What exactly does a $20 laptop display look like? It seems like for that much of a price difference (compared to the standard display you would get in a Dell, or something similar) there would be a huge difference in quality.
That clears it up a lot. I think I was confused about the "commercial" distinction. I just figured it meant "for profit," which definitely confused the whole issue.
Makes a lot more sense now, thanks.
So this means that the application itself is free (as in beer) as long as you release any software that you develop with it under the GPL? And for commercial software you have to buy a license?
Sorry if that's blindingly obvious to everyone, but I don't totally understand what this means.
"I do not accept any licenses as to how I use a machine I purchase..."
What about the license for that machine that's sitting out in your driveway? You can't very well do whatever you want with that. Just because the car is capable of going 120mph doesn't give you the right to do so. And just because you own the car doesn't mean you can run people over if you feel like it.
1. Video Out (how cool would an S-VIDEO port on there be). Hook up an S-VIDEO --> RCA adapter, and hook it into any TV, and play full screen. Oh how life would change.
I could be wrong but wouldn't the video look like crap on a TV? This thing is powerful and the graphics looks great, but that's because it's a 480 x 272 screen. Even on a standard TV that would look pretty bad.
Why are people willing to pay $400+ for an iPod, but for a powerful gaming system, video player and an audio player, all in one $250 is too much? Sure you don't have 20GB of space, but that's really the only difference. Plus you can play PS2 quality games and watch movies. You can't really compare this to the Game Boy or DS since it's not *just* a game system.
I *was* expecting the price to be lower, but I don't think it's that outrageous.
Nowdays, very few people use handheld game consoles.
Is this based on some sort of actual information or are you just making an assumption? I wouldn't know either way, I'm just curious to know if that's actually true.
Aside from a few games, namely Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime 2, and that last Zelda game (4 swords or whatever), you don't see too much mainstream marketing for GameCube games. And even then, I think sometimes they miss the mark. The ads for MP2 were pretty lame. They focused on the fact that Samus is female and then showed like 5 seconds of actual gameplay. It's one thing to try to sell Extreme Beach Volleyball by playing up the naked chicks, but Metroid? Yeah she's a female, but its not really obvious in the gameplay and you never really see her in the game since its in first person perspective.
For the PS2 and Xbox, though, I see ads for even the most obscure games. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that those consoles have more third-party support. But as far as public perception goes, it just makes it seem like the GameCube isn't as good. Not to me, but I know a lot of people who just assume because they hardly see any commercials that there aren't any good games.
Everyone I know has a PS2. I know 2 people that have Xbox and (now) 2 people that have GameCube. After 2+ years or raving about Metroid Prime, Eternal Darkness, Zelda, and the Resident Evil games, I finally convinced one other person to get a GameCube. I think Resident Evil 4 was the one that did it. And deservedly so... It's an amazing game. But I can't blame Capcom for probably regretting the decision to go exclusive with the GameCube. You can safely assume that RE4 would sell twice as many copies on the PS2... which is why it's eventually coming out on Sony's console.
Even the game publishers/developers don't seem to have faith in the GameCube. And I'm not sure I do either. I have complete faith in Nintendos ability to make great games. I've consistently had all around better experiences with more GameCube games than anything else in the past couple years. But I'm really starting to agree that they're heading in the wrong direction and if they go too far, won't be able to come back.
They also spend millions in promotions, provide contacts, etc, which sadly enough, is worth more (in terms of cash) than the creation itself.
I never bought this argument. I can't think of a single band that I listen to (including those that have moved over to major labels) that has got a national promotion or any sort of advertising campaign. Sometimes a song or two will make it onto the radio, but that alone is not enough to praise the industry gods, as they are also the roadblock from getting onto radio in the first place. As it stands now, I still only come to find out if a band is touring through third-party music websites or if I go to the bands website to check it out myself.
Since you didn't actually list the bands you listen to, and since they aren't the only bands in the industry as I'm sure you're aware, your point has little weight.
And just because you haven't seen any national promotion or advertising campaigns or heard their music on the radio, doesn't mean that the label didn't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars which all has to be recouped by the artist.
