Kind of funny to watch a/. discussion devolve into a dick waving contest over who has the best email backup system. Can't we just stick to CPUs, internet browsers, linux distros, and GPUs?
I think most of us saw this one coming, but the article is completely devoid of any information. First it's still just speculation that this is going to be the new announcement. For all any of us know it could be another new device to interact with the Wii. The only evidence the article even presents is that another news publication carried the rumor yesterday.
There's no mention of how they're going to add music and make it easy to put music on the device. There's no details on the camera either or even if the physical dimensions of the DS are going to be further reduced. Wouldn't it have been better to wait until Thursday when the product is actually announced and all of the details are released?
I don't mind a little speculation, but this had absolutely no substance to it at all. It's just a rumor repeated from another publication without anything of value added. Without the rest of the fluff about sales figures and release dates this article would have been one or two lines at most. What a complete waste of time.
I'm going to call bullshit on this. Not because I don't think DRM is a huge pain in the ass, but because most people aren't that tech savvy.
It's not an official survey by any means, but I just asked my roommate if he knew what DRM was. He had no clue. This is a guy in graduate school (field unrelated to technology) who downloads music through some site that's more DRM encumbered than I've ever seen. It's free, but only plays through their play which is loaded with ads and can't be used in any other way at all.
I wouldn't put money on more than 25% of people I randomly stop on campus knowing what DRM is. Of that 25%, how many could reasonably explain its purpose and ramifications on consumers? Most people are completely clueless and don't even think to question the DRM. Even if they do realize what it is and means for them, how many just brush off the thought in apathy?
My guess is that players are still expensive as hell and the discs aren't any cheaper. Most players are still well above $300 and most people don't even have a TV capable of potentially allowing you to discern a difference in quality between the Blu-ray disc and an upscaled DVD. Have I mentioned that the economy in America is going to shit and that people are starting to realize that they can't afford stuff like this yet?
If you argument held any weight, people would be rejecting DVD, which has DRM on it. Online video rentals or sales through iTunes, Xbox Live, or any of the other online stores would also be failing. Consumers aren't going to go without their video entertainment fix and generally the only legal way these days has DRM attached at the hip. As much everyone here hates DRM, the public at large has little knowledge of it. The real issue here is the high cost and perception of little increase in quality. DRM is probably a non-factor for most buyers.
I'm honestly not entirely sure what I've been let down by. Perhaps it's something to do with the DRM or maybe it's just a random bug in the game. Whatever it is, I haven't been able to actually play the game for over a week now. I've Google searched the problem endlessly, but haven't been able to come up with a solution and I've even resulted to dealing with EA support (albeit comically*) to try and figure out what's wrong.
I purchased the game the day it came out, installed it without a hitch and had a generally okay time playing the game. It wasn't everything I had dreamed it would be, but I found it fairly entertaining in its own right. For whatever reason, on the third day the game stopped working. I hadn't updated my system, changed any settings, or done anything that should suddenly stop the game from working; but for whatever reason, it just stopped working.
I've pretty much stopped caring and even if I were to get it working again I'm not entirely sure how much more I would play the game after having to deal with as much crap as I have. I looked over the patch notes and it seems as though there might be a potential fix, but of course I'm running the Mac version of the game so who knows when they'll actually patch that. After dealing with EA, it hasn't even been the DRM that's turned me off so much as the customer support in general. I've finally become a casualty to this monster that people have been decrying for so long. I guess I'll take my number and join the group.
* In case you were wonder I've been undergoing support through EA's online support system. This entails me submitting my problem and them getting back to me sometime within the next three days with generally unhelpful advice. The last piece of advice I got was from a guy (every time someone has got back to me, it's been a different person) who instructed me to follow steps which started with "Go to Start -> Run..." despite the fact that I'm on a mac. I got a pretty good laugh out of it, but at this point I really have to question how much EA has their shit together. From my end the answer seems to be, "Not very."
And Bill Gates still shows up for MS stories and he's retired. Granted he's doing commercials now, but that's about it.
They're kind of iconic and nostalgic in a way. Sure it's only been a few years/weeks, but in the tech world that may as well be eons.
Besides, the editors can't even be bothered to spell check story summaries or make sure they're factual. What makes you think they'll take the time to update the story icons?
I'm sure that they're confusing authoritarian with economically right, both of which describe Republicans, but two entirely separate things.
It's entirely possible to be extremely to the economic left and still be every bit if not more authoritarian than the Republican party tends to be. Just look at the USSR under Stalin.
It's also entirely possible to be extremely to the economic right and be very non-authoritarian. Probably the best example of this would be the American Libertarian party which has a strong free market belief as well as a very hands-off approach to government involvement in the personal lives of people.
Check out http://www.politicalcompass.org/ for a better explanation and to see where different political parties from different parts of the world are at. I've found a lot of interesting things on that site. The most interesting to me is that the vast majority of European governments aren't too far off of the US Democratic party, despite what a lot of European posters on/. would argue to the contrary.
