Throwing money at problems doesn't bring solutions. Lack of resources can prevent solutions from being developed, but excessive resources doesn't necessarily mean solutions will be developed.
You can have thousands of developers working on a problem, but the problem won't be solved if those developers aren't managed properly. In fact, even if some small team of developers *do* solve the problem, the solution won't be implemented unless the management is smart enough to choose that good solution as their approved solution.
Microsoft's problems have all the hallmarks of poor management, and most reports I've read of the internal workings of Microsoft confirms this.
I'm pretty sure you have that backwards, actually. The whole point of "copyright" is not controlling who has access to copies, but who has the legal right to copy things. If I buy a book, I own the book. I have not licensed the right to possess the book, a license to read the book, or a license to lend the book. I don't need any such license, because I own the book. What I do not own are the intellectual contents of the book. In order to copy the contents of the book, I need a license.
And so copyright laws made a lot of sense a hundred years ago, but the implications are increasingly problematic. For us now, copying information is absolutely trivial we're constantly doing it unintentionally. When you access information on a computer, it's might be automatically cached in many different places and in many different ways, and each of those might constitute a copy.
It used to be that buying a music CD meant that you bought the physical CD and could do with it as you please so long as you didn't copy the music from the CD. Now, with digital distribution, you're somehow "buying" the music itself with no medium. The files are being cached on servers when they're delivered to your computer, they're being cached in RAM while they're playing, and they're being backed up and copied to iPods. Also people expect to have a continued right to listen to that music even if they lose their original copy, but none of that is guaranteed by any law (AFAIK, IANAL). "Buying" the song doesn't give you a right to have that song, it only gives you the one copy that you've bought. Everything else depends on the licensing agreement you have with the store you bought it from.
Just because you can walk in and look at it free of charge doesn't mean that it is legal to copy the material.
But that's a restriction on copying the material. For example, if I buy a book, I am not permitted to copy the copyrighted contents of the book. However, I am permitted to sit on the book, throw it to the floor, read it while standing on my head, or burn the book. I do not need a license to do what I wish with the book itself-- I only need a license to copy/distribute the intellectual contents of the book (assuming the contents are protected by copyright).
I don't need a license to read the book in the library. The library doesn't need a license to let me read the book. There is no "license".
Here, it is possible (depending on the effectiveness of their express terms, etc.) that they're conditioning your making of that first copy on your not viewing the source.
Can someone put licensing restrictions on copyrighted material that's offered publicly on the internet? What I mean is, how can they put conditions on your right to make a copy of a publicly available page being cached on your own computer for viewing? Further, how can they expect you to be bound by a license that you haven't agreed to?
Can you restrict the use of a copy with copyright? My understanding was that you couldn't. Owning a copy doesn't imply or require a license to use or view the copy, but a license is only required for copying copyrighted material. Further, I've read that there's been a legal precedent set with software that, since their use implies caching to RAM, that form of "copying" does not require a license to copy. Selling the first copy of software carries the implied right to install the software on your hard drive and cache it in RAM, and those copies don't require a license.
Is that not true? I've read most of these things in various places, but admittedly IANAL and you apparently are.
These guys seem to have a shockingly stupid understanding of the Internet and copyright, even if you ignore the fact that they're claiming to be expert lawyers on Internet-related issues. I had assumed that the submitter must have misinterpreted things, but directly from their user agreement:
Dozier Internet Law, P.C. has a lot of intellectual property on our site. For instance, we are the creators of all of the text on this website, and own the "look and feel" of this website. We also own all of the code, including the HTML code, and all content. As you may know, you can view the HTML code with a standard browser. We do not permit you to view such code since we consider it to be our intellectual property protected by the copyright laws. You are therefore not authorized to do so.
(emphasis mine, and yeah, note the irony of me posting the text where they say all text on their site is copyright protected)
IANAL, but my understanding is that copyright is very much what is sounds like. "Copy right"-- the right to copy. The HTML code is necessarily copied to your computer in order to render the page. Therefore, the copying is done. Unless you can manage to argue that viewing the HTML code constitutes an additional "copy", then there isn't any possible chance that it could be a violation of copyright. It'd be like selling someone a book and then saying, "But you can't read this in bed, because we consider that a violation of copyright!" I'm sorry, but copyright doesn't allow you to determine how I use a legally-obtained copy.
