> You forgot about the references to Bush in the Darth Vader > dialog.
The dialog is superficial. Calls for dramatic absolutes are common when dictators are trying to gain power, as well as anyone with extreme viewpoints. It helps them manage the cognitive dissonance.
Actually all the Star Wars movies are describing, among other things, how Democracy can fall to fascism.
In summary, Palpatine starts a fake war[1] (where he controlled both sides[2]) in order to get elected and stay in office[3] by appealing to people's fear and rallying nationalism [4]. He convinces the Senate to vote Emergency Powers to him [5] in order to consolidate more power under himself. He finally declares the end of the Republic [6] in order to bring "peace" to the galaxy.
The movies are not intended to directly catalog Bush or his policies. The original plot was written in the 1970s, and it was inspired by a number of events in history, including Hitler's rise to power and the Vietnam War. The way we humans move from democracy to fascism happens in roughly the same way each time.
It just so happens that it can be argued that Bush has been following the same pattern as any drive towards fascism. Thus, any parallels to the current state of the U.S. is purely coincidental.
[3] Tom Ridge finally admits that the Department of Homeland Security twice questionably raised the terror alert status in order to prop up Bush's poll ratings during the election.
>> He should have been obeying his new master's orders but >> hating them, and hating himself too
> Did you notice the tear running down his check after he killed > the separatist leaders? I think he was hating himself.
That's exactly what I saw. He had tears running down his face after he killed the younglings and after he killed the Separatist leaders. Note that before he decided to interfere with Mace Windu confronting Sideous, he brooded in the Jedi Temple for what looked like hours.
He was doing what he had to do to become powerful enough to learn how to keep Padme from dying. He probably thought he would then kill Darth Sideous, and make himself Emperor (since eliminating the Senate would make things more efficient to ensure stability for the galaxy)
> Drive smoothly for the whole tank (tried to never let RPMs go > above 2500)
> You know what I found, I got 25 MPG in BOTH cases.
Same thing happened to me. I tried to drive smoothly the whole tank. I reset my fuel economy gauge, and consciously kept the tach under 3,000. I tapped the gas slowly to go as smoothly as possible. And the only thing it seemed to get me is I felt like a moron.
My car normally gets 20 - 26 MPG (it's a 350Z, so yeah, it's not really designed for good fuel economy, but it's not as bad as some sports cars). The only thing that kills my gas mileage is really gunning it stop and go. But if I drive generally smoothly, I can let the tach go to above 5k, and not see the gas mileage reduce appreciably.
What I found improved my car's gas mileage is:
1. Make sure the tires are inflated to 35 PSI (the Z has a tire pressure monitoring system that helps here) 2. Take it out on the highway for a long trip. I drove for four hours to Dallas to Houston, and my gas mileage has been consistently 2 MPG higher ever since I got back from the trip.
My wife has a Saab 9-5 2.7T "sport wagon", and it gets 29 MPG (it's a turbo 4), which is better than the Lexus RX 330 Hybrid(which we almost waited for when we bought her Saab) and almost as good as the Honda Accord, so that's a benefit.
Personally, I'm a little nervous at the recent horsepower wars that cars seem to be going through. It's almost like the early 1970s where cars are getting bigger and they're using more gas (I know, I know, I have a Z -- a bit hypocritical). I would like to see cars getting better gas mileage (including mine), and less emphasis on putting in more horsepower.
Combine that with the gas guzzling SUVs, and it's no wonder that the Saudi Royal family loves to hold Bush's hand.
> Spotlight is decidedly not the instant search it claims to be.
There might be a problem there for you. I hit command+space, and typed in slashdot, and less than 1 second later, I had 27 entries, including some emails that people wrote me 18 months ago about HP calculators. I've found Spotlight to be very fast, and incredibly useful.
Wow, is anyone else surprised CNET put this in here:
> Why did these ID requirements get attached to an "emergency" military > spending bill?? > Because it's difficult for politicians to vote against money that will go to the troops > in Iraq and tsunami relief. The funds cover ammunition, weapons, tracked combat > vehicles, aircraft, troop housing, death benefits, and so on.
The Republicans control congress and the executive branch now, and they wanted to have this National ID bill. By attaching this to a wholly unrelated military spending bill, the so-called advocates of small government will get their national ID card wish.
As an interesting aside it's funny that they chose to stick this into a military spending bill for Iraq. Anyone recall that the Bush Administration told us told this war was going to cost? I thought this was was supposed to cost between $10 and $100 billion? We're already more than three times the high end figure, with no end in sight. This is the fourth emergency allocation of money Bush has asked for for his war "on the cheap".
Anyway, make no mistake about it. The Republicans are now using their complete control to railroad this bill through, by sticking this thing in a military spending bill. It's a perfect catch-22. If the Democrats voted against it, they would have been accused of being against our troops (John Kerry, please take some time to describe how that feels). If they voted for it, it miraculously becomes a bipartisan bill so the Republicans can pass the blame around to evade responsibility. Even after this, the Democrats can be accused of "flip-flopping" since they voted against the national ID before, and now they're voting for it when it's buried in a military spending bill (Senator Kerry, your turn again). Wow, it's a win-win-win situation for the Republicans.
Of course, for the Democrats and the public in general, it's a nice lose-lose-lose situation though. Maybe a brave Democrat can filibuster this bill so it doesn't get railroaded through. Oh, wait, the Republicans want to get rid of the filibuster, too.
I call upon all the Democratic senators and representatives who read Slashdot to stop this as soon as possible! There. I've done my part.
> A lightsaber is a unique device, created by hand -- the > controls will be slightly different on each individual lightsaber > that you buy.
This is a pretty cool/funny article. "A lightsaber can help convince an assailant that no means no."
But I thought according to Star Wars lore, you couldn't "buy" a lightsaber. The Jedi (or Sith) had to build their own lightsaber. The story is the Jedi uses the Force to shape the lightsaber crystal and then uses the Force to put it into the cylinder. Because of the "Force" dexterity required, building a lightsaber is supposed to show that the Jedi has mastered the Force.
That's why in Episode VI Darth Vader notices that Luke built a new lightsaber (and subtly threatens Luke with it), and says, "Indeed you are powerful" or something like that. If all the Jedi had to do is buy a lightsaber, then having a new one wouldn't be any more impressive than having good credit.
Then again, I guess in Episode III (and the Clone Wars episodes), we learn the General Grievous collects lightsabers like baseball cards, so maybe the article was written especially for him.
Although I can't imagine General Grievous slicing bagels with his lightsaber, Anakin, with the cavalier attitude towards using the Force he showed in Episode II, probably did.
