PSP over the internet, will be a DVR soon, and does other neat little things.
A lot of the problems with blu0ray are related to an extreme DRM posture. It may be the format to significantly curtail bootlegging. I doubt it, but it's the best shot, and I think that's just fine. You aren't going to damage a blu-ray beyond repair on accident, so might as well see if it's possible to really harm piracy with DRM. I it isn't then maybe they will give up and try a more open approach. If it does succeed, then that's great! Bootleggers take food off the table for good families out there.
A: there's a lot of bias out there, and slashdot is often accused fairly accurately of being biased against Sony, which is a general trend in the US. I don't think for an instant that Slashdot is trying to hurt Toshiba's efforts so much as they just want a sexy headline to generate ad revenue. usually, it's the juicy-ing up of stories, either way, that can be confused with bias. Sony has so much bad news in the past couple of years, that the natural tendency to exaggerate in headlines made slashdot look biased against Sony. Now, it looks like they are Blu-Ray fanboys. It's just normal tabloid style journalism.
B: you are right, Blu-ray has been a bit of a clusterfuck. If you bought a PS3, you're going to be ok for the entire time blu-ray is out there, because that's Sony's baby. otherwise, I have no idea how the many early blu ray players are going to work. People will be very pissed.
I hope there is some sort of adaptor, usb->ethernet, made to help these players work, or that manufacturers replace them in some fashion. Otherwise, that's quite uncool.
Also, if every working blu-ray player has to be online, then how is Blu-ray going to compete with download services? Quality alone is a great strength, but I think limiting the blu-ray homes to online homes is a tremendous mistake. Just let the 2% pirate, sue the shit out of awful companies like lik-sang (that put honest people out of work), and accept a small bit of piracy.
Not sure why you think blu-ray is "bastard". Just because the old models don't work? Ask yourself: what kind of douchebag pays 600$ for a barebones DVD player? Early adopters get burned every time.
And "wins" need not go under scarequotes. Sony will make billions. It's clear at this point. That's going to make the PS3 gambit look quite wise, even if Sony never sells another PS3 game. It's a well earned win.
universal never committed to exclusivity to HD DVD, so they don't have to worry too much. They can just keep making movies that support sales figures. Paramount will not profit from their payola.
You just don't get in bed with Microsoft, or you will get fucked. IBM learned this, Sony learned this, many others have learned this. Microsoft is well positioned with Vista and the 360 to sell a lot of movies online. We all knew that they were just trying to minimize how many HD players and HD movies were out there by keeping this format war going forever. Paramount had to know this, and now that the format war climaxed much faster than anticipated, Paramount had better have an escape clause in their exclusivity promise.
The point is that the narrative has been written. Anyone who reads news about this stuff has heard that the format war has now been decided. This will snowball as some, then more and more, go ahead adn splurge on that blu-ray player, perhaps a PS3. The PS3 saved blu-ray, and now the blu-ray saves the PS3. And as market share becomes more unbalanced, yet more people go ahead and get a blu-ray player. Snow balling like this isn't possible to stop at this point.
And the fact is, with the WGA strike, these studios are total idiots not to end this format war already. People want stuff to watch on TV, and many will pay for new stuff. The WGA strike is the perfect opportunity to get hardware players sold.
You are forgetting something. When I torrent a movie, I often get some bullshit Trojan,
Oh, and sitting through ten minutes of commercials is unbeleivably annoying, but it beat the shit out of sitting and waiting for ten gigs to DL.
If you download a movie that you didn't buy, you're begging for crap quality. You may like that because you're poor, but I paid a lot of money for my TV and my sound system, and I don't mind paying a few bucks to netflix to get a very high quality movie.
The market will prove me right. Downloads will not beat movies until you can download ten gigs in half an hour.
That's a great point. I don't like the region coding idea either. It's meant to curb piracy, but I question its effect in today's world, especially with blu-rays.
Probably didn't hurt the studio's adoption of blu0ray if HD DVDs are region free (and they must be, given all these comments about this topic).
I wish I had a good answer for this, but I don't. This is just a sucky aspect of the deal. Anyone know if you can sell blu-rays with region 0? Almost certainly yes, so this is all about the studios. SOny obviously made the call, so I don't expect many All region blu-rays.
Fortunately, it doesn't seem like downloaded movies are regionalized. I watch a show from Hong Kong that I get from the Playstation Store. hopefully, as DRM takes root, one small benefit will be that there is less region code crap.
But this is a valid concern for movie companies. In Asia, many countries simply do not care enough about intellectual property, and entire nations are consumed with bootlegs. Some argue downloading a song isn't theft, but obviously taking entire nations of customers away is a massive theft. Until laws are enforced, companies have to do something to prevent bootlegs, and that's a big big reason behind the ridiculous amount of DRM, HDMI BS, regioning, etc of blu-rays. That's just the way it is. It's annoying, but I think it's more fair to blame the people running governments without enforcing these law than to blame Sony. And to some extend the extreme poverty in parts of the world that tend to bootleg is more at fault than these company's protecting themselves.
The world isn't small enough yet for every government to be able to protect rights, so the entire world isn't small enough for one region code.
First, Sony won with minidiscs and won big. It's a hugely profitable format. Like billion dollar profits. In the US, it's not so big.
Second, downloads will not compete with blu-ray in this country. Sadly, there isn't going to be a great adoption of high speed internet for many years even if everything goes perfectly, which it will not. People with 1080p sets will want pictures that are enormous. 10gb minimum. The average home cannot download a movie of that quality very quickly, and the netflix model of distributing movies is much more efficient. Anyway, every expert in this industry is desperate to sell movies in HD capacities. Toshiba, Sony, and many others have spent billions. You think they are all wrong, but I haven't seen any reasons that justify your ideas. You really think every studio will make their entire library open online? And that enough people will download online to pay the kind of money we're talking about? And what about the royalties that the WGA is demanding? I think the studios worry their pie is smaller, and their cut is also smaller, with online distro.
As far as Sony losing in online distribution, I think that's also a bit silly. Sony knows how to sell songs and movies. And it just doesn't take a lot of awesome technology, beyond sheer server strength, to distribute content. If the PS3 continues to outsell the 360, they are going to do fine selling movies online.