What might allow them to determine how things are viewed or used is some sort of "User Agreement", which I guess is what they're trying to do. However, they're trying to make it binding simply by stating that, "By using our website, you agree to the following". However, calling it a "User Agreement" doesn't mean that anyone agreed to it. This agreement isn't even on the front page, and so it's entirely possible to browse through the site without ever seeing the agreement.
When Microsoft started developing IE, there basically weren't any browser-based applications. The purpose was more like running an advertising service.
The browser would come pre-loaded with bookmarks. So let's say your browser comes with a bookmark to CNN. Why do you think this is? Most likely, it's because CNN paid the people who make your browser for bookmark placement. There would also be bookmarks for things like photo processing, for example, so if you wanted to get your GIF files printed on nice photo paper, Microsoft gave you a bookmark to a company who performed that service. Because that company paid Microsoft.
Remember, along with everything else, these early browsers came out before everyone had pretty much settled on Google as THE search engine. Your pre-loaded bookmarks meant even more than they do today.
Now, the purpose has shifted slightly to driving you to the services of people who paid Microsoft to also pointing you towards Microsoft-owned services. By default, IE uses a Microsoft search engine and an MSN homepage. Various hooks into the system encourage you to use Hotmail instead of Gmail. That's why Microsoft wants you to use IE.
You know, I tried it, but was only able to open/save.odt files (no Powerpoint or Excel). Not sure what the problem was. Also, it didn't associate ODF documents with their MSO counterparts (I didn't have OpenOffice installed at the time).
I don't know about you, but I think the file format is the real issue. I don't care if you use OpenOffice or Microsoft Office to edit your spreadsheets, so long as they're saved as.ods.
I don't think anyone is saying that OEMs should have to install Firefox AND Opera AND Internet Explorer AND Safari. What's at issue is that Microsoft doesn't allow manufacturers the option of choosing Firefox OR Opera OR Internet Explorer OR Safari.
OEMs don't have a choice in the matter. There's no supported way of installing Windows without installing IE. There's no supported method of uninstalling IE after Windows is installed. And I don't know what the current system is, but I remember past accusations that Microsoft had structured their OEM licensing so that not only was IE required, but OEMs were discouraged from installing a second browser *even if they wanted to*.
Apple is a little bit of a different issue, since Apple is also the OEM in addition to being the software developer. However, it's trivially easy to uninstall Safari if you're inclined to do so. You drag and drop the.app file into the trash.
Mozilla and Opera make money from their browsers. They don't make you pay for their browsers, but that doesn't mean they aren't money-making ventures. They have a deal with Google to set Google as the default search engine. They have deals with other people to put bookmarks to those companies in your default bookmarks. Things like that.
Why do you think Microsoft wants the browser market share so badly? Microsoft doesn't just install IE for free-- that's not the complaint. The complaint is that they sabotaged other browsers and made it impossible to remove IE. Why did Microsoft do that if browsers aren't worth anything?
Microsoft wants to be able to drive users to their own services. IE7 uses Microsoft's Live Search as its default search engine. They make money from Live Search's ad revenue. There's a lot of money to be found in "free" (gratis) software.
I don't know details, but Apple is claiming Outlook support for their new calendaring. I'm guessing they've figured out how to mimic Exchange's MAPI, but I guess it might be some sort of Outlook plugin...?
the quality of contributions of anonymous users goes down as the number of edits increases while quality goes up with the number of edits for registered users
This makes sense, right? If someone is editing anonymously, why are they editing anonymously? If they edit the Wikipedia frequently and just haven't bothered to get an account, it seems likely that they're lazy, stupid, or have something to hide. If they're anonymous because they don't make frequent edits and don't see the point in making an account, they'll probably give better information.
Now, if someone has an account, why did they sign up? Did that person just get excited about the Wikipedia and they wanted to try making edits for themselves? Those edits might satisfy the need to try this "wiki" thing, but they might not be great quality. Or is it because they really want to try to contribute to the Wikipedia, and they go on to post often? Then the edits are probably better.