> I have two words for you: > 1. Spotlight > 2. Dashboard
I got my copy of Tiger yesterday, so I installed it last night. Dashboard is cool, where I spent way too long adding and removing widgets just so I could watch the ripple effect (I've got a 1.5 GHz PowerBook G4 17" with 1 GB RAM). It's kind of like when everyone spent about 30 minutes doing the Genie effect when they got Mac OS X 10.0 Beta. Random cool things:
1. When it's sunny outside, the sun from the Weather widget spills out above it, gently illuminating the other things on the desktop. That's cool
2. The Address Book widget is fast and makes AddressBook far more usable. Just type in a name, and boom! you have their info.
3. The Calendar widget is next to useless. I thought it would show me my iCal events for the day or something, but no such luck. It just sits there, red and unaware.
4. I find this hard to believe but QuickTime 7 looks much better than QuickTime 6. I watched the large Star Wars Episode III trailer in it, and it appears to look far more detailed! You can actually see Anakin's complexion turning gray when he's talking to Palpatine!
5. Spotlight is really cool. It took about 30 minutes to index, but once it was done. I searched on a few terms. It found emails I wrote six years ago that I forgot I received. It's very fast. Type in someone's name, and in one second, you can see all sorts of stuff about them on your hard drive. Basically, your Mac turns into a giant contact manager (if you've ever gotten one of those PIMs to work where it tracked files, emails, and whatever for contacts). I'm getting used to the idea of using SpotLight to look for a file or application before I even go to the Finder, and it works well. SpotLight has earned its place in a hallowed corner place on the screen.
6. iChat can now display what song you're listening to in iTunes. That's cool, too!
7. The mouse preferences has a place to adjust the sensitivity of the scroll wheel and which to make the primary mouse button (left or right).
8. When Safari can't open a page (like this Ars-Technica page right now), it displays an error page, rather than a slide down dialog box. It's less obtrusive this way.
Well, I certainly don't want to be considered to be a troll, but here goes anyway.
The problem is we have a relatively small number of Star Wars/Lucas haters that speak very loudly on Slashdot and they speak out of proportion of the general population.
I'm assuming that they didn't like Episodes I and II for various reasons (some more emotional than anything else), and they are desperate to get others to feel the same way. Their fantasy is that if they say it enough, people will start to believe them and a whole movement will rise up and picket Star Wars movies or something. Ticket sales will drop and people will be burning Special Edition DVDs in the streets. Then George Lucas will fly the Star-Wars-hater who wrote the most vitriolic post on Slashdot first class to California to meet him at Skywalker Ranch, where he'll plea with them to write the new movies and beg for forgiveness for their perceived criticisms. The begging will give way to soft music and gentle romance...
Or something like that.
Well, it isn't going to happen. The fact of the matter is the silent majority of people enjoyed the movies quite a bit. It's been said before the Episodes I and II are the same general quality as Episodes IV, V, and VI.
> Millions? Find 5 people total who liked either episode 1 or 2, > they don't even have to like both. I challenge you.
I don't even have to do that. Look at Alexa.com. Star Wars.com is ranked 1,146th, while Slashdot (which, surprising at it seems, does have non-Star Wars-hating content, so it's still not a fair comparison) is 1,391th. So even if 50% of the stories on Slashdot were about how horrible Lucas is, you still have a lot more people who think a few people are blowing things out of proportion, and just want to enjoy a movie [1]. That is to say Star Wars.com has far more people visiting it (and I presume they're not visiting to keep their anger and hate fresh) than technology enthusiasts are currently visiting Slashdot, where only a small fraction of the stories are related to Star Wars.
Another data point: Episodes I, II, IV, V, and VI have done about the same in box office dollars. So people aren't staying away in droves like the Star-Wars-haters would like to believe. Screaming "Greedo did NOT shoot first!" doesn't make you [2] sound any more intelligent.
Basically all the Star Wars-hating is a tempest in a tea cup. If you disagree, fine, but don't feel like you have to post your vitriol in every Star Wars story that gets posted on Slashdot. Remember, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. So if Lucas has really ruined the franchise, you shouldn't care and you shouldn't be posting on a Slashdot Star Wars story anyway. Then you can ignore me.
Or mod me as a troll.
[1] I am of course not suggesting that just because millions of people enjoy Star Wars makes it a good series movies. I am saying that a dozen or so screaming Lucas-haters does not make it a bad set of movies.
[2] Obviously I'm using you in the plural sense meaning not just the poster, but the Star-Wars-haters in general.
Episode IV. Episode V and VI. Especially the Special Editions. Oh, and Episodes I and II. Plus Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
American Graffiti was supposed to be pretty good, too. Episode III looks like it will be good, too.
Oh, did I kill your zen-like hate-Lucas trance? Whoops, sorry! Please return to your Lucas-flagellation.
> Trust me George... you can only go up from here if you follow > these simple instructions.
This is getting annoying.
George Lucas doesn't read Slashdot, and he probably never will.
We're all sorry he did not use your saliva-encrusted fan fiction as the basis for his script for Episodes I-III, but millions of people enjoyed the movies anyway.
Comments such as yours and of the two dozen other minority ranters on Slashdot are getting irritating to no end. If you don't like the movies, fine -- click on Preferences, then click on Homepage, and de-select Star Wars. There! wasn't that easy?
I hope George Lucas makes Jar-Jar a freakin' Jedi Master in Episode III just to piss off the "George Lucas killed my childhood" crowd.
People are willing to censor blogs? Does this surprise anyone?
I saw an article (sorry, no reference) where the researchers took a poll to see if people thought certain things should be allowed. They rewrote the Bill of Rights to they'd be unrecognizable to the casual reader, and they asked people if each amendment should be allowed. For each amendment in the Bill of Rights, many (if not most) thought that the right need not be constitutionally protected.
It's not that people agreed strongly with the idea of preventing the government from forcing the quartering of soldiers. It's that most people are so ignorant that they don't know why we have certain protections in place in the Constitution. Freedom of speech? Naw, the government should be able to censor. Freedom of the press? Naw, the press should be required to get government approval for items published. The results were amazing and disturbing!
The point is too many people in America are so comfortable that they take their rights for granted. When people spend more time worrying if a certain entertainer is wearing slutty clothes than they did considering whether the government had given enough (or even correct) justification about going to war and killing hundreds of thousands of people, you know that a country has its priorities screwed up.
It's sad but patriots have died to protect these freedoms and most people don't give a damn. But that's why we have our Constitution: to protect the public from its own shortsightedness.