Like you said, most of these costs are inflated, which is part of the problem. They can end up spending $500,000 to $1,000,000 and still not have any effective promotion. They'll easily spend $100,000 on the recording and another $100,000-$250,000 on a video that will get played 3 times at 4am and maybe on some local music video shows and then never been seen on TV again. Then they have to spend thousands of dollars just to make the CDs available in Best Buy, Target, etc. They'll spend a bunch of money on some photo shoots for a bunch of lame press that no one will ever see and they'll have to pay a publicist to set up all that lame press. At this point, still no one knows who the band is.
Then they'll get them the opening slot on a national tour, which costs more money. Unless someone is calling in a favor, that headlining act is probably gonna give their opening slot to the highest bidder. not to mention all the costs of actually doing the tour once they've bought their way onto it... gas, food, van/bus rental, crew salaries, hotel rooms, guitar strings, drum sticks/heads... the label is usually fronting all of this money. The band can offset the cost a bit by selling merchandise and with whatever measly amount they get as the opening act (probably a couple hundred bucks). So now, unless you happen to go see the band they're opening for, you still have no idea who they are, but they're spending thousands of dollars a week of the labels money... which is eventually gonna have to be paid back.
I don't want it to seem like I'm totally disagreeing with you here, because you're right on with a lot of your points. I just thought I could offer some insight (from experience) into how a band can spend a ton of the label's money and still be pretty much unknown to most people.
Then there are the bands who work on a smaller level, sell a decent amount of records and make a lot of money touring. Some of the bands you're thinking of probably fall in this category. In their case, the label probably isn't spending all that money, but they also own a bigger piece of the copyright, if not all of it, and actually make money from record sales.
It amazes me how stupid some of the new artists are; they totally fail to prepare themselves for entering into any agreements with the labels, and then blame anyone but themselves later on when the light bulb clicks on and they realize that the contracts, written by the labels, are in the label's favour.
Maybe they're just too stupid to know they're stupid, but that's still no excuse. Even the most least expensive entertainment lawyer should be able to describe the situation outlined by the paperwork.
Sure, some of the "smart" guys I've known (who were some of the best musicians I've EVER heard), walked away from the userous loans/contracts, but there were always 100 willing idiots waiting in line to take their place.
That's a big part of the problem.
Just because you spend the money on an entertainment lawyer or business manager doesn't mean you're gonna have any options other than the horrible contract in front of you. Obcenely unfair terms for new artists have become the norm. Turn down one bad contract and if you're lucky you'll get offered another bad contract. If every new artist were to turn down these bad deals, it might make some sort of difference. But there's always some other hungry band waiting in line right behind you, and they're willing to give up rights to everything just to take a ride on a tour bus for a year. And with the advent of ProTools, they can take a mediocre artist and a good producer and make them sound perfect. You can no longer use your talent as a bargaining chip, because they have a computer that can simulate talent for them.
Obviously there are exceptions to this, but most unproven artists -- meaning they don't have a significant number of independent album sales, no real radio play, no "story," etc. -- are put in a situation where they either sign the contract as is, or they walk away. It's a huge decision to make especially for the kind of people who actually care about what they do and may see this as their one shot at making it. It's easy to tell someone to walk away, but it's a whole other story when the deal is on the table and you have to make that call. It's easier, like you said, once you go through a couple bad deals, to see the reality of situation and make the right choice. But a lot of these bands are in the 18-25 age range. They're young and passionate and a little bit naive, and the label takes full advantage of that.
They don't hold a gun to your head, but with such a small number of companies having control over the entire industry, it can certainly feel like it. It's like, you either sign one of the bad deals that you're lucky to get (according to them), or you can go back to obscurity in your garage. I'm not saying that's actually the case, but I don't totally blame a young band for getting caught up in the excitement and signing a bad deal in the hope that somehow they'll be different.
