This who debate is like the those stupid outlook emails with.dat attachments, because the sender is using outlook rich text format instead of plaintext or html.
Not to mention those users that are on networks that simply strip attachments (under the guise of "any files you work with should be accessed via a backed-up server, not email," which is worthwhile) or using crappy netware Groupwise (which doesn't support.dat, as far as I know -- and if it did, IT would never install it anyway!).
It's incredible how many people don't realize that just because you're using fancy markup, everyone else will see it the same way. They probably think all those unformatted emails they get are from "boring people" who don't "understand the web."
It's a bad idea anyway, regardless of your future data needs. I've already received a handful of.docx files in my job and have had to email the person back, asking them to save as an alternate format. And inevitably the response is "Oh right, I always forget that not everyone can open these files."
Microsoft's done a crappy job introducing a crappy format, and only people on the latest office (or the ability to install the Windows-oriented Windows-installer for old Office for Windows) can even work with the files.
Hopefully this will be an effective means of shutting up the old saw of "there's no way that 'simple random chance' could produce the creatures of today from the creatures of yesterday!"
It's also more expensive than an AppleTV. Maybe the social networking stuff is worth it to some people, but at least Apple TV is cross platform (via iTunes). Now they just need a linux release of iTunes.
Most people dislike proportional charges because there tends to be a baseline minimum that you have to pay anyway. I'm sure that if Time Warner rolled this out, the tiers would be "low usage" at the same price and "high usage" at $20 or something more. So if you never got close to using your alloted bandwidth, you'd see no savings and you'd get the same service. Why would those people push for something different? They know they're not going to get a discounted rate.
Those who DO use the service therefore make up the lion's share of the commentary on tiered or proportional services.
I mean, I'd love there to be a la carte cable TV, and on top of that I'd love that a la carte to be based on how many hours you actually watch of that service. But I know it's never going to happen, so I go without.
More importantly, that consistency means a lot for something that's often purchased on a track-by-track basis. I've shopped Amazon's store, and Amazon has the problem of having everything, even things that are out of print or available in multiple versions, so that other non-Amazon sellers can list items on those pages. That means that shopping MP3s is not an immediate, obvious thing. If you're looking for music, you need to either surf the mp3 store exclusively (which doesn't look for previous purchases or related things in their own CD store) or you need to shop normally and hope something you're looking for is available.
Then you need to see what the price is. On iTunes, there's a unified shopping area and if it's on iTunes you can buy it, and you know each track is going to be 99. On Amazon, it could be cheaper at 89, or it could be the same price or even more money? Why would I go through the hassle of hunting on Amazon to only sometimes save 10, when I can simply keep all my purchases together on iTunes?
I'm hardly a proponent for DRM, but since Apple's DRM does a good job of staying out of view, it's not nearly enough of a nuisance to shop Amazon exclusively. I've used both, even side by side, but I still opt for iTunes if the prices are identical.
(I also like that iTunes lets you use an mp3 shopping cart, instead of charging individually for every purchase)
ATT (Cingular) is GSM, as is a few other companies. They have essentially identical coverage as the other companies, so it will work -- you just won't be able to buy "any ol' SIM"
It's not antisocial, cos I feel the same way about these websites. They're just a way to hunt for gossip on your "friends." There's a reason they all display "relationship status" and crap like that, as well as "current favorite band" and other information that, if it was actually important, it would come up in conversation with your real friends.
Thankfully, for those who prefer to know a lot of people without actually having to spend time with those people getting to know them, social networking sites allow people to know all the gossip and gory details of a person's life without having to forge any meaningful bonds. Sure, your dad died last week and your boyfriend got put in a coma due to a car crash on the same weekend, but, what, I'm not gonna *call* you about it (unless I want to watch Sweeney Todd tomorrow).