But Sony is indeed taking their sweet ass time. They aren't letting the bandwitdh hogs like Home and movie distro out yet, mainly I think to avoid a lot of the problems MS is having with an obviously overwhelmed online service. Today, PS3's free service works well and MS's doesn't. I know that's temporary, but Sony is doing things carefully. You seem to think the Sony online experience executes much worse, but that's just not so. I have both, and usually the PS3 games have more players and less problems. The only problem is that the Ps3 has a very poor game selection. I spend more time playing my 360 because I like the games, but I wish I was on the PS3, which works very well.
I remember when PS3 released. Horribly overpriced with none of the promised games. Sony did that to win the format war. And you have to admit they would not have without this move. They aren't scrambling, they are actually acting methodically. One of your problems, as evidence by your dismissal oof the incredibly successful minidisc, is that you aren't considering the rest of the world. You can actually watch TV shows and more with the PS3, if you go to stores in different countries. Sony is obviously beating the 360 every but NA, and they are wise to do this, because those parts of the world are getting much richer much more quickly than the US. The dollar is slipping, and will continue to for at least some years. The Euro, Pound, Yen, etc, are much more valuable. Sony is killing the 360 where it's much more profitable and where the future is much more profitable.
Given how well things seem to be looking for the PS3, now that the absurdly early launch dearth of games and such is ending, it's hard to imagine that Sony will not be able to sell movies online. What do you think they will have to do to scramble? Sounds like a very easy task.
With the exception of Office, MS never has the best quality. They always have great marketing, as we see with the entire Halo series, and they always have cunning but cut-throat business ideas, such as paying studios for HD-DVD loyalty or getting their OS included with most computers sold by default.
But Microsoft doesn't have the best quality. They are all about quantity. They are the Chevrolet of the software world, and it's a great model from the stockholder's point of view, though not the best model from the customer's.
I prefer my 360 because of game selection, but I know this is a unique situation that may not last. And I never expected my 360 to be supported perfectly or for a long time (just compare the xbox 1.0 to either Playstation 1 or 2).
So it should surprise no-one that there are problems. Generally, people accept MS because they have to to get access to something else. I can't play bioshock or Halo 3 without an XBOX. I can't run all my shareware without Windows, I can't get that thinkpad without windows, etc etc. For me, it's worth dealing with all the problems, but Microsoft totally deserves a lawsuit. They took millions of dollars and there is no way they didn't know these problems were coming. They knew that after updates, the load on servers would decline, so t hey saved some money. Probably a lot more money than the lawsuit will cost, by the way. MS is lame is a very smart way.
Contracts can be held unconscionable. Microsoft eternally notes how much better their service is than the free one from Sony. And it generally is better. But if MS has sold their service on the premise that it is more reliable than the PS3 version, and it's not, I can absolutely guarantee you MS would have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, and probably millions, to defend against a class action suit.
Lawsuits are not 100% about the bare law. If a claim is not totally frivolous, that's leverage. Leverage plaintiff's attorneys will exploit for settlements. MS does not want this lawsuit in the papers for months or years, so they will offer some kind of something as part of a settlement, and the lawyers will take 40% of that value.
Live users will get another game or something, and the lawyers will get $200k. Or some such. MS should know that this is the world they are playing in, and they should have been prepared. They are playing against Sony, and Sony's system is only getting stronger every day, with a clear tactic for all factors to converge (the big games, Home, and probably a wave of movies in stores and online).
And look at how Sony handled a similar problem: Home. Home is actually quite functional, and though there are bugs there will be bugs on that thing for years. Sony held back the open beta specifically because they obviously do not have the servers to handle it yet. I'm sure they are scrambling to get that capacity to avoid precisely this sort of problem, and this sort of lame lawsuit. Any PS3 owner who has Warhawk knows that Sony online gaming is fraught with errors.
All MS really ought to do is credit their holder's account for the price of their XBOX subscriptions during the problem period (and if you didn't pay, you don't get any money).
Anyway, this is exactly the sort of clumsiness MS tends to show. It's very surprising, but it's a pattern.
You should watch Team America for an analysis of the benefits of being a big enough dick, my friend. I think that's part of the GOP platform, actually.
And it looks like one black fella is actually the most likely person to be president at this early stage of predicting. The USA is far from perfect, but it is getting better.
Just think, the type of crazies who used to murder blacks or capture them for sale now trolls slashdot for a.01% chance of response.
The DVD forum has been a bit of a bully, and while Toshiba made more then ten billion dollars through their involvement, I think a lot of companies are ready to try something else.
Blu-ray isn't the end of the world for them, as Japanese businesses are kinda incestuous and Toshiba has its own set of investments. Toshiba will make plenty of money, just not as much as they did last round.
I'm curious how Paramount deals with this. Does their contract (with MS or Toshiba) have an escape clause?
Anyway, HD DVD is done. Toshi can't be overtly honest about it until they get rid of some inventory. I saw a couple of people returning their HD DVD players, presumably from Christmas, to Target tonight. Are these people picking up PS3s? Probably some are. It's not like HD DVD owners should toss their systems, and I actually think they might be in for a pleasant round of super cheap movies and spare players.
And the Xbox 360 might even be helped by this. Think about it, the XBOX is not quiet enough to play a disc movie, at least for a lot of people. But it's just fine for downloads. Microsoft may ramp up and accelerate their download service now that this war is ending, instead of gaming each company against eachother like fools to slow adoption. Ps2 owners are slow adopted, but in my opinion 360 owners are fast adopters, and the console is more internet oriented. These people are much more likely to download movies, and I think the 360 is going to continue to do very well.
Warner did the right thing, and I'm confident there will be much more progress in HD movies. I think these films look much better than DVD, and while DVDs were much more of a revolution in technology, Blu-ray is a real step up that downloads cannot hope to compete with in the US.
We all knew this was going to end, and most of us realized bluray was going to win out. Warner had no leverage to end Blu-ray, so they used their power very effectively. And may have been planning this out. I expect to see Warner's movies all over Microsoft's system. I bet this was well known to MS, and the announcement the two companies have planned has to do with the 360's downloads.
In short, this is going to work out fine for everybody.
dumbass, he told the mom's it was not for minors because it really isn't for minors. He didn't stop the bad parents from getting GTA: SA for their kids. He warned them it wasn't appropriate.
