Uhhh that's kinda the point. Its a classic appeal to emotion to cover up the fact their position is complete and total horseshit that even the tiniest bit of thought would destroy because its the complete opposite of how capitalism has functioned since the beginning. after all classic Henry Ford style is sell it cheap, get economies of scale, make assloads o' cash. what these fucknuts want to do is charge assraping prices while making themselves monopolies and then when their sales naturally go down blame it on (insert terrorists, communists, pirates and pedos) and the laws twisted even more in their favor.
We've seen this same lame ploy so many times it isn't funny, hell look at the F35 which is having fricking rock videos made for it trying to pull a "Top Gun" rah rah appeal to emotion to get people to ignore the fact its a trillion dollar turkey, or remember how the MAFIAA was pushing that "P2P is full of kiddie fiddlers!" while just glossing over that most large software and MMO companies had switched to BT to save bandwidth? that's the essence of the appeal to emotion, to push the right buttons so that logic doesn't get in the way because as i pointed out in my earlier post carried to its logical conclusion system builders should get a cut every time a PC is resold, carpenters and electricians should get a cut every time a house is resold, the only way their argument works is if IP is somehow "magical" and deserves more rights than even property law which is just ludicrous hence the appeal to emotion.
Here is what turned me off of anything that RMS touches, the simple fact that you are "free" to do as he says, and that is it. you read his blogs and he makes it quite clear that anyway other than the GPL way should be openly attacked and banned, and uses the classic Dubya "You're with me or against me" language all over his writings. The word compromise simply doesn't exist in RMS land and he is so blinded by his desire for Communism that he blathers on and on about Chavez and Castro while at the same time railing against the "Evil corporations being big brother" when the entire regimes of both Castro and Chavez are nothing BUT big brother spying on their people!
And i'm a socialist, i believe that nobody should go to bed hungry, or without a place to sleep or clothes on their back or should have to walk around sick because they can't afford medicine but even i know that so far the only way to get to such a state is with a regulated market like what many in the EU have. But RMS has made it clear that making money is evil, he says he isn't anti-capitalism yet he goes out of his way to make sure that you can't make a dime on FOSS unless you use the services model which has already proven to be a failure beyond a few tiny niches.
In the end if GPL hadn't existed not only would I doubt it would have affected Linus in the least in many ways it would have probably made Linux stronger as he could have used a dual license which would have made it more business friendly. The simple fact is not only as you say that RMS treats friends like enemies (along with pretty much everyone that doesn't agree 100% with everything he says) but as he becomes more and more militant he insures that many wouldn't touch Linux with a 50 foot pole for fear of GPL infection!
Read his essay on GPL VS LGPL and he makes it quite clear the whole "GPL is an infection" sounds like a great idea to him anything that will force everyone into a corner and make them behave as he desires is a-ok by him, even if it hurts FOSS in general. For someone who says the word "freedom" so much its ironic that the only freedom he supports is your right to do things his way, the man truly believes that if everyone were forced to behave the GPL way he could create some communist paradise. Too bad nearly a century of history proves that don't work, and even in Linux itself many show stopping bugs won't get fixed because it will cost money that a company can never recoup. Linus could have used the BSD toolset and frankly nobody would have known the difference but without Linus old RMS would just be "The GCC and Emacs guy" and wouldn't even be given a second thought.
And this entire line of thinking is retarded! hey why don't I get a cut of every resale of every PC I have ever built? Why I could probably lower my price if that happened (but of course IRL I'd just pocket the extra profits) or why doesn't every carpenter get a cut every time a house he built gets resold?
Because that isn't how reality works and only arrogant game designers and the MAFIAA would try to push that insane bullshit upon us. If you want to charge for MP because you need to pay the server costs? Not a problem but frankly i'd rather host my own so don't be surprised if I buy the one that lets me host instead of yours, but news flash game designers YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL and don't deserve to have the entire rules of commerce rewritten because you think everyone that views your precious IP should have to give you a cut even after you have sold it.
Just remember everyime you support douchbags like this you are siding with those like Sony that think you should have to pay a nickel to play a song or give them the price of the CD over again if you want it in a different format. Your imaginary property rights don't and shouldn't trump ACTUAL property rights. the most ironic part is while douchenozzles like this rail for more American laws they then go to china to hire cheap coders. Our laws are good enough for these dicks but not our workers. fuck them and the horse they rode in on, if they block first sale I'll pirate every damned thing rather than give a cent to pricks like this!
Maybe where you are at but in my area a land line will cost north of $60 a month for just the phone or if you go cable with VoIP you are looking at $119 for the bundle with 2 year contract.
And again you didn't point out why I would want to pay $220 for the Galaxy player when i could just but the Precedent for $130 and then just use it instead as a PMP? its not like you need a contract or even minutes to use the Precedent as a PMP and you can always download apps using your home connection if you so choose.
So I just don't see a compelling reason to spend $200+ on an Android PMP when i could just get the phone and do the same thing PLUS use it as a phone if i want. I even know a few that even gave up their internet connection for the $45 unlimited as they found what they used the net for worked just fine on the Precedent and when its a minimum $60 a month for cable or DSL it was cheaper to just stick with the smartphone.
Because the UK has been for ages willing to jump when the US says frog while countries like Russia will tell the USA to go get fucked? There is a good reason why you see all the hacker stuff coming out of the Eastern EU and certain Asian countries and that is because they simply won't extradite to the USA, and frankly don't give a rat's ass about USA copyrights or patents either.
Look up KIRF sometime and see the most blatant knockoffs that would have any company in the UK, NZ, or AUS busted and hauled before a USA court so fast it would make your head spin but which can be not only sold on any street corner there but also on the net to anybody with a CC (be it real, prepaid, or stolen for that matter) and be shipped anywhere on the planet. hell they even have the brass balls to sell a Win 7 Flash stick with ALL the versions of Win 7 AND they stuck Steve Ballmer's signature on the fricking stick just as a "fuck you buddy" to MSFT!
Now if these countries don't give a shit about trademarks and copyrights on physical goods what makes you think they'll give a shit about hot code? as long as they get paid at the end of the week they frankly won't give a wet fart WHAT you do over there.
That is why I think the smart move would be for LO to target home users instead because as I said you don't become #1 by trying to copy the leader in a mature market, you become #1 by becoming the leader in a new market and let everyone else try to copy you.
Think about it, all of the software out there is trying to fit the SMB enterprise mold when the largest segment out there by far is home users. i think MSFT got this when they introduced the ribbon, which is easier for new users that 14 levels of sub-menus but frankly its still not all that easy or intuitive unless you have already learned some basics of office software and lingo.
So instead what LO should do is look at the jobs that home users have, book reports for school, letter writing, budgets, keeping up with addresses, maybe doing a family tree, and focus on making THOSE jobs as intuitive and easy as can possibly be done. Imagine if when you had say Writer running by banging the mouse all the way to the left a tab system popped out that gave you tabs going down the left side with useful actions based on templates? That is one thing that Jobs always got right as he would say you can't focus on the tech but focus on the consumer and make things THEY would like, that would make things easier for them to use. Nobody has really focused on the home market for this kind of software and would let LO get ahead of the game instead of constantly trying to play catch up with MSFT.