> In education, there is an "ideal draft" theory, that states, > essentially, that when an instructor has an ideal essay on a > particular subject in mind when reading/grading an > assignment, both the instructor and student lose.
There's also some psychology in this, too.
Familiarity makes you more inclined to like something.
For example, experiments were done where people were shown a stack of photographs and were asked to rate the photographs in terms of how flattering they were to the subject. The stack included a photo of themselves. In the control group, their photo was normal, but with the experimental group, their photo was a mirror image (flopped, in photography parlance).
The experimental group statistically rated their photos higher. The reasoning was that the flopped image is what you see when you look in a mirror -- that is, you see yourself in the mirror more often than as you actually are, so you are more familar with that image of yourself.
So, not surprisingly, the original trilogy is more familiar to people then the new trilogy. Moreover, I think than when some fans actually saw Episodes I and II, it did not live up to expectations, and people disliked them more than they would have otherwise. As for the rest of the crowd, not surprisingly, most people are fair weather fans: they saw Episode IV because of the hype and they saw Episode I because of the hype. Although I didn't run across this list adjusted for inflation, the box office sales indicate this as well, with the best sellers being Episode IV, Episode I, Episode II, Episode VI, and finally Episode V.
Going back to familiarity, think about when you're in a restaurant, and you order an iced tea, and the waiter accidentally brings you a Coke. That first taste is awful! Not because the Coke was bad, but because you were expecting iced tea. Once you know what to expect, even the second sip will taste better.
I think many fans had played up what they thought the prequels would be like, but when Lucas delivered, it wasn't what they were expecting, and they got angry. There are probably some other reasons why people didn't like the movies (one of which is probably the fact that Lucas's insights on proto-fascism might be turning some people off as well)
I enjoyed the movies, I'm a huge Star Wars fan, and Episode II is my favorite out of the five I've seen. The new movies are flawed, but so were the old ones. All five of them have wit, low-brow humor, great special effects, cheesy special effects, memorable dialog, and groan-worthy dialog. However, I think Lucas is tying together two themes. First, he describes an almost-utopia into a dystopia, and its effort to rise again. Second, the story is about a good character gone bad and how they can be redeemed. The fact that those two themes are in a story arc that are carried though a thirty year effort shows Lucas' movies haven't actually changed much at all.
> It definitely is. Since when do molluscs have tits and need a > bikini top?
Lucas had a squid flying shotgun in a gigantic spaceship issuing orders as an admiral of the Rebel navy, but your suspension of disbelief ends at the boobies? It's a trap, indeed. [I never post on Fark, but it feels like I just did]
That reminds me of when people were complaining that it was revealed in Episode II that Queen Amidala was an elected official. "But, queens aren't elected!" So suspension of disbelief covers the Force, light sabers, Wookies, Yoda, hyperspace, et al, but it doesn't cover Naboo's political structure?
> It's not the size of Apple that's invited this attention from > Congress, it's their behavior
Of course, some Republicans were aghast at the Department of Justice looking into Microsoft illegally abusing its monopoly. So much so, that all it required was for Microsoft to hire Bush advisor and Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed as a lobbyist, and to send a few million dollars Bush's way, and the DOJ dropped the case. Done. That obvious case was where Microsoft lied throughout the trial, had more smoking guns an Indiana Jones movie, and showed nothing but contempt for the judge and the rulings. No muss no fuss.
But now, Congress thinks it's important to go after Apple, who is just starting off in the market. They don't have a monopoly, and their success is far from assured. They are nowhere near the place in digital music that Microsoft is in for operatings systems and Microsoft Office.
If you don't like Apple's business model. Fine. Don't buy their stuff. But until Apple has been sued and found to (1) have a legal monopoly in terms of digital music, and (2) found to be illegally abusing their monopoly (like you if your iPod stops working if it finds you're not using their word processor Pages), Congress should stay away from nationalizing iTunes or iPods.
Or, if they can't keep themselves away, they should at least stop calling whatever we have in the U.S. a democracy and capitalism.
Actually, I'm embarrassed to say I don't know who that is. I'm taking a couple of advertising related classes -- Consumer Behavior and Communications. Interestingly we covered Milgrem's Obedience to Authority [no referrer link there; I just copied and pasted it from my Amazon wish list] and the related experiments, but we haven't done much more than touch on the basics of psychology.
Re:Marketing people love you!
on
Return of the Mac
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· Score: 3, Funny
> Some of these are also the names of standard logical fallacies, > which it appears your Consumer Behaviour class is teaching > you to exploit.
You're correct except for fact you misspelled "behavior"[1]
> A logic course would teach you the same thing, minus the > exploiting part.
I look a logic class as an undergrad -- in Electrical Engineering, that was the idea of a "fun" elective -- and you're absolutely correct.
Basically if everyone who ever had to purchase anything registered for a logics class, passed it, and retained enough information to recognize a logical fallacy, advertisements as we know it would cease. Plus, no one would vote Republican[2]. Short of that, everyone should take a consumer behavior class. It was very enlightening.
Basically Advertising is the reason why Capitalism in practice doesn't work as well as you'd think it would in theory [3].
Thanks for reading this post [4]
----- Rabid-Moderators' friend [1] Note, this is flamebait to people outside the U.S.
[2] Another flamebait, albeit "kidding on the square"
[3] Not flamebait since MBAs are automatically allowed to say things like this and not be accused of being socialists
[4] Moderators should mod this as overrated since it's clearly pandering to moderators by mentioning moderation at all[5]
> That's income generated on a monthly basis...and new > subscribers etc etc. And let's face it, the equipment can't be all > that expensive (for them).
We studied TiVo's business model in one of my MBA classes. Basically, they lose money on each box they sell and they make ridiculous amounts of money for the service -- more than 70% direct margins, if I recall correctly.
So the obvious idea is why the hell is TiVo selling hardware at all? Just sell a service that different devices can subscribe to. The remote control is part of it, but what's killing them in terms of margins is the set-top box.
Personally, I like the concept of TiVo, but I hate the subscription fee idea, and I don't like the idea of buying a lifetime subscription and having TiVo change the terms over time. So no TiVo for me yet.
> This isn't about getting free music. It's about removing > restrictions that traditionally haven't been in place on > consumer media.
Actually since this media type never existed, the Protected AAC is not removing anything you couldn't do before. Apple's FairPlay system was designed to serve as a substitute for purchasing the physical CD. Think about it: if you buy a physical CD, you can't give it to a friend and listen to it at the same time, right? You can't listen to it in your home theater CD player and your car at the same time, right? This is because the physical medium exists in one place at a time.