And it isn't. As a community, it's ok for me to tell a mom she's a terrible parent and her choices suck. It's wrong for the government to say that in many circumstances, and it's wrong for a store to deny an adult a sale, but that guy was 100% right to speak the truth.
Shitty parents are the root of all evil in this world. All of it. Stupid parents who get their kids vulgar games are causing real problems. Games obviously desensitize children to violence and other bad things. Tough to prove, but utterly obvious. Let's shame those crappy parents who think their personally freedom is some sort of shield from judgment. It isn't. And the backlash affect my ability to get the games I want, and as an adult am completely able to handle. If parents made responsible choices and all stores followed the law, there would be no need for the censorship in games that goes on today.
Some games are not for minors. And if a parent gets them for the kid, they are doing a bad thing.
HE may have read about the pursuit mode in a Outrage Pamphlet. He may have just seen the many boxes of MFS depicting a high speed chase. He may have heard Nancy Grace whining about it.
He's only showing dim awareness of the game. It's like knowing GTA involved stealing cars.
The PS3 would do better with the PS2 gone, but the PS2 makes more money than the PS3 would even if the PS2 were gone. Sony is diversifying to maximize profits.
PS2 owners are late adopters, and a very low percentage of them have moved to the 360, so though Sony has not done a very good job so far with PS3, their market position is much better than internet forums seem to realize.
They sold twice as many consoles worldwide as Microsoft last month. Only because they are diversified.
And also, I would never buy another Sony console if they did as MS did and completely stopped supporting my system before it was the right time. XBOX 1.0 users got screwed. 360 owners are probably going to get screwed as well. PS3 owners have confidence that, even if the PS3 doesn't dominate, Sony will support them for ten years. Abandoning the PS2 now would ruin a major distinction Sony enjoys. For what? The PS2 owners who aren't able to get a wii?
Sounds stupid. Sony makes royalties from every PS2 console out there that buys software. They don't have to subsidize the box. It's free money at this point. This is what all the loss leader stuff was building up for. This is what MS is dreaming will happen to them. people say Nintendo is the only console maker that sells for profit, but Sony does it too with PS2.
the ps3 adds motion sensing as well. You didn't know that? It's actually a lot nicer than the wii's in my opinion, because it's not used on its own as much, but rather used to enhance the normal controller. Games like high velocity bowling show that the PS3 is better suited for motion controlling games than the wii. I know how trollish that sounds, but you get more immersed when the game looks realistic.
Anyway, "generation" does not imply virtue. IT implies that the company is making a new edition of machine. The idea that teh -s3 and 360 aren't next gen because you prefer the wiimote is pathetic.
I think nintendo fans are overly impressed with the wii's scarcity and popularity and think that means it is revolutionary. Quite the opposite, in fact. The wii is the cheapest and least challenging system by far. And it's probably not even the most successful.
If you haven't noticed, Sony just won the format war, thanks entirely to the PS3. In games alone it is outselling the wii in many markets, and approaching its sales worldwide (And currently is selling more than the 360). Also, the PS3 is able to download much more expensive merchandise than the wii: movies, big games, furniture in home, etc. The PS3 is going to be responsible for an enormous amount of profit.
I don't prefer the PS3 (there isn't even one game on that thing I want to play), but the wii's certainly not as far ahead of the other systems as people pretend. It's winning a much smaller and less important battle.
Thing is, a lot of the problems he notes for the 360 are true. The games are just so much better on the 360 that, even with all the negatives, it's the best system to own right now.
Yeah, some huge secret number of these things already broke, and MS hasn't even fixed the core flaw. Yeah, it's loud. And it's quite ugly and doesn't protect its discs from scratching.
But it's got so many top notch games, it's still a great system. Says a lot for the software. The PS3 is the opposite. The game selection is atrocious, even now after Warhawk and Uncharted, this is a boring line-up. The real games everyone was thinking about upon purchase, from MGS4 to Home, have been delayed and delayed. Yet the PS3's so slick and interesting that most owners are happy with their system in spite of the lame game selection.
That's the reason these are still next gen. Because console gaming is all about the PS2. That's the normal system, and until the other ones take its place, which will be awhile, then the PS2 is the current gen.
You should write the President and ask him to give an executive order to not comply with earmarks that do not explicitly appear in legislation. Oddly, the vast majority of earmarks are from conference reports and lack the force of law This is somehow a way for congressmen to avoid taking responsibility for wasteful spending. There has been some talk of Bush doing this, but the pressure from powerful lobbyists and congressmen has turned the administration away from this crucial step.
Seriously, take ten minutes and write. It really does matter. The President's party lost big, partly for corrupt spending, and if enough voters chimed in, I'm confident Bush would take this opportunity to attempt to salvage his party's old fiscal steward position. Bush knows he is so unpopular there is really no way to attack him politically anymore, and this will not be true for the next president. If Bush doesn't do this, no one else will.
Why can't ideas be property? Why is that insane? Seems like ideas are extremely useful and valuable, and good ones might take a lot of work to arrive at.
You're taking the ether of ignorance and improving it into knowledge or something like that. It's not physical, but it's real. I never understood why people think it's ok to own their car but not their ideas. It's easy to share the ideas that aren't worth much. That's like giving your grass clipping away. You don't have a property righ tto physical property you don't care about and let someone else possess.
But you don't share your best ideas with just anybody. You might expect your employer to pay for the idea, or you might reserve such ideas for those you love, or you might paint the idea and sell it.
I see that you recognize that it's good to reward the good idea makers, as you note the tension between the "insanity" of owning ideas and the insanity of a world with far fewer ideas. I know you at least understand the benefits.
I just don't get why physicality is so relevant to owning something. Even my material things are not permanent. Certainly none would last as long as an earth shaking idea. Thus, ideas are more real than my car and cellphone.
Don't feed the troll, pal. The PS3 even has motion sensitivity and optional IR sensors and a very nice camera.
If anything, the PS3 add too much extra stuff.
This guy's just trying to piss everyone off. The truth is, everyone likes the wii, but it's adding the least to gaming. Where's the breakthrough story? The game that really gets in my head? Video games are this generation's story teller around the campfire.