In the end if all LO does is play catch up with MSFT they'll always be a day behind and a dollar short, if they want to beat them then they need to give users a compelling reason to switch and by focusing on the home user they could do just that. they could still have the standard LO for business use, but have a version specifically for the needs of the home user designed to make their lives easier. Maybe once they are done with the rewrite maybe we'll see someone with vision try that but by then it may be too late, as MSFT may be slow to get on the ball but when they decide to go somewhere they have the money to make it happen and as i said the ribbon is a step in the right direction, just poorly executed.
And you are assuming the same government that spent $600 on a toilet seat didn't piss a large amount of that money away on kickbacks and buying worthless training videos created by insiders who got no bid contracts. By your logic that would mean those retarded TSA goons would have the same level and skill as a secret service agent, because after all we have supposedly spent millions and millions on their training right? yet we have people walking through that forgot to take a fricking handgun out of their bag and not get caught while they yank diapers off little old ladies.
If ever "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" fit it would have to be the US government friend. All too many of them only care about is getting elected or looking like they are "doing something" that will get them a bigger budget. And look up the whole "taking the RAM" incident, we aren't talking some rare thing that would actually stop anybody but instead they believed according to their brief that "the RAM contained evidence" which I wouldn't be surprised if they got from some CSI where they magicked the contents of the memory and found the killer...using technobabble "science" of course.
I think you are wrong and here is why: RMS has made it pretty clear that as far as he is concerned the GPL V2 is completely broken and therefor only GPL V3 should be used, yet Linus won't license the kernel under GPL V3 nor will any of the devices mentioned like phones, TVs, and the bazillion other embedded devices that use Linux be using it right now if it had been under GPL V3.
The problem is when it comes to RMS like a lot of groups that were also originally started with good intentions such as PETA and Greenpeace as time goes along and he doesn't see the world adopt his beliefs he is becoming more and more militant. Read the man's own words in for instance the GPL VS LGPL debates and its quite clear that all those that say "The GPL is an infection" frankly would have a supporter in RMS because that is what he wants. For him its no longer about making good software that you are free to modify but about pushing an agenda and while i'll get hate for saying this frankly in the last 5 years his anti-corporation stance has become IMHO almost Marxist in his hatred of corporations. Read the man's writings and you'll see a progression from optimism to a lot darker vision, even going so far as to refuse interviews unless you use HIS language the way HE declares it to be which if that isn't the height of arrogance and self importance i don't know what is.
So I'm sorry but Linus would have gotten along just fine without RMS and in fact if it would have continued to follow RMS instead of refusing to go GPL V3 like he did then I have no doubt Linux as we know it today would be all but dead as the corps simply would have went with BSD or some other OS that didn't actively fight them at every turn. Linus could have easily used the existing BSD tools and I doubt Linux would be all that different than it is today and I'd argue the simple fact that so few of the mainstream projects are adopting GPL V3 just shows that RMS no longer speaks for the majority, if he ever did.
Or even more likely they are like the vast majority of computer users out there and don't know the difference between RAM, CPU and HDD. I don't know how many times i've dealt with extremely smart people, people that hold very complex jobs, that simply don't understand the difference between memory and hard drive or CPU and GPU.
Sadly to many the PC is a "black box" that they know enough about to operate but don't even know the tiniest bit when it comes to what its made of or what it actually does. I've actually talked to cops that thought you should be able to "hack" a machine by simply being told the physical address of the person or that you should be able to push some button and magically have every password that has ever been used by a person simply by having their system. Too much CSI I guess but at least they didn't tell me to trace down an IP address using VB.
That is why it is SOP to install it on all consumer machines I sell. the problem with using it in businesses is unless the ONLY interactions you do is strictly internal then you risk seriously screwing yourself as it looks unprofessional when they open your spreadsheet or doc in MS Office and its salad, and of course the same thing goes the other way. this is also why i don't recommend it to college kids as most of the teachers use MS office 2K3 or 2K7 and you hand them a complex doc made in LO and you can watch your grade get dinged when it comes out looking like shit.
Of course this is not the fault of LO as they are trying to reverse engineer a proprietary data format but this is why I said they should bypass business completely and work on a more user friendly home version. as you rightly pointed out home users simply won't touch a good 90%+ of the features but the features they DO use could be MUCH simpler and more intuitive. For example make sure there are several templates that conform to what your average school paper requires, make some presets to help users use Base for home budgeting or maybe make a wizard for Calc that helps them figure expenses.
Since both Apple and MSFT think the future is consumers this would give LO a chance to be ahead of the curve and if they can get widespread home adoption this could in turn put pressure on MSFT to make sure that LO docs open correctly in MS Office. Remember trying to keep up with someone else is always a losing game, the way to win is to make the other guy conform to you. I truly think LO could do this but they need to really focus on the much larger home market and make things as simple and intuitive as possible.
And all of us stealing gas to drive our mad max vehicles to escape the zombie hoards will be most grateful for your sacrifice! Remember folks when it comes to zombie hoards one poor dumb bastard on a bicycle can buy you precious seconds to escape! Of course the zombies would be considered VERY green as they are all biodegradable. BTW could you tie some bells or clackers to your bike to attract more of them to you? Thanks.
As for TFA which insurance company bribed...err I mean "contributed" to get this tax added to everyone? Got to love how you can pass any cost you want onto Americans just by throwing a few Shekels to the right whores.
Exactly. I had a customer who knew Xres like the back of his hand and it took him ages to switch over to Photoshop simply because he knew where everything was and had custom plugins for Xres and trying to switch his workflow over damned near put him at square one.
And who cares about writer? writer for the most part has NEVER been the problem with OO.o and now LO, because Writer always got the lion's share of attention. it'll still turn heavily formatted Word docs into Word salad which is why i give it to home users and not businesses, but it does that less and less and HAS come a long way.
What sucks is the rest of the suite. hand any Excel jockey a copy of Calc and he'll laugh you right out of the room, there are too many things the Excel Jockeys use that just isn't there, likewise with Access and love it or hate it Access is used a LOT in SMBs.
So quit focusing on the only thing that works and instead focus on the things that don't. To use a/. car analogy it'd be like trying to sell a car with half the side caved in with "But it has a REALLY great set of tires"...what good is that if the rest of it is crunched? maybe instead you should just give up completely on businesses since compatibility will always be a problem, and instead focus on making more user friendly designs for the home users? after all both Apple and MSFT are focusing on home users, why not LO? Makes sense, they have less worry about backwards compatibility or compatibility with MS Office for that matter.
Anyway we should probably give the LO guys another year and a half before we say anything anyway, having to clean up a codebase that goes back to the mid 90s can't be easy and I'm sure once they have made it more modular and easy to maintain the improvements will come fast, so lets just let them do their job and see what comes out the other side.