Well, my attempt to answer fails to do a very good job of taking many things into account, but I'm specifically talking about the engine inefficiency. In a nutshell, I was saying that you can make cars lighter and more aerodynamic and things like that, but that you're really talking about engine efficiency when you're talking about the value "Z". And although 50% could probably be improved on, it's probably not simple. It's not like engineers can just say, "Oh, right, I should just make my engine 100% efficient!" They've probably thought of that, but you're never going to get 100% efficiency, and even getting close would be quite a feat of engineering.
Well, yeah, sort of. My answer isn't exactly perfect, but there's something to it. Energy=work. Work can't be done without some sort of energy being done. Therefore, an object cannot be moved from point A to point B without expending energy.
So, yeah, I guess theoretically the amount of energy needed to move an object depends on how massive it is and how fast you want to move it. Which means, in that sense, the distance doesn't matter. Right? But it takes energy to move it there at 50 MPH.
But then, realistically, you have to deal with some level of friction and inefficiencies of the engine, stopping and starting again, turning, going up and down hills, wind, and all sorts of other crap. So all that is the reason why distance matters.
Of course, the problem with that is the idea of "copyright". If we were most concerned with conservation of resources, reliability of backups, and easy distribution, we probably would have made a huge shared filesystem using methods similar to bittorrent, and all movies/music would be stored online and made readily available to anyone with an internet connection. Storing this stuff on your local hard drive would be only necessary for the purpose of caching it so you could listen offline.
Still, big hard drives would be useful for businesses. Also, high storage density would be useful for getting decent amounts of data on small things. So in no case would these developments fail to be helpful.
Here's my stab at it, though I'm not really an expert:
fuel efficiency: Not knowing too much about it, I would assume that part of the problem is actual energy requirements. In order to move an object from point A to point B, you're going to need a certain amount of energy no matter what. So, if there's X amount of energy in 1 gallon of gasoline, and it takes X amount of energy to move a car Y miles, than 1 gallon of gasoline will never move a car more than Y miles. So right now, we're getting (Y-Z) miles per gallon with our cars, and the real questions are, how small is Z right now, and how small can we realistically make Z. Of course, some of Z is just energy used by changing velocity (cars don't move in a straight line at a constant rate), and other unavoidable things. It probably isn't as easy as it sounds. The only way to make Y higher is to make our cars lighter, and otherwise you'd never get more than Y miles per gallon.
internet bandwidth: Notice the problem isn't "network bandwidth", which in most businesses is up to 1Gbps and in some cases 10Gbps. The problem is not that we're unable to build faster networks technologically, but that we aren't willing to invest in developing the correct infrastructure. It's a money problem, not a technology problem.
Hey, people gave Microsoft 10 years to get Windows running as non-administrator by default. You'd think we could give Apple 6 before we started giving them shit for running things as root on a closed platform with only 20 applications installed by default, and no (officially sanctioned) means of installing more applications or accessing a shell.
Of course, it could also be that it's taken them this long for events to prove to AT&T that resistance was ultimately futile and counterproductive. Hard to say, with that crowd.
I also think it might not be a coincidence that Leopard just went to GM a couple days ago. It could be that Apple had allocated their own developers to getting Leopard out the door, and weren't even looking at developing an SDK until those developers were freed up to spend a couple days looking into the issue.
Just a thought. I have no inside knowledge, of course, so what I said might be complete bullshit. But then again, the iPhone basically runs Leopard, so one might expect that any talk about developing an SDK for Leopard would involve some of the Leopard developers.
And that's fine. I'm not saying you're wrong to enjoy Halo or that multiplayer can't be important to you. People who, like you, are very interested in multiplayer gameplay will likely believe that Halo 3 is a far better game than Bioshock. People who have that opinion are allowed to have that opinion.
But that isn't the only point of view. Essentially, I don't care about multiplayer capabilities because I'm not going to be playing online. I'm more interested in the visual style, story, and creativity of the single-player game. Following those criteria, none of the Halo games have been particularly remarkable. That's my opinion and I think I'm equally allowed to have that opinion. And I'm not alone in that opinion either.