It's good to hear that you're taking the reasonable approach to the problem. If I had more free time, and was just slightly more sociopathic, I would walk around city blocks and look for people who don't pick up after their dogs, put on some latex gloves, and then pick up the dog's poop and throw it at the owner.
Mmm, mercury, sweetest of the transition metals.
IKEA recycles the bulbs, and I imagine it won't take long before most any major seller of these bulbs accepts them back for recycling (Lowe's, Home Depot).
I noticed this as well -- take away the twitch/headshot aspect of FPS and suddenly the console isn't a hindrance. I love the people who quote Quake 3 on the dreamcast, a game that's based entirely on twitch deathmatch.
I wonder how many console players ever switch over to playing PC games? Beyond WoW, that is. Probably has to do with the whole "dwindling PC games market." There's diehards, but it seems plenty of people are perfectly happy getting the Orange Box on a console this year.
Bzzt. I said it was cheaper, that was all. I prefer playing games in person (and have played 8 player LAN MarioKart in a tiny apartment with 4-player Bomberman played in the kitchen on a 13" TV), but also know that online play is great when you just want to play a game with some people, not "for a story." Hard to have friends over on a random Tuesday night, for instance.
My opinion is mostly that if you just want to play video games, and not have to have friends over to enjoy your game library, the other consoles are probably a better deal. The Wii is still a lot of fun, but there's pretty much only Mario Galaxy and Metroid for the single player crowd. But I don't own any "next gen" systems because they're all too rich for me -- I bought a GameCube after it dropped to $100 and an Xbox when it was $130. Never owned a PS2 and won't. If there's one thing I am, it's frugal about gaming. Even if getting 4 WaveBirds cost a pretty penny, they make playing with friends so much easier (even if they've been sitting in a box for the past 2 years).
Most people don't have their own Wiimote -- they go play Wii games at the friend's house. And the person who owns the Wii ends up buying the controllers.
I mean, this is how it's always been -- if you own a console, and you don't live in a dorm, you are probably going to have to buy more controllers if you plan to play with other people, even if it's "just in case."
I do bemoan the fact, though, that the movement towards online play has essentially killed multiplayer modes -- it's "single player" or "online."
I agree with you, except that Coke is a beverage; their advertising isn't to get people to buy a singular item, but to get people to think "Hey, a Coke, I should drink one."
I see lots of billboards around bus stops with, say, 3 empty cans of coke that say "3 hour meeting" or something witty. Their advertising is trying to get people to drink more of their product. Arguably, those people are already coke drinkers -- they just don't drink enough for Coca-Cola.
People only buy one Wii, though, and if everyone is buying all they can make, they don't need to advertise. Coke, though, there's always coke on the shelf, so there's always more to sell.
Re:Couple Thoughts
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Where are Wii?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Not exactly; the other platforms have a push towards online play and single player play, meaning you pay the Gold account fee on a 360 and no extra fee on a PS3. You already own the single controller, which is all you need to play the online game.
It's a long term, non-permanent charge on the 360, for sure, but it is less than buying the extra Wii controllers.
You're completely correct -- the IE team was essentially disbanded until Firefox hit it big, and it was then reformed to create IE7. Hence the long lag since its release and no real updates other than the occasional security patch.
Which is sad, really, and just emphasizes the whole monopoly thing. After all, the first sign of a monopoly is a drastic reduction in services or increase in price once the competitors are removed.
Only if they're used at work. Dual-Layer DVDs are still too expensive to just snag a pack and burn away, and if I recall correctly there aren't any blu-ray drives you can buy to burn stuff. Which means the media is even more expensive, and will probably remain too expensive for most anyone to buy -- especially considering how cheap hard drives have become.
It's cheaper to spend $100 and get 300 gigs of storage, with no annoying burn times.
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This who debate is like the those stupid outlook emails with .dat attachments, because the sender is using outlook rich text format instead of plaintext or html.
.dat, as far as I know -- and if it did, IT would never install it anyway!).