I agree with everything you wrote 100% EXCEPT the upgrade treadmill part as i'm still gaming just fine on an HD4850 i bought nearly 2 years ago for a whole $50. while i did recently upgrade to a 6 core simply because tiger was unloading Thubans cheap the quad I had originally is going strong with my youngest and with another HD4850 and 4Gb of RAM frankly everything just flies. if anything the consoles being so old has held back PC gaming so other than the occasional Crysis style tech demo pretending to be a game most games run quite well on seriously old hardware.
But you are right that the FPS genre has been stagnate as of late, that is why when the big Steam Xmas sale came around i ended up loading up on either older games or non FPS titles like Just Cause II (biggest sandbox I've ever seen and some crazy fun) or C&C 4. Hell the only FPS I ended up buying was the FEAR II set for $5 (so I wouldn't have to dig out my discs) and the most excellent Riddick: Dark Athena. if you haven't tried Riddick and Escape From butcher bay you really should, its the only game I've seen in ages where the stealth is really tense.
I don't know about you but if I see even one more damned two gun halo ripoff set in a warzone or even worse WWII I think I'm gonna barf. what is sad is that even though there were hundreds of guns used in WWII by all sides you know EXACTLY what guns you are gonna get...follow along with me, BAR, M1,MP40, K98, 45 ACP, Bazooka, and if there are Brits the Sten. Give me a sticky bomb! or a PIAT, or napalm or something! Its become like those damned football games, its just the same shit with a little bit of graphical purty and a new number stamped on the box. That's why i end up going back to games like Blood, Redneck, and NOLF, as at least i get something cool like a kitty bomb or voodoo doll or titty gun! Its all linear corridors and AI that makes Forrest Gump look like a PHD and boring guns. When i play i want to have FUN not check items off a standard FPS checklist...yawn.
BTW if you haven't played them Blood and Redneck Rampage are some great classic gaming. Blood sends up every cheesy horror movie while giving you kick ass weapons while Redneck has you blasting trailer parks with a buzzsaw gun and dynamite crossbows while jamming to Mojo Nixon. What is sad is that both of those have HUGE levels with tons to explore and do while every modern FPS has you walk in a straight line, duck, shoot baddies, walk in a straight line some more...yawn.
Well lets see...you can't buy Ubisoft, EA, Activision/Blizzard, and Valve...what's left? The indie games? if you think you are any better off with SecuROM or Safedisc you might want to watch this video and watch a user get buttfucked by SecuROM.
And how EXACTLY is valve supposed to take ONLY MP out of games they don't own while leaving the SP behind? they don't own the code and i'm sure it says in the contracts with those that publish on Steam what valve can and cannot do and i doubt seriously ANY company would agree to hand over their code or develop a kill switch for JUST the MP just to make someone like you happy. And it isn't ripping anyone off anymore than throwing someone out of a theater for talking on their cell or sneaking in food would be considered ripping someone off, unless you think the theater should have a special 'rulebreaker booth" so those people that refuse to play well with others to still get their money's worth? it says quite clearly that wall hacks and aimbots will result in bans so if you go around acting like a total jackass one should expect consequences. If anything I'd argue that the whole "I should be allowed to be as big a prick as I want problem free!" attitude is what's wrong with this country, nobody gives a shit if they ruin it for everyone else as long as THEY get what THEY want.
And as for the last bit if you are pro piracy then at least have the guts to come out and say so. there is a difference between being pro piracy and showing there isn't any real way to take a game away from you with Steam than there is to take away your disc once you bought it. in BOTH cases they are trivial to bypass and in BOTH cases you will still be banned for being a douchebag. In fact i doubt you'll find a single game, either free or for pay, that will let you cheat your ass off and ruin it for everyone else without getting banned. Do you scream if WoW punts someone who cheats? in the end you can't find a SINGLE example, not one, where someone lost their games while following the very basic rules of conduct. That makes your entire argument hypothetical and you might as well argue that some day MSFT will flip a switch and turn off your windows until you write them a check because frankly both scenarios would be suicide and about as likely as me growing wings out my ass and flying south for the winter.
But then they become worse than nothing! the guys from South Park nailed it when they had the Klan who wanted to keep the SP flag come out against the flag because the knee jerk reaction would be to automatically vote the opposite of what the Klan wanted. in this case they have gone so far out of mainstream when anybody sees their name they think "total whackos" and this automatically gains sympathy for the ones they are against!
Frankly PETA, MAD, and Greenpeace would be more helpful to their causes if they didn't exist at all because they have pissed away any credibility they once had. damned shame as all three were originally worthy causes but now I'd probably buy any product made by a company opposed by them simply because i see them as self righteous whackjobs that just like on SP if they are against it then its probably something I'd support simply because they are so far from mainstream anymore. I mean you have blatant lies, Sea kittens (look it up if you haven't I swear its not a parody, they honestly think at PETA calling all fish sea kittens will keep people from eating fish) and prohibition...yep I'd buy anything they're against.
The problem is the bus system will NEVER break even as most of the south, aka "the place where the food is grown" is simply spread too far out for buses to make sense, and frankly unlike what I hear about EU bus lines, at least the ones i've seen in most areas I've been, quickly turn into rolling shitholes. Frankly i'd rather ride on a prison bus than the buses I've seen across the south as at least the prison buses have armed guards.
This is why I say the ONLY way this would really work is to make a "people's car" that gets 40MPG and can be sold for $10k with a small profit per unit. THEN you can offer a "cash for clunkers" and get all those working poor and single moms out of those old gas hogs but until you can make something truly affordable to the masses the gas hogs are going nowhere.
Hell even those of us that make a little better than most aren't buying, I myself am driving a serious gas hog that gets 14MPG, why? Because in a dead economy with the oldest in college and my mother in declining health it would be seriously risky to get rid of a paid for truck that is in good shape, even if it is a hog, when i have no idea if mom will get worse or one of the boys suddenly have an unexpected bill. Expecting rising gas prices to change that outlook is the height of arrogance and just shows how those like Rev Al Gore (which if you haven't driven by his place he's a fucking hypocrite, he has a fricking Mc mansion with indoor ACed basketball court and a fleet of SUVs) are only in this to see how much money they can leech. I bet my last soon to be QE'd to worthless dollar that the ONLY ones that would see any benefit from that tax would be Rev AL and friends of the POTUS.
Yeah but since they aren't in the USA (and most likely in some place that don't give a shit about the USA, like Russia or some parts of Asia) then it doesn't matter if he makes it $50 or a bazillion as nothing is gonna happen.
Of course this is why the entire copyright idea doesn't really work because thanks to the internet being global all one has to do is set up in a country with laws favorable to doing whatever you want (or with officials easily bribed) and then all that draconian copyright laws are worth exactly jack and squat. Not saying they should have the right to snatch anybody else's code, but the only way you can treat something that can be copied instantly and at no cost as a scarce resource is if everybody plays along and its obvious that will never be the case.