So what I'm trying to point out is that who wins the award is largely an issue of who is giving the award, and what kind of gamers those people are. Are they like me? Are they like you? Are they of some other perspective?
Yes, it's sort of part remake, part sequel, part unrelated game. That's why I said it's kind of a remake.
For those who aren't familiar with the history, the short version: Some developers made a little game called "Narbacular Drop" more as a proof-of-concept than a real game. It involved using doorways (same thing as the portals in Portal) that the user could place in order to solve puzzles. When Valve saw the game, they hired the developers of Narbacular Drop to remake the game, but this time set in the same world as Half Life. The end result was Portal.
"My friends and I only play FPS and MMORPGs and have narrowed our world view to the point that other game genres and trends don't show up in our small minded view of the world", does not mean the world is changing to adhere to your ignorance.
Geeze, calm down, I'm not even talking about me.
My point wasn't about about actual trends in games, but the pop-culture biases about games. Whenever I see anything related to gaming on TV, it always seems to be about frat-boy types playing Halo. Whenever I read game reviews these days, they're always slanted, favoring multiplayer games over single-player games.
But I don't agree with those people. If you read my post again, more carefully, you'll realize that I'm saying Wii Sports is a better game than Halo. The media and game sites are trying to cater to what people call "hardcore gamers", which basically means teenage boys and frat kids who are into playing first-person shooters on XBox Live. However, those "hardcore gamers" aren't really representative of gamers in general.
And where it really becomes a problem is that "hardcore gamers" (IMO) don't have very good taste in games. There was nothing new, interesting, or innovative about the original Halo game. It was merely the first FPS that really worked on the console, and had managed to have good controls and weapon balance for multiplayer games. AFAICT, the next two Halo games weren't particularly innovative either, but only refined the same formula that Halo had been using.
So if you're looking for a game that really does something cool, innovative, or that hasn't been seen before, Halo isn't where it's at. However, the people who give these "Game of the Year" awards are often catering to "hardcore" gamers. Therefore, I wouldn't be surprised if Halo won a bunch of those awards in spite of not really being an interesting game.
Well, if the people giving the "Game of the Year" award are the sort of gamers who are most interested in console-based multiplayer FPS games, then Halo will likely win.
I mean, if you want to talk about it, then let's just say what's going on with that. The current pop-culture of gaming right now is biased towards multiplayer, either FPS or MMORPG, doesn't care about story, art, or single-player gameplay. If that's who's handing out awards, then it's no surprise that Halo is the big game this year.
That's not to say there aren't better games, more original games, or games which will ultimately prove to be more influential. Personally, I think that if you look back in 10 years, Wii Sports will probably have had a bigger effect on the gaming community than Halo 3. Portal is far more innovative than Halo (even though it's kind of a remake of Narbacular Drop), and the Half Life series continues to provide a better single-player experience than Halo.
I recently read someone's attempt to compare Bioshock and Halo 3 to decide which was a better game. The review basically said, "Bioshock looks better, has a better story, and generally has a much better single-player experience. but Halo 3 has the best multiplayer ever, and multiplayer is what really matters!"
So yeah, it's basically a question of who's giving the review or who's giving the award. For some people, Mario Galaxy won't be a very good game unless it's a multiplayer FPS they can play on XBox Live.
I know what you mean, but really it's not interesting or funny. It's common sense: People are much more inclined to feel good about purchasing products that they believe to be good, well designed, and worth the money spent. People don't feel bad about failing to pay for the software they use when the software is crappy.
Meh. It doesn't really cause problems for Apple. The general consensus is that iTMS is a bit of a loss-leader for Apple, and that the main purpose is to make sure people have a wealth of content to fill their iPods with. Adding more sources of content to fill your iPod with won't be much trouble for Apple, so long as people are putting that content on their iPods. iPod sales is where Apple's bread is buttered.
I agree that the whole thing wit Amazon is kinda fishy, but I don't agree that it should stop people from buying from Amazon. The way I see it is this: People should buy cheap DRM-free music from whatever source they like, and avoid buying DRMed music.
