I really hate in when people overreact, regardless of why they're doing it. I have no idea what kind of sales numbers have been been recorded for the iPod Nano (I'm assuming this only refers to the most recent version of the device and not any of the earlier incarnations, but TFA is somewhat vague about matters.) in Japan so I can only guess. However, let's run some numbers for the sake of looking at things rationally.
Only 140 iPod Nano devices have been sold in Japan. That would make a 10% failure rate, which is something which would leave me alarmed.
If 1,400 had been sold in the country that lowers the failure rate to 1%. From my understanding that's not terribly bad, but of course it's batteries catching fire which is rather undesirable even if it only occurs 1% of the time.
If 14,000 have been sold thus far the chance of having your battery explode on you is only.1%. Still not something I'd want to keep in my pocket, but I think you can see where this is going from here.
If roughly one and a half million such devices have been sold the odds drop to.001%. In the grand scheme of things this is pretty low. You shouldn't quite by lottery tickets yet, but it's getting closer to that point. Then again, maybe you don't need to do that since if one of these goes up in flames you could probably get a decent settlement from a lawsuit against the company. Based on Apple's claims from the article (whether or not you care to believe them is another matter) there have been about 14 people out of roughly 1.4 million that have experienced this problem.
It could be higher than this and there are several more batteries that are potential time bombs, but I don't think it's anything to be alarmed about. I don't know how much truth there is to the number, but from various/. articles I've heard a 5% failure rate widely claimed for electronic devices. I understand that this deals with the whole device and not the batteries, but we're comparing 5% to less than.001%. I think at that rate you're more likely to be involved in a car accident (I don't have figures and couldn't find any at a glance, but based on personal observations I believe my statement to be correct.) than have your iPod battery combust on you.
The bit at the end about not wanting these devices on planes almost reeks of complete FUD. Once you go that far you might as well disallow cell phones, laptops, or any other device with a battery on an airplane. Hell, you might not want to allow anyone who looks like a terrorist (whatever that means) on a plane either since they seem to have a better track record of bringing down a plane than handheld electronic devices as far as I know. It's crap like this that ends up resulting in not being able to take bottled water on your flight.
I suppose I could have phrased things slightly better. I don't really believe it's the technical hurdle that's causing problems for developers, but really learning to design a game around the controller that's causing problems. Developers were too busy trying to figure out how to make the new controller work with their old games rather than asking what type of game would really go well with the new controller.
Take, for example, a series such as Grand Theft Auto. It works well enough on the more traditional controller designs from the last generation of consoles, but there's not guarantee that it would translate at all to the Wii's controls. The game would have to be designed with both the potential and limitations of the new controller in mind. Until developers manage to wrap their heads around that, we're not going to see anything that's really groundbreaking. Hopefully the MotionPlus, which you mentioned, will allow for better games in the sense that it makes controls tighter, but the old way of thinking about things is gone.
I'm still waiting for a great point and click adventure game for the Wii. What's the stop someone from making a game like Déjà Vu for the Wii? The Phoenix Wright series has done quite well on the DS, but I can't understand why someone hasn't bothered to put that kind of experience on the Wii. There's also been what seems to me as a complete lack of rail shooters. I used to love these games in the arcade, but aside from the Resident Evil one that came out a while back, I haven't seen much. Hell, someone could port the old classic arcade rail shooters to WiiWare and they'd probably get a few sales.
That still doesn't necessarily make them a commercial success. If you look at Okami, which is generally regarded as a wonderful piece of art, let alone a damn good game. Unfortunately the game wasn't a big seller and Clover Studios has since ceased to exist. Of course in an alternate reality they could've been big sellers and we'd have sequels thrown at us and eventually people would stop caring. I've honestly stopped being excited about Final Fantasy years ago. Recognition is fine, but it doesn't mean that you'll still make good games. I found FF XII to have a novel new approach to combat that needed some refining and fine tuning, but the story left me so apathetic that I've never bothered to finish the game.
Even if you make good games such as Viewtiful Joe and Okami that stand out from the rest and are engaging and fun to play, it doesn't mean that they're going to do well in terms of sales. As much as people like to bitch and moan about gaming being full of sequels, it seems as though that's what consumers are completely happy to buy. Unless you had read about Okami or Viewtiful Joe the odds are you wouldn't pick either of them up on an impulse buy, but you can be pretty sure what the new Mario game is going to be like and the last few were good enough so why not pick it up.