You can however, make a copy of the disc and have as many copies as you want. You can stick one in your Discman, one in your car -- you can fill a 500 disc changer with as many copies as you want. But you have to physically burn a copy.
Ditto with the protected AAC file. Think about the protected AAC file and the FairPlay enabled computer as being the substitute to the physical CD. Apple does one better; since you can set five computers to play the same protected AAC file, it would be the same as when you bought the new Eminem CD, it came with five identical physical CDs so you could load it into five CD players simultaneously.
Other competing DRM schemes that the big record companies were pushing did not let you make copies. Apple introduced a system that met the needs of record companies while still giving you an analogy to what you could do with a physical CD.
What I was trying to say (before the post was pummelled by moderators) that Apple came up with the best system the record companies would allow. Keep in mind that Apple might have preferred to not use DRM at all (they don't even use serial numbers for installing Mac OS X). So you could either get this flawed DRM scheme that Apple had or nothing at all. Go back to buying non-rippable CDs for $16.99 or pirating them.
This guy is annoying. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
Back when Apple introduced their iTunes Music Store, they offered something unique: one could buy a song for 99 cents no subscription, unlimited CD burns, and iTunes played MP3s. The other online choices were obtaining the music illegally or getting into some draconian subscription thing the big record companies were doing.
Apple didn't put hugely restrictive DRM on the files; you could burn the song to a disc as many times as you wanted or load it onto as many iPods as you wanted. You can move songs pretty easily between Macs without too much hassle. This was great compared to the other schemes the record companies had come up with -- like paying a fee every time you wanted to burn a song to a disc.
Now this guy is circumventing Apple's DRM scheme so that eventually Apple has no choice but to make it even tighter or shut the business down due to piracy. Plus, they're giving Microsoft a great "I told you so" -- remember back when Microsoft crippled Windows Media Player from even ripping 128 bit MP3s to push users into their proprietary media format? From the Wall Street Journal (April 2001):
Microsoft, for example, plans to severely limit the quality of music that can be recorded as an MP3 file using software built into the next version of its personal-computer operating system, Windows XP. But music recorded in the Redmond, Wash., software company's own format, called Windows Media Audio, will sound clearer and require far less storage space on a computer.
You want to prove your l33t skills or fight against The Man -- fine, go pick a more serious target (I'm sure the Electronic Frontier Foundation could think items that are more important than free music).
You want to know why companies come up with ridiculously restrictive copy protection schemes? You can thank guys like this./rant
> Riiiggghhhhhht. Why would you watch several seasons in one > sitting of a show you don't like?
Probably the same reason he wrote 340 words on a guy he doesn't particularly want to read about. Now that's dedication!
I like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and MC Pee Pants has some clever rhymes. Unfortunately I never caught the original story when questions were posed to begin with.
> IANAL but I don't think there is much apple can do. Unless > they stole some patented technology, they should be fine with > that desing. You cannot copyright style or asthetics.
I don't that's true. Patents aren't the only thing protected. Designs, trademarks, logos, and appearances are protected, too.
You can't market a product that can be mistakened for the product of another. The reason is that psychologically, people associated items that look similar as having the same quality as the original product, and consumers will assume that the two companies have something in common. In other words, the rip-off product is trying to bank on the consumer perception of the original product.
In my Consumer Behavior class we studied the case of a regional soft drink called "Corr's Natural Soda". The can looked vaguely like "Coors", but the script was different (to someone paying attention) and the former can had a big cross-section of a lemon on it.
Coor's Brewing Company sued the regional soda manufacturer claiming that "Corr's" was trying to facilitate their market position and gain benefits through the name and the look of the can. The latter defended by saying that it was named after the owner "Robert Corr".
The courts sided with Coor's Brewing Company. They told the regional soda company to change the product to make it less similar to Coors. They were told to not put the name in script and if they wanted to name their soda after the person, they had to use the guy's full name and not just the last name with an apostrophe s so as to not deceive. The soda was changed to "Robert Corr Natural Soda," the name was put in a regular (albeit ugly) Serif font, and the can looked different enough from Coors that no one would expect there to be a connection.
The Coors versus Corr's case gives some insight, so I think Apple has a case. Many people will look at this "Super Shuffle" and think either Apple made it (since it looks almost exactly like the iPod shuffle), or that this company builds it for Apple (and thus the customer is getting the same product for less money because they don't pay Apple's markup). Then they'll go home and find out it doesn't support purchases from the iTunes Music Store, and you'll have some unhappy customers.
Clearly this ripoff product is gaining value by banking on Apple's look and feel. The fact that they put "Shuffle" in the name (a non-obvious name that only has value now that Apple has an iPod shuffle) and their ad rips Apple's ads off makes it worse.
I'm sure Apple Legal will have a response Monday morning. Like with the case of Future Power who ripped off the iMacs years ago, Apple needs to quelch the iPod ripoffs early and often. If someone wants to make a competing product, great, but market the product on its own merits, not trying to deceive customers.
> At the very most, they might hear my phone's vibration
My phone is always in vibrate mode, unless it's plugged into a wall charger and stuck on my dresser for the night. I can think of few things more annoying or unprofessional than an obtrusive ring tone.
One person at work I knew believes she is a Very Important Person, but she didn't want to carry her phone on her (too bulky, I assume). So she turned up the ringer to a distinctive song set to its loudest volume and put the damn thing on vibrate. When the phone went off, the cacophony of noises would be accompanied by the phone vibrating so violently that it would start whirling around the desk like a dervish. All conversation would stop as people would stared shocked at her cell phone.
For teenagers, I guess it's fine to use obnoxious ring tones -- it's probably analogous to people of my generation in college having annoying answering machine messages with popular songs or samples from a TV show (ho ho! My answering machine message is George from Seinfeld singing "Believe it or not, George isn't at home") or something.
Slashdot Mirror
> You forgot about the references to Bush in the Darth Vader
> dialog.
The dialog is superficial. Calls for dramatic absolutes are common when dictators are trying to gain power, as well as anyone with extreme viewpoints. It helps them manage the cognitive dissonance.
Actually all the Star Wars movies are describing, among other things, how Democracy can fall to fascism.
In summary, Palpatine starts a fake war[1] (where he controlled both sides[2]) in order to get elected and stay in office[3] by appealing to people's fear and rallying nationalism [4]. He convinces the Senate to vote Emergency Powers to him [5] in order to consolidate more power under himself. He finally declares the end of the Republic [6] in order to bring "peace" to the galaxy.