If an adult wants to buy something in game? more power to 'em, its just the whole "aiming at kids" thing that bothers me. With little kids they don't have a clue about how much something really costs, all they know is they keep losing and this item gives them more (insert power, gold, magic, etc) so its easy to get a little kid to click on something like that. That's why we call them kids and not midgets.
But as long as its aimed at adults and doesn't screw the game (like you I stay away from these "free to play but buy items" to do anything) style games but what an adult wants to do with their money is their business. while i don't buy those stupid phone games i have been known to buy some DLC for my PC games if its cheap and fun, like the "Tuk Tuk Boom Boom" in Just Cause 2? Meh it was a buck with 4 other vehicles and who don't like driving a go cart with a tank gun mounted on top?
But looking at the ones aimed at kids too many of them are pretty much "wallet raper 2000" where you let them play a bit then nickel and dime the living hell out of them. like I said if an adult wants to be a moron? oh well. But you shouldn't have to lock everything down just so the kid can play a fricking game!
Uhhh..maybe you missed the story on the front page about how Asian call centers are being trained with tax dollars? You see to actually buy all this whizzbang tech, which is anything BUT cheap, you need...oh what is it called...oh yeah MONEY. That kind of thinking is why we have morons like Al Gore say "Well just raise the gas to $5+ a gallon and they'll all buy green cars or take the bus" while ignoring that in many places in the USA there simply are NO buses and the average age of a car in the USA right now is 11 years because nobody has any money to buy new ANYTHING.
This is why I've said for ages what we need is some common sense. What we need is a "people's car" that doesn't use batteries or any other bullshit that will make the price out of reach for the working poor, but instead build a car with a minimum of 40MPG with both a 2 door and a 4 door, and make the price $10k. THEN have a cash for clunkers program so that even the working poor can afford to trade in those 10+ year old gas hogs. If you can get it above 40MPG? great but it must NOT cost more than $10K.
Since the average MPG in the USA is 20 you'll have cut our fuel usage in half if you get everyone to switch and you'll also be producing more jobs the old fashioned way when businesses crop us to customize the new car. But all we are doing now is letting rich folks feel green if they so desire and from what i've seen most of the rich folks? really don't care about green, they are in a Lexus.
But that don't change the fact they shouldn't have been pushing these apps for kids. Do they think little Suzy has her own CC? If adults want to buy invisible property in some game? More power to 'em I say, I have a boy that pays $15 a month to be a fricking Bounty Hunter in that new Star Wars MMO. But these things are aimed at little kids and that just isn't right. if you want to sell them a game? Fine and dandy but the whole "bait apps" description sounds pretty right on to me. And if Apple wants to push iOS to the masses then maybe they should be a little more careful at what's aimed at kids huh?
I saw him to a character in a TV show once that talked but that was about it, i don't think I've ever seen him talk as himself.
If this holds up though we can say goodbye to any comic who hasn't got the money for lawsuits because as we all know stealing others bits is rife in that industry. Hell I've seen early Leary where he was ripping off Bill Hicks damned near word for word for half his act, made even more scummy because hicks was dying of cancer at the time and couldn't fight back.
Man as much as i love P&T I'd hate to see magic end up like music, where every hit song ends up with 30 has beens coming out of the woodwork claiming to own the melody or some shit. With magic it would be a LITTLE easier as with music you only have 12 notes in the western scale (and probably every pleasing combination is now owned by a cartel) but there are several "themes" in magic as well. what if someone claims say making someone disappear? Or claims the use of fire in their act? don't think it can't happen as from what we've seen with copyrights these things always get stretched into insane levels by lawyers looking for a check.
So I have to say this is a real puzzler for me, on the one hand I hate seeing anyone get ripped off but on the other the last thing we need is another way for pond scum lawyers to sue people.
Uhhh...because Android phones are cheap? hell you can get the Galaxy precedent Straightalk for like $130 and after playing with one I can say they are quite nice, very responsive and quick to load apps. And at $45 a month for unlimited everything most folks i know are using it as their PMP, GPS, netbook, etc.
So I'd say it was probably because while Apple already had a huge market they could tap with Android most folks weren't gonna pay more for a player than they would for a smartphone. after all the Galaxy player is $220 and the Precedent is $130, so why would I buy the player?
What is sad is that all these groups..PETA, Greenpeace, MAD, all started out with good intentions and goals, Greenpeace to stop whalers and those breaking treaties and polluting our oceans, MAD to stop drunk driving, PETA to insure the ethical treatment of food animals, but somewhere along the way the batshit fringes took over and frankly they are all loony tunes, PETA with the "sea kittens", the new head of MAD saying their goal is now prohibition (like we haven't seen what a failure THAT was) and Greenpeace with the constant lies.
Man its just a shame that you can't have an org that does good things hardly anymore without the batshit coming along and mucking everything up. All three originally had goals we could all stand behind, I mean nobody wants to see animals tortured, our oceans destroyed, or drunks plowing down families on the highway, but having sensible goals looks to be a thing of the past, its all loony tunes all the way down and i think that's a damned shame.
Nice to see I'm not the only one who finds the entire deal puzzling. the only thing I can think of is since they still have their embedded hard drive division they maybe have a cheap POS design already cooked up using the tech they already have and hope by buying IBM's contracts they can convert these users over to their new POS designs without having to compete, but even then it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
I mean we ARE talking 850 million dollars here, how are they gonna make enough off of sales and support in a market that is about to have its throat slit by commodity boxes? it would be like buying a company that only made desktop HDDs at this stage of the game with everyone going mobile...I honestly can't see where they are gonna find the sales to make this deal turn a profit. In every store I've walked into of late all I've seen is commodity X86 and ARM based touchscreens being used as POS, I don't think I saw a single "big name' POS unit, so where are they gonna get a billion plus dollars in sales to make this deal a winner?
I don't understand why he didn't know the answer except maybe he doesn't really know the products that he has acquired. the desktop was always free, the mobile always pay, no different than how many companies have a free consumer version and a non-free business version.
What always amazes me is how completely rampant the hypocrisy is in the tech community as the very same ones who had a living shitfit when MSFT tried to pull the exact same trick with the desktop (which was free) have NO problem when Google does it with mobile which was never free in the first place! you can't have your cake and eat it too, either any corp can do anything they want to a language no matter what the original creator thinks or one must bow to the original creator, pick already!
Because the only difference between this and what MSFT did was Google changed the name. tell me if MSFT had called theirs coffee would you have supported them? probably not, yet you do Google, why? Because Google basically snatched the Linux kernel and then hands it to companies that then lock the bootloader? Kinda sad that the FOSS advocates are so damned desperate for a win they will blindly champion a company that isn't doing them any favors and is gathering so much data on its users it makes every triple letter agency drool. Maybe one should see what RMS has to say about it? If his feelings on Google are like his feelings on Chrome again you may not be doing anybody in favors by cheering Google here.