What does that have to do with Obama's speeches? I don't recall any claim that McCain was somehow better, or for that matter worse, as he wasn't even mentioned. It's entirely possible that the OP thinks McCain is just as worthless or that even though his speeches have substance, it's a frightening kind of substance.
The worst part about the two party system and the people that go along with it is that instead of addressing any shortcomings or issues, they simply point to the other party and suggest that they're way worse or responsible for the blame. Nothing is ever really explained or examined in depth. No one ever bothers to counter the argument as it stands or point out why it's false. No one really cares about the truth of the matter and would just like to make the other party look worse while promoting their own goals and ideals regardless of whether it has any relation to the original point.
Thanks for being a classic example of how worthless our system is and how much it attempts to distract from actually weighing the merits of any given point and instead turn things into a circus for everyone's amusement.
I honestly have no idea how much time Ray is going to have to put into this, but is it possible that the RIAA is suing him only to keep him busy dealing with his own case? If it prevents him from having as much time to work on other cases in which the RIAA is involved, would it be worth it for them to create some fairly frivolous suit to keep Ray's hands tied?
Maybe I'm just reading into it, but you'd think with the amount of cash the RIAA has to throw around they could hire a lawyer that could develop a plan like this. Is it even feasible that something like this would suck up enough of his time to prevent him from being able to handle other cases?
Not so much joking as trolling. I've seen the exact same piece posted word for word on/. before as well as in a few other places over the years. It also takes a few different forms as well as I've seen it changed from a record store to a video game store. It's fairly similar to the "I don't want to start a holy war..." post that gets thrown up from time to time.
I'm not entirely sure if it originated here or if it's a copy paste job from some other publication. In this case it was pretty much a troll, but the post probably could be used in some context to make it quite funny.
I don't know if his statement necessarily means that he won't buy a copy. It could mean that he'll buy a copy of the game and if it uses some shitty DRM that really should be drug out behind the barn and murdered with an axe he'll get a cracked version and not have to worry about it getting in his way. I circumvent DRM all the time by storing my ripping my DVDs and backing them up on a hard drive. Then I can watch them on my modded Xbox without having to switch discs around or worry about the disc being damaged. Some people download a movie because the disc was damaged and they don't want to pay $20 for the movie again.
There are plenty of good reasons to circumvent DRM or make a digital copy of something that clearly fall under fair use. Not everyone who's doing these things is doing so to 'pirate' software or movies. Not everyone who owns a gun is going to commit murder with it either. Not everyone woman is a prostitute just because she's equip for it. I understand where you're coming from, but don't be so quick to judge.
I know that both support using a keyboard and mouse, but so far there aren't a lot of games that actually allow you to use them. The only one that I've ever heard of is UT3 on the PS3. That's one out of the countless FPS games on the consoles. Most of these games have PC versions as well which means that somewhere along the way there's some code that handles this. How much would need to be changed in order to get it to work on either of the consoles, I honestly don't know, but it seems as though once it's done you can reuse at least some of it for other games.
My best guess is that Sony and Microsoft both discourage it. The controllers for their systems are probably sold at significantly higher prices than they cost to manufacture to make up for the early subsidization of the console and being able to plug in a keyboard and mouse for some of the more popular games on the system would probably cut back on the number of controllers people buy. It might also have a big impact on online play where the keyboard and mouse combo is probably more desirable than the console controller and possibly provide an edge to people who use it.
Otherwise I'm honestly not sure why so many games on these consoles lack support for using a keyboard and mouse. Most of the top selling games for each console have PC counterparts or will in the near future. You'd think that if they encouraged developers to offer keyboard/mouse support that they might be able to encourage more PC gamers to pick up a console. Is there any good reason for being stuck with just using the regular console controllers?
I haven't played LotRO, but from what I hear its interface closely mirrors the WoW interface which would make it pretty much unplayable without a keyboard/mouse setup. Movement and using different skills are such a large part of both games and being unable to have precise control over both ends up making things ridiculously difficult in some PvE encounters and most PvP settings.
Entering text would be a complete pain in the ass and unless LotRO has built in voice support that everyone uses the console version would suffer due to a lack of Ventrilo or Team Speak support as voice communication is fairly vital in executing raid encounters. I suppose it could be included with the game, but that means getting it to work on both or either the PS3 and Xbox 360 and all the additional hassles that go along with that.
It'd probably work out decent for solo play where one joystick controls character movement, while the other moves the camera and cursor, and commonly used abilities are mapped to buttons. From my experience when I was grinding while playing WoW I never really used more than one or two abilities. There's probably a lot of other things that I'm overlooking, but as I haven't played this particular game, my knowledge is a little general.
It seems like something that won't draw a lot of additional subscribers and will probably end up costing more to develop and implement so that it works well than they'll see returned in increased revenue. I'm not saying that a console MMO couldn't be done, but it would need to either solve the problems I mentioned above by adding good voice chat functionality and allowing keyboard and mouse input or be designed from the group up with console controllers in mind.