The movies are not intended to directly catalog Bush or his policies. The original plot was written in the 1970s, and it was inspired by a number of events in history, including Hitler's rise to power and the Vietnam War. The way we humans move from democracy to fascism happens in roughly the same way each time.
It just so happens that it can be argued that Bush has been following the same pattern as any drive towards fascism. Thus, any parallels to the current state of the U.S. is purely coincidental.
-----
[1] Whoops! No weapons of mass destruction found. Our bad.
[2] Didn't we used to fund and support Saddam Hussein?
[3] Tom Ridge finally admits that the Department of Homeland Security twice questionably raised the terror alert status in order to prop up Bush's poll ratings during the election.
[4] Freedom fries, anyone?
[5] Secret sneak and peek searches via the PATRIOT Act, anyone?
[6] "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier," Bush said, pausing and then joking, "just so long as I'm the dictator."
>> He should have been obeying his new master's orders but
>> hating them, and hating himself too
> Did you notice the tear running down his check after he killed
> the separatist leaders? I think he was hating himself.
That's exactly what I saw. He had tears running down his face after he killed the younglings and after he killed the Separatist leaders. Note that before he decided to interfere with Mace Windu confronting Sideous, he brooded in the Jedi Temple for what looked like hours.
He was doing what he had to do to become powerful enough to learn how to keep Padme from dying. He probably thought he would then kill Darth Sideous, and make himself Emperor (since eliminating the Senate would make things more efficient to ensure stability for the galaxy)
> Drive smoothly for the whole tank (tried to never let RPMs go
> above 2500)
> You know what I found, I got 25 MPG in BOTH cases.
Same thing happened to me. I tried to drive smoothly the whole tank. I reset my fuel economy gauge, and consciously kept the tach under 3,000. I tapped the gas slowly to go as smoothly as possible. And the only thing it seemed to get me is I felt like a moron.
My car normally gets 20 - 26 MPG (it's a 350Z, so yeah, it's not really designed for good fuel economy, but it's not as bad as some sports cars). The only thing that kills my gas mileage is really gunning it stop and go. But if I drive generally smoothly, I can let the tach go to above 5k, and not see the gas mileage reduce appreciably.
What I found improved my car's gas mileage is:
1. Make sure the tires are inflated to 35 PSI (the Z has a tire pressure monitoring system that helps here)
2. Take it out on the highway for a long trip. I drove for four hours to Dallas to Houston, and my gas mileage has been consistently 2 MPG higher ever since I got back from the trip.
My wife has a Saab 9-5 2.7T "sport wagon", and it gets 29 MPG (it's a turbo 4), which is better than the Lexus RX 330 Hybrid(which we almost waited for when we bought her Saab) and almost as good as the Honda Accord, so that's a benefit.
Personally, I'm a little nervous at the recent horsepower wars that cars seem to be going through. It's almost like the early 1970s where cars are getting bigger and they're using more gas (I know, I know, I have a Z -- a bit hypocritical). I would like to see cars getting better gas mileage (including mine), and less emphasis on putting in more horsepower.
Combine that with the gas guzzling SUVs, and it's no wonder that the Saudi Royal family loves to hold Bush's hand.
> Spotlight is decidedly not the instant search it claims to be.
There might be a problem there for you. I hit command+space, and typed in slashdot, and less than 1 second later, I had 27 entries, including some emails that people wrote me 18 months ago about HP calculators. I've found Spotlight to be very fast, and incredibly useful.
I've got a 1.5 GHz PowerBook G4 with 1 GB RAM.
Wow, is anyone else surprised CNET put this in here:
> Why did these ID requirements get attached to an "emergency" military
> spending bill??
> Because it's difficult for politicians to vote against money that will go to the troops
> in Iraq and tsunami relief. The funds cover ammunition, weapons, tracked combat
> vehicles, aircraft, troop housing, death benefits, and so on.
The Republicans control congress and the executive branch now, and they wanted to have this National ID bill. By attaching this to a wholly unrelated military spending bill, the so-called advocates of small government will get their national ID card wish.
As an interesting aside it's funny that they chose to stick this into a military spending bill for Iraq. Anyone recall that the Bush Administration told us told this war was going to cost? I thought this was was supposed to cost between $10 and $100 billion? We're already more than three times the high end figure, with no end in sight. This is the fourth emergency allocation of money Bush has asked for for his war "on the cheap".
Anyway, make no mistake about it. The Republicans are now using their complete control to railroad this bill through, by sticking this thing in a military spending bill. It's a perfect catch-22. If the Democrats voted against it, they would have been accused of being against our troops (John Kerry, please take some time to describe how that feels). If they voted for it, it miraculously becomes a bipartisan bill so the Republicans can pass the blame around to evade responsibility. Even after this, the Democrats can be accused of "flip-flopping" since they voted against the national ID before, and now they're voting for it when it's buried in a military spending bill (Senator Kerry, your turn again). Wow, it's a win-win-win situation for the Republicans.
Of course, for the Democrats and the public in general, it's a nice lose-lose-lose situation though. Maybe a brave Democrat can filibuster this bill so it doesn't get railroaded through. Oh, wait, the Republicans want to get rid of the filibuster, too.
I call upon all the Democratic senators and representatives who read Slashdot to stop this as soon as possible! There. I've done my part.
> A lightsaber is a unique device, created by hand -- the
> controls will be slightly different on each individual lightsaber
> that you buy.
This is a pretty cool/funny article. "A lightsaber can help convince an assailant that no means no."
But I thought according to Star Wars lore, you couldn't "buy" a lightsaber. The Jedi (or Sith) had to build their own lightsaber. The story is the Jedi uses the Force to shape the lightsaber crystal and then uses the Force to put it into the cylinder. Because of the "Force" dexterity required, building a lightsaber is supposed to show that the Jedi has mastered the Force.
That's why in Episode VI Darth Vader notices that Luke built a new lightsaber (and subtly threatens Luke with it), and says, "Indeed you are powerful" or something like that. If all the Jedi had to do is buy a lightsaber, then having a new one wouldn't be any more impressive than having good credit.
Then again, I guess in Episode III (and the Clone Wars episodes), we learn the General Grievous collects lightsabers like baseball cards, so maybe the article was written especially for him.
Although I can't imagine General Grievous slicing bagels with his lightsaber, Anakin, with the cavalier attitude towards using the Force he showed in Episode II, probably did.
>> I searched on a few terms. It found emails I wrote six years ago
>> that I forgot I received.
> i know we've all been a bit lonely at times, but, you know, there
> are people you can call before you get to that stage.
