Actually most musicians will tell you they don't make shit from record sales, all the money comes from concerts and merch. hell even those of us that played in regional bands can tell you that, you sell the CD for a little over cost, just to cover production, and where you make your profits are the T-shirts, hats, mugs, keyrings, etc.
Why? simple: the music is advertising that gets you to the show. The more CDs you have out there, the more people you have potentially listening and hopefully playing it for their friends. this advertising then gets said friends to go to the show, where you as the artist then sell them the merch.
I had a nice thing going with my band where in each city we played I'd go hit the pawn shops and pick up a "pawn shop special" guitar or bass, which we would all sign and either myself (if it was a bass) or one of our guitarists would play it for a few (or several if they liked the sound) songs and then we would raffle it off. Every CD,T-shirt, etc got you another slot in the drawing. made out like bandits with that one we did. Oh and if any other musicians want to use the idea I offer it under the GPL. As long as you give me credit have fun! And enjoy the money, as we'd make close to a thousand a night with that trick.
So you see Nomadic the CDs are adverts nothing more, and it is the middle men leeches, that royally fuck EVERYBODY that are trying to make them profit centers. and why not? they steal the rights from the artists, don't pay them shit (last I checked even top draws only get a lousy 80c on a $20 CD) and own the rights to do with as they like for eternity.
Oh and as for why anyone would sign? We were told flat footed that NO radio stations in any of the markets would be allowed to play us, NO TV other than local would be allowed to touch us, and you know what? They were right. We had DJs tell us "Man we just love your stuff and listen to it in our cars, but we'll get fired if your name isn't on the list". You see this is what in the past would be labeled payola or antitrust, but since our corporate masters were able to get those pesky laws ignored with sack fulls of bribes they are allowed to pull that shit. We never signed but we got to see first hand what happened when you did, as one of the bands opening for us did. They ended up breaking up and never being able to work together just to get out of their contract, and now they can't play those two albums worth of songs, since the record company completely owns them for eternity.
So I can tell you that you aren't hurting any artists by going PTB, in fact the more people that listen to them the better. They will be lucky if they get a few pennies from the record leeches, more likely they will be like our friends and get hit with a $60,000 bill for "advertising expenses" for a record THEY promoted THEY recorded for less than $10k and THEY hustled to sell. The record management set up a grand total of TWO radio interviews, then new management came in and decided they were "going in a new direction" and basically left them in the street. so fuck the record companies and the horses they rode in on, you ain't doing no favors to artists by buying from them!
Oh you're so right, why they can even get to the DOS underpinnings that way! Oh, wait a tick, that hasn't been true for nearly FIVE years now since on Vista and 7 both run IE under low rights mode something even Linux doesn't have. Last time I checked Linux ran the browser with the same rights as the user that launched it whereas both IE and Chromium based (like the Comodo Dragon I'm typing on now) run as LOW rights, with the Dragon and other chromiums going one more step further and sandboxing (and if you are running the excellent Avast free you can have a "Yo Dawg" moment as it sandboxes too) the browser.
So unless you want us to start talking about how Linux is only up to version 2 of the kernel and doesn't support SATA yet you might want to stick with the facts, kay? If someone chooses to run a decade old OS, even if MSFT is nice enough to still offer security patches, that still isn't gonna make it safe for the modern web, anymore than digging out some 10 year old Debian discs would make for a very secure web server.
As for TFA, what was it I said to the Mac troll that swore up and down it wasn't a bug (he insisted on correcting everyone with a nice blame the victim "its a trojan!" meme) and insisted It didn't have anything to do with his excellent OS, just stupid users? oh yeah I said "the blood is in the water, now the wolves will come because they have seen that many Macs are like sheep ready for the slaughter" and guess what? I was right! Apple has gotten by with "security by obscurity" for so long that practically NO sally average Mac user follows safe practices, nobody on the Apple side runs AV or antimalware, so here come the sharks.
Which only makes sense, because despite all the "poo poo, Macs aren't toys for the rich, poo poo" studies have shown that not only do mac owners have multiple Macs, they on average pull down $100,000 a year. Wow. Who do you think has a juicier CC? The guy making $100k a year pisslefarting on his Mac? Or Becky the Wally world checkout girl who just got that $400 Dell out of lay-away? I know who I would be going after, and it sure wouldn't be Becky. Windows will be the target for botnets, and Macs will be the targets of those wanting them CC digits.
Mark my words: Now that they have seen how well they can spread the blood IS in the water, now the sharks will come. like any other predator the wolves looking to steal CCs, be it by ransomware or scareware or simply snatching the digits, they will look at Macs like a hungry wolf looks at a nice T-Bone steak. If it is any consolation Mac guys, I have a feeling Android may be the "mass market" product the bones the Linux guys, so at least you won't be alone. As a windows builder allow me to say...Welcome! The "how not to get pwned" workshop is on Thrusdays, coffee and donuts are in the back. Welcome to the club fellas, hey at least that means you're popular now, right?
Has anybody done a study on patten unlocks and what frequency we humans pick the same patterns? Because while I don't have a Droid just watching the video posted above my guess is along with the "left to right G shape" there will probably be a lot of people doing something like a cross, 4 box pattern, etc. We humans tend to like certain shapes and tend to go for those, such as tic tac toe.
So if anybody has a link comparing pattern matching to password guessing my bet is it would be interesting to see which is more prevalent, the same numbers chosen or the same patterns. Since I don't have the data and have to guess I bet ordinary folks probably pick the same patterns quite often, just like the old ASD123asd or Passw0rd passwords are used a lot.
And you are assuming the price is fixed at $100 whereas I would argue by the time that the new consoles (which will most likely be $300-$400 and up, except for whatever Nintendo comes out with) I have no doubt we'll be seeing sub $50 streaming boxes. I already picked up an Nbox for my dad because where he lives at DSL is around 500Kb on a good day, and by simply adding a USB enclosure to a 200Gb drive I had lying around I made a perfect present for my dad, that holds all of his action flicks and is butt simple to use.
How much would it cost in BOM to add wireless to this box? $1, maybe $2? Certainly less than the $20 difference between its current price and the $50 sweet spot. My guess is long before the next gen consoles get cheap as the current X360 is these boxes will be in the sub $60 range with wifi and Ethernet. Simply add a HDD like the WDTV or Nbox and you have a perfect little media tank for cheaper than a decent DVD player, something everyone including those who don't play games can afford.
And never underestimate the fact that people will see the next gen consoles as "game machines" first and foremost. sure the early adopters will be using all the bling bling extras but you'd be surprised how many people are actually surprised when I tell them their X360 and Windows 7 PC can be easily connected together. The thought simply never crosses their mind because the X360 is a "game player" and the PC is a...well PC. And then you have to figure in the bedroom, the kid's room, etc and quickly those game players will add up, whereas the Nboxes and WDTVs will be so dirt cheap nobody will even think twice. I already have several families that after hearing me talk of the Nbox has gotten one for their kids, having a device with no discs to scratch is a BIG plus when you have kids under 7. with the new ripping software frankly my mom could rip a DVD to AVI, and if they add streaming support under $70? Easy sell my friend, easy sell.
If you were any more full of shit I could squeeze you and solve the energy crisis! You accuse me of building straw men while you desperately jump through logic hoops and split hairs with a fucking laser! I don't give a wet fart whether you call it malware, trojan, fucking STD and you know what? i'll let you in on a little secret...here it comes...to the user it is ALL viruses all the way down, kay?
And whether you stick your head in the sand and go "tra la la" ain't no concern of mine friend, if you want to think all mac owners are Harvard educated CS grads, go right ahead. i'll tell you you're completely full of shit,. but don't let me stop your delusions none. Whether you refuse to accept it or not many believe Macs are immune to ALL viruses and Yes Virginia they consider this a virus. Get your panties in a twist if you want, but folks decided anything nasty is a bug a while back, right around when they decided there wasn't a difference between "hacker and cracker'. And I have seen sales guys in Worst Buy feed that very same lie to sell Macbooks.
So whether you choose to see that this is a bug, or that many Mac owners believe they can do whatever they want on the net is YOUR business, but as a guy that has been in the trenches for damned near 25 years I can tell you its a fact. I'm betting right now there is a shitload of VERY pissed off mac owners who had their little bubble burst on Macs being immune. Will that get them to switch to Linux or Windows? Who knows, but I doubt it. People are lazy and stick with what they know and nobody markets boutique slick like old Jobs. But what I CAN tell you is the malware writers are gonna have a field day, because they already have seen blood in the water, and they know the Macs are like sheep waiting for the wolves to descend. so many have convinced themselves they have no reason to ever worry they don't even think.
How else do YOU explain a trojan that needs a password spreading like wildfire? Were all those Mac owners just bored and wanted the "fun" of dealing with malware? Give me a break! .
Bingo! The only problem I personally see with places like Yelp is that they are rigged to side with trolls because they make their money by going "Psst! want to make these bad reviews go away? Give us $$$ and we'll make them disappear!" now THAT should be called what it is, blackmail pure and simple.
Otherwise as long as the doc is allowed to respond they shouldn't EVER have the right to take free speech (and has anyone seen if these are legal?) from anyone. I run a little shop and can count the number of PO'ed customers on a single hand. if they wrote a bad review i'd be happy to point out they simply had unbelievable expectations (One guy wanted his PC fixed for $20, trying to haggle like it was a fricking auction, another kept disabling his AV when it wouldn't let him install "Iz_Not_ViruZ_Iz_Pron_Codec.exe" and then expected me to clean his mess for free) and let people decide.
In ANY business you are gonna have some pissed off customers, I don't care how good of a job you do. some people think the world revolves around them and they can do anything they want, like spill a Coke down a PC and expect to return it, others think a single payment gets them repairs for life. but for every moron like that a GOOD business will have easily 1000 customers that have nothing but good things to say, and if a site isn't rigged like Yelp is then the good should outweigh the bad by huge amounts. Trying to get rid of free speech isn't the answer, having professional slander sites like Yelp shut down should be.
One last thing about docs: there should be an IRONCLAD contract that states 'here are what the side effects of this drug is, by agreeing to it you agree NEVER to sue if you have these side effects after being told" because I spent 5 years in a living hell because the miracle drug that would help me was taken off the market thanks to lawsuit whores. For ANYONE that took this drug you had to not only have a 30 minute explanation of the side effects as well as agree to not have ANY kids for AT LEAST 10 years, but actually had to watch a film as well telling you this, and sign saying you had watched it. so what happened? A couple of bitches (may they fucking rot) took the drug then promptly went out and got knocked up having horribly fucked up kids in the process. They sued and got an assload of money, which caused the drug to get yanked off the market.
NEWS FLASH: ALL DRUGS HAVE SIDE EFFECTS and if we are not gonna be able to have a medication because some asshole fucks himself up on it by not following the rules and sues? Well then there are gonna be a lot of suffering people needlessly. I should be able to sign a contract with my doc and get ANY drug he thinks would help me, period the end. Medications should be decided by the doc, not a lawsuit whore. Hell it is no wonder docs are so damned panicked right now, a doc can give someone a bottle of medication and if they crush it and shove it up their ass frying their brain they'll find some asshole ambulance chaser that will sue for a billion dollars over it!