Not to mention those users that are on networks that simply strip attachments (under the guise of "any files you work with should be accessed via a backed-up server, not email," which is worthwhile) or using crappy netware Groupwise (which doesn't support
It's incredible how many people don't realize that just because you're using fancy markup, everyone else will see it the same way. They probably think all those unformatted emails they get are from "boring people" who don't "understand the web."
It's a bad idea anyway, regardless of your future data needs. I've already received a handful of .docx files in my job and have had to email the person back, asking them to save as an alternate format. And inevitably the response is "Oh right, I always forget that not everyone can open these files."
Microsoft's done a crappy job introducing a crappy format, and only people on the latest office (or the ability to install the Windows-oriented Windows-installer for old Office for Windows) can even work with the files.
Hopefully this will be an effective means of shutting up the old saw of "there's no way that 'simple random chance' could produce the creatures of today from the creatures of yesterday!"
What do you mean? They were right!
Obviously, it was only mostly bricked.
It makes sense -- if you're in figure skating, you should have a figure.
It's also more expensive than an AppleTV. Maybe the social networking stuff is worth it to some people, but at least Apple TV is cross platform (via iTunes). Now they just need a linux release of iTunes.
Most people dislike proportional charges because there tends to be a baseline minimum that you have to pay anyway. I'm sure that if Time Warner rolled this out, the tiers would be "low usage" at the same price and "high usage" at $20 or something more. So if you never got close to using your alloted bandwidth, you'd see no savings and you'd get the same service. Why would those people push for something different? They know they're not going to get a discounted rate.
Those who DO use the service therefore make up the lion's share of the commentary on tiered or proportional services.
I mean, I'd love there to be a la carte cable TV, and on top of that I'd love that a la carte to be based on how many hours you actually watch of that service. But I know it's never going to happen, so I go without.
More importantly, that consistency means a lot for something that's often purchased on a track-by-track basis. I've shopped Amazon's store, and Amazon has the problem of having everything, even things that are out of print or available in multiple versions, so that other non-Amazon sellers can list items on those pages. That means that shopping MP3s is not an immediate, obvious thing. If you're looking for music, you need to either surf the mp3 store exclusively (which doesn't look for previous purchases or related things in their own CD store) or you need to shop normally and hope something you're looking for is available.
Then you need to see what the price is. On iTunes, there's a unified shopping area and if it's on iTunes you can buy it, and you know each track is going to be 99. On Amazon, it could be cheaper at 89, or it could be the same price or even more money? Why would I go through the hassle of hunting on Amazon to only sometimes save 10, when I can simply keep all my purchases together on iTunes?
I'm hardly a proponent for DRM, but since Apple's DRM does a good job of staying out of view, it's not nearly enough of a nuisance to shop Amazon exclusively. I've used both, even side by side, but I still opt for iTunes if the prices are identical.
(I also like that iTunes lets you use an mp3 shopping cart, instead of charging individually for every purchase)
ATT (Cingular) is GSM, as is a few other companies. They have essentially identical coverage as the other companies, so it will work -- you just won't be able to buy "any ol' SIM"
This is just the Ron Paul crazies out in force that their guy sucked in NH last night.
It's not antisocial, cos I feel the same way about these websites. They're just a way to hunt for gossip on your "friends." There's a reason they all display "relationship status" and crap like that, as well as "current favorite band" and other information that, if it was actually important, it would come up in conversation with your real friends.
Thankfully, for those who prefer to know a lot of people without actually having to spend time with those people getting to know them, social networking sites allow people to know all the gossip and gory details of a person's life without having to forge any meaningful bonds. Sure, your dad died last week and your boyfriend got put in a coma due to a car crash on the same weekend, but, what, I'm not gonna *call* you about it (unless I want to watch Sweeney Todd tomorrow).
I believe our current president has shown that the executive branch has no such limits.