Note to self: proofread posts more carefully before clicking "submit"
> I have two words for you:
> 1. Spotlight
> 2. Dashboard
I got my copy of Tiger yesterday, so I installed it last night. Dashboard is cool, where I spent way too long adding and removing widgets just so I could watch the ripple effect (I've got a 1.5 GHz PowerBook G4 17" with 1 GB RAM). It's kind of like when everyone spent about 30 minutes doing the Genie effect when they got Mac OS X 10.0 Beta. Random cool things:
1. When it's sunny outside, the sun from the Weather widget spills out above it, gently illuminating the other things on the desktop. That's cool
2. The Address Book widget is fast and makes AddressBook far more usable. Just type in a name, and boom! you have their info.
3. The Calendar widget is next to useless. I thought it would show me my iCal events for the day or something, but no such luck. It just sits there, red and unaware.
4. I find this hard to believe but QuickTime 7 looks much better than QuickTime 6. I watched the large Star Wars Episode III trailer in it, and it appears to look far more detailed! You can actually see Anakin's complexion turning gray when he's talking to Palpatine!
5. Spotlight is really cool. It took about 30 minutes to index, but once it was done. I searched on a few terms. It found emails I wrote six years ago that I forgot I received. It's very fast. Type in someone's name, and in one second, you can see all sorts of stuff about them on your hard drive. Basically, your Mac turns into a giant contact manager (if you've ever gotten one of those PIMs to work where it tracked files, emails, and whatever for contacts). I'm getting used to the idea of using SpotLight to look for a file or application before I even go to the Finder, and it works well. SpotLight has earned its place in a hallowed corner place on the screen.
6. iChat can now display what song you're listening to in iTunes. That's cool, too!
7. The mouse preferences has a place to adjust the sensitivity of the scroll wheel and which to make the primary mouse button (left or right).
8. When Safari can't open a page (like this Ars-Technica page right now), it displays an error page, rather than a slide down dialog box. It's less obtrusive this way.
Well, I certainly don't want to be considered to be a troll, but here goes anyway.
...
The problem is we have a relatively small number of Star Wars/Lucas haters that speak very loudly on Slashdot and they speak out of proportion of the general population.
I'm assuming that they didn't like Episodes I and II for various reasons (some more emotional than anything else), and they are desperate to get others to feel the same way. Their fantasy is that if they say it enough, people will start to believe them and a whole movement will rise up and picket Star Wars movies or something. Ticket sales will drop and people will be burning Special Edition DVDs in the streets. Then George Lucas will fly the Star-Wars-hater who wrote the most vitriolic post on Slashdot first class to California to meet him at Skywalker Ranch, where he'll plea with them to write the new movies and beg for forgiveness for their perceived criticisms. The begging will give way to soft music and gentle romance
Or something like that.
Well, it isn't going to happen. The fact of the matter is the silent majority of people enjoyed the movies quite a bit. It's been said before the Episodes I and II are the same general quality as Episodes IV, V, and VI.
> Millions? Find 5 people total who liked either episode 1 or 2,
> they don't even have to like both. I challenge you.
I don't even have to do that. Look at Alexa.com. Star Wars.com is ranked 1,146th, while Slashdot (which, surprising at it seems, does have non-Star Wars-hating content, so it's still not a fair comparison) is 1,391th. So even if 50% of the stories on Slashdot were about how horrible Lucas is, you still have a lot more people who think a few people are blowing things out of proportion, and just want to enjoy a movie [1]. That is to say Star Wars.com has far more people visiting it (and I presume they're not visiting to keep their anger and hate fresh) than technology enthusiasts are currently visiting Slashdot, where only a small fraction of the stories are related to Star Wars.
Another data point: Episodes I, II, IV, V, and VI have done about the same in box office dollars. So people aren't staying away in droves like the Star-Wars-haters would like to believe. Screaming "Greedo did NOT shoot first!" doesn't make you [2] sound any more intelligent.
Basically all the Star Wars-hating is a tempest in a tea cup. If you disagree, fine, but don't feel like you have to post your vitriol in every Star Wars story that gets posted on Slashdot. Remember, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. So if Lucas has really ruined the franchise, you shouldn't care and you shouldn't be posting on a Slashdot Star Wars story anyway. Then you can ignore me.
Or mod me as a troll.
[1] I am of course not suggesting that just because millions of people enjoy Star Wars makes it a good series movies. I am saying that a dozen or so screaming Lucas-haters does not make it a bad set of movies.
[2] Obviously I'm using you in the plural sense meaning not just the poster, but the Star-Wars-haters in general.
> Name something good by Lucas
Let's see.
Episode IV. Episode V and VI. Especially the Special Editions. Oh, and Episodes I and II. Plus Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
American Graffiti was supposed to be pretty good, too. Episode III looks like it will be good, too.
Oh, did I kill your zen-like hate-Lucas trance? Whoops, sorry! Please return to your Lucas-flagellation.
> Trust me George... you can only go up from here if you follow
> these simple instructions.
This is getting annoying.
George Lucas doesn't read Slashdot, and he probably never will.
We're all sorry he did not use your saliva-encrusted fan fiction as the basis for his script for Episodes I-III, but millions of people enjoyed the movies anyway.
Comments such as yours and of the two dozen other minority ranters on Slashdot are getting irritating to no end. If you don't like the movies, fine -- click on Preferences, then click on Homepage, and de-select Star Wars. There! wasn't that easy?
I hope George Lucas makes Jar-Jar a freakin' Jedi Master in Episode III just to piss off the "George Lucas killed my childhood" crowd.
Of course not.
People are willing to censor blogs? Does this surprise anyone?
I saw an article (sorry, no reference) where the researchers took a poll to see if people thought certain things should be allowed. They rewrote the Bill of Rights to they'd be unrecognizable to the casual reader, and they asked people if each amendment should be allowed. For each amendment in the Bill of Rights, many (if not most) thought that the right need not be constitutionally protected.
It's not that people agreed strongly with the idea of preventing the government from forcing the quartering of soldiers. It's that most people are so ignorant that they don't know why we have certain protections in place in the Constitution. Freedom of speech? Naw, the government should be able to censor. Freedom of the press? Naw, the press should be required to get government approval for items published. The results were amazing and disturbing!
The point is too many people in America are so comfortable that they take their rights for granted. When people spend more time worrying if a certain entertainer is wearing slutty clothes than they did considering whether the government had given enough (or even correct) justification about going to war and killing hundreds of thousands of people, you know that a country has its priorities screwed up.