And you have been able to do the same thing in Windows for a decade, by simply setting them up as a normal user and not handing them the password for admin. your point? in the end the simple fact is if a user has rights, they have the right to be stupid and there is no way to take away the "right to be stupid" part without taking away ALL of their rights.
This is why you see much more infections on home users than corporate networks (well run networks that is) as the admins take away their rights, including the right to be stupid. But unless you want to trust the two Steves or the head of the repo or anybody else in charge of "doing no evil" and give away your rights you simply have to give them the right to be stupid. Because no matter how "smart" you make the OS in the end the user actually has to THINK occasionally and not abuse their rights.
In the end you will see more and more "MacDefender" style infections, same as here in the shop I've seen infections go from Windows exploits to third party software to social engineering. Because at the end of the day the user will always be the weakest link and no amount of OS planning or protection will stop the user if they truly want the carrot the malware writer is offering, or simply refuses to think. it is the classic dancing bunnies problem and has been going on nearly as long as there have been PCs. Hell some of the first bugs I had to clean were boot sector floppy bugs, which spread by people copying warez. You offer the dancing bunny and the malware is just an added 'bonus" or in this case you spook the user into thinking they MUST have the malware to protect them from...what else? Malware! In the end you just can't stop stupid, sooner or later the user has to think or you have to take away ALL their rights, there really is no in between.
I frankly don't see how Linux (or any OS for that matter) can protect from this, as it is a classic social engineered 'ZOMG! You HAVE to run this RIGHT NOW or you will die ZOMG!" style infection, which we Windows repair guys have seen quite often through the "Security Tool" and Antivirus 20xxx variants.
Since Vista I have noticed less and less malware are going after the OS anymore, and instead are either going after third party software with serious flaws (such as anything Adobe along with Java, both of which rarely gets updated on a machine) along with social engineering. on the social engineering front they can usually be divided into these categories. the 'ZOMG! You got teh virus! Run Iz_Not_Viruz_Iz_Fixer.exe to kill it ZOMG!' the 'Want teh hot lesboz? We give u teh hot lezboz for teh free! Jusr run Iz_Not_Viruz_Iz_Codex.exe' so you can play teh moviez!' and the ever popular "My BFF Kim sent me a (insert screensaver,LOLCat Video,zip full of pictures) and it says I need to click this email link and run Iz_Not_Viruz_Iz_Goodie.exe to enjoy them!"
Notice how in NONE of the above does the underlying OS have a damned thing to do with making the attack successful? I've found a good 90%+ of new malware I'm finding on machines are using social engineering because it is easier to pwn a machine if the user helps and by appealing to their greed, desire, gullibility, or fear, one can easily solicit their aid in infecting their machine.
So frankly I don't see how anyone can expect Apple, Canonical, MSFT, or anybody else for that matter to magically stop the user without taking away the rights of ownership ala sticking them in a walled sandbox where someone else decides what they can and can't have. Now what you CAN do is to pop up warnings like UAC or in this case like Apple asking for the password, and if they are foolish enough to give it have a cleaning tool for after the fact like MSRT.
But unfortunately there simply isn't a way to patch stupid, and most of us I'm sure wouldn't like to give up our rights to control our machines just to keep the Forest Gumps out there from doing dumb shit. Hell just a couple of weeks ago I had to deal with an angry customer who was infected less than a week after I handed him his new machine. did I miss an attack vector? Nope he ignored every word I said and went so far as to disable his AV because it wouldn't let him install "the new Limewire" (Iz_Not_Viruz_Iz_New_Limewirez.exe) and then got pissed because there wasn't some way for the box to magically protect him from his own stupidity. I finally just told him "You ignored everything I said, you disabled your AV, all because you didn't want to pay for some cheap pop crap. Well TNSTAAFL and if you walk out in front of a truck after everyone has warned you it is coming? Well then you deserve to be hit, sorry". Sometimes you just have to be blunt with the stupid, otherwise they are just too dumb to fucking get it.
I'm sure the tidal wave of new malware coming to Macs thanks to the success of MacDefender will weed out the retarded soon enough. The question will be just how much does Apple's business model depend on the stupid, and how many of them will end up going to Windows when they find out Macs can't magically protect them from being total dumbasses. Frankly after dealing with some of the braintrusts that argued up and down with me that "Macs can NOT get infected!" while the DNSChanger bug was happily sending all their machines to porn sites? If the ones I have dealt with are typical you are looking at a minimum of 30% of mac users being dumb as stumps. Whether they will get pissed and leave or stay because Macs are more expensive (and yes I've seen plenty of folks buy Macs because they have money and wish to show it off. How do you think that "I am rich" app was able to sell?) is anybody's guess.
You want to know what is sad? I have gotten to the point that when I buy a game I take its nice shiny box and put it in the closet and just run the "Razr1911" version. Why? Because their shitty ass ring 0 DRM garbage makes a modern X64 OS run like ass, so yet again its the pirate version for the win!
If for any reason I need to install new hardware, or move my game folder to that new drive I just bought without wanting to do a full reinstall, the pirate version "just works" whereas the DRM version is crap. Starting with Bioshock II (which makes you run GFWL, which I've spent more time fighting that POS software service than I have the bad guys in the games) I've simply bought the game and left it in the package. The Razr1911 version doesn't need GFWL, it has a pre hacked version already included that "just works" hassle free. And that doesn't count the fact that so many of the games I buy simply won't run OOTB because the DRM ignore the drive (because I have two burners and no players) and calls me a pirate for daring to have burners in my machine! WTF? who doesn't have burners in their machine today? Hell they are cheaper than the players!
For a good example of how this DRM bites you in the ass I invite you to watch this video (warning language NSFW, but you watch it you'll understand why he is POed) and share it with everybody you know. People don't realize that for many of us piracy isn't about "getting free stuff" it is about being able to use what we paid for because if the DRM don't work there is nothing you can do, as most places won't accept opened returns. As the guy in TFL I posted says "It IS bullshit!" and I have to agree. Nowhere else are you allowed to sell products that are broken by design and fail so often to do as intended.
I've got a question about the whole "unique, globally addressable IP" thing, and my question is this: Isn't that gonna make every *.A.A have a woody, as well as every government, by making everyone trivial to locate? I mean with IPV4 it is really cat and mouse, as nearly every home user is on Dynamic IPs, which means what they had today could be completely different from what they have tomorrow, but won't this make it a cakewalk for every government three letter agency and their corporate masters to find out every single thing a person does or says on the net?
With all these "PROTECT IP" style laws getting passed, and more and more the government being in bed blatantly with the corps, not to mention treating those that dare to publish docs showing corruption like Wikileaks as "subversive" having everyone with a unique ID seems like a really BAD idea to me right now. So what is too keep this from being a 1984 lover's wet dream?
It isn't only that, it is the fact that if they don't offer some sort of 6to4 setup the amount of pissed off users and eWaste generated is gonna be unreal, so bad it'll make the CRT to LCD switch look like a green revolution.
Look at the sub $80 routers, both wired and wireless on Newegg. See how many are offering IPV6 even today. You will find damned few if any. As someone who sells and services PCs I can tell you the vast majority of routers in homes and small businesses are sub $50 routers that can not and most like will never support IPV6. Don't say tomato or another Linux "hack" either, as most of these things are 200Mhz CPUs with maybe 4 Mbs of RAM and a couple of Mbs of flash. There simply isn't the room to hold any Linux firmware on there.
So I really don't blame many of the ISPs for holding off, it is gonna be a support nightmare unless they have 6to4 set up so seamless that the user can just plug in their current router and go. As it is currently you'd have to tell your customers they are gonna have to shitcan their current routers for an Apple Airport, which costs double to triple, maybe even 5 times as much (the $20 Trendnets are quite popular in SOHOs, as is the $25 wireless version) for a router that is gonna have a ton of features they'll never ever use, simply because the router manufacturers are dragging their feet.
IMNSHO we really need to go ahead and simply ban the import of routers that don't have native IPV6 support. It is simply ridiculous that so many routers are being imported and sold even after the IPV4 pool has run out with no support for IPV6, and with no plans by the OEMs to offer upgraded firmware. This is a classic example of "designed for the dump" and if we want to cut down on the headaches of IPV6* then we really need to stop these routers being imported now, to force the OEMs to start building native support for IPV6. Otherwise it looks like we'll be seeing IPV4 only home routers for quite some time to come.
*-Personally since only 35% at last count of IPV4 is actually being used, the rest hogged by those that got in early or squatters I think we should propose a "$1 a month per IP" plan. You want to keep that class a? That'll be $1 a month per IP to help pay for the upgrade for IPV6. I bet that would kill squatting dead, as well as get those companies that got in on the ground floor and are now just sitting on huge block to seriously rethink sitting on them. If you want to keep them fine, pay up. Otherwise sell them or give them back for a one time tax break of $1 per IP. If this were to happen we could probably gain another 5-10 years, and then could implement as I said a slow and orderly phase out of hardware supporting IPV4, and get our admins up to speed (I know many that are retiring or switching careers rather than deal with the nightmare that is the switch while already being underpaid and short handed) so that we don't end up with a mess.
Remember folks that much of your traffic sooner or later has to go through what you call the "flyover states" where I can tell you its a mess here, with corps lowballing the pay so badly nobody wants the jobs, expecting you on your own time to learn the latest tech with NO compensation, and most places having less than half the amount of help they really need. I have a feeling when the IPV6 switch gets flipped you are gonna see failures all over the flyover states, and fixes that should take hours will take weeks if not longer, simply because you have a shortchanged staff running on less than half manpower and far behind the curve on the tech. Most of the ISP here have had "help wanted!" signs up for over a year, because they are paying so shitty and expecting so much in return for said shit pay nobody will take the jobs even in a dead economy. it ain't gonna be pretty folks, I have a feeling this may be a real life version of Y2K.
The thing is, I honestly think if we do go for the Hail Mary "Lets act like the Germans when they had that crazy Austrian!" asshole route, I don't think it'll be over anything the Chinese will give a shit about. On the contrary if both sides played their cards right they'd both come out ahead, and maybe even get our old former rivals Russia in on the deal.
How would that work? simple, if we decide to go crazy Austrian (which if our economy tanks ala Germany 33 IS a possibility. you don't think those in power will just quietly go away like Mubarak, do you?) then the two powers we will need to take out of the equation will be China and Russia, as we sure as fuck don't want to deal with the Red Army or the PLA mucking up the works. but how without going WWIII?
Simple we give them what they want and give both Russia and China a 'happy ending". Russia has never liked having an open western flank, and you can tell old Putin is a classic red, so we say 'hey friend, you know that whole Eastern Europe thing? Have fun!" and at the same time that will scare the crap out of the Germans by having the old USSR looking to spread its wings again. as for China? they want Africa, and they want it bad. Who can blame them? lots of resources, crappy armies, it would be a cakewalk for China if the USA and Russia STFU so we say "Hey our eastern friends, you know Africa? have fun!" if they balk we can throw in Taiwan, like we would care about them if our economy is in the shitter.
So what do we get? The "United Continent of America" of course! you know how much raw resources are south of the border? We just get our good friends the canucks to crank up the oil sands to feed the M1s (which I'm sure they'd do to keep us from looking in THEIR direction) and away we go! Hell we even have pre made bogeymen in the narcoterrorists and Chavez, it would be an easy sell to the American public. A couple of jingos, lots of flag waving, easy sell.