Because let's say people drop iTunes and move to Amazon, buying tons of MP3s. Well, the MP3s don't tie them to continuing to use Amazon's service. You can still use your iPod, or any other MP3 player you choose. Now let's imagine that, having won a lot of market share, the big labels force Amazon to raise prices and use DRM. Right then, stop using Amazon.
Your years of using Amazon won't tie you to Amazon as long as it's all DRM-free. And if Amazon is a huge success with cheap DRM-free music, and their sales dry up when they increase price and add DRM, then it sends a clear message: consumers want cheap DRM-free music. Consumers are willing to pay for cheap DRM-free music. If you want to make money selling music, the music must be cheap and DRM-free.
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Throwing money at problems doesn't bring solutions. Lack of resources can prevent solutions from being developed, but excessive resources doesn't necessarily mean solutions will be developed.
You can have thousands of developers working on a problem, but the problem won't be solved if those developers aren't managed properly. In fact, even if some small team of developers *do* solve the problem, the solution won't be implemented unless the management is smart enough to choose that good solution as their approved solution.
Microsoft's problems have all the hallmarks of poor management, and most reports I've read of the internal workings of Microsoft confirms this.
I'm pretty sure you have that backwards, actually. The whole point of "copyright" is not controlling who has access to copies, but who has the legal right to copy things. If I buy a book, I own the book. I have not licensed the right to possess the book, a license to read the book, or a license to lend the book. I don't need any such license, because I own the book. What I do not own are the intellectual contents of the book. In order to copy the contents of the book, I need a license.
And so copyright laws made a lot of sense a hundred years ago, but the implications are increasingly problematic. For us now, copying information is absolutely trivial we're constantly doing it unintentionally. When you access information on a computer, it's might be automatically cached in many different places and in many different ways, and each of those might constitute a copy.
It used to be that buying a music CD meant that you bought the physical CD and could do with it as you please so long as you didn't copy the music from the CD. Now, with digital distribution, you're somehow "buying" the music itself with no medium. The files are being cached on servers when they're delivered to your computer, they're being cached in RAM while they're playing, and they're being backed up and copied to iPods. Also people expect to have a continued right to listen to that music even if they lose their original copy, but none of that is guaranteed by any law (AFAIK, IANAL). "Buying" the song doesn't give you a right to have that song, it only gives you the one copy that you've bought. Everything else depends on the licensing agreement you have with the store you bought it from.
Just because you can walk in and look at it free of charge doesn't mean that it is legal to copy the material.
But that's a restriction on copying the material. For example, if I buy a book, I am not permitted to copy the copyrighted contents of the book. However, I am permitted to sit on the book, throw it to the floor, read it while standing on my head, or burn the book. I do not need a license to do what I wish with the book itself-- I only need a license to copy/distribute the intellectual contents of the book (assuming the contents are protected by copyright).
I don't need a license to read the book in the library. The library doesn't need a license to let me read the book. There is no "license".
Yes, but doing that will break other things. Deleting Safari doesn't break anything in the OS.
Here, it is possible (depending on the effectiveness of their express terms, etc.) that they're conditioning your making of that first copy on your not viewing the source.
Can someone put licensing restrictions on copyrighted material that's offered publicly on the internet? What I mean is, how can they put conditions on your right to make a copy of a publicly available page being cached on your own computer for viewing? Further, how can they expect you to be bound by a license that you haven't agreed to?
Can you restrict the use of a copy with copyright? My understanding was that you couldn't. Owning a copy doesn't imply or require a license to use or view the copy, but a license is only required for copying copyrighted material. Further, I've read that there's been a legal precedent set with software that, since their use implies caching to RAM, that form of "copying" does not require a license to copy. Selling the first copy of software carries the implied right to install the software on your hard drive and cache it in RAM, and those copies don't require a license.
Is that not true? I've read most of these things in various places, but admittedly IANAL and you apparently are.
I'm just stating the obvious, but...