Until the vast majority, rather than a vocal minority, of the gaming market starts demanding new and innovative games and actually follows through by voting with dollars, we're going to keep seeing sequel after sequel. It's just like the movie business where tons of great independent films are being made every year on shoestring budgets, but the biggest return on investment is always going to be "Return of the generic summer action blockbuster 4." It's not going to be great cinema, but it'll put people in seats. Occasionally you'll get something that comes out of left field and is wildly successful, but then it just goes on to become the next franchise receiving the sequel treatment.
The mass consumer generally isn't very well informed and usually wants to go with something safe. I can't count the number of times I've heard friends or other people talking about a game that was massively hyped in the months leading up to its launch, but ended up a dud, talk about the game as though it was every bit as good as the developer was marking it to be. Add to that the number of people who will look at you as though they have no idea what you're talking about when you mention a great game that didn't receive a lot of hype or early press coverage. Until the gaming community as a whole pays more attention to reviews and other information, we're not going to see much of a change.
It's fairly true, actually. If we look at the sales of games like Boom Blox and Zack & Wiki, both of which have been said to be good games that make use of the Wii's capabilities, they really aren't all that great.
It's not that companies wouldn't like to make great groundbreaking games, but if you can turn twice as many sales at half the cost on a collection of mini-games or porting your hot IP from last generation, why bother with anything else?
I think developers are still learning how to work with the Wii. Let's not forget that almost all of them were caught with their pants down (hell, even Nintendo didn't expect the success that they've enjoyed) when it came to having content ready for the Wii. At the system launch the only third party that had anything that could be considered a worth-while showing was Ubisoft, and most of those games weren't all that great in my opinion.
Once Wii sales took off for the stratosphere, everyone wanted to get in on the action. The only problem is that a lot of teams had no experience working with the new control system, so this presented a learning curve. It would also take over a year in order to put out something fresh, so old games were ported over to the platform to cash in on its new found success.
Now that developers have had time to see how much of a success the Wii has turned out to be along with becoming accustomed to working with the new controller, I think we'll start to see better games trickle out. Square Enix is still working on the new Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicals game, which has been in the pipes for a while. I've also been interested in seeing what will come of MadWorld, a game by Sega of all developers that has an interesting art style to say the least. Note that the linked video contains graphic violence and is probably NSFW, which if nothing else probably ensures that the game will do good among the eighteen-and-under and ultra-violence-lover crowds.
A few other posters have already pointed out how Wii-ware games can be quite excellent as well and I think that it Nintendo more aggressively pursued developers as both Microsoft and Sony have, they could acquire more top-notch indie games on their platform as well. Some of the $10 games that you can find on Xbox Live and Sony's PSN (PlayStation Network) provide more fun and enjoyment than some of the $60 boxed games for the systems. The virtual console is also another potential marketplace where we can relive and enjoy older games, but I wish they'd release more of the games that I wanted to play.
The only person who's ever to blame is the one who's doing something illegal such as violating the content owner's copyright.
The person designing the security is generally trying to do the best that they can to balance security against annoyance of said security of customers, knowing full well that it's only a matter of time before that security is broken.
You can't blame the person breaking the security either as they may only being doing so to enable fair use rights that were taken away by the security. Likewise, anyone who uses the security remove technique could only be doing so for fair use reasons. Fair use may seem sketchy when talking about streamed video online, but if you want to use parts of the video to form a rebuttal video to the points or opinions expressed in the original video I believe making a copy of the stream would fall within fair use. Also I believe it's considered fair use to use any video if providing commentary on segments of the video.
You really can't necessarily blame the content creator either. In some cases they're not even responsible for their works being available somewhere on the internet. Someone violating their copyright may have uploaded it to a video streaming site. Is lack of security on a video streaming site the fault of a movie creator if someone rips the movie from DVD and uploads it to a website?
Blame copyright violations on the people who actually commit them.
Even if Psystar somehow manages a court victory that would allow them to purchase and sell copies of OS X installed on generic x86 boxes, all that Apple has to do is stop selling OS X to any retail outlet other than its own. If Psystar can't get legal copies of the software to put on the machines it sells, there isn't any legal way that they can stay in business at that point, other than going to Apple stores and purchasing copies of OS X at full retail price.
We're also heading towards a future of digital distribution. It started with music, has moved to movie rentals, and looks as though it can be expanded to anything in the near future. What's to stop Apple from selling you the newer versions of OS X online? In five years when everyone wants to upgrade to Puma or whatever else they end up calling it, you have the option of downloading the upgrade to your computer instead of having to go out and purchase any physical install media.