Who would stand up to a new tripartite consisting of USA, USSR, and China? Britain? Wolf packs showed how to fix THAT little problem. The French? Italy? Please. And Germany will be too busy watching their flank and trying to control the EU to give a shit. As an added bonus we could work out a "mid east security deal" between the three of us that would STFU anybody that would dare say shit in that region.
So I think if we have a Germany 32 style money collapse the Chinese won't be having to worry about us, too damned far and too much work, especially when they are so easy to make deals with. No it is the poor bastards south of the border that should be watching for the falling bombs. Hell we already have enough hatred of Mexicans that turning South Americans into the bogey man would be a piece of cake. but anybody that thinks the USA would go silently into the sunset is just nuts. We have too many weapons and too much pride to go down easy. if the shit hits the fan it WILL be nasty.
Ha! to be rivals we'd actually have to compete with them. With the US and China right now it is more like a crack dealer and his customers, and we ain't the dealer! I'm just waiting for them to have enough US paper they can say "hey, you know that whole Taiwan thing? Yeah unless you want your money to be worth about the same as a Zimbabwean dollar you will STFU while we take it, kay?" and you know what? We'll STFU.
America is too hooked on cheap electronics to say shit to China anymore, and i'm sure they know it. Personally I don't see why we don't just admit it and be what we were born to be...arms dealer to the world. hell it is the only thing worth a shit we build anymore, we may not be able to build a TV but dammit we can build an F-18 or M1a1 like nobody's business! Hell if we don't start selling something the trade deficit is gonna kill us, and with all the floods and tornadoes exporting food might not be a wise move in the future. The Ruskies sell everything to everyone, why the hell shouldn't we?
I'm sure the Chinese would be happy to give back some of that paper for F-16s, great little bird that. They want to build up their military? Let every tank have "Made in the USA" stamped on it! While we are at it we got that boneyard with billions of dollars, just sitting there in the desert! Fire sale anyone? I bet there are plenty of countries that would like some of those warbirds, now at rock bottom prices! Hell we could put the Ruskies out of business!
Oh I can't stand the fire and brimstone types, I got my fill of those when I was a teen. true story I had become friend with this guy whose sis I was sleeping with, I didn't know what his dad did for a living, just that there was this big funky glass and steel building right by their house that his sis had keys for (and which we screwed in A LOT).
So I stay the weekend with the guy (I get a two for, visit my bud and a booty call, can't beat that!) and on Sunday right after we both took some killer acid he tells me we gotta make an appearance at his dad's "job". little shit gave me NO warning, and BTW I was wearing my favorite Rush 2112 shirt (I'm sure you know the one). so he and I walk in the door right in the middle of a freaking sermon and his dad takes one look at me and says "look at that! A reason why the youth of today are GONNA BURN!" talking about my shirt. I tried to hold it in, I swear I did, but I just bust out laughing my ass off and walked out the door. it didn't really help that while this douchebag was screaming about fire and brimstone his son had the best smoke in the county and I had boned his baby less than 12 feet from where he was standing. Needless to say I was NOT invited back. If he only new his baby insisted that we do right where he had stood and called me out the next Saturday! HA HA!
So yeah, really got no time for fire and brimstone types. But I knew Charles before he became a preacher, and he has always walked the walk. he don't judge anybody and uses any profits for the homeless and food kitchens. He also don't waste time trying to convert my ass, so it all works out. To this day if that man is in a jam and needs a bass player to cover his butt I'll be there, simply because no matter what his beliefs he does good work.
BTW my mom actually knows the above story (heard it from my sis after it got out all over town, I was looked at like a God for laughing at Mr fire and brimstone while secretly doing his daughter) and she insisted on telling my GF that story "to let her know what she was in for". Brenda just looked at me, who had a cat ate the canary grin, and said "you know, he can act all nice and meek but I KNEW he was a wild one!" and that was that. Nice thing about having a Cherokee GF, she don't buy into all the fire and brimstone BS either. She follows the great spirit of her people which she says doesn't discriminate against wild asses like me,LOL
Except you can't avoid it by choosing hardware because what works ATM may not work 6 months from now! Am I supposed to offer free hardware upgrades to all my customers when Torvalds gets an itch and borks something major that may not be fixed for months?
I have seen this happen with Realtek HD sound, with Via chipsets and sound, even the Aetheros wireless that so many on the forums pushed as "it just works" which BTW would have added a good $50 to any mobile build, well guess what happened? That's right, the latest updates is causing problems for those chips!
So I'm sorry, but as a retailer that has tried your product since Ubuntu 6.04, as well as PCLOS and Mepis, I'm afraid I have to agree with what one poster here said "Linux is free if your time is worthless". because if it was my own box on my own time, where I had nothing better to do than trawl forums with a list of my make/model/rev of hardware? then yes I could use Linux on my personal machine. But for my customers, who just want to "flip the switch and go" and have no desire no inclination to learn Linux forums nor CLI fix application? Then I'm sorry but its a mess.
Tell you what YOU try to design the hardware. Try to design a bog standard desktop and laptop using basic designs and then YOU go look at the forums and see if not at least one of those parts have been borked by updates between 6.04 and Ubuntu 11. I bet you'll find they have been borked at LEAST once, if not multiple times. Which only makes sense as you are talking about 10s of 1000s of drivers, all of which HAVE to keep up with Linus's constant kernel futzing. There is simply no way in hell all of those drivers for all of that hardware will be done in time for every single 6 month update, there simply aren't enough man hours dedicated to the job.
Again that is all well and good if it is only YOUR machine that gets borked, but I literally have on average between 4 and 7 boxes sold a week. do the math and see how much of my time would be dealing with pissed off customers who got "update foo broke my drivers" and how much of my time would be wasted trawling forums for fixes. my time costs a minimum of $35 an hour, at that rate it only takes a little over 2 hours for Windows to become the cheaper solution. I can easily blow 4 or 5 hours minimum on a PITA driver breakage. the ONLY machines I have found where one can expect even a 2 year run without breaking is enterprise class hardware where the OEM supports Linux, like HP workstations. The MUCH higher price of those simply makes them not worth even looking at. Again if Linux would fix this major deficiency, instead of sling insults and kissing Torvalds butt, Linux might get somewhere in the retail space. Because there are plenty of guys like me that would stock it.
But you'll notice the ONLY places selling Linux boxes are online, where they don't have to support it after the sale. that is VERY telling, because I guarantee you that like me if they actually had to support the things after the sale that would find Linux a money pit. When you can't even get a single national retailer to stock your product in their B&M stores? And everyone from staples to Walmart has tried and failed due to returns rates being insane? Then it is high time to ask 'What are we doing wrong?" and I'd say the constant driver breakage, which c'mon! Its 2011 not 1991 folks, is a hell of a reason to avoid your OS in the retail sector!
Your post brings up something that frankly has been bugging the living shit out of me. Now we have all this processing power, yes? Multicore CPUs, GPUs with dozens if not hundreds of stream processors, right? So why in the fuck can't I knock that damned door down no matter what I am packing! Seriously WTF?
If I have a fricking shotgun and I run into a damned wooden door I ought to be able to use a standard SWAT breach maneuver and get through the damned door! All their talk about physics bullshit and I still can't even blow down the damned door with an RPG? WTF people?
And it sounds like basically we are 100% in agreement, we are just looking at it from different angles. you think it is laziness, whereas I think it is nothing but Kotik style "milk that IP!" bullshit. They have learned how to crank out the bling bling almost to the point they can do it by assembly line, no thought required, therefor they can give it to the grunts to do and kick back and cash the checks. It doesn't help that we have so many clueless (I'm sorry, but running around like a chicken with your head cut off stabbing somebody with a knife until you get shot is NOT in any way innovative) that treat the MP in CoD as some sort of second coming, giving them an easy way to milk the shit out of the IP without having to do anything but add a little more bling and a new number.
You will notice that damned near every. single. game. now has MP bolted onto it, even when it makes no damned sense whatsoever, just trying to milk that IP, and I would argue it also gives them an excuse to make a piss poor cookie cutter SP experience by giving the excuse that SP is more of a "training level" (yeah, cause you need lots of training for running around like a madman shooting everything in sight) for the MP bullshit. Mark my words it is gonna be another dreary Q3:Arena style drought where shitty game after shitty game is cranked out with its sole excuse for being is MP, only now it will be WORSE than the shittastic Q3:Arena period because they have now found out how to "monetize the IP long term" by screwing the shit out of you if you don't shell out another $100 or more on DLC. And then as soon as they can't milk it anymore? "Oh its time to abandon that game, no dedicated servers for you! Nope it is time to jump onto our next $100+ DLC shitfest "Medal of Dookie 6: Super chickens with their heads cut of with a vengeance!"
So it is any wonder so many of us are hanging onto our hardware and not buying as much as the fratboy consolers? Unlike the consolers we had plenty of games in the past that are still playable without needing a separate machine for them and frankly they were better than the cookie cutter bullshit I see today. For every decent game you have to wade through ass deep shit, with reviewers so blatantly paid off it ain't even funny, oh and look how quick that one got fired for daring to say Kane&Lynch was MOR (in actuality it sucked assholes, but the poor bastard wasn't allowed to tell the truth) so you have to wade through ass deep shit or wait until a game has been out several months so actual gamers can speak the truth. Meanwhile we are buried alive in cookie cutter bling bling bullshit fests, with the gameplay being either mediocre at best, or at worst unplayable without an X360 controller, and Ai that either lines up to die or has X-Ray vision that lets them snipe you from behind ANY cover while taking more rounds than the T-800 did in the Cyberdyne scene in Judgement Day.
And sorry about the length of the rant, I'm just so damned tired of every 9 out of 10 games being SSDD. I've gone back to playing games like No One Lives Forever, simply because i'm so damned tired of quick time events, my guy carrying only 2 weapons, not being able to blast open a shitty wooden door even with a bazooka, lame ass AI that sucks no matter what setting you play on, broken controls, hell I could go on all day. They talk about how PC gamers bring in less money? Well maybe if you didn't put out broke ass console ports we might actually be excited and buy your game!
Just goes to show how, yet again....piracy wins! With piracy one doesn't have to give up control or freedom, you can have it in any damned format you want, and no worry about rootkits, backdoors or other acts of sabotage...err...I mean 'protecting of IP".
Time and time again, from game companies putting out their wares with nasty malware DRM, music companies putting ring 0 drivers that leave huge gaping security holes, and now this, time and time again the corps make sure piracy is ALWAYS better. Why you'd think they have stock in PTB or something!
Oh and mark my words Android WILL end up as locked down as iPhone, just you watch. Now that it has started to get traction both Google and the carriers will want more control, and since they have been very careful not to touch ANYTHING GPL V3 with regards to Android the next move will be eFuses or code signing. They'll do it "for security" and probably announce it right after some piece of Android malware has hit, but the results will be the same. Just like TiVo you'll have the code but not be able to do a damned thing with it.