Not to say that we'll have a solution to that particular problem anytime soon, but technology advances in unexpected ways all the time. For all anyone knows we're just a simple, "Hmm... that's interesting..." away from being able to rapidly accelerate the growth process of organisms or genetically engineer a tree that makes this easy to accomplish.
We had science fiction writers describing fascinating spectacles that many thought were impossible only mere decades before we'd figured out how to actually do some of the things described in their books. Just because we can't do it now doesn't mean that in 20 years it may be completely viable if not trivial to do. Given the steady increases in computational power that the world is gaining and our increasing understanding of genetics, I think we'll see this become possible within 20 years.
Of course whether our society will embrace such a thing is another matter. This doesn't really seem to fit in well with the densely packed urban environments that we seem to continue expanding. It'll be nice for smaller communities, but I don't expect it to catch on in a big way. We'll have the technology long before we'll have the desire to implement it.
Probably the best thing to do is explain your stance on technology and why you feel it's important. It seems as though there are a lot of people who single issue vote on gun control or abortion so it might not be too difficult to get them to pick up another issue that they care about.
There are also plenty of people who really haven't decided who to vote for yet, so explaining your views on technology and answering their questions might help to influence their choice just a little bit.
As an added bonus if they take the information in and do a little research of their own they might continue to be interested in some technology issues and base their voting in local or state elections on a candidate's tech platform in addition to other areas as well.
Even if you only talk to your parents you've spread the message. For most people this shouldn't be too difficult as they're only upstairs.
The user name isn't really a troll. You can be a whatever-you-want fanboy and no one will really care. Go ahead and post how much you like whatever-you-want products, services, etc. and no one will care. You might get called a shill, but there's no '-1 shill' moderation option yet so at most you'll just get glanced over.
Then you basically had to agree with some piece of crap flame designed to provoke people. I only noticed your user name after I read what you wrote and it made a certain amount of sense. If you were some hardcore PC/Sony/whatever fanboy that might suggest some hatred towards Apple, Linux, Microsoft (They're part of what's generally considered a PC, but they also make the Xbox which competes against Sony so how does that work out?), or something else that's generally associated as an opponent towards PCs.
The name isn't a troll. If you were named 'PCs and Sony suck' I'd probably consider it a trollish name, but your user name isn't a troll, no matter what anyone thinks. Anyone who thinks it is a troll is probably as narrow minded as... you. Yes that's flamebait, but I really don't care.
Unless that prime number happens to be 3. Granted we've known about that one since whenever the hell we learned about prime numbers, but it is a prime number that satisfies n+1 is prime where n happens to be prime.
Sometimes the solution to a problem isn't millions of digits long.
My goodness the trolls are out in force today. Hopefully the meta-moderation fixes trolls with mod points, but nothing is perfect.
The original claim essentially says that the iPhone is only for rich kids who have too much money on their hands and isn't good for business use at all. If you have an opinion, that's perfectly fine, but expressing it in such an inflamatory manner generally isn't; or at least it's frowned upon in polite, formal discussion.
At least it's not surprising coming from your user name.
If people are actually able to make an impact on the page rank for different sites, how long until we see some websites trying to game the system. It's already possible for you to buy a front page spot on Digg for a few hundred dollars.
Google makes it fairly obvious which results are paid for at the moment, but if this system were to be implemented it wouldn't be as easy to decide if that number one search result is there due to Google's search algorithms or because the site owner paid some company to bump it up and leave dozens of positive comments. Of course the reverse is also possible where a competitor's website is bumped down the list and filled with comments about how bad or unhelpful the website was. In some cases you wouldn't even need to pay someone to do it. Any fairly large group with an agenda would be capable of unbalancing things.
The only redeeming feature is that this is a Google product and will probably be in beta for the next few decades. By then I'll be more worried about the kids on my lawn than my Google search results.
If I had mod points I probably would have modded it 'Troll' as well. Not because I somehow love Apple products or own an iPhone and feel that need to justify my purchase but because the language in the post makes it seem as though the iPhone is only a kid's toy. Swap iPhone and Blackberry around and it's still a Troll, but he's just trolling a different audience. He could have made the exact same point by changing his wording and suggesting that this is a reason why he would not recommend using the iPhone in a business setting. Same message, but the language isn't anywhere near as inflammatory.
Can I assume whoever modded the comment 'insightful' has something against Apple and decided to take a shot at them rather than modding unbiased?
Here's one instance where I generally don't mind the government being a little heavy-handed. I wish that the US government would go after every company that advertises an 'unlimited' plan that has a cap. If you're going to use words like 'unlimited' and 'all' you should probably mean it. 'Unlimited' is probably easier to sort out than 'all' since there are plenty of fringe technologies in regards to the internet, but I think flash and java is widely used enough to draw the line.
Ideally I wish that the government wouldn't have to do this since it does spend taxpayer dollars and everyone would be a good consumer and do some research or avoid companies that have a tendency to flavor their advertising to make it seem as though you're getting something that you're really not. Of course, most of the world is horrible at taking the initiative to check into what they'll be buying. It's probably not quite so bad when it happens with an iPhone, but if people are advertising a $300 cure for cancer, there are enough stupid people who'd fall for it without even thinking to check the treatment out at all.