Does it really matter if the court rules that Psystar can do whatever they want with a copy of OS X once they already have it if Apple does everything that they possibly can in order to prevent Psystar from ever obtaining a copy of OS X?
You forget one important detail. All that Apple has to do to thwart this is to stop selling install media through any venue other than an Apple store or sell it in small enough quantities to other retail outfits that it would be a pain in the ass to buy enough copies easily for a business such as this to exist. They could even take it to the point that your computer comes with original install media and that any upgrades to future releases of OS X are done through an online process.
Apple will always be one step ahead in that it has complete control over the software it writes and is under no obligation at all to sell it to any third parties or make it available in any manner other than through purchasing it with their hardware. I suppose that the clone makers can always pirate the OS, but that's more than likely to be legally frowned upon.
Apple likes doing things there own way and having control over the "Mac experience" to as large of a degree as possible. They'll be sure to stop anything that might tarnish the image that they've built for themselves. If you don't like it, don't use their products or pirate the OS and run it on your own custom box. Don't, however, think that Apple will allow anything like this to happen for any extended period of time.
I get where you're coming from and I'm not some elitist prick who thinks himself a "hardcore gamer" but I really don't like it when the jerks who think that hard core gaming only applies to playing Counter Strike, Halo, or something else along those lines for ten hours a day and that anything else is just "kiddie-gaming" or some lesser form of gaming.
I don't mind those games and their fun to play, but it's unhealthy if they're the only games that are ever developed. I really like what Nintendo has done in providing something new. I was talking to my mother on the phone just the other day and she was talking about how much the old folks at the nursing home she works at are enjoying the Wii that they just got. She told me a story about a lady who had never bowled before in her life managed to get a score of 150 the first time she tried and was absolutely thrilled. As someone who's passionate about gaming I find something like this incredible, but all the self-proclaimed "hardcore" and "mature" gamers somehow view that as worthless.
If they want to play games like that for days on end I really don't care, but when they start talking as though that's the only way to game and that nothing else is important or worthwhile, it annoys me. It's not just because it's irritating to hear them talk like that, but also because it further reinforces that notion among developers that pretty graphics and big explosions are what make great games. A lot of people gripe about the lack of creative third party titles on the Wii or DS and I almost wonder if it's because developers have been trying to cater to that noisi^H^H^H^H^Hmost vocal segment of the market and have forgotten how to actually make something original or creative. Even Nintendo is somewhat guilty with constantly milking their key franchises, but at least they attempt to keep the game play fresh.
I don't think they're really after any money that Pystar may have made from their sales. Sure they'll sue Pystar for tens of millions of dollars, but I don't think it's really about that. To Apple their brand image is worth more to them than any small amount of money that Pystar has possibly made over the last few months.
My best guess is that the only reason that they took this long is that they were curious to see exactly how many units Pystar could ship over a certain period of time. The sales data would obviously be brought up during the trial so that Apple could "determine potential losses" to determine how much they should get from the lawsuit.
This sales data gives them so insight into how a similarly configured Mac computer would do in the market without having to actually spend the time designing one or marketing it. The only fees they incur are legal fees, but they're already paying their lawyers just to be there, regardless if they're wasting time on stupid court cases or not. Or perhaps they're interested in gauging how much interest there would be in licensing their OS (not that they ever would, but they might just be curious in having that information) to a generic PC vendor.
Unless their legal team was overly busy back when Pystar first opened shop, I can't think of any other good reason for them taking so long to take legal action other than having a passive interest in how the results of their business would turn out. They let them run free for long enough to get some good data, but now they're blowing the whistle and probably going to put the company out of business since they probably don't want everyone and their grandmother setting up something similar.
Please don't start using the term "hard core" either. I'm sick of people using this term to refer to people who spend hours upon hours playing a "mature" game. Those are just people who have too much time on their hands and spend all of it gaming. It doesn't necessarily make them "hard core" in much the same way that "mature gamers" doesn't refer to people who enjoy games with excessive violent content or other adult themes. Those are just people who like games with violent themes.
"Hard core" should be used to refer to the gamers who are constantly challenging themselves by finding new ways to play games. They're the people doing a speed run of an FPS and restricting themselves to only using a pistol or playing through an RPG with some severe form of handicap. Sometimes they also fall into the other categories such as gamers with a lot of disposable time on their hands or gamers who enjoy content and themes generally regarded as not suitable for children. But using "hard core" to refer to people in the other two categories annoys me. Hard core gamers are always looking for new and interesting ways to challenge themselves.