While I've never agreed with much when it comes to RMS I thought then as now he had it spot on, once the corps were shown by TiVo how to lock up GPL code then the days of GPL V2 were numbered for anybody that actually cared for the four freedoms. Funny how once the TiVo trick was known all these corps started using GPL V2 code huh? Especially how they've gone out of their way to make sure they aren't "tainted" with GPL V3 code anywhere near their devices. mark my words Google doesn't need the geeks anymore so the days of open Android are numbered. They will jump in bed with the *.A.As, the carriers, and of course making it so every search has to go through Google will just be a nice bonus. Don't forget how they said Android was "open" and then said it was open "for the carriers" not the end users. These are just the feelers, seeing how much backlash they are gonna get. mark my words, before Xmas you'll see the end of Android being open.
Just cause it hasn't bit you in the ass don't mean others aren't getting pwned. I personally haven't seen a bug on my windows machines since 99 but I wouldn't be foolish enough to say infections aren't rampant, I see them every day. Since there isn't something like MSRT on Mac frankly we have NO idea how badly the infections have already spread, and with Apple in full cover up mode we frankly may not know for months or maybe even a year or more. But just because Apple refuses to say the word doesn't mean it isn't spreading. On the contrary I would argue that the reason Apple refuses to say the word is it is spreading quickly and they are trying to do damage control. For all we know this may be the first mac "Code red" style nasty, we simply won't know until someone gathers the data.
I wouldn't say it is just that, it is also that there is only so much eye candy you can look at while getting shot at, and too many turned gamers off by putting out completely shitty console ports, with just a little bling added if that.
In the 90s and early 00s I was the type that had a new PC every two years and was constantly upgrading in between, all trying to get the good framerate. But now with so damned many games being designed for crappy 5 year old consoles first you know what? kinda pointless ATM. I'm quite happy with my Phenom II 925 quad (picked up nearly 2 years go) and the HD4850 my GF picked up for me (those were released in what? 07?) and even on newer games like Batman AA and Just Cause 2 frankly I get all the eye candy I can look at and it runs just fine at my native 1600x900, so why bother upgrading?
I think the problem is too many focused on the bling bling and not the overall gaming experience. I have a couple of gaming customers that bought Crysis for the benchmarking, but do they actually play it? Not really. Sitting here playing in the shop I have folks come in and go "ooooh wow, what is that?" when I'm playing Brothers in Arms, even though that game is going on 8 years old. The reason they oooh and ahhh is because they focused on the experience with decent acting and a story that flows, so you feel like you are in the middle of Band of Brothers on HBO.
Frankly, and I doubt I'm alone, I'd be happy to play a game with Far Cry 1 level graphics if it has a decent story and great controls. Too many of the newer games feel like nobody even bothered to test it with a keyboard to see if it was playable, or it has show stopping bugs that make it so you end up having to wait, sometimes months, just to get a game stable enough to play through.
Bling bling is nice, but give me story, give me some decent AI, I'm so sick of devs bolting on MP and expecting that to be the "fix" for their shoddy AI. If I wanted to run around like a chicken with my head cut off while someone screams nigger and faggot I'd be playing halo. Thanks but no thanks devs. Give us atmosphere and a believable world, give us AI that will put up a good fight instead of the cheap "rubber band AI" that EA uses, where on hard you have a private that can snipe from 1000 yards behind cover while taking more rounds than the Terminator. We have multicore now, why aren't you using them for pathfinding and AI?
And finally do something about your shitty DRM devs! I'd list all the times it has bit me in the ass but I think this guy says it best. So in the end I end up playing older games, games where all the patches are out, where I can download the crack so DRM don't bite me in the ass, games where I've seen enough reviews to know it is actually worth my time. In the end I'd say the consoles are just a symptom of a larger disease, the Activision "Lets milk that IP!" disease, where everything is just another copy of another copy and is frankly boring as hell. Why should I bother upgrading, when the new bling bling games the only thing they offer is bling?
The problem is nobody cares if the OS won't run which is EXACTLY what you have now! Read my earlier post where I gave a link showing how even Dell, one of the largest OEMs on the planet, has to blow serious cash and man hours maintaining their own repos, because if you try to use Canonical's (or any Linux repos) the drivers break and you end up with a crippled machine. I mean I can make the most secure machine in the world if I make sure to break it so bad the user can't do anything, but do you think anybody would buy it?
And between 2K/XP to Vista/7 you are talking a combined 14 years of support where those drivers worked just fine, year after year after year. I have NO doubt with the new driver model we will see as long or even longer support, and I can take Vista drivers and drop them straight into Windows 7 with no hassles or recompiles, or forums, or futzing, it all "just works" and continues to work, no matter how many patches I apply.
Compare this to Linux, where out of the 6 machines I tested (4 desktop and 2 laptops, all with pretty bog standard hardware) where what I found was not a single one survived the updates unscathed. Not a single one. Sound , networking, video, wireless, there was always SOMETHING that didn't survive updates. Was there a simple "update driver" button? A simple way for an average user to easily get the functionality back? Nope it was back to the forums, for sometimes hours, scouring and trying different "fixes" in a vain attempt to get the hardware functional again. I'm sure you'll agree that for an OS for the masses that is simply unacceptable, especially when Windows 7 is so damned simple and intuitive my 68 year old clueless dad installed it by himself and it took care of everything including finding ALL the drivers and giving him a choice of free or pay AVs. The hardest thing he had was it asked "are you at home or at work?" and that was it.
So I hope you can see I'm not some troll, I'm a potential customer. I don't like having to shell out $100 a pop for Windows licenses, and would like to be able to offer low cost machines that anybody can afford. But when I can't even guarantee that the machine will be functional in a year, even if the user only follows best practices? I'm sorry but that is simply inexcusable. I sell to normal folks, not nerds or CS grads. They just want to come home, fire up their PC, and do the things normal folks do, Youtube, email, FaceBook. These jobs could be easily done by Linux but as long as Torvalds treats the kernel as his personal playground, as long as a simple update turns into a "Break linux NOW" button almost every single time without fail, as long as the ONLY way to return the machine to a usable state is to trawl some forum (that is if you haven't had the networking broken by the update) where you have to know the exact make, rev, model, etc AND after all that apply a whole bunch of CLI gibberish that the user won't understand and may/may not work? I'm sorry but that is simply not an acceptable product for home users.
This is why I figured it would only be a matter of time before Macs end up nearly as infested as Windows boxes. the last numbers I saw were something like an average income of $100,000 for Mac owners, which means snatching their CC numbers will be worth a hell of a lot more than snatching the CC from the girl that works the checkout at the Wally World who just got her a $400 Dell laptop.
This is something that both Linux and Apple users are simply gonna have to accept, it is simple really all computers are vulnerable period. ALL OSes, I don't care who makes them, are extremely complex piles of code with so many interactions on so many levels nobody can have a full grasp of all the variables anymore, and that is before you add third party code on top.
Can they be made more secure? Of course they can, which is why you see only 4 infections per 1000 on Windows 7 VS 14 per 1000 on WinXP. But no matter how well you harden the OS it always comes down to the user is the weak point which is why here in my shop I've seen Windows malware go from drive bys and exploits to nearly all social engineering based, it is simply easier if you can trick the user to help you.
In the end owning a Mac or running Linux doesn't instantly make you a CS genius or make you invulnerable to social engineering, as we saw with the Mac DNS changer bug or the KDE screensaver malware that went around a couple of years ago. It all comes down to how bad the bad guys want in, and how much working they are willing to do for a target.
What has protected Macs and Linux in the past is that malware writers like all criminals are naturally lazy creatures, and there was plenty of low hanging Windows machines to snatch. Now that Android is popping up everywhere and the malware guys are starting to realize Macs=money I have NO doubt things are gonna change, just as I have seen Windows malware going from exploit based to third party to social engineering. Times change, targets change, and I have a feeling so many have bought the "Macs don't get malware!" meme that until some really nasty bugs hit Mac guys are gonna be easy pickings. I've already seen it myself, with having to argue with a customer who swore up and down his Macs couldn't possibly be infected even as the DNS Changer bug was redirecting everything.
Off the top of my head...Nvidia, Realtek, Via, Broadcom, Aetheros, and ATI...that enough for you? These are just the ones off the top of my head where an update completely wasted the driver leaving a broken machine in its wake.
Frankly I have seen ONE, just one mind you, machine where it was able to go more than a single update without a single driver breaking, and that was a 10 year old Intel box I was getting ready to chunk and decided to try it. I still threw it away BTW, as nobody wants 10 year old junk anymore.
But I want to thank you, Mr Linux Zealot, thanks for giving a perfect example of why we retailers avoid your product because if we dare to say anything other than "Gee isn't Linux swell? Why it sure is Biff, and RMS's beard smells like roses!" then we get nothing but vicious hatred, with the words "shill" and astroturfer" being your nigger or wetback. anybody that doesn't get in line and follow the "Linux is perfect" meme gets shot down.
Finally you want some proof, 100% undeniable that my words are true? Will the largest OEM on the planet be good enough for you? Dell is having to run their own repos because if you dare to try to update from Canonical's it breaks the drivers.
But I'm sure that rather than admit you are wrong and that drivers are a serious problem, you'll instead trot out the trusted Linux TMs, which BTW they've made a site dedicated to the complete bullshit excuses Linux Zealots use to cover up their failings. So let me guess which ones you will use....let's see...how about "Use Distro X" "Works for Me" and "Astroturfer". Any I missed?
Yep thanks to piracy, which is kinda the opposite of 'works" since the entire reason a black market such as piracy pops up in the first place is that the current market is hopelessly broken and therefor simple supply and demand creates a way around the broken system.
So allow me to say, as someone who has directly benefited from the pirates...thanks! Thanks to you the games that I bought and paid for that no longer works thanks to shitty DRM that refuses to run on a modern OS work just fine, even better than they did before as a matter of fact, since there isn't ring 0 buggy shit running 24/7 in the background.
Thanks to the pirates I can just download an AVI copy of a movie I own instead of wasting time and electricity converting some 8Gb flick, complete with commercials they won't let you avoid, into a file that will easily fit on my little netbook, and thanks to them I can "try before I buy" shows that In wouldn't normally be able to view in my area, such as BtVS, which ended up getting me hooked on Joss Whedon shows and caused me to buy the entire Whedon box set, to the tune of around $1000.
So thank you pirates, you make the world a better place, unlike our corrupt corporate ass kissing congress whores who would happily sell out the constitution if it gave them a big fat check and a job in the industry they are "supposed" to regulate.
Uhhh...because the corps can dump the toxic sludge that is created manufacturing electronics out the back door? For all the libertarian and right wing talk of globalization and free markets the ugly truth is the multinationals are creating toxic sites that will make the American superfund sites (which We, The People got stuck with the bill for after the corps walked away) look like a park your kids can play in.
Look up "India river toxic" to see how big pharma is dumping so many bad batches of drugs into their rivers nothing there is edible or drinkable from it (yet the poor still are) and in China? Jesus Tap Dancing Christ are they dumping the sludge. The pursuit of ever lower costs inevitably ends up with destroyed land, something we have a limited supply of, and poisoned water which we have even less potable water and it will only get worse.
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Actually most musicians will tell you they don't make shit from record sales, all the money comes from concerts and merch. hell even those of us that played in regional bands can tell you that, you sell the CD for a little over cost, just to cover production, and where you make your profits are the T-shirts, hats, mugs, keyrings, etc.