The wii has add wiisports, an awesome game, but with no soul. Nintendo can do better. My sincere opinion. Zelda is a gamecube game, and Metroid didn't really expand the tale of Samus in a profound way. Where's the new tale?
The 360 enables stories to be told deeply. Gears and Bioshock were vivid. The PS3 is getting this too with Uncharted and... uh Resistance, and you can tell people want MGS4 for the tale.
It's not as though we think High Velocity Bowling and Geometry Wars really defined this new generation. They are soulless pretty games.
The next gen is marked by new vivid ways to tell new stories. The wii is next gen, and I'm sure the stories are soon to come. 'till then, it's not next gen in spirit.
That's very European of them.
I'm not a fan of the EU style agreement, but I'm not European, so maybe they don't need my approval. Still, yeah, it's wildly unpopular. Europe is a hotbed of nationalism. More fake-races (Irish? Norman? Saxon? Pole? not to mention Germans) come from Europe than anywhere else, and I just don't think they can get along quite like Vermont and Massachusetts do. But the EU has no choice. Their economic resurgence is impressive, but it won't last with their demographics and growing social burden, not to mention Iraq, China, and India will all become powerhouse economies in the next 50 years. If the EU does not stand together, hey will have much less economic clout in a world fighting for resources.
That's the kind of pressure the bureaucrats are facing to erect a nation out of a bunch of nationalists, and it's certainly enough to overwhelm any resistance to a EU-DMCA.
Frankly, Asia is not going to play along, and unless we erect a firewall around half the world piracy is going to remain an outright industry. Still, I forsee a great prohibition-esque war on data sharing and unsecured media in western nations. We already see computers powerful enough to search content based on tone and speech. We may see, in a decade perhaps, filters that first look to see if something is an audio or video file, and then compare that file against all copyrighted material, and then determine if that file is authorized to be shared.
What will people do? Encrypt? Sounds easy enough now, when you can build a PC and run your own OS. What happens when the only affordable devices that work on Web 7.0 applications are subsidized living room appliances like the XBOX 1080^3? We're in a unique period where technology is enabling certain sharing of information but not enabling powerful controls over that sharing. With the incestuous relationship between virtually all hardware makers, and the media's certain central role on the internet with movies, TV, etc being the primary internet application of the near future, I think it will become very difficult to avoid DRM. I predict your current devices will not work with the internet of the future. Just as MS isn't letting you open Word Perfect 5.1 files in a fully updated MS Office, they will cite security BS to justify cutting off compatibility. I bet ISPs and routers outright refuse to work with devices that lack some sort of DRM credential. For "security".
I hope I'm wrong. The best way to avoid it is to create separate internetworks that can support legacy systems. The underground railroad of warez NES roms.
How in the hell did he get married if he always went Dutch? Damn cheapskate.
Kidding, kidding, but seriously, I imagine these DMCA law would probably be passed in enough jurisdictions within the EU along with the normal trade agreements. The EU is in some ways a trade agreement anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Artificial as it is, I think it makes at least a bit of sense to sell a movie for far less in a dirt poor country. If that's not possible, the poor folks are the ones that get screwed, because the studios will just revert back to high price.
I actually am fairly certain region locking is meant to curtail bootleging, particularly in the blu-ray version, which has much larger regions (that imply that movies will no longer be cheap in Nigeria, for example). By offering one set of supercheap movies to bootleg-friendly nations, which is contained in its own region, there's less incentive to rip it, and there's at least some negligible difficult in getting that stuff to the other markets.
Hey, I didn't say it was smart or that it had any chance of working! I know it's dumb as dirt, and it's extremely crappy for consumers who can't get movies from overseas. But there is an antipiracy motive to it (that is linked to the motivation you mention, which is diverse price).
Again, the real problem is how shitty much of the world is. I'm playing on a 360 elite, I've got a PS3 folding, and my kids are bowling on the wii. Meanwhile, some dad out there is trying to get some food for his kid. The problem isn't distribution of wealth, it's tolerance for awful governments. I don't know the answer,and I know we can't just topple those shitty governments, but as long as they last we will have huge problems with media distribution and more importantly, human dignity.
Well, I'm apparently flamebait right now. Not sure why. My nick should have indicated I'm in the states. I guess I found it more obvious than it was. Sony seems to get an unduly harsh analysis from you. It's very easy to get content on the playstation store, albeit it's boring and inferior to the XBOX system. The minidisc made a ton of money (more than all xbox profits over the entire lifespan of that system) and you consider it a failure. The PS3 is dramatically outselling the XBOX outside of the US, and you think the PS3 only beats the xbox in Japan,and that only because of xenophobia. Sony has obviously failed in one key way, they have let an enormous segment of the US market hate their guts.
Note that the potential to selling movies online is absolutely dominated by East Asia and Western Europe, where fast internet connections are cheap and reliable. Sony has an advantage, then. Do you understand how slow the rural DSL implementations are in the states? You cannot download at 6mbs with the kind of DSL most folks get in Kansas. That is not going to happen for many years. In the US, there is no chance in hell, even in your urban centers, of downloads seriously competing with physical rentals. There will be a small niche market, and that's it. The US infrastructure is not going to get any better for a fair amount of time, and the average person does not want to tie up their internet connection for an entire day to get a mere movie that looks and sounds awful next to a blu-ray. Americans can wait a few days for a much better movie to come from netflix without nearly as much effort.
You're right, the XBOX Live implementation, when it works, is nice in comparison to the lame Playstation store, PSN is obviously just a bandaid until Home is implemented. Which is taking forever. But remember, the PSN is free. There's a reason it's more bland. XBOX live is very expensive when you think about what you're getting, the opportunity to play demos and buy games. It should be better.
Betting against the US economy isn't what Sony is doing. Another very twisted way of seeing things. Sony only has so much investment to make in marketing, and they are betting on the Asian and Eurpoean economies a lot more than they are the US over the next ten years. Frankly, a very wise proposition. The US isn't just losing pace right now, they are losing to the tune of 200% to many european economies, and if you check your history, wartime will do that. The US will have an enormous boom once this war effort begins to wind down, but for the next many years, the other markets are sure to outperform considerably. Every dollar that Sony has made in 2006 is worth less than 75 cents in Japan. Microsoft has failed to do well where it really needs to. And that's something of a shock, because if anything, the weak dollar has actually boosted 360 sales, but they are simply not selling outside the US. The 360 has the best games, but something is missing. My general point is that we all know what Sony was up to with the PS3, they were trying to save the blu-ray format. And they probably did, and will make a ton of money as a result.