I think most people who refer to themselves as "hard core" fall into one of the other two categories and just want to identify themselves as "hard core" because it somehow makes them appear more awesome. To me they just look like idiots who would like to think they're cool, "l33t", or whatever other new hipster term is out there.
There was a lot of discussion about this when the Wii's controller was first unveiled. The best explanation that I read is that the control would play a sound signifying two blades crossing, letting you know to stop your swing and to draw the remote back. Until then, it would just treat your virtual sword as though the blow had been deflected or as though it had glanced off until the remote is returned to some neutral position and the virtual sword is ready to be swung again. Eventually you would train your own body to act as your own force feedback mechanism as you become better at reacting to the visual and audio cues from the game. If you continue to wildly flail about the game simply leaves your virtual self open to attack and you die.
Of course everything was speculative at the time and the Wii controller didn't seem as though it had the precision for something like this when the system initially launched, but if the improvements are as good as they're being hyped-up to be, then I suppose it's possible for someone to implement a good sword fighting game, but anything I've played on the console up until now has been a serious disappointment.
There are probably a few other ways to implement a good system, but short of this new gadget having some inertia-defying properties as well, I haven't heard of anything else that was likely to work any better.
Unfortunately, this still wouldn't do much if anything to prevent movie or song piracy. Have they forgotten that pirating music is as easy as purchasing a CD or DRM-free song and simply burning a CD and giving it to a friend? At best this just stops a few poeple from having an Internet connection, but when they could easilly haul a 500 GB external HD over to a friends house and load up all on manner of content, there's no way that it will curb the overall level of piracy to any extent. Hell, even if you were cut off, internet is only an unsecure access point or location with free internet away.
There are always going to be a certain subset of people who feel that prices are too high and will seek alternative methods of acquiring songs, movies, or any other similar form of media. They could probably reduce the price to reduce the amount of people who resort to such methods, but the current price might be the one that maximizes revenue for all I know.
Personally, I think the ideal solution is for the bands, songwriters, et al. to ditch the **AA (or equivalent in their countries) and use a model similar to what Radiohead or Trent Reznor used. Even when they offered their music for free, some people still donated money. Hell, if they were independent and sold tracks through Amazon, iTunes, or some other music store they'd get to keep everything that Amazon, Apple, etc. doesn't keep to cover distribution costs. That'd be somewhere in the neighborhood of $.75 or more per song sold. How much more likely would the poeple who either don't buy music now or refuse to pay the currents rates be to donate money to a band for purchasing their album if they knew that most of it wasn't going to a middleman that has a history of acting hostile towards its customers or that they would only need to offer up a few dollars, if anything?
I don't want to come of as pro-DRM, but I have a simple question for you?
Do you plan to purchase or play this game?
Considering that it's a heavily anticipated game and generally recognized as being one of the more creative and innovative titles to come in in a while, it's probably reasonable for me to expect that you want to play Spore. Your stated hate for DRM leads me to believe that you couldn't bring yourself to actually pay for any product that comes with any type of DRM. Assuming that you both want to play this game and don't want to deal with the DRM, would you pirate it?
If so, you're contributing to the reason why these companies think they need to have DRM. I can understand why people will pirate things when cost is a factor since I did it myself once upon a time, but if you pirate this game simply to spite the paid version which has DRM you're probably not doing the cause any help.
I appologize in advance for potentially mislabeling you or constructing a situation involving you from so little information, but I have a feeling that there are a few people who will pirate the game just because they dislike the notion of DRM despite the fact that they're going to play the hell out of it and had the money to easily purchase it.
My understanding from my following of the game since it was first announced is that due to the way in which the various creatures that inhabit a universe are defined, it's possible to download thousands of them with relatively little effort. I forget which conference or event it was at, but Will Wright explained that due the fact that everything in the game is proceedurally generated, it is possible to express a creature design not in terms of graphics skins and other large files, but as something very similar to DNA. The game reads a few thousand bytes worth of data and is able to take that information to recreate the creature that someone else uploaded. Even if you're playing on dial-up, you'll be able to get this new content ridiculously fast.
You've also made the assumption that you have to enter a validation code. Why wouldn't the game just store the key that was used to register it and automatically take care of it? It probably won't be a hastle unless the key has been orgied out to all of your friends and the authentication server flags it as suspicious and bans it. There might be a few false positives but for the most part I don't forsee you getting locked out unless you're playing with a pirated copy.
I'm not sure I undestand why you're less likely to buy it after the changes. There's no regularily set phone-home-and-authenticate functionality so after the intial install an online registration you never have to bother validating your copy of the game if you don't want to get new patches or play online (both of which require you to have an internet connection in order to accomplish.) so I fail to see what the fuss is about.