I suppose we could all write letters to the company and anyone who's a shareholder could express their distaste towards dishonest advertising, but the next Slashdot article will probably be posted soon and it might be interesting; and I might be able to get first post! I guess I'd better not bother with that letter, writing my government representatives, leave my comments on a consumer information website, or anything else that might help to make an actual difference.
Aside from trying to scare the ever living crap out of Joe Public, I can't see why the RIAA and MPAA bother going after the poor idiot who's sharing five songs from the new Brittany Spears album instead of going after the people like this who are actually making a profit violating someone else's copyright. Not only is it easier to track down the people who are doing it for profit, but you don't look like complete dicks when it turns out the anonymous person you tracked down through an IP address turns out to be a handicapped woman or someone who doesn't even own a computer.
I really don't mind the concept of copyright (although I do feel as though the duration should be significantly shortened to something of at most fifteen years.) and don't have a problem of not consuming any copyrighted media that has an asking price too much for my likes. I've never produced anything that I'd consider charging people to consume myself, but like the idea that if I ever did and decided to charge for it, I'd appreciate it if it wasn't spread across the internet or various other channels without my consent.
I don't really blame the casual infringers either. I understand that most of them are young and poor like I once was and usually can't afford the going rate for most works. I'd be fairly hypocritical of me to want them brought to justice when I've done exactly the same thing. I think that most people on slashdot feel the same, but there are a few people who have differing opinions. I think we should all draw the line when someone is actually taking your work and turning a profit through selling it without your permission.
I really wish the **AAs would take this kind of approach and train the killer legal dogs on the assholes that really deserve it instead of some poor college kids. I don't mind them releasing a commercial telling the casual file sharers who are distributing their copyrighted works that they suck, but the hardhanded legal action against these people is ridiculous.
Eh, the only one of the three Halo games that I enjoyed at all in terms of story was the first one. It wasn't the best story I've ever seen in a video game (let alone an FPS) but it did take several different bits of its characters and worlds from different science fiction novels (Ringworld, Starhammer, etc.) that I enjoyed which made me somewhat more appreciative of it. You can spot a lot of things in Halo's story that are based on various other science fiction movies or novels as well, which makes it a lot of fun to recognize the inspiration behind certain parts of the game. The whole story feels like an homage to some great science fiction.
It also looked fairly good for a console game at the time it was released and due to the Xbox having a hard drive to store parts of the game on, had very short load times that were few and far between. This was a far cry from games that were on the PS2 where the loading times seemed to drag on forever in comparison. For its time the enemy AI was fairly impressive and the harder difficulties would keep players looking for a challenge interested in the game. The game also felt quite at home on a console as well. Movement was at a slower pace when compared to something on the PC which allowed it to compensate for having to use console controllers. It eventually allowed online multiplayer experience, which really helped to drive the popularity of the series as it was one of the first times that console users could play against other gamers from across the country.
However, the second and third games had crap stories with uninteresting characters and generally poorly designed dialogue and plot elements. As someone who enjoyed the first entry in the series, I found myself generally turned off by the second and even more-so the third. They still had solid multiplayer though and I think that's what most fans of the series were interested in to begin with so no one really bothered to weigh the game so heavily on its story. They're still decent games as far as console shooters go, but aside from the first I've never felt the story in any of the games to be anything more than mediocre.
It's fairly hard to pin something like this (and the case you mentioned even though it seems more like a flame at Microsoft.) down completely. First of all there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million Xbox (Xboxen?) consoles, which makes the failure rate horribly low. Of course when designing something like that the manufacturer is constantly using different parts from different manufacturers (I know this because I chipped my Xbox and did a bit of reading on the different parts and which were generally considered better.) and making revisions to the hardware. This results in several different hardware configurations.
It's possible that the hardware configurations that have had problems for both companies were fairly limited in production. Suppose only a few tens of thousands of iPods (or Xbox consoles) contained the faulty batteries (solder problems) that resulted in a fire hazard. That makes the problem for that particular lot unacceptably high, but overall it's hardly worth a mention.
For all we know Apple already has the relevant data and knows exactly how widespread or likely the problem happens to be. The article mentions that the batteries came from the same manufacturer. Unless someone around here is privy to some inside information we have no real idea what the scope of this problem happens to be. Maybe only 14,000 units with the crap batteries were shipped. Maybe it's 140,000. We can't really know how severe the problem is without better data. Maybe there're only 14,000 crap batteries out there and after talking with the company that made them the failure rate is about right on and it doesn't constitute a major risk. Maybe it's 14,000,000 of those batteries out there and the explosions are so few it's just statistical noise for the most part.
Nothing like some sensationalism on a slow news day to get everyone's blood boiling a little bit though.
Slashdot Mirror
Kind of funny to watch a /. discussion devolve into a dick waving contest over who has the best email backup system. Can't we just stick to CPUs, internet browsers, linux distros, and GPUs?