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Uhhh that's kinda the point. Its a classic appeal to emotion to cover up the fact their position is complete and total horseshit that even the tiniest bit of thought would destroy because its the complete opposite of how capitalism has functioned since the beginning. after all classic Henry Ford style is sell it cheap, get economies of scale, make assloads o' cash. what these fucknuts want to do is charge assraping prices while making themselves monopolies and then when their sales naturally go down blame it on (insert terrorists, communists, pirates and pedos) and the laws twisted even more in their favor.
We've seen this same lame ploy so many times it isn't funny, hell look at the F35 which is having fricking rock videos made for it trying to pull a "Top Gun" rah rah appeal to emotion to get people to ignore the fact its a trillion dollar turkey, or remember how the MAFIAA was pushing that "P2P is full of kiddie fiddlers!" while just glossing over that most large software and MMO companies had switched to BT to save bandwidth? that's the essence of the appeal to emotion, to push the right buttons so that logic doesn't get in the way because as i pointed out in my earlier post carried to its logical conclusion system builders should get a cut every time a PC is resold, carpenters and electricians should get a cut every time a house is resold, the only way their argument works is if IP is somehow "magical" and deserves more rights than even property law which is just ludicrous hence the appeal to emotion.
Here is what turned me off of anything that RMS touches, the simple fact that you are "free" to do as he says, and that is it. you read his blogs and he makes it quite clear that anyway other than the GPL way should be openly attacked and banned, and uses the classic Dubya "You're with me or against me" language all over his writings. The word compromise simply doesn't exist in RMS land and he is so blinded by his desire for Communism that he blathers on and on about Chavez and Castro while at the same time railing against the "Evil corporations being big brother" when the entire regimes of both Castro and Chavez are nothing BUT big brother spying on their people!
And i'm a socialist, i believe that nobody should go to bed hungry, or without a place to sleep or clothes on their back or should have to walk around sick because they can't afford medicine but even i know that so far the only way to get to such a state is with a regulated market like what many in the EU have. But RMS has made it clear that making money is evil, he says he isn't anti-capitalism yet he goes out of his way to make sure that you can't make a dime on FOSS unless you use the services model which has already proven to be a failure beyond a few tiny niches.
In the end if GPL hadn't existed not only would I doubt it would have affected Linus in the least in many ways it would have probably made Linux stronger as he could have used a dual license which would have made it more business friendly. The simple fact is not only as you say that RMS treats friends like enemies (along with pretty much everyone that doesn't agree 100% with everything he says) but as he becomes more and more militant he insures that many wouldn't touch Linux with a 50 foot pole for fear of GPL infection!
Read his essay on GPL VS LGPL and he makes it quite clear the whole "GPL is an infection" sounds like a great idea to him anything that will force everyone into a corner and make them behave as he desires is a-ok by him, even if it hurts FOSS in general. For someone who says the word "freedom" so much its ironic that the only freedom he supports is your right to do things his way, the man truly believes that if everyone were forced to behave the GPL way he could create some communist paradise. Too bad nearly a century of history proves that don't work, and even in Linux itself many show stopping bugs won't get fixed because it will cost money that a company can never recoup. Linus could have used the BSD toolset and frankly nobody would have known the difference but without Linus old RMS would just be "The GCC and Emacs guy" and wouldn't even be given a second thought.
And this entire line of thinking is retarded! hey why don't I get a cut of every resale of every PC I have ever built? Why I could probably lower my price if that happened (but of course IRL I'd just pocket the extra profits) or why doesn't every carpenter get a cut every time a house he built gets resold?
Because that isn't how reality works and only arrogant game designers and the MAFIAA would try to push that insane bullshit upon us. If you want to charge for MP because you need to pay the server costs? Not a problem but frankly i'd rather host my own so don't be surprised if I buy the one that lets me host instead of yours, but news flash game designers YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL and don't deserve to have the entire rules of commerce rewritten because you think everyone that views your precious IP should have to give you a cut even after you have sold it.
Just remember everyime you support douchbags like this you are siding with those like Sony that think you should have to pay a nickel to play a song or give them the price of the CD over again if you want it in a different format. Your imaginary property rights don't and shouldn't trump ACTUAL property rights. the most ironic part is while douchenozzles like this rail for more American laws they then go to china to hire cheap coders. Our laws are good enough for these dicks but not our workers. fuck them and the horse they rode in on, if they block first sale I'll pirate every damned thing rather than give a cent to pricks like this!
Maybe where you are at but in my area a land line will cost north of $60 a month for just the phone or if you go cable with VoIP you are looking at $119 for the bundle with 2 year contract.
And again you didn't point out why I would want to pay $220 for the Galaxy player when i could just but the Precedent for $130 and then just use it instead as a PMP? its not like you need a contract or even minutes to use the Precedent as a PMP and you can always download apps using your home connection if you so choose.
So I just don't see a compelling reason to spend $200+ on an Android PMP when i could just get the phone and do the same thing PLUS use it as a phone if i want. I even know a few that even gave up their internet connection for the $45 unlimited as they found what they used the net for worked just fine on the Precedent and when its a minimum $60 a month for cable or DSL it was cheaper to just stick with the smartphone.
Because the UK has been for ages willing to jump when the US says frog while countries like Russia will tell the USA to go get fucked? There is a good reason why you see all the hacker stuff coming out of the Eastern EU and certain Asian countries and that is because they simply won't extradite to the USA, and frankly don't give a rat's ass about USA copyrights or patents either.
Look up KIRF sometime and see the most blatant knockoffs that would have any company in the UK, NZ, or AUS busted and hauled before a USA court so fast it would make your head spin but which can be not only sold on any street corner there but also on the net to anybody with a CC (be it real, prepaid, or stolen for that matter) and be shipped anywhere on the planet. hell they even have the brass balls to sell a Win 7 Flash stick with ALL the versions of Win 7 AND they stuck Steve Ballmer's signature on the fricking stick just as a "fuck you buddy" to MSFT!
Now if these countries don't give a shit about trademarks and copyrights on physical goods what makes you think they'll give a shit about hot code? as long as they get paid at the end of the week they frankly won't give a wet fart WHAT you do over there.
That is why I think the smart move would be for LO to target home users instead because as I said you don't become #1 by trying to copy the leader in a mature market, you become #1 by becoming the leader in a new market and let everyone else try to copy you.
Think about it, all of the software out there is trying to fit the SMB enterprise mold when the largest segment out there by far is home users. i think MSFT got this when they introduced the ribbon, which is easier for new users that 14 levels of sub-menus but frankly its still not all that easy or intuitive unless you have already learned some basics of office software and lingo.
So instead what LO should do is look at the jobs that home users have, book reports for school, letter writing, budgets, keeping up with addresses, maybe doing a family tree, and focus on making THOSE jobs as intuitive and easy as can possibly be done. Imagine if when you had say Writer running by banging the mouse all the way to the left a tab system popped out that gave you tabs going down the left side with useful actions based on templates? That is one thing that Jobs always got right as he would say you can't focus on the tech but focus on the consumer and make things THEY would like, that would make things easier for them to use. Nobody has really focused on the home market for this kind of software and would let LO get ahead of the game instead of constantly trying to play catch up with MSFT.