I suppose it sucks if you don't have internet access (but then how are you posting to Slashdot?) to begin with, but considering they dropped the overly silly requirement of having the CD/DVD in the drive while playing the game, they've more than made concessions. I'll also mention that this allows you to easily install and enjoy the game on multiple systems since you don't have to haul the stupid CD/DVD around.
Either I've completely misunderstood you or I can't even comprehend what you're objections to the new scheme that they've developed are.
There probably isn't a lot of love for EA around here (or many parts of the internet in general) but you do have to admit that they responded fairly well to the situation. From what I've read the approach that they're planning to take now is actually pretty good, if not better than what most of us are probably used to dealing with. The fact that I don't need to have the CD in the drive while playing the game is a nice touch, especially for anyone who likes to switch between games frequently.
The only thing that you could really complain about is the necessity of an internet connection to validate on install. The only other time it bothers to validate is if you're downloading an update or using some other online feature which means you're already connected to the internet.
As someone who was a little put off by the overly encumbering DRM that was originally planned to be included, I'd like to tip my hat to EA for listening to their customers and making a wise decision.
You've completely slanted the argument with your assessment.
You assume that if we pull out of Iraq we'll loose influence with the middle east and that nothing positive could come out of it. This would also significantly reduce the budget in coming years by a considerable amount.
I don't see how spending more money on education will automatically cause students to develop political awareness that will shield them from corrupt politicians. We've been increasing spending on education for decades now and a majority of the country is still politically inept. More money will probably not solve this problem in my opinion.
I feel as though NASA could do things differently or better with the money it has, such as sharing the information possess and data it collects with anyone else interested in obtaining space travel. I'm interested in seeing humans move out among the stars and I've had nothing to do with NASA. I think your statement is complete hyperbole.
Perhaps if you'd care to back up your assertions with something more than your own opinion I might be lead to believe your point of view.
I don't do it because I hate the Republicans or any other political party. I push for it in order to establish that these electronic voting machines are easily susceptible to tampering and that they should be replaced with machines that are running open source software so that I can verify myself (if so inclined) that it wouldn't be possible for anyone to tamper with the machine in order to rig an election and leave no method of determining that any damage had been done. I'm not say that this has or hasn't happened in the past, I just want to ensure that it never happens again or a first time.
A lot of states have been waking up to just how insecure these electronic voting machines are and that without a paper trail there's no way of getting an accurate vote count if the results have been doctored. A person's vote really doesn't count if someone has gone into the machine and altered it or completely wiped it out.
There really isn't a lot of substance to what he has to say on any particular view point. Then again it's pretty damned hard for one of the other candidates to attack your point of view if you haven't made it specific enough.
Like you said, there's not much there with which one can disagree. All of the things he listed are viewpoints that most people would agree with. Of course renewable energy and getting off of foreign oil is good. Until he lays out an exact plan for how to do so, which may or may not be crap, criticizing him for any reason other than "he seems to have a very broad message with no particular specifics" would only make the person attacking him look stupid.
Personally, I don't think I'd vote for him simply based on the fact that he hasn't really gone into detail. It's nice that you want to do all of those things, but what indication is there that you have a plan for doing them or are even capable of formulating one. I don't feel like a gambling man when it comes to choosing the leader of the nation.
I don't think it really matters what you use: video games, religion, television, books, or just casual conversation. Any of these are capable of taking people who are predisposed towards violence and pushing them to actually taking action. In all of my years of dealing with any of these, I don't think any of them have ever pushed me towards committing violent acts. I've never had a problem distinguishing between a video game or movie and reality and have always felt that my religious beliefs are my own and don't need to be forced upon anyone else. Reading a good book or listening to a motivated speaker has stirred up strong feelings inside of me, but no message has ever made me more prone to commit a violent act.
I and millions of other people are able to clearly draw the line. There are some people who aren't very good at that, however, and when they are exposed to a violent message, regardless of the medium, they become more aggressive and violent themselves. You could suggest that none of this should be allowed because some people won't be able to handle it, but I don't think that's the right way to go. Everyone is responsible for their own actions and if some person feels that such material affects you in a negative manner, then perhaps that person shouldn't consume that content.
Regardless of what you believe, humans are a violent animal and it's a big part of our history. I don't think that ignoring the problem is somehow going to solve it. If you think that any of the recent video games, movies, books, etc. are overly violent, just look at some of the ancient methods of torture on Wikipedia or other web sites. They tend to make anything you see in Manhunt or Hostel seem fairly tame by comparison. The big difference is that the movies and games are just imagination whereas these methods of torture were actually used.