These guys seem to have a shockingly stupid understanding of the Internet and copyright, even if you ignore the fact that they're claiming to be expert lawyers on Internet-related issues. I had assumed that the submitter must have misinterpreted things, but directly from their user agreement:
(emphasis mine, and yeah, note the irony of me posting the text where they say all text on their site is copyright protected)
IANAL, but my understanding is that copyright is very much what is sounds like. "Copy right"-- the right to copy. The HTML code is necessarily copied to your computer in order to render the page. Therefore, the copying is done. Unless you can manage to argue that viewing the HTML code constitutes an additional "copy", then there isn't any possible chance that it could be a violation of copyright. It'd be like selling someone a book and then saying, "But you can't read this in bed, because we consider that a violation of copyright!" I'm sorry, but copyright doesn't allow you to determine how I use a legally-obtained copy.
What might allow them to determine how things are viewed or used is some sort of "User Agreement", which I guess is what they're trying to do. However, they're trying to make it binding simply by stating that, "By using our website, you agree to the following". However, calling it a "User Agreement" doesn't mean that anyone agreed to it. This agreement isn't even on the front page, and so it's entirely possible to browse through the site without ever seeing the agreement.
When Microsoft started developing IE, there basically weren't any browser-based applications. The purpose was more like running an advertising service.
The browser would come pre-loaded with bookmarks. So let's say your browser comes with a bookmark to CNN. Why do you think this is? Most likely, it's because CNN paid the people who make your browser for bookmark placement. There would also be bookmarks for things like photo processing, for example, so if you wanted to get your GIF files printed on nice photo paper, Microsoft gave you a bookmark to a company who performed that service. Because that company paid Microsoft.
Remember, along with everything else, these early browsers came out before everyone had pretty much settled on Google as THE search engine. Your pre-loaded bookmarks meant even more than they do today.
Now, the purpose has shifted slightly to driving you to the services of people who paid Microsoft to also pointing you towards Microsoft-owned services. By default, IE uses a Microsoft search engine and an MSN homepage. Various hooks into the system encourage you to use Hotmail instead of Gmail. That's why Microsoft wants you to use IE.
You know, I tried it, but was only able to open/save .odt files (no Powerpoint or Excel). Not sure what the problem was. Also, it didn't associate ODF documents with their MSO counterparts (I didn't have OpenOffice installed at the time).
I don't know about you, but I think the file format is the real issue. I don't care if you use OpenOffice or Microsoft Office to edit your spreadsheets, so long as they're saved as .ods.
OEMs don't have a choice in the matter. There's no supported way of installing Windows without installing IE. There's no supported method of uninstalling IE after Windows is installed. And I don't know what the current system is, but I remember past accusations that Microsoft had structured their OEM licensing so that not only was IE required, but OEMs were discouraged from installing a second browser *even if they wanted to*.
Apple is a little bit of a different issue, since Apple is also the OEM in addition to being the software developer. However, it's trivially easy to uninstall Safari if you're inclined to do so. You drag and drop the .app file into the trash.
Mozilla and Opera make money from their browsers. They don't make you pay for their browsers, but that doesn't mean they aren't money-making ventures. They have a deal with Google to set Google as the default search engine. They have deals with other people to put bookmarks to those companies in your default bookmarks. Things like that.
Why do you think Microsoft wants the browser market share so badly? Microsoft doesn't just install IE for free-- that's not the complaint. The complaint is that they sabotaged other browsers and made it impossible to remove IE. Why did Microsoft do that if browsers aren't worth anything?
Microsoft wants to be able to drive users to their own services. IE7 uses Microsoft's Live Search as its default search engine. They make money from Live Search's ad revenue. There's a lot of money to be found in "free" (gratis) software.
I don't know details, but Apple is claiming Outlook support for their new calendaring. I'm guessing they've figured out how to mimic Exchange's MAPI, but I guess it might be some sort of Outlook plugin...?
Like I said, I don't know.
This makes sense, right? If someone is editing anonymously, why are they editing anonymously? If they edit the Wikipedia frequently and just haven't bothered to get an account, it seems likely that they're lazy, stupid, or have something to hide. If they're anonymous because they don't make frequent edits and don't see the point in making an account, they'll probably give better information.