In the end if all LO does is play catch up with MSFT they'll always be a day behind and a dollar short, if they want to beat them then they need to give users a compelling reason to switch and by focusing on the home user they could do just that. they could still have the standard LO for business use, but have a version specifically for the needs of the home user designed to make their lives easier. Maybe once they are done with the rewrite maybe we'll see someone with vision try that but by then it may be too late, as MSFT may be slow to get on the ball but when they decide to go somewhere they have the money to make it happen and as i said the ribbon is a step in the right direction, just poorly executed.
And you are assuming the same government that spent $600 on a toilet seat didn't piss a large amount of that money away on kickbacks and buying worthless training videos created by insiders who got no bid contracts. By your logic that would mean those retarded TSA goons would have the same level and skill as a secret service agent, because after all we have supposedly spent millions and millions on their training right? yet we have people walking through that forgot to take a fricking handgun out of their bag and not get caught while they yank diapers off little old ladies.
If ever "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" fit it would have to be the US government friend. All too many of them only care about is getting elected or looking like they are "doing something" that will get them a bigger budget. And look up the whole "taking the RAM" incident, we aren't talking some rare thing that would actually stop anybody but instead they believed according to their brief that "the RAM contained evidence" which I wouldn't be surprised if they got from some CSI where they magicked the contents of the memory and found the killer...using technobabble "science" of course.
I think you are wrong and here is why: RMS has made it pretty clear that as far as he is concerned the GPL V2 is completely broken and therefor only GPL V3 should be used, yet Linus won't license the kernel under GPL V3 nor will any of the devices mentioned like phones, TVs, and the bazillion other embedded devices that use Linux be using it right now if it had been under GPL V3.
The problem is when it comes to RMS like a lot of groups that were also originally started with good intentions such as PETA and Greenpeace as time goes along and he doesn't see the world adopt his beliefs he is becoming more and more militant. Read the man's own words in for instance the GPL VS LGPL debates and its quite clear that all those that say "The GPL is an infection" frankly would have a supporter in RMS because that is what he wants. For him its no longer about making good software that you are free to modify but about pushing an agenda and while i'll get hate for saying this frankly in the last 5 years his anti-corporation stance has become IMHO almost Marxist in his hatred of corporations. Read the man's writings and you'll see a progression from optimism to a lot darker vision, even going so far as to refuse interviews unless you use HIS language the way HE declares it to be which if that isn't the height of arrogance and self importance i don't know what is.
So I'm sorry but Linus would have gotten along just fine without RMS and in fact if it would have continued to follow RMS instead of refusing to go GPL V3 like he did then I have no doubt Linux as we know it today would be all but dead as the corps simply would have went with BSD or some other OS that didn't actively fight them at every turn. Linus could have easily used the existing BSD tools and I doubt Linux would be all that different than it is today and I'd argue the simple fact that so few of the mainstream projects are adopting GPL V3 just shows that RMS no longer speaks for the majority, if he ever did.
Or even more likely they are like the vast majority of computer users out there and don't know the difference between RAM, CPU and HDD. I don't know how many times i've dealt with extremely smart people, people that hold very complex jobs, that simply don't understand the difference between memory and hard drive or CPU and GPU.
Sadly to many the PC is a "black box" that they know enough about to operate but don't even know the tiniest bit when it comes to what its made of or what it actually does. I've actually talked to cops that thought you should be able to "hack" a machine by simply being told the physical address of the person or that you should be able to push some button and magically have every password that has ever been used by a person simply by having their system. Too much CSI I guess but at least they didn't tell me to trace down an IP address using VB.
That is why it is SOP to install it on all consumer machines I sell. the problem with using it in businesses is unless the ONLY interactions you do is strictly internal then you risk seriously screwing yourself as it looks unprofessional when they open your spreadsheet or doc in MS Office and its salad, and of course the same thing goes the other way. this is also why i don't recommend it to college kids as most of the teachers use MS office 2K3 or 2K7 and you hand them a complex doc made in LO and you can watch your grade get dinged when it comes out looking like shit.
Of course this is not the fault of LO as they are trying to reverse engineer a proprietary data format but this is why I said they should bypass business completely and work on a more user friendly home version. as you rightly pointed out home users simply won't touch a good 90%+ of the features but the features they DO use could be MUCH simpler and more intuitive. For example make sure there are several templates that conform to what your average school paper requires, make some presets to help users use Base for home budgeting or maybe make a wizard for Calc that helps them figure expenses.
Since both Apple and MSFT think the future is consumers this would give LO a chance to be ahead of the curve and if they can get widespread home adoption this could in turn put pressure on MSFT to make sure that LO docs open correctly in MS Office. Remember trying to keep up with someone else is always a losing game, the way to win is to make the other guy conform to you. I truly think LO could do this but they need to really focus on the much larger home market and make things as simple and intuitive as possible.
And all of us stealing gas to drive our mad max vehicles to escape the zombie hoards will be most grateful for your sacrifice! Remember folks when it comes to zombie hoards one poor dumb bastard on a bicycle can buy you precious seconds to escape! Of course the zombies would be considered VERY green as they are all biodegradable. BTW could you tie some bells or clackers to your bike to attract more of them to you? Thanks.
As for TFA which insurance company bribed...err I mean "contributed" to get this tax added to everyone? Got to love how you can pass any cost you want onto Americans just by throwing a few Shekels to the right whores.
Exactly. I had a customer who knew Xres like the back of his hand and it took him ages to switch over to Photoshop simply because he knew where everything was and had custom plugins for Xres and trying to switch his workflow over damned near put him at square one.
And who cares about writer? writer for the most part has NEVER been the problem with OO.o and now LO, because Writer always got the lion's share of attention. it'll still turn heavily formatted Word docs into Word salad which is why i give it to home users and not businesses, but it does that less and less and HAS come a long way.
What sucks is the rest of the suite. hand any Excel jockey a copy of Calc and he'll laugh you right out of the room, there are too many things the Excel Jockeys use that just isn't there, likewise with Access and love it or hate it Access is used a LOT in SMBs.
So quit focusing on the only thing that works and instead focus on the things that don't. To use a /. car analogy it'd be like trying to sell a car with half the side caved in with "But it has a REALLY great set of tires"...what good is that if the rest of it is crunched? maybe instead you should just give up completely on businesses since compatibility will always be a problem, and instead focus on making more user friendly designs for the home users? after all both Apple and MSFT are focusing on home users, why not LO? Makes sense, they have less worry about backwards compatibility or compatibility with MS Office for that matter.
Anyway we should probably give the LO guys another year and a half before we say anything anyway, having to clean up a codebase that goes back to the mid 90s can't be easy and I'm sure once they have made it more modular and easy to maintain the improvements will come fast, so lets just let them do their job and see what comes out the other side.