Three sticks of dynamite you say? Hold my beer and watch this!
I think most of us saw this one coming, but the article is completely devoid of any information. First it's still just speculation that this is going to be the new announcement. For all any of us know it could be another new device to interact with the Wii. The only evidence the article even presents is that another news publication carried the rumor yesterday.
There's no mention of how they're going to add music and make it easy to put music on the device. There's no details on the camera either or even if the physical dimensions of the DS are going to be further reduced. Wouldn't it have been better to wait until Thursday when the product is actually announced and all of the details are released?
I don't mind a little speculation, but this had absolutely no substance to it at all. It's just a rumor repeated from another publication without anything of value added. Without the rest of the fluff about sales figures and release dates this article would have been one or two lines at most. What a complete waste of time.
I'm going to call bullshit on this. Not because I don't think DRM is a huge pain in the ass, but because most people aren't that tech savvy.
It's not an official survey by any means, but I just asked my roommate if he knew what DRM was. He had no clue. This is a guy in graduate school (field unrelated to technology) who downloads music through some site that's more DRM encumbered than I've ever seen. It's free, but only plays through their play which is loaded with ads and can't be used in any other way at all.
I wouldn't put money on more than 25% of people I randomly stop on campus knowing what DRM is. Of that 25%, how many could reasonably explain its purpose and ramifications on consumers? Most people are completely clueless and don't even think to question the DRM. Even if they do realize what it is and means for them, how many just brush off the thought in apathy?
My guess is that players are still expensive as hell and the discs aren't any cheaper. Most players are still well above $300 and most people don't even have a TV capable of potentially allowing you to discern a difference in quality between the Blu-ray disc and an upscaled DVD. Have I mentioned that the economy in America is going to shit and that people are starting to realize that they can't afford stuff like this yet?
If you argument held any weight, people would be rejecting DVD, which has DRM on it. Online video rentals or sales through iTunes, Xbox Live, or any of the other online stores would also be failing. Consumers aren't going to go without their video entertainment fix and generally the only legal way these days has DRM attached at the hip. As much everyone here hates DRM, the public at large has little knowledge of it. The real issue here is the high cost and perception of little increase in quality. DRM is probably a non-factor for most buyers.
I'm honestly not entirely sure what I've been let down by. Perhaps it's something to do with the DRM or maybe it's just a random bug in the game. Whatever it is, I haven't been able to actually play the game for over a week now. I've Google searched the problem endlessly, but haven't been able to come up with a solution and I've even resulted to dealing with EA support (albeit comically*) to try and figure out what's wrong.
I purchased the game the day it came out, installed it without a hitch and had a generally okay time playing the game. It wasn't everything I had dreamed it would be, but I found it fairly entertaining in its own right. For whatever reason, on the third day the game stopped working. I hadn't updated my system, changed any settings, or done anything that should suddenly stop the game from working; but for whatever reason, it just stopped working.
I've pretty much stopped caring and even if I were to get it working again I'm not entirely sure how much more I would play the game after having to deal with as much crap as I have. I looked over the patch notes and it seems as though there might be a potential fix, but of course I'm running the Mac version of the game so who knows when they'll actually patch that. After dealing with EA, it hasn't even been the DRM that's turned me off so much as the customer support in general. I've finally become a casualty to this monster that people have been decrying for so long. I guess I'll take my number and join the group.
* In case you were wonder I've been undergoing support through EA's online support system. This entails me submitting my problem and them getting back to me sometime within the next three days with generally unhelpful advice. The last piece of advice I got was from a guy (every time someone has got back to me, it's been a different person) who instructed me to follow steps which started with "Go to Start -> Run ..." despite the fact that I'm on a mac. I got a pretty good laugh out of it, but at this point I really have to question how much EA has their shit together. From my end the answer seems to be, "Not very."
And Bill Gates still shows up for MS stories and he's retired. Granted he's doing commercials now, but that's about it.
They're kind of iconic and nostalgic in a way. Sure it's only been a few years/weeks, but in the tech world that may as well be eons.
Besides, the editors can't even be bothered to spell check story summaries or make sure they're factual. What makes you think they'll take the time to update the story icons?
I'm sure that they're confusing authoritarian with economically right, both of which describe Republicans, but two entirely separate things.
/. would argue to the contrary.
It's entirely possible to be extremely to the economic left and still be every bit if not more authoritarian than the Republican party tends to be. Just look at the USSR under Stalin.
It's also entirely possible to be extremely to the economic right and be very non-authoritarian. Probably the best example of this would be the American Libertarian party which has a strong free market belief as well as a very hands-off approach to government involvement in the personal lives of people.
Check out http://www.politicalcompass.org/ for a better explanation and to see where different political parties from different parts of the world are at. I've found a lot of interesting things on that site. The most interesting to me is that the vast majority of European governments aren't too far off of the US Democratic party, despite what a lot of European posters on
What does that have to do with Obama's speeches? I don't recall any claim that McCain was somehow better, or for that matter worse, as he wasn't even mentioned. It's entirely possible that the OP thinks McCain is just as worthless or that even though his speeches have substance, it's a frightening kind of substance.