Now, if someone has an account, why did they sign up? Did that person just get excited about the Wikipedia and they wanted to try making edits for themselves? Those edits might satisfy the need to try this "wiki" thing, but they might not be great quality. Or is it because they really want to try to contribute to the Wikipedia, and they go on to post often? Then the edits are probably better.
Well, my attempt to answer fails to do a very good job of taking many things into account, but I'm specifically talking about the engine inefficiency. In a nutshell, I was saying that you can make cars lighter and more aerodynamic and things like that, but that you're really talking about engine efficiency when you're talking about the value "Z". And although 50% could probably be improved on, it's probably not simple. It's not like engineers can just say, "Oh, right, I should just make my engine 100% efficient!" They've probably thought of that, but you're never going to get 100% efficiency, and even getting close would be quite a feat of engineering.
Well, yeah, sort of. My answer isn't exactly perfect, but there's something to it. Energy=work. Work can't be done without some sort of energy being done. Therefore, an object cannot be moved from point A to point B without expending energy.
So, yeah, I guess theoretically the amount of energy needed to move an object depends on how massive it is and how fast you want to move it. Which means, in that sense, the distance doesn't matter. Right? But it takes energy to move it there at 50 MPH.
But then, realistically, you have to deal with some level of friction and inefficiencies of the engine, stopping and starting again, turning, going up and down hills, wind, and all sorts of other crap. So all that is the reason why distance matters.
Of course, the problem with that is the idea of "copyright". If we were most concerned with conservation of resources, reliability of backups, and easy distribution, we probably would have made a huge shared filesystem using methods similar to bittorrent, and all movies/music would be stored online and made readily available to anyone with an internet connection. Storing this stuff on your local hard drive would be only necessary for the purpose of caching it so you could listen offline.
Still, big hard drives would be useful for businesses. Also, high storage density would be useful for getting decent amounts of data on small things. So in no case would these developments fail to be helpful.
Hey, people gave Microsoft 10 years to get Windows running as non-administrator by default. You'd think we could give Apple 6 before we started giving them shit for running things as root on a closed platform with only 20 applications installed by default, and no (officially sanctioned) means of installing more applications or accessing a shell.
Of course, it could also be that it's taken them this long for events to prove to AT&T that resistance was ultimately futile and counterproductive. Hard to say, with that crowd.
I also think it might not be a coincidence that Leopard just went to GM a couple days ago. It could be that Apple had allocated their own developers to getting Leopard out the door, and weren't even looking at developing an SDK until those developers were freed up to spend a couple days looking into the issue.
Just a thought. I have no inside knowledge, of course, so what I said might be complete bullshit. But then again, the iPhone basically runs Leopard, so one might expect that any talk about developing an SDK for Leopard would involve some of the Leopard developers.
And that's fine. I'm not saying you're wrong to enjoy Halo or that multiplayer can't be important to you. People who, like you, are very interested in multiplayer gameplay will likely believe that Halo 3 is a far better game than Bioshock. People who have that opinion are allowed to have that opinion.
But that isn't the only point of view. Essentially, I don't care about multiplayer capabilities because I'm not going to be playing online. I'm more interested in the visual style, story, and creativity of the single-player game. Following those criteria, none of the Halo games have been particularly remarkable. That's my opinion and I think I'm equally allowed to have that opinion. And I'm not alone in that opinion either.
So what I'm trying to point out is that who wins the award is largely an issue of who is giving the award, and what kind of gamers those people are. Are they like me? Are they like you? Are they of some other perspective?
Yes, it's sort of part remake, part sequel, part unrelated game. That's why I said it's kind of a remake.
For those who aren't familiar with the history, the short version: Some developers made a little game called "Narbacular Drop" more as a proof-of-concept than a real game. It involved using doorways (same thing as the portals in Portal) that the user could place in order to solve puzzles. When Valve saw the game, they hired the developers of Narbacular Drop to remake the game, but this time set in the same world as Half Life. The end result was Portal.