One of my friends purchased a video card from Best Buy once and after opening the box found an old sound card in its place. He was able to get the store to substitute the purchase for a new video card after raising a fair amount of hell over the problem. Recently I had to return a coffee bean grinder to the store after I found out it was defective. They asked for my name when I returned it, but I'm not sure if they'd do this if the package was unopened.
I'm assuming it's not terribly hard to pull something like this off. Simply buy something from the store, take it out of the package and substitute it for something else. Return it a few days later and tell them that you accidentally purchased the wrong item and ask for your money back or some store credit. If you put new shrink wrap around the box so that it looks completely unopened they probably won't check inside the package or think much of it. Paying in cash also eliminates a paper trail and depending on how long it takes them to restock the product and for someone else to buy it, they may not even have any surveilance footage of the person who did it. It's probably not something that's heavily repeatable, but if the store is fairly careless about returns, it's going to happen.
Anyone work at a store like Best Buy that knows how often stuff like this happens?
I think the jury is still out on Super Mario: Galaxy. I've read a few different impressions from various journalists who play tested some levels at E3 this summer and they've said that it's amazing. If you compare Super Mario Bros. to Super Mario Bros. 2 (The Japanese version, not the American one.) how much changed between the games? They were both 2D side-scrolling platformers with a lot in common. Super Mario Bros. 3 was also fairly similar, but did feature some upgrades. In a similar fashion, I don't expect huge changes to Galaxy. It's still going to be a 3D platformer, but from what I've heard that concept for the game allowed for level design that easily lends itself to a great camera, something that can easily get in the way in other 3D games, platformer or not. I don't expect Nintendo to come out with some blatantly obvious, mind-blowing feature that will change the series or the genre, but I expect there to be an incredible amount of subtle changes that overall create an incredible play experience. The overall package might not be innovative or original, but I'm willing to bet that some components of the game will be.
Before we start using this as a reason to promote a universal health care solution, keep in mind that the United States is probably one of the least healthy countries in the world. If there were fewer people who drink, smoke, and do other drugs and more people who ate healthy and exercised I think we'd see dramatic decreases in the amount that we're spending. A lot of the problems we have are self-inflicted and results of poor lifestyle choices.
It's also private citizens who are paying for the healthcare. He's saying that because Canada's government isn't sinking loads of money into a military, it has something else to sink it into. If we cut our military down to something similar to the size the Canadians have, we could probably have budget surpluses as well. At least until the politicians found something else to waste it on anyhow. I'd rather just have them trim that fat and give me back more money and cut taxes, but maybe that's just me.
Personally, I wouldn't trust facebook to begin with. I haven't read their policy in regards to this storage, but almost anything else that you put on facebook, whether it's pictures, a blog, or anything else that you could they claim that they own it. You're still allowed to repost that material on other websites, but only for non-commercial purposes. So in other words, if you or I were to write the next great American novel and post chapters of it on facebook, they now own it.
I don't care whether they offer ulimited storage or offer any storage for free. If they maintain that storing my data on their servers grants them some form of ownership over that data, then I will never use their service and won't encourage that anyone else use it either. This kind of thinking and corporate greed disgusts me, but there's no law requiring me to use it. Caveat emptor, I suppose.
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I really hate in when people overreact, regardless of why they're doing it. I have no idea what kind of sales numbers have been been recorded for the iPod Nano (I'm assuming this only refers to the most recent version of the device and not any of the earlier incarnations, but TFA is somewhat vague about matters.) in Japan so I can only guess. However, let's run some numbers for the sake of looking at things rationally.
Only 140 iPod Nano devices have been sold in Japan. That would make a 10% failure rate, which is something which would leave me alarmed.
If 1,400 had been sold in the country that lowers the failure rate to 1%. From my understanding that's not terribly bad, but of course it's batteries catching fire which is rather undesirable even if it only occurs 1% of the time.
If 14,000 have been sold thus far the chance of having your battery explode on you is only .1%. Still not something I'd want to keep in my pocket, but I think you can see where this is going from here.
If roughly one and a half million such devices have been sold the odds drop to .001%. In the grand scheme of things this is pretty low. You shouldn't quite by lottery tickets yet, but it's getting closer to that point. Then again, maybe you don't need to do that since if one of these goes up in flames you could probably get a decent settlement from a lawsuit against the company. Based on Apple's claims from the article (whether or not you care to believe them is another matter) there have been about 14 people out of roughly 1.4 million that have experienced this problem.