You're largely wrong about the 360's status today. The system is still very crummy today, as many are noting. I think you might just not have an open mind as far as these things are concerned, but Sony's free system is simply more reliable, particularly once you are playing an actual multiplayer game. I spend 90% of my time playing games on my 360. MS is already dealing with non-frivolous lawsuits and giving apologies and promises to fix what you apparently don't think is even broken. I love my 360, and it's got the best games, but your glasses are rose colored. MS is obviously not able to predict when their system will be overwhelmed, and theirs is the paid service.
Anyway, the 360 is the best system to own from a game perspective, and MS will get Live working again soon enough, though they still have that lawsuit and the profits lost from that free game to ans
First: good point about CDs and DVDs needing no successor. You're right about that, I suspect, albeit you may have exaggerated. Maybe not to the same extent, but for most people, DVD is actually very good. There is a multibillion dollar market for next generation discs, but it probably will never beat DVD.
Second: Why the hell would you want Toshiba to go royalty free? Is this some sort of "I really hate Sony" thing? Lots of money was invested into that format. Money that will never come back. Same for Blu-ray. Toshiba actually stands to make money from either format, though obviously would make far more from HD DVD. Your idea would destroy all profits from both HD DVD and Bluray development, costing thousands of jobs and stifling innovation. I fail to see how anyone benefits from such a measure.
You already have open formats. Just use your computer and upload your stuff or burn it to data discs in whatever file format you want. You already have what you want. Maybe not 25 gb discs, but so what? The real problem is that you don't have any content worth putting on these discs. Everyone who does is desperate to get them as DRMd as possible. That's a major reason why blu0ray is both winning and sucking for the owners of early players.
You said that HD players were cheaper. You actually said it twice. But you do realize they were loss leaders? Toshiba sold them for a loss, just as Sony does with the PS3.
WB chose blu-ray because it was on the other side, giving it no other logical move. Warner couldn't help HD DVD win, because they already were helping it as much as possible. They needed this idiotic format war to end if it's going to be adopted at all and Warner is going to make the kind of money they ought to be making, so they did the only thing they could do to end it by harming HD DVD. With the WGA strike, now is a great time to shift the customers over to anew format. They always want something new and interesting, and TV isn't there right now.
I don't think many people bought a PS3 just for the games. The PS3 is a cool little toy, but it's not exactly the best gaming system to own today.
Why get either if you're happy with DVD? The late adopter always wins. If you wait five years, these players will be cheaper. If you have an HDTV, and can't see the difference, your money is better spent at the optometrist. Even if you stick with DVDs, the PS3 is one of the best DVD players you can get, since it upconverts DVDs very well, streams content from your computer and can broadcast it to your PSP over the internet, will be a DVR soon, and does other neat little things.
A lot of the problems with blu0ray are related to an extreme DRM posture. It may be the format to significantly curtail bootlegging. I doubt it, but it's the best shot, and I think that's just fine. You aren't going to damage a blu-ray beyond repair on accident, so might as well see if it's possible to really harm piracy with DRM. I it isn't then maybe they will give up and try a more open approach. If it does succeed, then that's great! Bootleggers take food off the table for good families out there.
A: there's a lot of bias out there, and slashdot is often accused fairly accurately of being biased against Sony, which is a general trend in the US. I don't think for an instant that Slashdot is trying to hurt Toshiba's efforts so much as they just want a sexy headline to generate ad revenue. usually, it's the juicy-ing up of stories, either way, that can be confused with bias. Sony has so much bad news in the past couple of years, that the natural tendency to exaggerate in headlines made slashdot look biased against Sony. Now, it looks like they are Blu-Ray fanboys. It's just normal tabloid style journalism.
B: you are right, Blu-ray has been a bit of a clusterfuck. If you bought a PS3, you're going to be ok for the entire time blu-ray is out there, because that's Sony's baby. otherwise, I have no idea how the many early blu ray players are going to work. People will be very pissed.
I hope there is some sort of adaptor, usb->ethernet, made to help these players work, or that manufacturers replace them in some fashion. Otherwise, that's quite uncool.
Also, if every working blu-ray player has to be online, then how is Blu-ray going to compete with download services? Quality alone is a great strength, but I think limiting the blu-ray homes to online homes is a tremendous mistake. Just let the 2% pirate, sue the shit out of awful companies like lik-sang (that put honest people out of work), and accept a small bit of piracy.
Not sure why you think blu-ray is "bastard". Just because the old models don't work? Ask yourself: what kind of douchebag pays 600$ for a barebones DVD player? Early adopters get burned every time.
And "wins" need not go under scarequotes. Sony will make billions. It's clear at this point. That's going to make the PS3 gambit look quite wise, even if Sony never sells another PS3 game. It's a well earned win.
universal never committed to exclusivity to HD DVD, so they don't have to worry too much. They can just keep making movies that support sales figures. Paramount will not profit from their payola.
You just don't get in bed with Microsoft, or you will get fucked. IBM learned this, Sony learned this, many others have learned this. Microsoft is well positioned with Vista and the 360 to sell a lot of movies online. We all knew that they were just trying to minimize how many HD players and HD movies were out there by keeping this format war going forever. Paramount had to know this, and now that the format war climaxed much faster than anticipated, Paramount had better have an escape clause in their exclusivity promise.
The point is that the narrative has been written. Anyone who reads news about this stuff has heard that the format war has now been decided. This will snowball as some, then more and more, go ahead adn splurge on that blu-ray player, perhaps a PS3. The PS3 saved blu-ray, and now the blu-ray saves the PS3. And as market share becomes more unbalanced, yet more people go ahead and get a blu-ray player. Snow balling like this isn't possible to stop at this point.
And the fact is, with the WGA strike, these studios are total idiots not to end this format war already. People want stuff to watch on TV, and many will pay for new stuff. The WGA strike is the perfect opportunity to get hardware players sold.
You are forgetting something. When I torrent a movie, I often get some bullshit Trojan,
Oh, and sitting through ten minutes of commercials is unbeleivably annoying, but it beat the shit out of sitting and waiting for ten gigs to DL.