"My friends and I only play FPS and MMORPGs and have narrowed our world view to the point that other game genres and trends don't show up in our small minded view of the world", does not mean the world is changing to adhere to your ignorance.
Geeze, calm down, I'm not even talking about me.
My point wasn't about about actual trends in games, but the pop-culture biases about games. Whenever I see anything related to gaming on TV, it always seems to be about frat-boy types playing Halo. Whenever I read game reviews these days, they're always slanted, favoring multiplayer games over single-player games.
But I don't agree with those people. If you read my post again, more carefully, you'll realize that I'm saying Wii Sports is a better game than Halo. The media and game sites are trying to cater to what people call "hardcore gamers", which basically means teenage boys and frat kids who are into playing first-person shooters on XBox Live. However, those "hardcore gamers" aren't really representative of gamers in general.
And where it really becomes a problem is that "hardcore gamers" (IMO) don't have very good taste in games. There was nothing new, interesting, or innovative about the original Halo game. It was merely the first FPS that really worked on the console, and had managed to have good controls and weapon balance for multiplayer games. AFAICT, the next two Halo games weren't particularly innovative either, but only refined the same formula that Halo had been using.
So if you're looking for a game that really does something cool, innovative, or that hasn't been seen before, Halo isn't where it's at. However, the people who give these "Game of the Year" awards are often catering to "hardcore" gamers. Therefore, I wouldn't be surprised if Halo won a bunch of those awards in spite of not really being an interesting game.
Well, if the people giving the "Game of the Year" award are the sort of gamers who are most interested in console-based multiplayer FPS games, then Halo will likely win.
I mean, if you want to talk about it, then let's just say what's going on with that. The current pop-culture of gaming right now is biased towards multiplayer, either FPS or MMORPG, doesn't care about story, art, or single-player gameplay. If that's who's handing out awards, then it's no surprise that Halo is the big game this year.
That's not to say there aren't better games, more original games, or games which will ultimately prove to be more influential. Personally, I think that if you look back in 10 years, Wii Sports will probably have had a bigger effect on the gaming community than Halo 3. Portal is far more innovative than Halo (even though it's kind of a remake of Narbacular Drop), and the Half Life series continues to provide a better single-player experience than Halo.
I recently read someone's attempt to compare Bioshock and Halo 3 to decide which was a better game. The review basically said, "Bioshock looks better, has a better story, and generally has a much better single-player experience. but Halo 3 has the best multiplayer ever, and multiplayer is what really matters!"
So yeah, it's basically a question of who's giving the review or who's giving the award. For some people, Mario Galaxy won't be a very good game unless it's a multiplayer FPS they can play on XBox Live.
I find it interesting (and funny?)
I know what you mean, but really it's not interesting or funny. It's common sense: People are much more inclined to feel good about purchasing products that they believe to be good, well designed, and worth the money spent. People don't feel bad about failing to pay for the software they use when the software is crappy.
Meh. It doesn't really cause problems for Apple. The general consensus is that iTMS is a bit of a loss-leader for Apple, and that the main purpose is to make sure people have a wealth of content to fill their iPods with. Adding more sources of content to fill your iPod with won't be much trouble for Apple, so long as people are putting that content on their iPods. iPod sales is where Apple's bread is buttered.
I agree that the whole thing wit Amazon is kinda fishy, but I don't agree that it should stop people from buying from Amazon. The way I see it is this: People should buy cheap DRM-free music from whatever source they like, and avoid buying DRMed music.
Because let's say people drop iTunes and move to Amazon, buying tons of MP3s. Well, the MP3s don't tie them to continuing to use Amazon's service. You can still use your iPod, or any other MP3 player you choose. Now let's imagine that, having won a lot of market share, the big labels force Amazon to raise prices and use DRM. Right then, stop using Amazon.
Your years of using Amazon won't tie you to Amazon as long as it's all DRM-free. And if Amazon is a huge success with cheap DRM-free music, and their sales dry up when they increase price and add DRM, then it sends a clear message: consumers want cheap DRM-free music. Consumers are willing to pay for cheap DRM-free music. If you want to make money selling music, the music must be cheap and DRM-free.
That's the message we all want to send, right?