It could be higher than this and there are several more batteries that are potential time bombs, but I don't think it's anything to be alarmed about. I don't know how much truth there is to the number, but from various /. articles I've heard a 5% failure rate widely claimed for electronic devices. I understand that this deals with the whole device and not the batteries, but we're comparing 5% to less than .001%. I think at that rate you're more likely to be involved in a car accident (I don't have figures and couldn't find any at a glance, but based on personal observations I believe my statement to be correct.) than have your iPod battery combust on you.
The bit at the end about not wanting these devices on planes almost reeks of complete FUD. Once you go that far you might as well disallow cell phones, laptops, or any other device with a battery on an airplane. Hell, you might not want to allow anyone who looks like a terrorist (whatever that means) on a plane either since they seem to have a better track record of bringing down a plane than handheld electronic devices as far as I know. It's crap like this that ends up resulting in not being able to take bottled water on your flight.
I suppose I could have phrased things slightly better. I don't really believe it's the technical hurdle that's causing problems for developers, but really learning to design a game around the controller that's causing problems. Developers were too busy trying to figure out how to make the new controller work with their old games rather than asking what type of game would really go well with the new controller.
Take, for example, a series such as Grand Theft Auto. It works well enough on the more traditional controller designs from the last generation of consoles, but there's not guarantee that it would translate at all to the Wii's controls. The game would have to be designed with both the potential and limitations of the new controller in mind. Until developers manage to wrap their heads around that, we're not going to see anything that's really groundbreaking. Hopefully the MotionPlus, which you mentioned, will allow for better games in the sense that it makes controls tighter, but the old way of thinking about things is gone.
I'm still waiting for a great point and click adventure game for the Wii. What's the stop someone from making a game like Déjà Vu for the Wii? The Phoenix Wright series has done quite well on the DS, but I can't understand why someone hasn't bothered to put that kind of experience on the Wii. There's also been what seems to me as a complete lack of rail shooters. I used to love these games in the arcade, but aside from the Resident Evil one that came out a while back, I haven't seen much. Hell, someone could port the old classic arcade rail shooters to WiiWare and they'd probably get a few sales.
That still doesn't necessarily make them a commercial success. If you look at Okami, which is generally regarded as a wonderful piece of art, let alone a damn good game. Unfortunately the game wasn't a big seller and Clover Studios has since ceased to exist. Of course in an alternate reality they could've been big sellers and we'd have sequels thrown at us and eventually people would stop caring. I've honestly stopped being excited about Final Fantasy years ago. Recognition is fine, but it doesn't mean that you'll still make good games. I found FF XII to have a novel new approach to combat that needed some refining and fine tuning, but the story left me so apathetic that I've never bothered to finish the game.
Even if you make good games such as Viewtiful Joe and Okami that stand out from the rest and are engaging and fun to play, it doesn't mean that they're going to do well in terms of sales. As much as people like to bitch and moan about gaming being full of sequels, it seems as though that's what consumers are completely happy to buy. Unless you had read about Okami or Viewtiful Joe the odds are you wouldn't pick either of them up on an impulse buy, but you can be pretty sure what the new Mario game is going to be like and the last few were good enough so why not pick it up.
Until the vast majority, rather than a vocal minority, of the gaming market starts demanding new and innovative games and actually follows through by voting with dollars, we're going to keep seeing sequel after sequel. It's just like the movie business where tons of great independent films are being made every year on shoestring budgets, but the biggest return on investment is always going to be "Return of the generic summer action blockbuster 4." It's not going to be great cinema, but it'll put people in seats. Occasionally you'll get something that comes out of left field and is wildly successful, but then it just goes on to become the next franchise receiving the sequel treatment.
The mass consumer generally isn't very well informed and usually wants to go with something safe. I can't count the number of times I've heard friends or other people talking about a game that was massively hyped in the months leading up to its launch, but ended up a dud, talk about the game as though it was every bit as good as the developer was marking it to be. Add to that the number of people who will look at you as though they have no idea what you're talking about when you mention a great game that didn't receive a lot of hype or early press coverage. Until the gaming community as a whole pays more attention to reviews and other information, we're not going to see much of a change.
It's fairly true, actually. If we look at the sales of games like Boom Blox and Zack & Wiki, both of which have been said to be good games that make use of the Wii's capabilities, they really aren't all that great.
.41 million in sales for Boom Blox and almost the exact same number for Zack & Wiki.