Why? simple: the music is advertising that gets you to the show. The more CDs you have out there, the more people you have potentially listening and hopefully playing it for their friends. this advertising then gets said friends to go to the show, where you as the artist then sell them the merch.
I had a nice thing going with my band where in each city we played I'd go hit the pawn shops and pick up a "pawn shop special" guitar or bass, which we would all sign and either myself (if it was a bass) or one of our guitarists would play it for a few (or several if they liked the sound) songs and then we would raffle it off. Every CD,T-shirt, etc got you another slot in the drawing. made out like bandits with that one we did. Oh and if any other musicians want to use the idea I offer it under the GPL. As long as you give me credit have fun! And enjoy the money, as we'd make close to a thousand a night with that trick.
So you see Nomadic the CDs are adverts nothing more, and it is the middle men leeches, that royally fuck EVERYBODY that are trying to make them profit centers. and why not? they steal the rights from the artists, don't pay them shit (last I checked even top draws only get a lousy 80c on a $20 CD) and own the rights to do with as they like for eternity.
Oh and as for why anyone would sign? We were told flat footed that NO radio stations in any of the markets would be allowed to play us, NO TV other than local would be allowed to touch us, and you know what? They were right. We had DJs tell us "Man we just love your stuff and listen to it in our cars, but we'll get fired if your name isn't on the list". You see this is what in the past would be labeled payola or antitrust, but since our corporate masters were able to get those pesky laws ignored with sack fulls of bribes they are allowed to pull that shit. We never signed but we got to see first hand what happened when you did, as one of the bands opening for us did. They ended up breaking up and never being able to work together just to get out of their contract, and now they can't play those two albums worth of songs, since the record company completely owns them for eternity.
So I can tell you that you aren't hurting any artists by going PTB, in fact the more people that listen to them the better. They will be lucky if they get a few pennies from the record leeches, more likely they will be like our friends and get hit with a $60,000 bill for "advertising expenses" for a record THEY promoted THEY recorded for less than $10k and THEY hustled to sell. The record management set up a grand total of TWO radio interviews, then new management came in and decided they were "going in a new direction" and basically left them in the street. so fuck the record companies and the horses they rode in on, you ain't doing no favors to artists by buying from them!
Oh you're so right, why they can even get to the DOS underpinnings that way! Oh, wait a tick, that hasn't been true for nearly FIVE years now since on Vista and 7 both run IE under low rights mode something even Linux doesn't have. Last time I checked Linux ran the browser with the same rights as the user that launched it whereas both IE and Chromium based (like the Comodo Dragon I'm typing on now) run as LOW rights, with the Dragon and other chromiums going one more step further and sandboxing (and if you are running the excellent Avast free you can have a "Yo Dawg" moment as it sandboxes too) the browser.
So unless you want us to start talking about how Linux is only up to version 2 of the kernel and doesn't support SATA yet you might want to stick with the facts, kay? If someone chooses to run a decade old OS, even if MSFT is nice enough to still offer security patches, that still isn't gonna make it safe for the modern web, anymore than digging out some 10 year old Debian discs would make for a very secure web server.
As for TFA, what was it I said to the Mac troll that swore up and down it wasn't a bug (he insisted on correcting everyone with a nice blame the victim "its a trojan!" meme) and insisted It didn't have anything to do with his excellent OS, just stupid users? oh yeah I said "the blood is in the water, now the wolves will come because they have seen that many Macs are like sheep ready for the slaughter" and guess what? I was right! Apple has gotten by with "security by obscurity" for so long that practically NO sally average Mac user follows safe practices, nobody on the Apple side runs AV or antimalware, so here come the sharks.
Which only makes sense, because despite all the "poo poo, Macs aren't toys for the rich, poo poo" studies have shown that not only do mac owners have multiple Macs, they on average pull down $100,000 a year. Wow. Who do you think has a juicier CC? The guy making $100k a year pisslefarting on his Mac? Or Becky the Wally world checkout girl who just got that $400 Dell out of lay-away? I know who I would be going after, and it sure wouldn't be Becky. Windows will be the target for botnets, and Macs will be the targets of those wanting them CC digits.
Mark my words: Now that they have seen how well they can spread the blood IS in the water, now the sharks will come. like any other predator the wolves looking to steal CCs, be it by ransomware or scareware or simply snatching the digits, they will look at Macs like a hungry wolf looks at a nice T-Bone steak. If it is any consolation Mac guys, I have a feeling Android may be the "mass market" product the bones the Linux guys, so at least you won't be alone. As a windows builder allow me to say...Welcome! The "how not to get pwned" workshop is on Thrusdays, coffee and donuts are in the back. Welcome to the club fellas, hey at least that means you're popular now, right?
Has anybody done a study on patten unlocks and what frequency we humans pick the same patterns? Because while I don't have a Droid just watching the video posted above my guess is along with the "left to right G shape" there will probably be a lot of people doing something like a cross, 4 box pattern, etc. We humans tend to like certain shapes and tend to go for those, such as tic tac toe.
So if anybody has a link comparing pattern matching to password guessing my bet is it would be interesting to see which is more prevalent, the same numbers chosen or the same patterns. Since I don't have the data and have to guess I bet ordinary folks probably pick the same patterns quite often, just like the old ASD123asd or Passw0rd passwords are used a lot.
And you are assuming the price is fixed at $100 whereas I would argue by the time that the new consoles (which will most likely be $300-$400 and up, except for whatever Nintendo comes out with) I have no doubt we'll be seeing sub $50 streaming boxes. I already picked up an Nbox for my dad because where he lives at DSL is around 500Kb on a good day, and by simply adding a USB enclosure to a 200Gb drive I had lying around I made a perfect present for my dad, that holds all of his action flicks and is butt simple to use.
How much would it cost in BOM to add wireless to this box? $1, maybe $2? Certainly less than the $20 difference between its current price and the $50 sweet spot. My guess is long before the next gen consoles get cheap as the current X360 is these boxes will be in the sub $60 range with wifi and Ethernet. Simply add a HDD like the WDTV or Nbox and you have a perfect little media tank for cheaper than a decent DVD player, something everyone including those who don't play games can afford.
And never underestimate the fact that people will see the next gen consoles as "game machines" first and foremost. sure the early adopters will be using all the bling bling extras but you'd be surprised how many people are actually surprised when I tell them their X360 and Windows 7 PC can be easily connected together. The thought simply never crosses their mind because the X360 is a "game player" and the PC is a ...well PC. And then you have to figure in the bedroom, the kid's room, etc and quickly those game players will add up, whereas the Nboxes and WDTVs will be so dirt cheap nobody will even think twice. I already have several families that after hearing me talk of the Nbox has gotten one for their kids, having a device with no discs to scratch is a BIG plus when you have kids under 7. with the new ripping software frankly my mom could rip a DVD to AVI, and if they add streaming support under $70? Easy sell my friend, easy sell.
/Marches in in a Major's outfit and Tutu/ ALRIGHT THEN! That is enough! Stop the sketch! It is just much too silly!
If you were any more full of shit I could squeeze you and solve the energy crisis! You accuse me of building straw men while you desperately jump through logic hoops and split hairs with a fucking laser! I don't give a wet fart whether you call it malware, trojan, fucking STD and you know what? i'll let you in on a little secret...here it comes...to the user it is ALL viruses all the way down, kay?
And whether you stick your head in the sand and go "tra la la" ain't no concern of mine friend, if you want to think all mac owners are Harvard educated CS grads, go right ahead. i'll tell you you're completely full of shit,. but don't let me stop your delusions none. Whether you refuse to accept it or not many believe Macs are immune to ALL viruses and Yes Virginia they consider this a virus. Get your panties in a twist if you want, but folks decided anything nasty is a bug a while back, right around when they decided there wasn't a difference between "hacker and cracker'. And I have seen sales guys in Worst Buy feed that very same lie to sell Macbooks.
So whether you choose to see that this is a bug, or that many Mac owners believe they can do whatever they want on the net is YOUR business, but as a guy that has been in the trenches for damned near 25 years I can tell you its a fact. I'm betting right now there is a shitload of VERY pissed off mac owners who had their little bubble burst on Macs being immune. Will that get them to switch to Linux or Windows? Who knows, but I doubt it. People are lazy and stick with what they know and nobody markets boutique slick like old Jobs. But what I CAN tell you is the malware writers are gonna have a field day, because they already have seen blood in the water, and they know the Macs are like sheep waiting for the wolves to descend. so many have convinced themselves they have no reason to ever worry they don't even think.
How else do YOU explain a trojan that needs a password spreading like wildfire? Were all those Mac owners just bored and wanted the "fun" of dealing with malware? Give me a break! .
Bingo! The only problem I personally see with places like Yelp is that they are rigged to side with trolls because they make their money by going "Psst! want to make these bad reviews go away? Give us $$$ and we'll make them disappear!" now THAT should be called what it is, blackmail pure and simple.
Otherwise as long as the doc is allowed to respond they shouldn't EVER have the right to take free speech (and has anyone seen if these are legal?) from anyone. I run a little shop and can count the number of PO'ed customers on a single hand. if they wrote a bad review i'd be happy to point out they simply had unbelievable expectations (One guy wanted his PC fixed for $20, trying to haggle like it was a fricking auction, another kept disabling his AV when it wouldn't let him install "Iz_Not_ViruZ_Iz_Pron_Codec.exe" and then expected me to clean his mess for free) and let people decide.
In ANY business you are gonna have some pissed off customers, I don't care how good of a job you do. some people think the world revolves around them and they can do anything they want, like spill a Coke down a PC and expect to return it, others think a single payment gets them repairs for life. but for every moron like that a GOOD business will have easily 1000 customers that have nothing but good things to say, and if a site isn't rigged like Yelp is then the good should outweigh the bad by huge amounts. Trying to get rid of free speech isn't the answer, having professional slander sites like Yelp shut down should be.
One last thing about docs: there should be an IRONCLAD contract that states 'here are what the side effects of this drug is, by agreeing to it you agree NEVER to sue if you have these side effects after being told" because I spent 5 years in a living hell because the miracle drug that would help me was taken off the market thanks to lawsuit whores. For ANYONE that took this drug you had to not only have a 30 minute explanation of the side effects as well as agree to not have ANY kids for AT LEAST 10 years, but actually had to watch a film as well telling you this, and sign saying you had watched it. so what happened? A couple of bitches (may they fucking rot) took the drug then promptly went out and got knocked up having horribly fucked up kids in the process. They sued and got an assload of money, which caused the drug to get yanked off the market.
NEWS FLASH: ALL DRUGS HAVE SIDE EFFECTS and if we are not gonna be able to have a medication because some asshole fucks himself up on it by not following the rules and sues? Well then there are gonna be a lot of suffering people needlessly. I should be able to sign a contract with my doc and get ANY drug he thinks would help me, period the end. Medications should be decided by the doc, not a lawsuit whore. Hell it is no wonder docs are so damned panicked right now, a doc can give someone a bottle of medication and if they crush it and shove it up their ass frying their brain they'll find some asshole ambulance chaser that will sue for a billion dollars over it!