If you download a movie that you didn't buy, you're begging for crap quality. You may like that because you're poor, but I paid a lot of money for my TV and my sound system, and I don't mind paying a few bucks to netflix to get a very high quality movie.
The market will prove me right. Downloads will not beat movies until you can download ten gigs in half an hour.
That's a great point. I don't like the region coding idea either. It's meant to curb piracy, but I question its effect in today's world, especially with blu-rays.
Probably didn't hurt the studio's adoption of blu0ray if HD DVDs are region free (and they must be, given all these comments about this topic).
I wish I had a good answer for this, but I don't. This is just a sucky aspect of the deal. Anyone know if you can sell blu-rays with region 0? Almost certainly yes, so this is all about the studios. SOny obviously made the call, so I don't expect many All region blu-rays.
Fortunately, it doesn't seem like downloaded movies are regionalized. I watch a show from Hong Kong that I get from the Playstation Store. hopefully, as DRM takes root, one small benefit will be that there is less region code crap.
But this is a valid concern for movie companies. In Asia, many countries simply do not care enough about intellectual property, and entire nations are consumed with bootlegs. Some argue downloading a song isn't theft, but obviously taking entire nations of customers away is a massive theft. Until laws are enforced, companies have to do something to prevent bootlegs, and that's a big big reason behind the ridiculous amount of DRM, HDMI BS, regioning, etc of blu-rays. That's just the way it is. It's annoying, but I think it's more fair to blame the people running governments without enforcing these law than to blame Sony. And to some extend the extreme poverty in parts of the world that tend to bootleg is more at fault than these company's protecting themselves.
The world isn't small enough yet for every government to be able to protect rights, so the entire world isn't small enough for one region code.
First, Sony won with minidiscs and won big. It's a hugely profitable format. Like billion dollar profits. In the US, it's not so big.
Second, downloads will not compete with blu-ray in this country. Sadly, there isn't going to be a great adoption of high speed internet for many years even if everything goes perfectly, which it will not. People with 1080p sets will want pictures that are enormous. 10gb minimum. The average home cannot download a movie of that quality very quickly, and the netflix model of distributing movies is much more efficient. Anyway, every expert in this industry is desperate to sell movies in HD capacities. Toshiba, Sony, and many others have spent billions. You think they are all wrong, but I haven't seen any reasons that justify your ideas. You really think every studio will make their entire library open online? And that enough people will download online to pay the kind of money we're talking about? And what about the royalties that the WGA is demanding? I think the studios worry their pie is smaller, and their cut is also smaller, with online distro.
As far as Sony losing in online distribution, I think that's also a bit silly. Sony knows how to sell songs and movies. And it just doesn't take a lot of awesome technology, beyond sheer server strength, to distribute content. If the PS3 continues to outsell the 360, they are going to do fine selling movies online.
But Sony is indeed taking their sweet ass time. They aren't letting the bandwitdh hogs like Home and movie distro out yet, mainly I think to avoid a lot of the problems MS is having with an obviously overwhelmed online service. Today, PS3's free service works well and MS's doesn't. I know that's temporary, but Sony is doing things carefully. You seem to think the Sony online experience executes much worse, but that's just not so. I have both, and usually the PS3 games have more players and less problems. The only problem is that the Ps3 has a very poor game selection. I spend more time playing my 360 because I like the games, but I wish I was on the PS3, which works very well.
I remember when PS3 released. Horribly overpriced with none of the promised games. Sony did that to win the format war. And you have to admit they would not have without this move. They aren't scrambling, they are actually acting methodically. One of your problems, as evidence by your dismissal oof the incredibly successful minidisc, is that you aren't considering the rest of the world. You can actually watch TV shows and more with the PS3, if you go to stores in different countries. Sony is obviously beating the 360 every but NA, and they are wise to do this, because those parts of the world are getting much richer much more quickly than the US. The dollar is slipping, and will continue to for at least some years. The Euro, Pound, Yen, etc, are much more valuable. Sony is killing the 360 where it's much more profitable and where the future is much more profitable.
Given how well things seem to be looking for the PS3, now that the absurdly early launch dearth of games and such is ending, it's hard to imagine that Sony will not be able to sell movies online. What do you think they will have to do to scramble? Sounds like a very easy task.
With the exception of Office, MS never has the best quality. They always have great marketing, as we see with the entire Halo series, and they always have cunning but cut-throat business ideas, such as paying studios for HD-DVD loyalty or getting their OS included with most computers sold by default.
But Microsoft doesn't have the best quality. They are all about quantity. They are the Chevrolet of the software world, and it's a great model from the stockholder's point of view, though not the best model from the customer's.
I prefer my 360 because of game selection, but I know this is a unique situation that may not last. And I never expected my 360 to be supported perfectly or for a long time (just compare the xbox 1.0 to either Playstation 1 or 2).
So it should surprise no-one that there are problems. Generally, people accept MS because they have to to get access to something else. I can't play bioshock or Halo 3 without an XBOX. I can't run all my shareware without Windows, I can't get that thinkpad without windows, etc etc. For me, it's worth dealing with all the problems, but Microsoft totally deserves a lawsuit. They took millions of dollars and there is no way they didn't know these problems were coming. They knew that after updates, the load on servers would decline, so t hey saved some money. Probably a lot more money than the lawsuit will cost, by the way. MS is lame is a very smart way.
Contracts can be held unconscionable. Microsoft eternally notes how much better their service is than the free one from Sony. And it generally is better. But if MS has sold their service on the premise that it is more reliable than the PS3 version, and it's not, I can absolutely guarantee you MS would have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, and probably millions, to defend against a class action suit.
Lawsuits are not 100% about the bare law. If a claim is not totally frivolous, that's leverage. Leverage plaintiff's attorneys will exploit for settlements. MS does not want this lawsuit in the papers for months or years, so they will offer some kind of something as part of a settlement, and the lawyers will take 40% of that value.
Live users will get another game or something, and the lawyers will get $200k. Or some such. MS should know that this is the world they are playing in, and they should have been prepared. They are playing against Sony, and Sony's system is only getting stronger every day, with a clear tactic for all factors to converge (the big games, Home, and probably a wave of movies in stores and online).