It's sad but patriots have died to protect these freedoms and most people don't give a damn. But that's why we have our Constitution: to protect the public from its own shortsightedness.
> In education, there is an "ideal draft" theory, that states,
> essentially, that when an instructor has an ideal essay on a
> particular subject in mind when reading/grading an
> assignment, both the instructor and student lose.
There's also some psychology in this, too.
Familiarity makes you more inclined to like something.
For example, experiments were done where people were shown a stack of photographs and were asked to rate the photographs in terms of how flattering they were to the subject. The stack included a photo of themselves. In the control group, their photo was normal, but with the experimental group, their photo was a mirror image (flopped, in photography parlance).
The experimental group statistically rated their photos higher. The reasoning was that the flopped image is what you see when you look in a mirror -- that is, you see yourself in the mirror more often than as you actually are, so you are more familar with that image of yourself.
So, not surprisingly, the original trilogy is more familiar to people then the new trilogy. Moreover, I think than when some fans actually saw Episodes I and II, it did not live up to expectations, and people disliked them more than they would have otherwise. As for the rest of the crowd, not surprisingly, most people are fair weather fans: they saw Episode IV because of the hype and they saw Episode I because of the hype. Although I didn't run across this list adjusted for inflation, the box office sales indicate this as well, with the best sellers being Episode IV, Episode I, Episode II, Episode VI, and finally Episode V.
Going back to familiarity, think about when you're in a restaurant, and you order an iced tea, and the waiter accidentally brings you a Coke. That first taste is awful! Not because the Coke was bad, but because you were expecting iced tea. Once you know what to expect, even the second sip will taste better.
I think many fans had played up what they thought the prequels would be like, but when Lucas delivered, it wasn't what they were expecting, and they got angry. There are probably some other reasons why people didn't like the movies (one of which is probably the fact that Lucas's insights on proto-fascism might be turning some people off as well)
I enjoyed the movies, I'm a huge Star Wars fan, and Episode II is my favorite out of the five I've seen. The new movies are flawed, but so were the old ones. All five of them have wit, low-brow humor, great special effects, cheesy special effects, memorable dialog, and groan-worthy dialog. However, I think Lucas is tying together two themes. First, he describes an almost-utopia into a dystopia, and its effort to rise again. Second, the story is about a good character gone bad and how they can be redeemed. The fact that those two themes are in a story arc that are carried though a thirty year effort shows Lucas' movies haven't actually changed much at all.
> It definitely is. Since when do molluscs have tits and need a
> bikini top?
Lucas had a squid flying shotgun in a gigantic spaceship issuing orders as an admiral of the Rebel navy, but your suspension of disbelief ends at the boobies? It's a trap, indeed. [I never post on Fark, but it feels like I just did]
That reminds me of when people were complaining that it was revealed in Episode II that Queen Amidala was an elected official. "But, queens aren't elected!" So suspension of disbelief covers the Force, light sabers, Wookies, Yoda, hyperspace, et al, but it doesn't cover Naboo's political structure?
> Terrible.
> Piscene face, mammalian, uhhhh... mammaries.
"Oh, why couldn't she be the other kind of mermaid?! The kind with the fish part on top and the lady part on bottom!"
> It's not the size of Apple that's invited this attention from
> Congress, it's their behavior
Of course, some Republicans were aghast at the Department of Justice looking into Microsoft illegally abusing its monopoly. So much so, that all it required was for Microsoft to hire Bush advisor and Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed as a lobbyist, and to send a few million dollars Bush's way, and the DOJ dropped the case. Done. That obvious case was where Microsoft lied throughout the trial, had more smoking guns an Indiana Jones movie, and showed nothing but contempt for the judge and the rulings. No muss no fuss.
But now, Congress thinks it's important to go after Apple, who is just starting off in the market. They don't have a monopoly, and their success is far from assured. They are nowhere near the place in digital music that Microsoft is in for operatings systems and Microsoft Office.
If you don't like Apple's business model. Fine. Don't buy their stuff. But until Apple has been sued and found to (1) have a legal monopoly in terms of digital music, and (2) found to be illegally abusing their monopoly (like you if your iPod stops working if it finds you're not using their word processor Pages), Congress should stay away from nationalizing iTunes or iPods.
Or, if they can't keep themselves away, they should at least stop calling whatever we have in the U.S. a democracy and capitalism.
> You've been reading Cialdini, haven't you?
Actually, I'm embarrassed to say I don't know who that is. I'm taking a couple of advertising related classes -- Consumer Behavior and Communications. Interestingly we covered Milgrem's Obedience to Authority [no referrer link there; I just copied and pasted it from my Amazon wish list] and the related experiments, but we haven't done much more than touch on the basics of psychology.
> Some of these are also the names of standard logical fallacies,
> which it appears your Consumer Behaviour class is teaching
> you to exploit.
You're correct except for fact you misspelled "behavior"[1]
> A logic course would teach you the same thing, minus the
> exploiting part.
I look a logic class as an undergrad -- in Electrical Engineering, that was the idea of a "fun" elective -- and you're absolutely correct.
Basically if everyone who ever had to purchase anything registered for a logics class, passed it, and retained enough information to recognize a logical fallacy, advertisements as we know it would cease. Plus, no one would vote Republican[2]. Short of that, everyone should take a consumer behavior class. It was very enlightening.
Basically Advertising is the reason why Capitalism in practice doesn't work as well as you'd think it would in theory [3].
Thanks for reading this post [4]
-----
Rabid-Moderators' friend
[1] Note, this is flamebait to people outside the U.S.
[2] Another flamebait, albeit "kidding on the square"
[3] Not flamebait since MBAs are automatically allowed to say things like this and not be accused of being socialists
[4] Moderators should mod this as overrated since it's clearly pandering to moderators by mentioning moderation at all[5]
[5] See [4] above
> Last year's Usenix conference was full of Powerbooks.
This is an example of Principle of Similarity and Principle of Social Proof including "The Number of Sources" Effect.
> Most of the top dogs in the industry.
This is an example of influence using authority, including High Status
> That prompted me to buy a PowerMac.
Aha! The requested target action!
> It's the best computing decision I've ever made.
Principle of Consistency
p.s., I'm not mocking you. I just noticed a bunch of statements that match the midterm I have Thursday night. Thus, this post counts as "studying"
p.p.s., I love my PowerBook
p.p.p.s., Please note, reading the above post qualifies you to place out of a graduate level Consumer Behavior marketing class.
> That's income generated on a monthly basis...and new
> subscribers etc etc. And let's face it, the equipment can't be all
> that expensive (for them).