This post is kind of all over the place, but the point is, you can't put *all* of the blame on the artist just because they signed a "bad" deal. The major labels have consolidated to the point where you either sign on their terms (they'll give you a few lame concessions to make it seem like you negotiated something) or you do it yourself, which is becoming more and more difficult. The major labels manipulate the market (radio, MTV, major retail, etc) by paying these outlets huge amounts of money to promote their products, knowing that the independent artist can't afford to compete. This makes it almost impossible for the independent artist to break into the mainstream and therefore more likely to want to sign with the major label, even if the deal is heavily sided with the label, just for that chance to break out and become successful.
Yeah but the corporation is still a separate entity and is treated as such. Stan Lee is an individual. Stan Lee Enterprises is a corporation. It doesn't really matter if he is the only person involved (and he's probably not, although I'm just guessing.)
As much as I'm not really a fan of most current hip hop music, I really do appreciate the production of a lot of the songs I've heard lately. I'm not gonna get into an Art vs. Not Art argument because it's completely unwinnable (and unlosable, really...), but if I can listen to a piece of music and appreciate the creativity that obviously went into it or the originality of the sound, I think there's a good chance a lot of people would very much consider it "art." It's irrelevent that they were motivated by money or the idea of appealing to the masses.
Just because something is created to try to appeal to the most people possible doesn't disqualify it from being art. It may not be an acceptable motivation to create art by *your* standards, but those are your standards, which are, in the world of "art," pretty much meaningless to everyone else. And they should be. As should mine. That's what makes it interesting.
I agree with an earlier post about how a line needs to be drawn between what is art and what isn't. Or more accurately, a line already has been drawn, but no one seems to know where it is. is a pen cap art? Well, no not really. If it's just sitting with its pen on my desk. But I can take that pen cap, without modifying it in any way, and turn it into art simply be placing it somewhere in a certain way. Or maybe it could even become art if I take my whole desk as it is right now (without touching the pen cap at all) and put it in a glass case in a museum with a stuffed monkey sitting in my chair.
Would that be good art? Depends who you ask I guess. (Probably not) And where is the actual art? Is it the desk? The pen cap? The whole scene? Or is it somewhere else? Was it just that split second where I thought to do it in the first place? And the actual physical objects are nothing more than a way to allow other people to experience that moment of my existence? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I'd just be full of shit.
Anyway, the point is, it's just kind of annoying to hear people saying that a certain type of music or a particular song definitely isn't art, just because they don't like it or it doesn't fit into their definition of "art" (which is just as valid (or not) as anyone else's).
The only problems I've ever had with Comcast have been a few hours of downtime over a 3-4 year period. I think there was one day where there was an extended outage (12-14 hours or so), but it was back when they first made cable internet available in my area, so it's understandable.
I'm sure with the amount of customers they have, you'll find everything from glowing reviews to lifetime boycotts. But in my experience they've performed as advertised.
Maybe you meant it's the first time that Man has placed an object on the surface of a moon outside the Earth-Moon system? That may or may not be true (I really have no idea), but it seems more likely.
Maybe it's just me, but that sounds horrible. It takes 2+ hours to get into the game and get everything set up so that you can start really playing... and then if someone in your group decides to log off, you have to start over.
I realize there are people who love the challenge of this kind of game, but my free time is just way too valuable to me to spend hours of it playing a game that isn't really fun until you have everything (other players, equipment, location, etc) just right.
I can jump into WoW and play for an hour (or even less) and actually accomplish something. And when I have a larger block of time, I don't have to waste half of it looking for other people to play with or grinding to make up all the XP I lost the day before. Maybe that's too easy for some people, but for a *lot* of others, it seems to be just what they were looking for.
"the ipod is *waaay* too expensive for the mass market (it's dirt cheap in the US, expensive everywhere else)"
How much is the iPod everywhere else? I wouldn't exactly describe the US price as "dirt cheap." Compared to the rest of the HD mp3 players available, the iPod is on the expensive side.
I wouldn't say it's "still" better than IE. Yes, the current version is better than IE, but that's because Netscape is now based on Mozilla/Firefox.