And look at how Sony handled a similar problem: Home. Home is actually quite functional, and though there are bugs there will be bugs on that thing for years. Sony held back the open beta specifically because they obviously do not have the servers to handle it yet. I'm sure they are scrambling to get that capacity to avoid precisely this sort of problem, and this sort of lame lawsuit. Any PS3 owner who has Warhawk knows that Sony online gaming is fraught with errors.
All MS really ought to do is credit their holder's account for the price of their XBOX subscriptions during the problem period (and if you didn't pay, you don't get any money).
Anyway, this is exactly the sort of clumsiness MS tends to show. It's very surprising, but it's a pattern.
You should watch Team America for an analysis of the benefits of being a big enough dick, my friend. I think that's part of the GOP platform, actually.
.01% chance of response.
And it looks like one black fella is actually the most likely person to be president at this early stage of predicting. The USA is far from perfect, but it is getting better.
Just think, the type of crazies who used to murder blacks or capture them for sale now trolls slashdot for a
The DVD forum has been a bit of a bully, and while Toshiba made more then ten billion dollars through their involvement, I think a lot of companies are ready to try something else.
Blu-ray isn't the end of the world for them, as Japanese businesses are kinda incestuous and Toshiba has its own set of investments. Toshiba will make plenty of money, just not as much as they did last round.
I'm curious how Paramount deals with this. Does their contract (with MS or Toshiba) have an escape clause?
Anyway, HD DVD is done. Toshi can't be overtly honest about it until they get rid of some inventory. I saw a couple of people returning their HD DVD players, presumably from Christmas, to Target tonight. Are these people picking up PS3s? Probably some are. It's not like HD DVD owners should toss their systems, and I actually think they might be in for a pleasant round of super cheap movies and spare players.
And the Xbox 360 might even be helped by this. Think about it, the XBOX is not quiet enough to play a disc movie, at least for a lot of people. But it's just fine for downloads. Microsoft may ramp up and accelerate their download service now that this war is ending, instead of gaming each company against eachother like fools to slow adoption. Ps2 owners are slow adopted, but in my opinion 360 owners are fast adopters, and the console is more internet oriented. These people are much more likely to download movies, and I think the 360 is going to continue to do very well.
Warner did the right thing, and I'm confident there will be much more progress in HD movies. I think these films look much better than DVD, and while DVDs were much more of a revolution in technology, Blu-ray is a real step up that downloads cannot hope to compete with in the US.
We all knew this was going to end, and most of us realized bluray was going to win out. Warner had no leverage to end Blu-ray, so they used their power very effectively. And may have been planning this out. I expect to see Warner's movies all over Microsoft's system. I bet this was well known to MS, and the announcement the two companies have planned has to do with the 360's downloads.
In short, this is going to work out fine for everybody.
oh, I agree that he was blatantly trolling, but some of his general negative comments are certainly major problems for the 360.
Its graphic are generally awesome, but he's right that Halo 3 was lacking in this area. And 360s are shoddy and unreliable.
but in spite of that, the system is great, which I think is the bigger story.
the best fud is loosely based on truth, the best answer is to give the rest of the story.
dumbass, he told the mom's it was not for minors because it really isn't for minors. He didn't stop the bad parents from getting GTA: SA for their kids. He warned them it wasn't appropriate.
And it isn't. As a community, it's ok for me to tell a mom she's a terrible parent and her choices suck. It's wrong for the government to say that in many circumstances, and it's wrong for a store to deny an adult a sale, but that guy was 100% right to speak the truth.
Shitty parents are the root of all evil in this world. All of it. Stupid parents who get their kids vulgar games are causing real problems. Games obviously desensitize children to violence and other bad things. Tough to prove, but utterly obvious. Let's shame those crappy parents who think their personally freedom is some sort of shield from judgment. It isn't. And the backlash affect my ability to get the games I want, and as an adult am completely able to handle. If parents made responsible choices and all stores followed the law, there would be no need for the censorship in games that goes on today.
Some games are not for minors. And if a parent gets them for the kid, they are doing a bad thing.
HE may have read about the pursuit mode in a Outrage Pamphlet. He may have just seen the many boxes of MFS depicting a high speed chase. He may have heard Nancy Grace whining about it.
He's only showing dim awareness of the game. It's like knowing GTA involved stealing cars.
I don't get it. Scrap PS2 for PS3 sales?
The PS3 would do better with the PS2 gone, but the PS2 makes more money than the PS3 would even if the PS2 were gone. Sony is diversifying to maximize profits.
PS2 owners are late adopters, and a very low percentage of them have moved to the 360, so though Sony has not done a very good job so far with PS3, their market position is much better than internet forums seem to realize.
They sold twice as many consoles worldwide as Microsoft last month. Only because they are diversified.
And also, I would never buy another Sony console if they did as MS did and completely stopped supporting my system before it was the right time. XBOX 1.0 users got screwed. 360 owners are probably going to get screwed as well. PS3 owners have confidence that, even if the PS3 doesn't dominate, Sony will support them for ten years. Abandoning the PS2 now would ruin a major distinction Sony enjoys. For what? The PS2 owners who aren't able to get a wii?
Sounds stupid. Sony makes royalties from every PS2 console out there that buys software. They don't have to subsidize the box. It's free money at this point. This is what all the loss leader stuff was building up for. This is what MS is dreaming will happen to them. people say Nintendo is the only console maker that sells for profit, but Sony does it too with PS2.
the ps3 adds motion sensing as well. You didn't know that? It's actually a lot nicer than the wii's in my opinion, because it's not used on its own as much, but rather used to enhance the normal controller. Games like high velocity bowling show that the PS3 is better suited for motion controlling games than the wii. I know how trollish that sounds, but you get more immersed when the game looks realistic.
Anyway, "generation" does not imply virtue. IT implies that the company is making a new edition of machine. The idea that teh -s3 and 360 aren't next gen because you prefer the wiimote is pathetic.
I think nintendo fans are overly impressed with the wii's scarcity and popularity and think that means it is revolutionary. Quite the opposite, in fact. The wii is the cheapest and least challenging system by far. And it's probably not even the most successful.