And you have been able to do the same thing in Windows for a decade, by simply setting them up as a normal user and not handing them the password for admin. your point? in the end the simple fact is if a user has rights, they have the right to be stupid and there is no way to take away the "right to be stupid" part without taking away ALL of their rights.
This is why you see much more infections on home users than corporate networks (well run networks that is) as the admins take away their rights, including the right to be stupid. But unless you want to trust the two Steves or the head of the repo or anybody else in charge of "doing no evil" and give away your rights you simply have to give them the right to be stupid. Because no matter how "smart" you make the OS in the end the user actually has to THINK occasionally and not abuse their rights.
In the end you will see more and more "MacDefender" style infections, same as here in the shop I've seen infections go from Windows exploits to third party software to social engineering. Because at the end of the day the user will always be the weakest link and no amount of OS planning or protection will stop the user if they truly want the carrot the malware writer is offering, or simply refuses to think. it is the classic dancing bunnies problem and has been going on nearly as long as there have been PCs. Hell some of the first bugs I had to clean were boot sector floppy bugs, which spread by people copying warez. You offer the dancing bunny and the malware is just an added 'bonus" or in this case you spook the user into thinking they MUST have the malware to protect them from...what else? Malware! In the end you just can't stop stupid, sooner or later the user has to think or you have to take away ALL their rights, there really is no in between.
I frankly don't see how Linux (or any OS for that matter) can protect from this, as it is a classic social engineered 'ZOMG! You HAVE to run this RIGHT NOW or you will die ZOMG!" style infection, which we Windows repair guys have seen quite often through the "Security Tool" and Antivirus 20xxx variants.
Since Vista I have noticed less and less malware are going after the OS anymore, and instead are either going after third party software with serious flaws (such as anything Adobe along with Java, both of which rarely gets updated on a machine) along with social engineering. on the social engineering front they can usually be divided into these categories. the 'ZOMG! You got teh virus! Run Iz_Not_Viruz_Iz_Fixer.exe to kill it ZOMG!' the 'Want teh hot lesboz? We give u teh hot lezboz for teh free! Jusr run Iz_Not_Viruz_Iz_Codex.exe' so you can play teh moviez!' and the ever popular "My BFF Kim sent me a (insert screensaver,LOLCat Video,zip full of pictures) and it says I need to click this email link and run Iz_Not_Viruz_Iz_Goodie.exe to enjoy them!"
Notice how in NONE of the above does the underlying OS have a damned thing to do with making the attack successful? I've found a good 90%+ of new malware I'm finding on machines are using social engineering because it is easier to pwn a machine if the user helps and by appealing to their greed, desire, gullibility, or fear, one can easily solicit their aid in infecting their machine.
So frankly I don't see how anyone can expect Apple, Canonical, MSFT, or anybody else for that matter to magically stop the user without taking away the rights of ownership ala sticking them in a walled sandbox where someone else decides what they can and can't have. Now what you CAN do is to pop up warnings like UAC or in this case like Apple asking for the password, and if they are foolish enough to give it have a cleaning tool for after the fact like MSRT.
But unfortunately there simply isn't a way to patch stupid, and most of us I'm sure wouldn't like to give up our rights to control our machines just to keep the Forest Gumps out there from doing dumb shit. Hell just a couple of weeks ago I had to deal with an angry customer who was infected less than a week after I handed him his new machine. did I miss an attack vector? Nope he ignored every word I said and went so far as to disable his AV because it wouldn't let him install "the new Limewire" (Iz_Not_Viruz_Iz_New_Limewirez.exe) and then got pissed because there wasn't some way for the box to magically protect him from his own stupidity. I finally just told him "You ignored everything I said, you disabled your AV, all because you didn't want to pay for some cheap pop crap. Well TNSTAAFL and if you walk out in front of a truck after everyone has warned you it is coming? Well then you deserve to be hit, sorry". Sometimes you just have to be blunt with the stupid, otherwise they are just too dumb to fucking get it.
I'm sure the tidal wave of new malware coming to Macs thanks to the success of MacDefender will weed out the retarded soon enough. The question will be just how much does Apple's business model depend on the stupid, and how many of them will end up going to Windows when they find out Macs can't magically protect them from being total dumbasses. Frankly after dealing with some of the braintrusts that argued up and down with me that "Macs can NOT get infected!" while the DNSChanger bug was happily sending all their machines to porn sites? If the ones I have dealt with are typical you are looking at a minimum of 30% of mac users being dumb as stumps. Whether they will get pissed and leave or stay because Macs are more expensive (and yes I've seen plenty of folks buy Macs because they have money and wish to show it off. How do you think that "I am rich" app was able to sell?) is anybody's guess.
You want to know what is sad? I have gotten to the point that when I buy a game I take its nice shiny box and put it in the closet and just run the "Razr1911" version. Why? Because their shitty ass ring 0 DRM garbage makes a modern X64 OS run like ass, so yet again its the pirate version for the win!
If for any reason I need to install new hardware, or move my game folder to that new drive I just bought without wanting to do a full reinstall, the pirate version "just works" whereas the DRM version is crap. Starting with Bioshock II (which makes you run GFWL, which I've spent more time fighting that POS software service than I have the bad guys in the games) I've simply bought the game and left it in the package. The Razr1911 version doesn't need GFWL, it has a pre hacked version already included that "just works" hassle free. And that doesn't count the fact that so many of the games I buy simply won't run OOTB because the DRM ignore the drive (because I have two burners and no players) and calls me a pirate for daring to have burners in my machine! WTF? who doesn't have burners in their machine today? Hell they are cheaper than the players!
For a good example of how this DRM bites you in the ass I invite you to watch this video (warning language NSFW, but you watch it you'll understand why he is POed) and share it with everybody you know. People don't realize that for many of us piracy isn't about "getting free stuff" it is about being able to use what we paid for because if the DRM don't work there is nothing you can do, as most places won't accept opened returns. As the guy in TFL I posted says "It IS bullshit!" and I have to agree. Nowhere else are you allowed to sell products that are broken by design and fail so often to do as intended.
I've got a question about the whole "unique, globally addressable IP" thing, and my question is this: Isn't that gonna make every *.A.A have a woody, as well as every government, by making everyone trivial to locate? I mean with IPV4 it is really cat and mouse, as nearly every home user is on Dynamic IPs, which means what they had today could be completely different from what they have tomorrow, but won't this make it a cakewalk for every government three letter agency and their corporate masters to find out every single thing a person does or says on the net?
With all these "PROTECT IP" style laws getting passed, and more and more the government being in bed blatantly with the corps, not to mention treating those that dare to publish docs showing corruption like Wikileaks as "subversive" having everyone with a unique ID seems like a really BAD idea to me right now. So what is too keep this from being a 1984 lover's wet dream?
It isn't only that, it is the fact that if they don't offer some sort of 6to4 setup the amount of pissed off users and eWaste generated is gonna be unreal, so bad it'll make the CRT to LCD switch look like a green revolution.
Look at the sub $80 routers, both wired and wireless on Newegg. See how many are offering IPV6 even today. You will find damned few if any. As someone who sells and services PCs I can tell you the vast majority of routers in homes and small businesses are sub $50 routers that can not and most like will never support IPV6. Don't say tomato or another Linux "hack" either, as most of these things are 200Mhz CPUs with maybe 4 Mbs of RAM and a couple of Mbs of flash. There simply isn't the room to hold any Linux firmware on there.
So I really don't blame many of the ISPs for holding off, it is gonna be a support nightmare unless they have 6to4 set up so seamless that the user can just plug in their current router and go. As it is currently you'd have to tell your customers they are gonna have to shitcan their current routers for an Apple Airport, which costs double to triple, maybe even 5 times as much (the $20 Trendnets are quite popular in SOHOs, as is the $25 wireless version) for a router that is gonna have a ton of features they'll never ever use, simply because the router manufacturers are dragging their feet.
IMNSHO we really need to go ahead and simply ban the import of routers that don't have native IPV6 support. It is simply ridiculous that so many routers are being imported and sold even after the IPV4 pool has run out with no support for IPV6, and with no plans by the OEMs to offer upgraded firmware. This is a classic example of "designed for the dump" and if we want to cut down on the headaches of IPV6* then we really need to stop these routers being imported now, to force the OEMs to start building native support for IPV6. Otherwise it looks like we'll be seeing IPV4 only home routers for quite some time to come.
*-Personally since only 35% at last count of IPV4 is actually being used, the rest hogged by those that got in early or squatters I think we should propose a "$1 a month per IP" plan. You want to keep that class a? That'll be $1 a month per IP to help pay for the upgrade for IPV6. I bet that would kill squatting dead, as well as get those companies that got in on the ground floor and are now just sitting on huge block to seriously rethink sitting on them. If you want to keep them fine, pay up. Otherwise sell them or give them back for a one time tax break of $1 per IP. If this were to happen we could probably gain another 5-10 years, and then could implement as I said a slow and orderly phase out of hardware supporting IPV4, and get our admins up to speed (I know many that are retiring or switching careers rather than deal with the nightmare that is the switch while already being underpaid and short handed) so that we don't end up with a mess.
Remember folks that much of your traffic sooner or later has to go through what you call the "flyover states" where I can tell you its a mess here, with corps lowballing the pay so badly nobody wants the jobs, expecting you on your own time to learn the latest tech with NO compensation, and most places having less than half the amount of help they really need. I have a feeling when the IPV6 switch gets flipped you are gonna see failures all over the flyover states, and fixes that should take hours will take weeks if not longer, simply because you have a shortchanged staff running on less than half manpower and far behind the curve on the tech. Most of the ISP here have had "help wanted!" signs up for over a year, because they are paying so shitty and expecting so much in return for said shit pay nobody will take the jobs even in a dead economy. it ain't gonna be pretty folks, I have a feeling this may be a real life version of Y2K.
The thing is, I honestly think if we do go for the Hail Mary "Lets act like the Germans when they had that crazy Austrian!" asshole route, I don't think it'll be over anything the Chinese will give a shit about. On the contrary if both sides played their cards right they'd both come out ahead, and maybe even get our old former rivals Russia in on the deal.
How would that work? simple, if we decide to go crazy Austrian (which if our economy tanks ala Germany 33 IS a possibility. you don't think those in power will just quietly go away like Mubarak, do you?) then the two powers we will need to take out of the equation will be China and Russia, as we sure as fuck don't want to deal with the Red Army or the PLA mucking up the works. but how without going WWIII?
Simple we give them what they want and give both Russia and China a 'happy ending". Russia has never liked having an open western flank, and you can tell old Putin is a classic red, so we say 'hey friend, you know that whole Eastern Europe thing? Have fun!" and at the same time that will scare the crap out of the Germans by having the old USSR looking to spread its wings again. as for China? they want Africa, and they want it bad. Who can blame them? lots of resources, crappy armies, it would be a cakewalk for China if the USA and Russia STFU so we say "Hey our eastern friends, you know Africa? have fun!" if they balk we can throw in Taiwan, like we would care about them if our economy is in the shitter.
So what do we get? The "United Continent of America" of course! you know how much raw resources are south of the border? We just get our good friends the canucks to crank up the oil sands to feed the M1s (which I'm sure they'd do to keep us from looking in THEIR direction) and away we go! Hell we even have pre made bogeymen in the narcoterrorists and Chavez, it would be an easy sell to the American public. A couple of jingos, lots of flag waving, easy sell.