Compare IE 4 to to Netscape 4.x and it's a totally different story. Before that, there *was* another time where Netscape was the better browser but they were in a pretty big slump for a while.
It's not open source, but I found a program called WinDates that works pretty well. It's far from perfect, but it may work as an alternative to the Outlook calendar.
The costs involved in developing the game are completely different than the costs of keeping the game world up and running and providing 24/7 support for hundreds of thousands of players.
You can't expect them the to just eat the development costs and hope to make it all back on subscriptions.
If you want TiVo, you buy the unit and then you also pay a subscription for the monthly service and support. Same goes here.
You can't really compare this to single player games or even to other online games where the users run their own servers. Once the game is released, the company's work is pretty much done. They still provide support, but its nowhere near the support needed on a MMORPG, where every copy of the game that is running is connected to their servers.
If you don't enjoy this type of game, then obviously it's not worth it to youo. But for a lot of people it is. I bought HL2 a few days after release and I'm already through the whole game. I'll probably play it again sometime and check out the DM mode, but I've seen pretty much everything the game has to offer. And I still think it was worth the price.
With WoW, you can play for months and still not run out of new and different things to do. You could say the same thing about a lot of single player RPGs, but aside from a few games (like Morrowind) you can only get these huge worlds to explore in MMORPGs.
Think about it, you probably pay close to $100/month (if not more) for a high speed connection and cable TV subscription. And I'd say a good portion of WoW players are spending *way* more time in the game than they are just surfing the web or watching TV. Considering that, it doesn't seem as expensive, to me at least.
Hell, I spend way more than $15/month on my phone and I hardly even use it.
Slashdot Mirror
What exactly does a $20 laptop display look like? It seems like for that much of a price difference (compared to the standard display you would get in a Dell, or something similar) there would be a huge difference in quality.
That clears it up a lot. I think I was confused about the "commercial" distinction. I just figured it meant "for profit," which definitely confused the whole issue. Makes a lot more sense now, thanks.
So this means that the application itself is free (as in beer) as long as you release any software that you develop with it under the GPL? And for commercial software you have to buy a license?
Sorry if that's blindingly obvious to everyone, but I don't totally understand what this means.
It's interesting how the argument just stopped right here.
If everyone was so upset about Firefox "ripping off" interface concepts from Apple, shouldn't you be just as upset about Apple doing it to Microsoft?
"I do not accept any licenses as to how I use a machine I purchase..."
What about the license for that machine that's sitting out in your driveway? You can't very well do whatever you want with that. Just because the car is capable of going 120mph doesn't give you the right to do so. And just because you own the car doesn't mean you can run people over if you feel like it.
1. Video Out (how cool would an S-VIDEO port on there be). Hook up an S-VIDEO --> RCA adapter, and hook it into any TV, and play full screen. Oh how life would change.
I could be wrong but wouldn't the video look like crap on a TV? This thing is powerful and the graphics looks great, but that's because it's a 480 x 272 screen. Even on a standard TV that would look pretty bad.
Why are people willing to pay $400+ for an iPod, but for a powerful gaming system, video player and an audio player, all in one $250 is too much? Sure you don't have 20GB of space, but that's really the only difference. Plus you can play PS2 quality games and watch movies. You can't really compare this to the Game Boy or DS since it's not *just* a game system.
I *was* expecting the price to be lower, but I don't think it's that outrageous.
Nowdays, very few people use handheld game consoles.
Is this based on some sort of actual information or are you just making an assumption? I wouldn't know either way, I'm just curious to know if that's actually true.
It's all part of the Google Grid.
In exchange for giving up Firewire, USB2, quiet operation, OS X (going with XP instead), I get a slightly slower computer for...
$1137
The one I spec'ed out came to $1337. Its an extra $20 but man look at that pR1c3! $w337!
Aside from a few games, namely Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime 2, and that last Zelda game (4 swords or whatever), you don't see too much mainstream marketing for GameCube games. And even then, I think sometimes they miss the mark. The ads for MP2 were pretty lame. They focused on the fact that Samus is female and then showed like 5 seconds of actual gameplay. It's one thing to try to sell Extreme Beach Volleyball by playing up the naked chicks, but Metroid? Yeah she's a female, but its not really obvious in the gameplay and you never really see her in the game since its in first person perspective.