If you haven't noticed, Sony just won the format war, thanks entirely to the PS3. In games alone it is outselling the wii in many markets, and approaching its sales worldwide (And currently is selling more than the 360). Also, the PS3 is able to download much more expensive merchandise than the wii: movies, big games, furniture in home, etc. The PS3 is going to be responsible for an enormous amount of profit.
I don't prefer the PS3 (there isn't even one game on that thing I want to play), but the wii's certainly not as far ahead of the other systems as people pretend. It's winning a much smaller and less important battle.
Thing is, a lot of the problems he notes for the 360 are true. The games are just so much better on the 360 that, even with all the negatives, it's the best system to own right now.
Yeah, some huge secret number of these things already broke, and MS hasn't even fixed the core flaw. Yeah, it's loud. And it's quite ugly and doesn't protect its discs from scratching.
But it's got so many top notch games, it's still a great system. Says a lot for the software. The PS3 is the opposite. The game selection is atrocious, even now after Warhawk and Uncharted, this is a boring line-up. The real games everyone was thinking about upon purchase, from MGS4 to Home, have been delayed and delayed. Yet the PS3's so slick and interesting that most owners are happy with their system in spite of the lame game selection.
That's the reason these are still next gen. Because console gaming is all about the PS2. That's the normal system, and until the other ones take its place, which will be awhile, then the PS2 is the current gen.
You should write the President and ask him to give an executive order to not comply with earmarks that do not explicitly appear in legislation. Oddly, the vast majority of earmarks are from conference reports and lack the force of law This is somehow a way for congressmen to avoid taking responsibility for wasteful spending. There has been some talk of Bush doing this, but the pressure from powerful lobbyists and congressmen has turned the administration away from this crucial step.
Seriously, take ten minutes and write. It really does matter. The President's party lost big, partly for corrupt spending, and if enough voters chimed in, I'm confident Bush would take this opportunity to attempt to salvage his party's old fiscal steward position. Bush knows he is so unpopular there is really no way to attack him politically anymore, and this will not be true for the next president. If Bush doesn't do this, no one else will.
Why can't ideas be property? Why is that insane? Seems like ideas are extremely useful and valuable, and good ones might take a lot of work to arrive at.
You're taking the ether of ignorance and improving it into knowledge or something like that. It's not physical, but it's real. I never understood why people think it's ok to own their car but not their ideas. It's easy to share the ideas that aren't worth much. That's like giving your grass clipping away. You don't have a property righ tto physical property you don't care about and let someone else possess.
But you don't share your best ideas with just anybody. You might expect your employer to pay for the idea, or you might reserve such ideas for those you love, or you might paint the idea and sell it.
I see that you recognize that it's good to reward the good idea makers, as you note the tension between the "insanity" of owning ideas and the insanity of a world with far fewer ideas. I know you at least understand the benefits.
I just don't get why physicality is so relevant to owning something. Even my material things are not permanent. Certainly none would last as long as an earth shaking idea. Thus, ideas are more real than my car and cellphone.
Just babbling.
Don't feed the troll, pal. The PS3 even has motion sensitivity and optional IR sensors and a very nice camera. If anything, the PS3 add too much extra stuff. This guy's just trying to piss everyone off. The truth is, everyone likes the wii, but it's adding the least to gaming. Where's the breakthrough story? The game that really gets in my head? Video games are this generation's story teller around the campfire. The wii has add wiisports, an awesome game, but with no soul. Nintendo can do better. My sincere opinion. Zelda is a gamecube game, and Metroid didn't really expand the tale of Samus in a profound way. Where's the new tale? The 360 enables stories to be told deeply. Gears and Bioshock were vivid. The PS3 is getting this too with Uncharted and... uh Resistance, and you can tell people want MGS4 for the tale. It's not as though we think High Velocity Bowling and Geometry Wars really defined this new generation. They are soulless pretty games. The next gen is marked by new vivid ways to tell new stories. The wii is next gen, and I'm sure the stories are soon to come. 'till then, it's not next gen in spirit.
Yep, that's exactly what my malfunction was. Highly annoying. Tango Mike.
That's very European of them. I'm not a fan of the EU style agreement, but I'm not European, so maybe they don't need my approval. Still, yeah, it's wildly unpopular. Europe is a hotbed of nationalism. More fake-races (Irish? Norman? Saxon? Pole? not to mention Germans) come from Europe than anywhere else, and I just don't think they can get along quite like Vermont and Massachusetts do. But the EU has no choice. Their economic resurgence is impressive, but it won't last with their demographics and growing social burden, not to mention Iraq, China, and India will all become powerhouse economies in the next 50 years. If the EU does not stand together, hey will have much less economic clout in a world fighting for resources. That's the kind of pressure the bureaucrats are facing to erect a nation out of a bunch of nationalists, and it's certainly enough to overwhelm any resistance to a EU-DMCA. Frankly, Asia is not going to play along, and unless we erect a firewall around half the world piracy is going to remain an outright industry. Still, I forsee a great prohibition-esque war on data sharing and unsecured media in western nations. We already see computers powerful enough to search content based on tone and speech. We may see, in a decade perhaps, filters that first look to see if something is an audio or video file, and then compare that file against all copyrighted material, and then determine if that file is authorized to be shared. What will people do? Encrypt? Sounds easy enough now, when you can build a PC and run your own OS. What happens when the only affordable devices that work on Web 7.0 applications are subsidized living room appliances like the XBOX 1080^3? We're in a unique period where technology is enabling certain sharing of information but not enabling powerful controls over that sharing. With the incestuous relationship between virtually all hardware makers, and the media's certain central role on the internet with movies, TV, etc being the primary internet application of the near future, I think it will become very difficult to avoid DRM. I predict your current devices will not work with the internet of the future. Just as MS isn't letting you open Word Perfect 5.1 files in a fully updated MS Office, they will cite security BS to justify cutting off compatibility. I bet ISPs and routers outright refuse to work with devices that lack some sort of DRM credential. For "security". I hope I'm wrong. The best way to avoid it is to create separate internetworks that can support legacy systems. The underground railroad of warez NES roms.
How in the hell did he get married if he always went Dutch? Damn cheapskate. Kidding, kidding, but seriously, I imagine these DMCA law would probably be passed in enough jurisdictions within the EU along with the normal trade agreements. The EU is in some ways a trade agreement anyway.