Who would stand up to a new tripartite consisting of USA, USSR, and China? Britain? Wolf packs showed how to fix THAT little problem. The French? Italy? Please. And Germany will be too busy watching their flank and trying to control the EU to give a shit. As an added bonus we could work out a "mid east security deal" between the three of us that would STFU anybody that would dare say shit in that region.
So I think if we have a Germany 32 style money collapse the Chinese won't be having to worry about us, too damned far and too much work, especially when they are so easy to make deals with. No it is the poor bastards south of the border that should be watching for the falling bombs. Hell we already have enough hatred of Mexicans that turning South Americans into the bogey man would be a piece of cake. but anybody that thinks the USA would go silently into the sunset is just nuts. We have too many weapons and too much pride to go down easy. if the shit hits the fan it WILL be nasty.
Ha! to be rivals we'd actually have to compete with them. With the US and China right now it is more like a crack dealer and his customers, and we ain't the dealer! I'm just waiting for them to have enough US paper they can say "hey, you know that whole Taiwan thing? Yeah unless you want your money to be worth about the same as a Zimbabwean dollar you will STFU while we take it, kay?" and you know what? We'll STFU.
America is too hooked on cheap electronics to say shit to China anymore, and i'm sure they know it. Personally I don't see why we don't just admit it and be what we were born to be...arms dealer to the world. hell it is the only thing worth a shit we build anymore, we may not be able to build a TV but dammit we can build an F-18 or M1a1 like nobody's business! Hell if we don't start selling something the trade deficit is gonna kill us, and with all the floods and tornadoes exporting food might not be a wise move in the future. The Ruskies sell everything to everyone, why the hell shouldn't we?
I'm sure the Chinese would be happy to give back some of that paper for F-16s, great little bird that. They want to build up their military? Let every tank have "Made in the USA" stamped on it! While we are at it we got that boneyard with billions of dollars, just sitting there in the desert! Fire sale anyone? I bet there are plenty of countries that would like some of those warbirds, now at rock bottom prices! Hell we could put the Ruskies out of business!
Oh I can't stand the fire and brimstone types, I got my fill of those when I was a teen. true story I had become friend with this guy whose sis I was sleeping with, I didn't know what his dad did for a living, just that there was this big funky glass and steel building right by their house that his sis had keys for (and which we screwed in A LOT) .
So I stay the weekend with the guy (I get a two for, visit my bud and a booty call, can't beat that!) and on Sunday right after we both took some killer acid he tells me we gotta make an appearance at his dad's "job". little shit gave me NO warning, and BTW I was wearing my favorite Rush 2112 shirt (I'm sure you know the one). so he and I walk in the door right in the middle of a freaking sermon and his dad takes one look at me and says "look at that! A reason why the youth of today are GONNA BURN!" talking about my shirt. I tried to hold it in, I swear I did, but I just bust out laughing my ass off and walked out the door. it didn't really help that while this douchebag was screaming about fire and brimstone his son had the best smoke in the county and I had boned his baby less than 12 feet from where he was standing. Needless to say I was NOT invited back. If he only new his baby insisted that we do right where he had stood and called me out the next Saturday! HA HA!
So yeah, really got no time for fire and brimstone types. But I knew Charles before he became a preacher, and he has always walked the walk. he don't judge anybody and uses any profits for the homeless and food kitchens. He also don't waste time trying to convert my ass, so it all works out. To this day if that man is in a jam and needs a bass player to cover his butt I'll be there, simply because no matter what his beliefs he does good work.
BTW my mom actually knows the above story (heard it from my sis after it got out all over town, I was looked at like a God for laughing at Mr fire and brimstone while secretly doing his daughter) and she insisted on telling my GF that story "to let her know what she was in for". Brenda just looked at me, who had a cat ate the canary grin, and said "you know, he can act all nice and meek but I KNEW he was a wild one!" and that was that. Nice thing about having a Cherokee GF, she don't buy into all the fire and brimstone BS either. She follows the great spirit of her people which she says doesn't discriminate against wild asses like me,LOL
Except you can't avoid it by choosing hardware because what works ATM may not work 6 months from now! Am I supposed to offer free hardware upgrades to all my customers when Torvalds gets an itch and borks something major that may not be fixed for months?
I have seen this happen with Realtek HD sound, with Via chipsets and sound, even the Aetheros wireless that so many on the forums pushed as "it just works" which BTW would have added a good $50 to any mobile build, well guess what happened? That's right, the latest updates is causing problems for those chips!
So I'm sorry, but as a retailer that has tried your product since Ubuntu 6.04, as well as PCLOS and Mepis, I'm afraid I have to agree with what one poster here said "Linux is free if your time is worthless". because if it was my own box on my own time, where I had nothing better to do than trawl forums with a list of my make/model/rev of hardware? then yes I could use Linux on my personal machine. But for my customers, who just want to "flip the switch and go" and have no desire no inclination to learn Linux forums nor CLI fix application? Then I'm sorry but its a mess.
Tell you what YOU try to design the hardware. Try to design a bog standard desktop and laptop using basic designs and then YOU go look at the forums and see if not at least one of those parts have been borked by updates between 6.04 and Ubuntu 11. I bet you'll find they have been borked at LEAST once, if not multiple times. Which only makes sense as you are talking about 10s of 1000s of drivers, all of which HAVE to keep up with Linus's constant kernel futzing. There is simply no way in hell all of those drivers for all of that hardware will be done in time for every single 6 month update, there simply aren't enough man hours dedicated to the job.
Again that is all well and good if it is only YOUR machine that gets borked, but I literally have on average between 4 and 7 boxes sold a week. do the math and see how much of my time would be dealing with pissed off customers who got "update foo broke my drivers" and how much of my time would be wasted trawling forums for fixes. my time costs a minimum of $35 an hour, at that rate it only takes a little over 2 hours for Windows to become the cheaper solution. I can easily blow 4 or 5 hours minimum on a PITA driver breakage. the ONLY machines I have found where one can expect even a 2 year run without breaking is enterprise class hardware where the OEM supports Linux, like HP workstations. The MUCH higher price of those simply makes them not worth even looking at. Again if Linux would fix this major deficiency, instead of sling insults and kissing Torvalds butt, Linux might get somewhere in the retail space. Because there are plenty of guys like me that would stock it.
But you'll notice the ONLY places selling Linux boxes are online, where they don't have to support it after the sale. that is VERY telling, because I guarantee you that like me if they actually had to support the things after the sale that would find Linux a money pit. When you can't even get a single national retailer to stock your product in their B&M stores? And everyone from staples to Walmart has tried and failed due to returns rates being insane? Then it is high time to ask 'What are we doing wrong?" and I'd say the constant driver breakage, which c'mon! Its 2011 not 1991 folks, is a hell of a reason to avoid your OS in the retail sector!
Your post brings up something that frankly has been bugging the living shit out of me. Now we have all this processing power, yes? Multicore CPUs, GPUs with dozens if not hundreds of stream processors, right? So why in the fuck can't I knock that damned door down no matter what I am packing! Seriously WTF?
If I have a fricking shotgun and I run into a damned wooden door I ought to be able to use a standard SWAT breach maneuver and get through the damned door! All their talk about physics bullshit and I still can't even blow down the damned door with an RPG? WTF people?
And it sounds like basically we are 100% in agreement, we are just looking at it from different angles. you think it is laziness, whereas I think it is nothing but Kotik style "milk that IP!" bullshit. They have learned how to crank out the bling bling almost to the point they can do it by assembly line, no thought required, therefor they can give it to the grunts to do and kick back and cash the checks. It doesn't help that we have so many clueless (I'm sorry, but running around like a chicken with your head cut off stabbing somebody with a knife until you get shot is NOT in any way innovative) that treat the MP in CoD as some sort of second coming, giving them an easy way to milk the shit out of the IP without having to do anything but add a little more bling and a new number.
You will notice that damned near every. single. game. now has MP bolted onto it, even when it makes no damned sense whatsoever, just trying to milk that IP, and I would argue it also gives them an excuse to make a piss poor cookie cutter SP experience by giving the excuse that SP is more of a "training level" (yeah, cause you need lots of training for running around like a madman shooting everything in sight) for the MP bullshit. Mark my words it is gonna be another dreary Q3:Arena style drought where shitty game after shitty game is cranked out with its sole excuse for being is MP, only now it will be WORSE than the shittastic Q3:Arena period because they have now found out how to "monetize the IP long term" by screwing the shit out of you if you don't shell out another $100 or more on DLC. And then as soon as they can't milk it anymore? "Oh its time to abandon that game, no dedicated servers for you! Nope it is time to jump onto our next $100+ DLC shitfest "Medal of Dookie 6: Super chickens with their heads cut of with a vengeance!"
So it is any wonder so many of us are hanging onto our hardware and not buying as much as the fratboy consolers? Unlike the consolers we had plenty of games in the past that are still playable without needing a separate machine for them and frankly they were better than the cookie cutter bullshit I see today. For every decent game you have to wade through ass deep shit, with reviewers so blatantly paid off it ain't even funny, oh and look how quick that one got fired for daring to say Kane&Lynch was MOR (in actuality it sucked assholes, but the poor bastard wasn't allowed to tell the truth) so you have to wade through ass deep shit or wait until a game has been out several months so actual gamers can speak the truth. Meanwhile we are buried alive in cookie cutter bling bling bullshit fests, with the gameplay being either mediocre at best, or at worst unplayable without an X360 controller, and Ai that either lines up to die or has X-Ray vision that lets them snipe you from behind ANY cover while taking more rounds than the T-800 did in the Cyberdyne scene in Judgement Day.
And sorry about the length of the rant, I'm just so damned tired of every 9 out of 10 games being SSDD. I've gone back to playing games like No One Lives Forever, simply because i'm so damned tired of quick time events, my guy carrying only 2 weapons, not being able to blast open a shitty wooden door even with a bazooka, lame ass AI that sucks no matter what setting you play on, broken controls, hell I could go on all day. They talk about how PC gamers bring in less money? Well maybe if you didn't put out broke ass console ports we might actually be excited and buy your game!
Just goes to show how, yet again....piracy wins! With piracy one doesn't have to give up control or freedom, you can have it in any damned format you want, and no worry about rootkits, backdoors or other acts of sabotage...err...I mean 'protecting of IP".
Time and time again, from game companies putting out their wares with nasty malware DRM, music companies putting ring 0 drivers that leave huge gaping security holes, and now this, time and time again the corps make sure piracy is ALWAYS better. Why you'd think they have stock in PTB or something!
Oh and mark my words Android WILL end up as locked down as iPhone, just you watch. Now that it has started to get traction both Google and the carriers will want more control, and since they have been very careful not to touch ANYTHING GPL V3 with regards to Android the next move will be eFuses or code signing. They'll do it "for security" and probably announce it right after some piece of Android malware has hit, but the results will be the same. Just like TiVo you'll have the code but not be able to do a damned thing with it.