For the PS2 and Xbox, though, I see ads for even the most obscure games. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that those consoles have more third-party support. But as far as public perception goes, it just makes it seem like the GameCube isn't as good. Not to me, but I know a lot of people who just assume because they hardly see any commercials that there aren't any good games.
Everyone I know has a PS2. I know 2 people that have Xbox and (now) 2 people that have GameCube. After 2+ years or raving about Metroid Prime, Eternal Darkness, Zelda, and the Resident Evil games, I finally convinced one other person to get a GameCube. I think Resident Evil 4 was the one that did it. And deservedly so... It's an amazing game. But I can't blame Capcom for probably regretting the decision to go exclusive with the GameCube. You can safely assume that RE4 would sell twice as many copies on the PS2... which is why it's eventually coming out on Sony's console.
Even the game publishers/developers don't seem to have faith in the GameCube. And I'm not sure I do either. I have complete faith in Nintendos ability to make great games. I've consistently had all around better experiences with more GameCube games than anything else in the past couple years. But I'm really starting to agree that they're heading in the wrong direction and if they go too far, won't be able to come back.
They also spend millions in promotions, provide contacts, etc, which sadly enough, is worth more (in terms of cash) than the creation itself.
I never bought this argument. I can't think of a single band that I listen to (including those that have moved over to major labels) that has got a national promotion or any sort of advertising campaign. Sometimes a song or two will make it onto the radio, but that alone is not enough to praise the industry gods, as they are also the roadblock from getting onto radio in the first place. As it stands now, I still only come to find out if a band is touring through third-party music websites or if I go to the bands website to check it out myself.
Since you didn't actually list the bands you listen to, and since they aren't the only bands in the industry as I'm sure you're aware, your point has little weight.
And just because you haven't seen any national promotion or advertising campaigns or heard their music on the radio, doesn't mean that the label didn't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars which all has to be recouped by the artist.
Like you said, most of these costs are inflated, which is part of the problem. They can end up spending $500,000 to $1,000,000 and still not have any effective promotion. They'll easily spend $100,000 on the recording and another $100,000-$250,000 on a video that will get played 3 times at 4am and maybe on some local music video shows and then never been seen on TV again. Then they have to spend thousands of dollars just to make the CDs available in Best Buy, Target, etc. They'll spend a bunch of money on some photo shoots for a bunch of lame press that no one will ever see and they'll have to pay a publicist to set up all that lame press. At this point, still no one knows who the band is.
Then they'll get them the opening slot on a national tour, which costs more money. Unless someone is calling in a favor, that headlining act is probably gonna give their opening slot to the highest bidder. not to mention all the costs of actually doing the tour once they've bought their way onto it... gas, food, van/bus rental, crew salaries, hotel rooms, guitar strings, drum sticks/heads... the label is usually fronting all of this money. The band can offset the cost a bit by selling merchandise and with whatever measly amount they get as the opening act (probably a couple hundred bucks). So now, unless you happen to go see the band they're opening for, you still have no idea who they are, but they're spending thousands of dollars a week of the labels money... which is eventually gonna have to be paid back.
I don't want it to seem like I'm totally disagreeing with you here, because you're right on with a lot of your points. I just thought I could offer some insight (from experience) into how a band can spend a ton of the label's money and still be pretty much unknown to most people.
Then there are the bands who work on a smaller level, sell a decent amount of records and make a lot of money touring. Some of the bands you're thinking of probably fall in this category. In their case, the label probably isn't spending all that money, but they also own a bigger piece of the copyright, if not all of it, and actually make money from record sales.
It amazes me how stupid some of the new artists are; they totally fail to prepare themselves for entering into any agreements with the labels, and then blame anyone but themselves later on when the light bulb clicks on and they realize that the contracts, written by the labels, are in the label's favour.