I agree with everything you wrote 100% EXCEPT the upgrade treadmill part as i'm still gaming just fine on an HD4850 i bought nearly 2 years ago for a whole $50. while i did recently upgrade to a 6 core simply because tiger was unloading Thubans cheap the quad I had originally is going strong with my youngest and with another HD4850 and 4Gb of RAM frankly everything just flies. if anything the consoles being so old has held back PC gaming so other than the occasional Crysis style tech demo pretending to be a game most games run quite well on seriously old hardware.
But you are right that the FPS genre has been stagnate as of late, that is why when the big Steam Xmas sale came around i ended up loading up on either older games or non FPS titles like Just Cause II (biggest sandbox I've ever seen and some crazy fun) or C&C 4. Hell the only FPS I ended up buying was the FEAR II set for $5 (so I wouldn't have to dig out my discs) and the most excellent Riddick: Dark Athena. if you haven't tried Riddick and Escape From butcher bay you really should, its the only game I've seen in ages where the stealth is really tense.
I don't know about you but if I see even one more damned two gun halo ripoff set in a warzone or even worse WWII I think I'm gonna barf. what is sad is that even though there were hundreds of guns used in WWII by all sides you know EXACTLY what guns you are gonna get...follow along with me, BAR, M1,MP40, K98, 45 ACP, Bazooka, and if there are Brits the Sten. Give me a sticky bomb! or a PIAT, or napalm or something! Its become like those damned football games, its just the same shit with a little bit of graphical purty and a new number stamped on the box. That's why i end up going back to games like Blood, Redneck, and NOLF, as at least i get something cool like a kitty bomb or voodoo doll or titty gun! Its all linear corridors and AI that makes Forrest Gump look like a PHD and boring guns. When i play i want to have FUN not check items off a standard FPS checklist...yawn.
BTW if you haven't played them Blood and Redneck Rampage are some great classic gaming. Blood sends up every cheesy horror movie while giving you kick ass weapons while Redneck has you blasting trailer parks with a buzzsaw gun and dynamite crossbows while jamming to Mojo Nixon. What is sad is that both of those have HUGE levels with tons to explore and do while every modern FPS has you walk in a straight line, duck, shoot baddies, walk in a straight line some more...yawn.
Well lets see...you can't buy Ubisoft, EA, Activision/Blizzard, and Valve...what's left? The indie games? if you think you are any better off with SecuROM or Safedisc you might want to watch this video and watch a user get buttfucked by SecuROM.
And how EXACTLY is valve supposed to take ONLY MP out of games they don't own while leaving the SP behind? they don't own the code and i'm sure it says in the contracts with those that publish on Steam what valve can and cannot do and i doubt seriously ANY company would agree to hand over their code or develop a kill switch for JUST the MP just to make someone like you happy. And it isn't ripping anyone off anymore than throwing someone out of a theater for talking on their cell or sneaking in food would be considered ripping someone off, unless you think the theater should have a special 'rulebreaker booth" so those people that refuse to play well with others to still get their money's worth? it says quite clearly that wall hacks and aimbots will result in bans so if you go around acting like a total jackass one should expect consequences. If anything I'd argue that the whole "I should be allowed to be as big a prick as I want problem free!" attitude is what's wrong with this country, nobody gives a shit if they ruin it for everyone else as long as THEY get what THEY want.
And as for the last bit if you are pro piracy then at least have the guts to come out and say so. there is a difference between being pro piracy and showing there isn't any real way to take a game away from you with Steam than there is to take away your disc once you bought it. in BOTH cases they are trivial to bypass and in BOTH cases you will still be banned for being a douchebag. In fact i doubt you'll find a single game, either free or for pay, that will let you cheat your ass off and ruin it for everyone else without getting banned. Do you scream if WoW punts someone who cheats? in the end you can't find a SINGLE example, not one, where someone lost their games while following the very basic rules of conduct. That makes your entire argument hypothetical and you might as well argue that some day MSFT will flip a switch and turn off your windows until you write them a check because frankly both scenarios would be suicide and about as likely as me growing wings out my ass and flying south for the winter.
But then they become worse than nothing! the guys from South Park nailed it when they had the Klan who wanted to keep the SP flag come out against the flag because the knee jerk reaction would be to automatically vote the opposite of what the Klan wanted. in this case they have gone so far out of mainstream when anybody sees their name they think "total whackos" and this automatically gains sympathy for the ones they are against!
Frankly PETA, MAD, and Greenpeace would be more helpful to their causes if they didn't exist at all because they have pissed away any credibility they once had. damned shame as all three were originally worthy causes but now I'd probably buy any product made by a company opposed by them simply because i see them as self righteous whackjobs that just like on SP if they are against it then its probably something I'd support simply because they are so far from mainstream anymore. I mean you have blatant lies, Sea kittens (look it up if you haven't I swear its not a parody, they honestly think at PETA calling all fish sea kittens will keep people from eating fish) and prohibition...yep I'd buy anything they're against.
The problem is the bus system will NEVER break even as most of the south, aka "the place where the food is grown" is simply spread too far out for buses to make sense, and frankly unlike what I hear about EU bus lines, at least the ones i've seen in most areas I've been, quickly turn into rolling shitholes. Frankly i'd rather ride on a prison bus than the buses I've seen across the south as at least the prison buses have armed guards.
This is why I say the ONLY way this would really work is to make a "people's car" that gets 40MPG and can be sold for $10k with a small profit per unit. THEN you can offer a "cash for clunkers" and get all those working poor and single moms out of those old gas hogs but until you can make something truly affordable to the masses the gas hogs are going nowhere.
Hell even those of us that make a little better than most aren't buying, I myself am driving a serious gas hog that gets 14MPG, why? Because in a dead economy with the oldest in college and my mother in declining health it would be seriously risky to get rid of a paid for truck that is in good shape, even if it is a hog, when i have no idea if mom will get worse or one of the boys suddenly have an unexpected bill. Expecting rising gas prices to change that outlook is the height of arrogance and just shows how those like Rev Al Gore (which if you haven't driven by his place he's a fucking hypocrite, he has a fricking Mc mansion with indoor ACed basketball court and a fleet of SUVs) are only in this to see how much money they can leech. I bet my last soon to be QE'd to worthless dollar that the ONLY ones that would see any benefit from that tax would be Rev AL and friends of the POTUS.
Yeah but since they aren't in the USA (and most likely in some place that don't give a shit about the USA, like Russia or some parts of Asia) then it doesn't matter if he makes it $50 or a bazillion as nothing is gonna happen.
Of course this is why the entire copyright idea doesn't really work because thanks to the internet being global all one has to do is set up in a country with laws favorable to doing whatever you want (or with officials easily bribed) and then all that draconian copyright laws are worth exactly jack and squat. Not saying they should have the right to snatch anybody else's code, but the only way you can treat something that can be copied instantly and at no cost as a scarce resource is if everybody plays along and its obvious that will never be the case.