While I've never agreed with much when it comes to RMS I thought then as now he had it spot on, once the corps were shown by TiVo how to lock up GPL code then the days of GPL V2 were numbered for anybody that actually cared for the four freedoms. Funny how once the TiVo trick was known all these corps started using GPL V2 code huh? Especially how they've gone out of their way to make sure they aren't "tainted" with GPL V3 code anywhere near their devices. mark my words Google doesn't need the geeks anymore so the days of open Android are numbered. They will jump in bed with the *.A.As, the carriers, and of course making it so every search has to go through Google will just be a nice bonus. Don't forget how they said Android was "open" and then said it was open "for the carriers" not the end users. These are just the feelers, seeing how much backlash they are gonna get. mark my words, before Xmas you'll see the end of Android being open.
Uhhh when you have one of the Applecare reps saying things are getting worse here and you have Apple actively saying don't say the word or acknowledge malware infections? Then I don't think you have to worry about "its coming" as it is already here friend.
Just cause it hasn't bit you in the ass don't mean others aren't getting pwned. I personally haven't seen a bug on my windows machines since 99 but I wouldn't be foolish enough to say infections aren't rampant, I see them every day. Since there isn't something like MSRT on Mac frankly we have NO idea how badly the infections have already spread, and with Apple in full cover up mode we frankly may not know for months or maybe even a year or more. But just because Apple refuses to say the word doesn't mean it isn't spreading. On the contrary I would argue that the reason Apple refuses to say the word is it is spreading quickly and they are trying to do damage control. For all we know this may be the first mac "Code red" style nasty, we simply won't know until someone gathers the data.
I wouldn't say it is just that, it is also that there is only so much eye candy you can look at while getting shot at, and too many turned gamers off by putting out completely shitty console ports, with just a little bling added if that.
In the 90s and early 00s I was the type that had a new PC every two years and was constantly upgrading in between, all trying to get the good framerate. But now with so damned many games being designed for crappy 5 year old consoles first you know what? kinda pointless ATM. I'm quite happy with my Phenom II 925 quad (picked up nearly 2 years go) and the HD4850 my GF picked up for me (those were released in what? 07?) and even on newer games like Batman AA and Just Cause 2 frankly I get all the eye candy I can look at and it runs just fine at my native 1600x900, so why bother upgrading?
I think the problem is too many focused on the bling bling and not the overall gaming experience. I have a couple of gaming customers that bought Crysis for the benchmarking, but do they actually play it? Not really. Sitting here playing in the shop I have folks come in and go "ooooh wow, what is that?" when I'm playing Brothers in Arms, even though that game is going on 8 years old. The reason they oooh and ahhh is because they focused on the experience with decent acting and a story that flows, so you feel like you are in the middle of Band of Brothers on HBO.
Frankly, and I doubt I'm alone, I'd be happy to play a game with Far Cry 1 level graphics if it has a decent story and great controls. Too many of the newer games feel like nobody even bothered to test it with a keyboard to see if it was playable, or it has show stopping bugs that make it so you end up having to wait, sometimes months, just to get a game stable enough to play through.
Bling bling is nice, but give me story, give me some decent AI, I'm so sick of devs bolting on MP and expecting that to be the "fix" for their shoddy AI. If I wanted to run around like a chicken with my head cut off while someone screams nigger and faggot I'd be playing halo. Thanks but no thanks devs. Give us atmosphere and a believable world, give us AI that will put up a good fight instead of the cheap "rubber band AI" that EA uses, where on hard you have a private that can snipe from 1000 yards behind cover while taking more rounds than the Terminator. We have multicore now, why aren't you using them for pathfinding and AI?
And finally do something about your shitty DRM devs! I'd list all the times it has bit me in the ass but I think this guy says it best. So in the end I end up playing older games, games where all the patches are out, where I can download the crack so DRM don't bite me in the ass, games where I've seen enough reviews to know it is actually worth my time. In the end I'd say the consoles are just a symptom of a larger disease, the Activision "Lets milk that IP!" disease, where everything is just another copy of another copy and is frankly boring as hell. Why should I bother upgrading, when the new bling bling games the only thing they offer is bling?
The problem is nobody cares if the OS won't run which is EXACTLY what you have now! Read my earlier post where I gave a link showing how even Dell, one of the largest OEMs on the planet, has to blow serious cash and man hours maintaining their own repos, because if you try to use Canonical's (or any Linux repos) the drivers break and you end up with a crippled machine. I mean I can make the most secure machine in the world if I make sure to break it so bad the user can't do anything, but do you think anybody would buy it?
And between 2K/XP to Vista/7 you are talking a combined 14 years of support where those drivers worked just fine, year after year after year. I have NO doubt with the new driver model we will see as long or even longer support, and I can take Vista drivers and drop them straight into Windows 7 with no hassles or recompiles, or forums, or futzing, it all "just works" and continues to work, no matter how many patches I apply.
Compare this to Linux, where out of the 6 machines I tested (4 desktop and 2 laptops, all with pretty bog standard hardware) where what I found was not a single one survived the updates unscathed. Not a single one. Sound , networking, video, wireless, there was always SOMETHING that didn't survive updates. Was there a simple "update driver" button? A simple way for an average user to easily get the functionality back? Nope it was back to the forums, for sometimes hours, scouring and trying different "fixes" in a vain attempt to get the hardware functional again. I'm sure you'll agree that for an OS for the masses that is simply unacceptable, especially when Windows 7 is so damned simple and intuitive my 68 year old clueless dad installed it by himself and it took care of everything including finding ALL the drivers and giving him a choice of free or pay AVs. The hardest thing he had was it asked "are you at home or at work?" and that was it.
So I hope you can see I'm not some troll, I'm a potential customer. I don't like having to shell out $100 a pop for Windows licenses, and would like to be able to offer low cost machines that anybody can afford. But when I can't even guarantee that the machine will be functional in a year, even if the user only follows best practices? I'm sorry but that is simply inexcusable. I sell to normal folks, not nerds or CS grads. They just want to come home, fire up their PC, and do the things normal folks do, Youtube, email, FaceBook. These jobs could be easily done by Linux but as long as Torvalds treats the kernel as his personal playground, as long as a simple update turns into a "Break linux NOW" button almost every single time without fail, as long as the ONLY way to return the machine to a usable state is to trawl some forum (that is if you haven't had the networking broken by the update) where you have to know the exact make, rev, model, etc AND after all that apply a whole bunch of CLI gibberish that the user won't understand and may/may not work? I'm sorry but that is simply not an acceptable product for home users.
This is why I figured it would only be a matter of time before Macs end up nearly as infested as Windows boxes. the last numbers I saw were something like an average income of $100,000 for Mac owners, which means snatching their CC numbers will be worth a hell of a lot more than snatching the CC from the girl that works the checkout at the Wally World who just got her a $400 Dell laptop.
This is something that both Linux and Apple users are simply gonna have to accept, it is simple really all computers are vulnerable period. ALL OSes, I don't care who makes them, are extremely complex piles of code with so many interactions on so many levels nobody can have a full grasp of all the variables anymore, and that is before you add third party code on top.
Can they be made more secure? Of course they can, which is why you see only 4 infections per 1000 on Windows 7 VS 14 per 1000 on WinXP. But no matter how well you harden the OS it always comes down to the user is the weak point which is why here in my shop I've seen Windows malware go from drive bys and exploits to nearly all social engineering based, it is simply easier if you can trick the user to help you.
In the end owning a Mac or running Linux doesn't instantly make you a CS genius or make you invulnerable to social engineering, as we saw with the Mac DNS changer bug or the KDE screensaver malware that went around a couple of years ago. It all comes down to how bad the bad guys want in, and how much working they are willing to do for a target.
What has protected Macs and Linux in the past is that malware writers like all criminals are naturally lazy creatures, and there was plenty of low hanging Windows machines to snatch. Now that Android is popping up everywhere and the malware guys are starting to realize Macs=money I have NO doubt things are gonna change, just as I have seen Windows malware going from exploit based to third party to social engineering. Times change, targets change, and I have a feeling so many have bought the "Macs don't get malware!" meme that until some really nasty bugs hit Mac guys are gonna be easy pickings. I've already seen it myself, with having to argue with a customer who swore up and down his Macs couldn't possibly be infected even as the DNS Changer bug was redirecting everything.
Off the top of my head...Nvidia, Realtek, Via, Broadcom, Aetheros, and ATI...that enough for you? These are just the ones off the top of my head where an update completely wasted the driver leaving a broken machine in its wake.
Frankly I have seen ONE, just one mind you, machine where it was able to go more than a single update without a single driver breaking, and that was a 10 year old Intel box I was getting ready to chunk and decided to try it. I still threw it away BTW, as nobody wants 10 year old junk anymore.
But I want to thank you, Mr Linux Zealot, thanks for giving a perfect example of why we retailers avoid your product because if we dare to say anything other than "Gee isn't Linux swell? Why it sure is Biff, and RMS's beard smells like roses!" then we get nothing but vicious hatred, with the words "shill" and astroturfer" being your nigger or wetback. anybody that doesn't get in line and follow the "Linux is perfect" meme gets shot down.
Finally you want some proof, 100% undeniable that my words are true? Will the largest OEM on the planet be good enough for you? Dell is having to run their own repos because if you dare to try to update from Canonical's it breaks the drivers.
But I'm sure that rather than admit you are wrong and that drivers are a serious problem, you'll instead trot out the trusted Linux TMs, which BTW they've made a site dedicated to the complete bullshit excuses Linux Zealots use to cover up their failings. So let me guess which ones you will use....let's see...how about "Use Distro X" "Works for Me" and "Astroturfer". Any I missed?
Yep thanks to piracy, which is kinda the opposite of 'works" since the entire reason a black market such as piracy pops up in the first place is that the current market is hopelessly broken and therefor simple supply and demand creates a way around the broken system.
So allow me to say, as someone who has directly benefited from the pirates...thanks! Thanks to you the games that I bought and paid for that no longer works thanks to shitty DRM that refuses to run on a modern OS work just fine, even better than they did before as a matter of fact, since there isn't ring 0 buggy shit running 24/7 in the background.
Thanks to the pirates I can just download an AVI copy of a movie I own instead of wasting time and electricity converting some 8Gb flick, complete with commercials they won't let you avoid, into a file that will easily fit on my little netbook, and thanks to them I can "try before I buy" shows that In wouldn't normally be able to view in my area, such as BtVS, which ended up getting me hooked on Joss Whedon shows and caused me to buy the entire Whedon box set, to the tune of around $1000.
So thank you pirates, you make the world a better place, unlike our corrupt corporate ass kissing congress whores who would happily sell out the constitution if it gave them a big fat check and a job in the industry they are "supposed" to regulate.
Uhhh...because the corps can dump the toxic sludge that is created manufacturing electronics out the back door? For all the libertarian and right wing talk of globalization and free markets the ugly truth is the multinationals are creating toxic sites that will make the American superfund sites (which We, The People got stuck with the bill for after the corps walked away) look like a park your kids can play in.
Look up "India river toxic" to see how big pharma is dumping so many bad batches of drugs into their rivers nothing there is edible or drinkable from it (yet the poor still are) and in China? Jesus Tap Dancing Christ are they dumping the sludge. The pursuit of ever lower costs inevitably ends up with destroyed land, something we have a limited supply of, and poisoned water which we have even less potable water and it will only get worse.