Maybe they're just too stupid to know they're stupid, but that's still no excuse. Even the most least expensive entertainment lawyer should be able to describe the situation outlined by the paperwork.
Sure, some of the "smart" guys I've known (who were some of the best musicians I've EVER heard), walked away from the userous loans/contracts, but there were always 100 willing idiots waiting in line to take their place.
That's a big part of the problem.
Just because you spend the money on an entertainment lawyer or business manager doesn't mean you're gonna have any options other than the horrible contract in front of you. Obcenely unfair terms for new artists have become the norm. Turn down one bad contract and if you're lucky you'll get offered another bad contract. If every new artist were to turn down these bad deals, it might make some sort of difference. But there's always some other hungry band waiting in line right behind you, and they're willing to give up rights to everything just to take a ride on a tour bus for a year. And with the advent of ProTools, they can take a mediocre artist and a good producer and make them sound perfect. You can no longer use your talent as a bargaining chip, because they have a computer that can simulate talent for them.
Obviously there are exceptions to this, but most unproven artists -- meaning they don't have a significant number of independent album sales, no real radio play, no "story," etc. -- are put in a situation where they either sign the contract as is, or they walk away. It's a huge decision to make especially for the kind of people who actually care about what they do and may see this as their one shot at making it. It's easy to tell someone to walk away, but it's a whole other story when the deal is on the table and you have to make that call. It's easier, like you said, once you go through a couple bad deals, to see the reality of situation and make the right choice. But a lot of these bands are in the 18-25 age range. They're young and passionate and a little bit naive, and the label takes full advantage of that.
They don't hold a gun to your head, but with such a small number of companies having control over the entire industry, it can certainly feel like it. It's like, you either sign one of the bad deals that you're lucky to get (according to them), or you can go back to obscurity in your garage. I'm not saying that's actually the case, but I don't totally blame a young band for getting caught up in the excitement and signing a bad deal in the hope that somehow they'll be different.
This post is kind of all over the place, but the point is, you can't put *all* of the blame on the artist just because they signed a "bad" deal. The major labels have consolidated to the point where you either sign on their terms (they'll give you a few lame concessions to make it seem like you negotiated something) or you do it yourself, which is becoming more and more difficult. The major labels manipulate the market (radio, MTV, major retail, etc) by paying these outlets huge amounts of money to promote their products, knowing that the independent artist can't afford to compete. This makes it almost impossible for the independent artist to break into the mainstream and therefore more likely to want to sign with the major label, even if the deal is heavily sided with the label, just for that chance to break out and become successful.
Yeah but the corporation is still a separate entity and is treated as such. Stan Lee is an individual. Stan Lee Enterprises is a corporation. It doesn't really matter if he is the only person involved (and he's probably not, although I'm just guessing.)
Totally agree...
As much as I'm not really a fan of most current hip hop music, I really do appreciate the production of a lot of the songs I've heard lately. I'm not gonna get into an Art vs. Not Art argument because it's completely unwinnable (and unlosable, really...), but if I can listen to a piece of music and appreciate the creativity that obviously went into it or the originality of the sound, I think there's a good chance a lot of people would very much consider it "art." It's irrelevent that they were motivated by money or the idea of appealing to the masses.
Just because something is created to try to appeal to the most people possible doesn't disqualify it from being art. It may not be an acceptable motivation to create art by *your* standards, but those are your standards, which are, in the world of "art," pretty much meaningless to everyone else. And they should be. As should mine. That's what makes it interesting.
I agree with an earlier post about how a line needs to be drawn between what is art and what isn't. Or more accurately, a line already has been drawn, but no one seems to know where it is. is a pen cap art? Well, no not really. If it's just sitting with its pen on my desk. But I can take that pen cap, without modifying it in any way, and turn it into art simply be placing it somewhere in a certain way. Or maybe it could even become art if I take my whole desk as it is right now (without touching the pen cap at all) and put it in a glass case in a museum with a stuffed monkey sitting in my chair.