The worst part about the two party system and the people that go along with it is that instead of addressing any shortcomings or issues, they simply point to the other party and suggest that they're way worse or responsible for the blame. Nothing is ever really explained or examined in depth. No one ever bothers to counter the argument as it stands or point out why it's false. No one really cares about the truth of the matter and would just like to make the other party look worse while promoting their own goals and ideals regardless of whether it has any relation to the original point.
Thanks for being a classic example of how worthless our system is and how much it attempts to distract from actually weighing the merits of any given point and instead turn things into a circus for everyone's amusement.
Even still, if he has to show up in court it may prevent him from being present at another case or working on useful legal defenses against the RIAA.
I honestly have no idea how much time Ray is going to have to put into this, but is it possible that the RIAA is suing him only to keep him busy dealing with his own case? If it prevents him from having as much time to work on other cases in which the RIAA is involved, would it be worth it for them to create some fairly frivolous suit to keep Ray's hands tied?
Maybe I'm just reading into it, but you'd think with the amount of cash the RIAA has to throw around they could hire a lawyer that could develop a plan like this. Is it even feasible that something like this would suck up enough of his time to prevent him from being able to handle other cases?
Not so much joking as trolling. I've seen the exact same piece posted word for word on /. before as well as in a few other places over the years. It also takes a few different forms as well as I've seen it changed from a record store to a video game store. It's fairly similar to the "I don't want to start a holy war ..." post that gets thrown up from time to time.
I'm not entirely sure if it originated here or if it's a copy paste job from some other publication. In this case it was pretty much a troll, but the post probably could be used in some context to make it quite funny.
I don't know if his statement necessarily means that he won't buy a copy. It could mean that he'll buy a copy of the game and if it uses some shitty DRM that really should be drug out behind the barn and murdered with an axe he'll get a cracked version and not have to worry about it getting in his way. I circumvent DRM all the time by storing my ripping my DVDs and backing them up on a hard drive. Then I can watch them on my modded Xbox without having to switch discs around or worry about the disc being damaged. Some people download a movie because the disc was damaged and they don't want to pay $20 for the movie again.
There are plenty of good reasons to circumvent DRM or make a digital copy of something that clearly fall under fair use. Not everyone who's doing these things is doing so to 'pirate' software or movies. Not everyone who owns a gun is going to commit murder with it either. Not everyone woman is a prostitute just because she's equip for it. I understand where you're coming from, but don't be so quick to judge.
I know that both support using a keyboard and mouse, but so far there aren't a lot of games that actually allow you to use them. The only one that I've ever heard of is UT3 on the PS3. That's one out of the countless FPS games on the consoles. Most of these games have PC versions as well which means that somewhere along the way there's some code that handles this. How much would need to be changed in order to get it to work on either of the consoles, I honestly don't know, but it seems as though once it's done you can reuse at least some of it for other games.
My best guess is that Sony and Microsoft both discourage it. The controllers for their systems are probably sold at significantly higher prices than they cost to manufacture to make up for the early subsidization of the console and being able to plug in a keyboard and mouse for some of the more popular games on the system would probably cut back on the number of controllers people buy. It might also have a big impact on online play where the keyboard and mouse combo is probably more desirable than the console controller and possibly provide an edge to people who use it.
Otherwise I'm honestly not sure why so many games on these consoles lack support for using a keyboard and mouse. Most of the top selling games for each console have PC counterparts or will in the near future. You'd think that if they encouraged developers to offer keyboard/mouse support that they might be able to encourage more PC gamers to pick up a console. Is there any good reason for being stuck with just using the regular console controllers?
I haven't played LotRO, but from what I hear its interface closely mirrors the WoW interface which would make it pretty much unplayable without a keyboard/mouse setup. Movement and using different skills are such a large part of both games and being unable to have precise control over both ends up making things ridiculously difficult in some PvE encounters and most PvP settings.
Entering text would be a complete pain in the ass and unless LotRO has built in voice support that everyone uses the console version would suffer due to a lack of Ventrilo or Team Speak support as voice communication is fairly vital in executing raid encounters. I suppose it could be included with the game, but that means getting it to work on both or either the PS3 and Xbox 360 and all the additional hassles that go along with that.
It'd probably work out decent for solo play where one joystick controls character movement, while the other moves the camera and cursor, and commonly used abilities are mapped to buttons. From my experience when I was grinding while playing WoW I never really used more than one or two abilities. There's probably a lot of other things that I'm overlooking, but as I haven't played this particular game, my knowledge is a little general.
It seems like something that won't draw a lot of additional subscribers and will probably end up costing more to develop and implement so that it works well than they'll see returned in increased revenue. I'm not saying that a console MMO couldn't be done, but it would need to either solve the problems I mentioned above by adding good voice chat functionality and allowing keyboard and mouse input or be designed from the group up with console controllers in mind.