If an adult wants to buy something in game? more power to 'em, its just the whole "aiming at kids" thing that bothers me. With little kids they don't have a clue about how much something really costs, all they know is they keep losing and this item gives them more (insert power, gold, magic, etc) so its easy to get a little kid to click on something like that. That's why we call them kids and not midgets.
But as long as its aimed at adults and doesn't screw the game (like you I stay away from these "free to play but buy items" to do anything) style games but what an adult wants to do with their money is their business. while i don't buy those stupid phone games i have been known to buy some DLC for my PC games if its cheap and fun, like the "Tuk Tuk Boom Boom" in Just Cause 2? Meh it was a buck with 4 other vehicles and who don't like driving a go cart with a tank gun mounted on top?
But looking at the ones aimed at kids too many of them are pretty much "wallet raper 2000" where you let them play a bit then nickel and dime the living hell out of them. like I said if an adult wants to be a moron? oh well. But you shouldn't have to lock everything down just so the kid can play a fricking game!
Uhhh..maybe you missed the story on the front page about how Asian call centers are being trained with tax dollars? You see to actually buy all this whizzbang tech, which is anything BUT cheap, you need...oh what is it called...oh yeah MONEY. That kind of thinking is why we have morons like Al Gore say "Well just raise the gas to $5+ a gallon and they'll all buy green cars or take the bus" while ignoring that in many places in the USA there simply are NO buses and the average age of a car in the USA right now is 11 years because nobody has any money to buy new ANYTHING.
This is why I've said for ages what we need is some common sense. What we need is a "people's car" that doesn't use batteries or any other bullshit that will make the price out of reach for the working poor, but instead build a car with a minimum of 40MPG with both a 2 door and a 4 door, and make the price $10k. THEN have a cash for clunkers program so that even the working poor can afford to trade in those 10+ year old gas hogs. If you can get it above 40MPG? great but it must NOT cost more than $10K.
Since the average MPG in the USA is 20 you'll have cut our fuel usage in half if you get everyone to switch and you'll also be producing more jobs the old fashioned way when businesses crop us to customize the new car. But all we are doing now is letting rich folks feel green if they so desire and from what i've seen most of the rich folks? really don't care about green, they are in a Lexus.
But that don't change the fact they shouldn't have been pushing these apps for kids. Do they think little Suzy has her own CC? If adults want to buy invisible property in some game? More power to 'em I say, I have a boy that pays $15 a month to be a fricking Bounty Hunter in that new Star Wars MMO. But these things are aimed at little kids and that just isn't right. if you want to sell them a game? Fine and dandy but the whole "bait apps" description sounds pretty right on to me. And if Apple wants to push iOS to the masses then maybe they should be a little more careful at what's aimed at kids huh?
I saw him to a character in a TV show once that talked but that was about it, i don't think I've ever seen him talk as himself.
If this holds up though we can say goodbye to any comic who hasn't got the money for lawsuits because as we all know stealing others bits is rife in that industry. Hell I've seen early Leary where he was ripping off Bill Hicks damned near word for word for half his act, made even more scummy because hicks was dying of cancer at the time and couldn't fight back.
Man as much as i love P&T I'd hate to see magic end up like music, where every hit song ends up with 30 has beens coming out of the woodwork claiming to own the melody or some shit. With magic it would be a LITTLE easier as with music you only have 12 notes in the western scale (and probably every pleasing combination is now owned by a cartel) but there are several "themes" in magic as well. what if someone claims say making someone disappear? Or claims the use of fire in their act? don't think it can't happen as from what we've seen with copyrights these things always get stretched into insane levels by lawyers looking for a check.
So I have to say this is a real puzzler for me, on the one hand I hate seeing anyone get ripped off but on the other the last thing we need is another way for pond scum lawyers to sue people.
Uhhh...because Android phones are cheap? hell you can get the Galaxy precedent Straightalk for like $130 and after playing with one I can say they are quite nice, very responsive and quick to load apps. And at $45 a month for unlimited everything most folks i know are using it as their PMP, GPS, netbook, etc.
So I'd say it was probably because while Apple already had a huge market they could tap with Android most folks weren't gonna pay more for a player than they would for a smartphone. after all the Galaxy player is $220 and the Precedent is $130, so why would I buy the player?
What is sad is that all these groups..PETA, Greenpeace, MAD, all started out with good intentions and goals, Greenpeace to stop whalers and those breaking treaties and polluting our oceans, MAD to stop drunk driving, PETA to insure the ethical treatment of food animals, but somewhere along the way the batshit fringes took over and frankly they are all loony tunes, PETA with the "sea kittens", the new head of MAD saying their goal is now prohibition (like we haven't seen what a failure THAT was) and Greenpeace with the constant lies.
Man its just a shame that you can't have an org that does good things hardly anymore without the batshit coming along and mucking everything up. All three originally had goals we could all stand behind, I mean nobody wants to see animals tortured, our oceans destroyed, or drunks plowing down families on the highway, but having sensible goals looks to be a thing of the past, its all loony tunes all the way down and i think that's a damned shame.
Nice to see I'm not the only one who finds the entire deal puzzling. the only thing I can think of is since they still have their embedded hard drive division they maybe have a cheap POS design already cooked up using the tech they already have and hope by buying IBM's contracts they can convert these users over to their new POS designs without having to compete, but even then it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
I mean we ARE talking 850 million dollars here, how are they gonna make enough off of sales and support in a market that is about to have its throat slit by commodity boxes? it would be like buying a company that only made desktop HDDs at this stage of the game with everyone going mobile...I honestly can't see where they are gonna find the sales to make this deal turn a profit. In every store I've walked into of late all I've seen is commodity X86 and ARM based touchscreens being used as POS, I don't think I saw a single "big name' POS unit, so where are they gonna get a billion plus dollars in sales to make this deal a winner?
I don't understand why he didn't know the answer except maybe he doesn't really know the products that he has acquired. the desktop was always free, the mobile always pay, no different than how many companies have a free consumer version and a non-free business version.
What always amazes me is how completely rampant the hypocrisy is in the tech community as the very same ones who had a living shitfit when MSFT tried to pull the exact same trick with the desktop (which was free) have NO problem when Google does it with mobile which was never free in the first place! you can't have your cake and eat it too, either any corp can do anything they want to a language no matter what the original creator thinks or one must bow to the original creator, pick already!
Because the only difference between this and what MSFT did was Google changed the name. tell me if MSFT had called theirs coffee would you have supported them? probably not, yet you do Google, why? Because Google basically snatched the Linux kernel and then hands it to companies that then lock the bootloader? Kinda sad that the FOSS advocates are so damned desperate for a win they will blindly champion a company that isn't doing them any favors and is gathering so much data on its users it makes every triple letter agency drool. Maybe one should see what RMS has to say about it? If his feelings on Google are like his feelings on Chrome again you may not be doing anybody in favors by cheering Google here.