Would that be good art? Depends who you ask I guess. (Probably not) And where is the actual art? Is it the desk? The pen cap? The whole scene? Or is it somewhere else? Was it just that split second where I thought to do it in the first place? And the actual physical objects are nothing more than a way to allow other people to experience that moment of my existence? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I'd just be full of shit.
Anyway, the point is, it's just kind of annoying to hear people saying that a certain type of music or a particular song definitely isn't art, just because they don't like it or it doesn't fit into their definition of "art" (which is just as valid (or not) as anyone else's).
The only problems I've ever had with Comcast have been a few hours of downtime over a 3-4 year period. I think there was one day where there was an extended outage (12-14 hours or so), but it was back when they first made cable internet available in my area, so it's understandable.
I'm sure with the amount of customers they have, you'll find everything from glowing reviews to lifetime boycotts. But in my experience they've performed as advertised.
I'm no science expert, but I think that's been done before.
Mars Exploration Rover Mission
Maybe you meant it's the first time that Man has placed an object on the surface of a moon outside the Earth-Moon system? That may or may not be true (I really have no idea), but it seems more likely.
It's pretty common to distribute white papers in PDF format.
An HTML version would have been nice, but it's not completely unexpected to see something like this as a PDF.
So where's the joke?
Maybe it's just me, but that sounds horrible. It takes 2+ hours to get into the game and get everything set up so that you can start really playing... and then if someone in your group decides to log off, you have to start over. I realize there are people who love the challenge of this kind of game, but my free time is just way too valuable to me to spend hours of it playing a game that isn't really fun until you have everything (other players, equipment, location, etc) just right. I can jump into WoW and play for an hour (or even less) and actually accomplish something. And when I have a larger block of time, I don't have to waste half of it looking for other people to play with or grinding to make up all the XP I lost the day before. Maybe that's too easy for some people, but for a *lot* of others, it seems to be just what they were looking for.
"the ipod is *waaay* too expensive for the mass market (it's dirt cheap in the US, expensive everywhere else)"
How much is the iPod everywhere else? I wouldn't exactly describe the US price as "dirt cheap." Compared to the rest of the HD mp3 players available, the iPod is on the expensive side.
I wouldn't say it's "still" better than IE. Yes, the current version is better than IE, but that's because Netscape is now based on Mozilla/Firefox.
Compare IE 4 to to Netscape 4.x and it's a totally different story. Before that, there *was* another time where Netscape was the better browser but they were in a pretty big slump for a while.
It's not open source, but I found a program called WinDates that works pretty well. It's far from perfect, but it may work as an alternative to the Outlook calendar.
WinDates
And you can publish your calendars, in iCal format, here:
iCal Exchange
The costs involved in developing the game are completely different than the costs of keeping the game world up and running and providing 24/7 support for hundreds of thousands of players. You can't expect them the to just eat the development costs and hope to make it all back on subscriptions. If you want TiVo, you buy the unit and then you also pay a subscription for the monthly service and support. Same goes here. You can't really compare this to single player games or even to other online games where the users run their own servers. Once the game is released, the company's work is pretty much done. They still provide support, but its nowhere near the support needed on a MMORPG, where every copy of the game that is running is connected to their servers. If you don't enjoy this type of game, then obviously it's not worth it to youo. But for a lot of people it is. I bought HL2 a few days after release and I'm already through the whole game. I'll probably play it again sometime and check out the DM mode, but I've seen pretty much everything the game has to offer. And I still think it was worth the price. With WoW, you can play for months and still not run out of new and different things to do. You could say the same thing about a lot of single player RPGs, but aside from a few games (like Morrowind) you can only get these huge worlds to explore in MMORPGs. Think about it, you probably pay close to $100/month (if not more) for a high speed connection and cable TV subscription. And I'd say a good portion of WoW players are spending *way* more time in the game than they are just surfing the web or watching TV. Considering that, it doesn't seem as expensive, to me at least. Hell, I spend way more than $15/month on my phone and I hardly even use it.
On my home computer, I've got 500+ MB worth of results from simulations that I would like to back up but there's just no affordable way to do that.
You meant 500+ GB right?
You could back up 500MB to a CD.