Not to say that we'll have a solution to that particular problem anytime soon, but technology advances in unexpected ways all the time. For all anyone knows we're just a simple, "Hmm... that's interesting..." away from being able to rapidly accelerate the growth process of organisms or genetically engineer a tree that makes this easy to accomplish.
We had science fiction writers describing fascinating spectacles that many thought were impossible only mere decades before we'd figured out how to actually do some of the things described in their books. Just because we can't do it now doesn't mean that in 20 years it may be completely viable if not trivial to do. Given the steady increases in computational power that the world is gaining and our increasing understanding of genetics, I think we'll see this become possible within 20 years.
Of course whether our society will embrace such a thing is another matter. This doesn't really seem to fit in well with the densely packed urban environments that we seem to continue expanding. It'll be nice for smaller communities, but I don't expect it to catch on in a big way. We'll have the technology long before we'll have the desire to implement it.
Probably the best thing to do is explain your stance on technology and why you feel it's important. It seems as though there are a lot of people who single issue vote on gun control or abortion so it might not be too difficult to get them to pick up another issue that they care about.
There are also plenty of people who really haven't decided who to vote for yet, so explaining your views on technology and answering their questions might help to influence their choice just a little bit.
As an added bonus if they take the information in and do a little research of their own they might continue to be interested in some technology issues and base their voting in local or state elections on a candidate's tech platform in addition to other areas as well.
Even if you only talk to your parents you've spread the message. For most people this shouldn't be too difficult as they're only upstairs.
The user name isn't really a troll. You can be a whatever-you-want fanboy and no one will really care. Go ahead and post how much you like whatever-you-want products, services, etc. and no one will care. You might get called a shill, but there's no '-1 shill' moderation option yet so at most you'll just get glanced over.
Then you basically had to agree with some piece of crap flame designed to provoke people. I only noticed your user name after I read what you wrote and it made a certain amount of sense. If you were some hardcore PC/Sony/whatever fanboy that might suggest some hatred towards Apple, Linux, Microsoft (They're part of what's generally considered a PC, but they also make the Xbox which competes against Sony so how does that work out?), or something else that's generally associated as an opponent towards PCs.
The name isn't a troll. If you were named 'PCs and Sony suck' I'd probably consider it a trollish name, but your user name isn't a troll, no matter what anyone thinks. Anyone who thinks it is a troll is probably as narrow minded as... you. Yes that's flamebait, but I really don't care.
Unless that prime number happens to be 3. Granted we've known about that one since whenever the hell we learned about prime numbers, but it is a prime number that satisfies n+1 is prime where n happens to be prime.
Sometimes the solution to a problem isn't millions of digits long.
My goodness the trolls are out in force today. Hopefully the meta-moderation fixes trolls with mod points, but nothing is perfect.
The original claim essentially says that the iPhone is only for rich kids who have too much money on their hands and isn't good for business use at all. If you have an opinion, that's perfectly fine, but expressing it in such an inflamatory manner generally isn't; or at least it's frowned upon in polite, formal discussion.
At least it's not surprising coming from your user name.
If people are actually able to make an impact on the page rank for different sites, how long until we see some websites trying to game the system. It's already possible for you to buy a front page spot on Digg for a few hundred dollars.
Google makes it fairly obvious which results are paid for at the moment, but if this system were to be implemented it wouldn't be as easy to decide if that number one search result is there due to Google's search algorithms or because the site owner paid some company to bump it up and leave dozens of positive comments. Of course the reverse is also possible where a competitor's website is bumped down the list and filled with comments about how bad or unhelpful the website was. In some cases you wouldn't even need to pay someone to do it. Any fairly large group with an agenda would be capable of unbalancing things.
The only redeeming feature is that this is a Google product and will probably be in beta for the next few decades. By then I'll be more worried about the kids on my lawn than my Google search results.
If I had mod points I probably would have modded it 'Troll' as well. Not because I somehow love Apple products or own an iPhone and feel that need to justify my purchase but because the language in the post makes it seem as though the iPhone is only a kid's toy. Swap iPhone and Blackberry around and it's still a Troll, but he's just trolling a different audience. He could have made the exact same point by changing his wording and suggesting that this is a reason why he would not recommend using the iPhone in a business setting. Same message, but the language isn't anywhere near as inflammatory.
Can I assume whoever modded the comment 'insightful' has something against Apple and decided to take a shot at them rather than modding unbiased?
Here's one instance where I generally don't mind the government being a little heavy-handed. I wish that the US government would go after every company that advertises an 'unlimited' plan that has a cap. If you're going to use words like 'unlimited' and 'all' you should probably mean it. 'Unlimited' is probably easier to sort out than 'all' since there are plenty of fringe technologies in regards to the internet, but I think flash and java is widely used enough to draw the line.