It's good to hear that you're taking the reasonable approach to the problem. If I had more free time, and was just slightly more sociopathic, I would walk around city blocks and look for people who don't pick up after their dogs, put on some latex gloves, and then pick up the dog's poop and throw it at the owner.
I suppose calling the cops is more civil.
Mmm, mercury, sweetest of the transition metals. IKEA recycles the bulbs, and I imagine it won't take long before most any major seller of these bulbs accepts them back for recycling (Lowe's, Home Depot).
if you need an explanation as to why "not Sony," you don't read /. enough.
I noticed this as well -- take away the twitch/headshot aspect of FPS and suddenly the console isn't a hindrance. I love the people who quote Quake 3 on the dreamcast, a game that's based entirely on twitch deathmatch.
I do like how this is in response to Apple's "Plays on that iPod you already own" marketing "strategy."
I wonder how many console players ever switch over to playing PC games? Beyond WoW, that is. Probably has to do with the whole "dwindling PC games market." There's diehards, but it seems plenty of people are perfectly happy getting the Orange Box on a console this year.
Bzzt. I said it was cheaper, that was all. I prefer playing games in person (and have played 8 player LAN MarioKart in a tiny apartment with 4-player Bomberman played in the kitchen on a 13" TV), but also know that online play is great when you just want to play a game with some people, not "for a story." Hard to have friends over on a random Tuesday night, for instance.
My opinion is mostly that if you just want to play video games, and not have to have friends over to enjoy your game library, the other consoles are probably a better deal. The Wii is still a lot of fun, but there's pretty much only Mario Galaxy and Metroid for the single player crowd. But I don't own any "next gen" systems because they're all too rich for me -- I bought a GameCube after it dropped to $100 and an Xbox when it was $130. Never owned a PS2 and won't. If there's one thing I am, it's frugal about gaming. Even if getting 4 WaveBirds cost a pretty penny, they make playing with friends so much easier (even if they've been sitting in a box for the past 2 years).
Most people don't have their own Wiimote -- they go play Wii games at the friend's house. And the person who owns the Wii ends up buying the controllers.
I mean, this is how it's always been -- if you own a console, and you don't live in a dorm, you are probably going to have to buy more controllers if you plan to play with other people, even if it's "just in case."
I do bemoan the fact, though, that the movement towards online play has essentially killed multiplayer modes -- it's "single player" or "online."
I agree with you, except that Coke is a beverage; their advertising isn't to get people to buy a singular item, but to get people to think "Hey, a Coke, I should drink one."
I see lots of billboards around bus stops with, say, 3 empty cans of coke that say "3 hour meeting" or something witty. Their advertising is trying to get people to drink more of their product. Arguably, those people are already coke drinkers -- they just don't drink enough for Coca-Cola.
People only buy one Wii, though, and if everyone is buying all they can make, they don't need to advertise. Coke, though, there's always coke on the shelf, so there's always more to sell.
Not exactly; the other platforms have a push towards online play and single player play, meaning you pay the Gold account fee on a 360 and no extra fee on a PS3. You already own the single controller, which is all you need to play the online game.
It's a long term, non-permanent charge on the 360, for sure, but it is less than buying the extra Wii controllers.
You're completely correct -- the IE team was essentially disbanded until Firefox hit it big, and it was then reformed to create IE7. Hence the long lag since its release and no real updates other than the occasional security patch.
Which is sad, really, and just emphasizes the whole monopoly thing. After all, the first sign of a monopoly is a drastic reduction in services or increase in price once the competitors are removed.
I like how the article mentions the richest man in the world as if no one has heard of him.
Only if they're used at work. Dual-Layer DVDs are still too expensive to just snag a pack and burn away, and if I recall correctly there aren't any blu-ray drives you can buy to burn stuff. Which means the media is even more expensive, and will probably remain too expensive for most anyone to buy -- especially considering how cheap hard drives have become.
It's cheaper to spend $100 and get 300 gigs of storage, with no annoying burn times.