We studied TiVo's business model in one of my MBA classes. Basically, they lose money on each box they sell and they make ridiculous amounts of money for the service -- more than 70% direct margins, if I recall correctly.
So the obvious idea is why the hell is TiVo selling hardware at all? Just sell a service that different devices can subscribe to. The remote control is part of it, but what's killing them in terms of margins is the set-top box.
Personally, I like the concept of TiVo, but I hate the subscription fee idea, and I don't like the idea of buying a lifetime subscription and having TiVo change the terms over time. So no TiVo for me yet.
> This isn't about getting free music. It's about removing
> restrictions that traditionally haven't been in place on
> consumer media.
Actually since this media type never existed, the Protected AAC is not removing anything you couldn't do before. Apple's FairPlay system was designed to serve as a substitute for purchasing the physical CD. Think about it: if you buy a physical CD, you can't give it to a friend and listen to it at the same time, right? You can't listen to it in your home theater CD player and your car at the same time, right? This is because the physical medium exists in one place at a time.
You can however, make a copy of the disc and have as many copies as you want. You can stick one in your Discman, one in your car -- you can fill a 500 disc changer with as many copies as you want. But you have to physically burn a copy.
Ditto with the protected AAC file. Think about the protected AAC file and the FairPlay enabled computer as being the substitute to the physical CD. Apple does one better; since you can set five computers to play the same protected AAC file, it would be the same as when you bought the new Eminem CD, it came with five identical physical CDs so you could load it into five CD players simultaneously.
Other competing DRM schemes that the big record companies were pushing did not let you make copies. Apple introduced a system that met the needs of record companies while still giving you an analogy to what you could do with a physical CD.
What I was trying to say (before the post was pummelled by moderators) that Apple came up with the best system the record companies would allow. Keep in mind that Apple might have preferred to not use DRM at all (they don't even use serial numbers for installing Mac OS X). So you could either get this flawed DRM scheme that Apple had or nothing at all. Go back to buying non-rippable CDs for $16.99 or pirating them.
Back when Apple introduced their iTunes Music Store, they offered something unique: one could buy a song for 99 cents no subscription, unlimited CD burns, and iTunes played MP3s. The other online choices were obtaining the music illegally or getting into some draconian subscription thing the big record companies were doing.
Apple didn't put hugely restrictive DRM on the files; you could burn the song to a disc as many times as you wanted or load it onto as many iPods as you wanted. You can move songs pretty easily between Macs without too much hassle. This was great compared to the other schemes the record companies had come up with -- like paying a fee every time you wanted to burn a song to a disc.
Now this guy is circumventing Apple's DRM scheme so that eventually Apple has no choice but to make it even tighter or shut the business down due to piracy. Plus, they're giving Microsoft a great "I told you so" -- remember back when Microsoft crippled Windows Media Player from even ripping 128 bit MP3s to push users into their proprietary media format? From the Wall Street Journal (April 2001):
You want to prove your l33t skills or fight against The Man -- fine, go pick a more serious target (I'm sure the Electronic Frontier Foundation could think items that are more important than free music).
You want to know why companies come up with ridiculously restrictive copy protection schemes? You can thank guys like this.
> Riiiggghhhhhht. Why would you watch several seasons in one
> sitting of a show you don't like?
Probably the same reason he wrote 340 words on a guy he doesn't particularly want to read about. Now that's dedication!
I like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and MC Pee Pants has some clever rhymes. Unfortunately I never caught the original story when questions were posed to begin with.
Hooray for Adult Swim!
> IANAL but I don't think there is much apple can do. Unless
> they stole some patented technology, they should be fine with
> that desing. You cannot copyright style or asthetics.
I don't that's true. Patents aren't the only thing protected. Designs, trademarks, logos, and appearances are protected, too.
You can't market a product that can be mistakened for the product of another. The reason is that psychologically, people associated items that look similar as having the same quality as the original product, and consumers will assume that the two companies have something in common. In other words, the rip-off product is trying to bank on the consumer perception of the original product.
In my Consumer Behavior class we studied the case of a regional soft drink called "Corr's Natural Soda". The can looked vaguely like "Coors", but the script was different (to someone paying attention) and the former can had a big cross-section of a lemon on it.
Coor's Brewing Company sued the regional soda manufacturer claiming that "Corr's" was trying to facilitate their market position and gain benefits through the name and the look of the can. The latter defended by saying that it was named after the owner "Robert Corr".
The courts sided with Coor's Brewing Company. They told the regional soda company to change the product to make it less similar to Coors. They were told to not put the name in script and if they wanted to name their soda after the person, they had to use the guy's full name and not just the last name with an apostrophe s so as to not deceive. The soda was changed to "Robert Corr Natural Soda," the name was put in a regular (albeit ugly) Serif font, and the can looked different enough from Coors that no one would expect there to be a connection.
The Coors versus Corr's case gives some insight, so I think Apple has a case. Many people will look at this "Super Shuffle" and think either Apple made it (since it looks almost exactly like the iPod shuffle), or that this company builds it for Apple (and thus the customer is getting the same product for less money because they don't pay Apple's markup). Then they'll go home and find out it doesn't support purchases from the iTunes Music Store, and you'll have some unhappy customers.
Clearly this ripoff product is gaining value by banking on Apple's look and feel. The fact that they put "Shuffle" in the name (a non-obvious name that only has value now that Apple has an iPod shuffle) and their ad rips Apple's ads off makes it worse.
I'm sure Apple Legal will have a response Monday morning. Like with the case of Future Power who ripped off the iMacs years ago, Apple needs to quelch the iPod ripoffs early and often. If someone wants to make a competing product, great, but market the product on its own merits, not trying to deceive customers.
> At the very most, they might hear my phone's vibration
My phone is always in vibrate mode, unless it's plugged into a wall charger and stuck on my dresser for the night. I can think of few things more annoying or unprofessional than an obtrusive ring tone.
One person at work I knew believes she is a Very Important Person, but she didn't want to carry her phone on her (too bulky, I assume). So she turned up the ringer to a distinctive song set to its loudest volume and put the damn thing on vibrate. When the phone went off, the cacophony of noises would be accompanied by the phone vibrating so violently that it would start whirling around the desk like a dervish. All conversation would stop as people would stared shocked at her cell phone.
For teenagers, I guess it's fine to use obnoxious ring tones -- it's probably analogous to people of my generation in college having annoying answering machine messages with popular songs or samples from a TV show (ho ho! My answering machine message is George from Seinfeld singing "Believe it or not, George isn't at home") or something.