Ideally I wish that the government wouldn't have to do this since it does spend taxpayer dollars and everyone would be a good consumer and do some research or avoid companies that have a tendency to flavor their advertising to make it seem as though you're getting something that you're really not. Of course, most of the world is horrible at taking the initiative to check into what they'll be buying. It's probably not quite so bad when it happens with an iPhone, but if people are advertising a $300 cure for cancer, there are enough stupid people who'd fall for it without even thinking to check the treatment out at all.
I suppose we could all write letters to the company and anyone who's a shareholder could express their distaste towards dishonest advertising, but the next Slashdot article will probably be posted soon and it might be interesting; and I might be able to get first post! I guess I'd better not bother with that letter, writing my government representatives, leave my comments on a consumer information website, or anything else that might help to make an actual difference.
Aside from trying to scare the ever living crap out of Joe Public, I can't see why the RIAA and MPAA bother going after the poor idiot who's sharing five songs from the new Brittany Spears album instead of going after the people like this who are actually making a profit violating someone else's copyright. Not only is it easier to track down the people who are doing it for profit, but you don't look like complete dicks when it turns out the anonymous person you tracked down through an IP address turns out to be a handicapped woman or someone who doesn't even own a computer.
I really don't mind the concept of copyright (although I do feel as though the duration should be significantly shortened to something of at most fifteen years.) and don't have a problem of not consuming any copyrighted media that has an asking price too much for my likes. I've never produced anything that I'd consider charging people to consume myself, but like the idea that if I ever did and decided to charge for it, I'd appreciate it if it wasn't spread across the internet or various other channels without my consent.
I don't really blame the casual infringers either. I understand that most of them are young and poor like I once was and usually can't afford the going rate for most works. I'd be fairly hypocritical of me to want them brought to justice when I've done exactly the same thing. I think that most people on slashdot feel the same, but there are a few people who have differing opinions. I think we should all draw the line when someone is actually taking your work and turning a profit through selling it without your permission.
I really wish the **AAs would take this kind of approach and train the killer legal dogs on the assholes that really deserve it instead of some poor college kids. I don't mind them releasing a commercial telling the casual file sharers who are distributing their copyrighted works that they suck, but the hardhanded legal action against these people is ridiculous.
Eh, the only one of the three Halo games that I enjoyed at all in terms of story was the first one. It wasn't the best story I've ever seen in a video game (let alone an FPS) but it did take several different bits of its characters and worlds from different science fiction novels (Ringworld, Starhammer, etc.) that I enjoyed which made me somewhat more appreciative of it. You can spot a lot of things in Halo's story that are based on various other science fiction movies or novels as well, which makes it a lot of fun to recognize the inspiration behind certain parts of the game. The whole story feels like an homage to some great science fiction.
It also looked fairly good for a console game at the time it was released and due to the Xbox having a hard drive to store parts of the game on, had very short load times that were few and far between. This was a far cry from games that were on the PS2 where the loading times seemed to drag on forever in comparison. For its time the enemy AI was fairly impressive and the harder difficulties would keep players looking for a challenge interested in the game. The game also felt quite at home on a console as well. Movement was at a slower pace when compared to something on the PC which allowed it to compensate for having to use console controllers. It eventually allowed online multiplayer experience, which really helped to drive the popularity of the series as it was one of the first times that console users could play against other gamers from across the country.
However, the second and third games had crap stories with uninteresting characters and generally poorly designed dialogue and plot elements. As someone who enjoyed the first entry in the series, I found myself generally turned off by the second and even more-so the third. They still had solid multiplayer though and I think that's what most fans of the series were interested in to begin with so no one really bothered to weigh the game so heavily on its story. They're still decent games as far as console shooters go, but aside from the first I've never felt the story in any of the games to be anything more than mediocre.
It's fairly hard to pin something like this (and the case you mentioned even though it seems more like a flame at Microsoft.) down completely. First of all there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million Xbox (Xboxen?) consoles, which makes the failure rate horribly low. Of course when designing something like that the manufacturer is constantly using different parts from different manufacturers (I know this because I chipped my Xbox and did a bit of reading on the different parts and which were generally considered better.) and making revisions to the hardware. This results in several different hardware configurations.
It's possible that the hardware configurations that have had problems for both companies were fairly limited in production. Suppose only a few tens of thousands of iPods (or Xbox consoles) contained the faulty batteries (solder problems) that resulted in a fire hazard. That makes the problem for that particular lot unacceptably high, but overall it's hardly worth a mention.
For all we know Apple already has the relevant data and knows exactly how widespread or likely the problem happens to be. The article mentions that the batteries came from the same manufacturer. Unless someone around here is privy to some inside information we have no real idea what the scope of this problem happens to be. Maybe only 14,000 units with the crap batteries were shipped. Maybe it's 140,000. We can't really know how severe the problem is without better data. Maybe there're only 14,000 crap batteries out there and after talking with the company that made them the failure rate is about right on and it doesn't constitute a major risk. Maybe it's 14,000,000 of those batteries out there and the explosions are so few it's just statistical noise for the most part.
Nothing like some sensationalism on a slow news day to get everyone's blood boiling a little bit though.