VGChartz lists
Of course if you can make a quick mini-game compilation and get nearly 2 million in sales or port a game from the last generation of consoles and get around 1.5 million sales why bother actually creating anything new and original?
It's not that companies wouldn't like to make great groundbreaking games, but if you can turn twice as many sales at half the cost on a collection of mini-games or porting your hot IP from last generation, why bother with anything else?
I think developers are still learning how to work with the Wii. Let's not forget that almost all of them were caught with their pants down (hell, even Nintendo didn't expect the success that they've enjoyed) when it came to having content ready for the Wii. At the system launch the only third party that had anything that could be considered a worth-while showing was Ubisoft, and most of those games weren't all that great in my opinion.
Once Wii sales took off for the stratosphere, everyone wanted to get in on the action. The only problem is that a lot of teams had no experience working with the new control system, so this presented a learning curve. It would also take over a year in order to put out something fresh, so old games were ported over to the platform to cash in on its new found success.
Now that developers have had time to see how much of a success the Wii has turned out to be along with becoming accustomed to working with the new controller, I think we'll start to see better games trickle out. Square Enix is still working on the new Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicals game, which has been in the pipes for a while. I've also been interested in seeing what will come of MadWorld, a game by Sega of all developers that has an interesting art style to say the least. Note that the linked video contains graphic violence and is probably NSFW, which if nothing else probably ensures that the game will do good among the eighteen-and-under and ultra-violence-lover crowds.
A few other posters have already pointed out how Wii-ware games can be quite excellent as well and I think that it Nintendo more aggressively pursued developers as both Microsoft and Sony have, they could acquire more top-notch indie games on their platform as well. Some of the $10 games that you can find on Xbox Live and Sony's PSN (PlayStation Network) provide more fun and enjoyment than some of the $60 boxed games for the systems. The virtual console is also another potential marketplace where we can relive and enjoy older games, but I wish they'd release more of the games that I wanted to play.
The only person who's ever to blame is the one who's doing something illegal such as violating the content owner's copyright.
The person designing the security is generally trying to do the best that they can to balance security against annoyance of said security of customers, knowing full well that it's only a matter of time before that security is broken.
You can't blame the person breaking the security either as they may only being doing so to enable fair use rights that were taken away by the security. Likewise, anyone who uses the security remove technique could only be doing so for fair use reasons. Fair use may seem sketchy when talking about streamed video online, but if you want to use parts of the video to form a rebuttal video to the points or opinions expressed in the original video I believe making a copy of the stream would fall within fair use. Also I believe it's considered fair use to use any video if providing commentary on segments of the video.
You really can't necessarily blame the content creator either. In some cases they're not even responsible for their works being available somewhere on the internet. Someone violating their copyright may have uploaded it to a video streaming site. Is lack of security on a video streaming site the fault of a movie creator if someone rips the movie from DVD and uploads it to a website?
Blame copyright violations on the people who actually commit them.
Even if Psystar somehow manages a court victory that would allow them to purchase and sell copies of OS X installed on generic x86 boxes, all that Apple has to do is stop selling OS X to any retail outlet other than its own. If Psystar can't get legal copies of the software to put on the machines it sells, there isn't any legal way that they can stay in business at that point, other than going to Apple stores and purchasing copies of OS X at full retail price.
We're also heading towards a future of digital distribution. It started with music, has moved to movie rentals, and looks as though it can be expanded to anything in the near future. What's to stop Apple from selling you the newer versions of OS X online? In five years when everyone wants to upgrade to Puma or whatever else they end up calling it, you have the option of downloading the upgrade to your computer instead of having to go out and purchase any physical install media.
Does it really matter if the court rules that Psystar can do whatever they want with a copy of OS X once they already have it if Apple does everything that they possibly can in order to prevent Psystar from ever obtaining a copy of OS X?
You forget one important detail. All that Apple has to do to thwart this is to stop selling install media through any venue other than an Apple store or sell it in small enough quantities to other retail outfits that it would be a pain in the ass to buy enough copies easily for a business such as this to exist. They could even take it to the point that your computer comes with original install media and that any upgrades to future releases of OS X are done through an online process.
Apple will always be one step ahead in that it has complete control over the software it writes and is under no obligation at all to sell it to any third parties or make it available in any manner other than through purchasing it with their hardware. I suppose that the clone makers can always pirate the OS, but that's more than likely to be legally frowned upon.
Apple likes doing things there own way and having control over the "Mac experience" to as large of a degree as possible. They'll be sure to stop anything that might tarnish the image that they've built for themselves. If you don't like it, don't use their products or pirate the OS and run it on your own custom box. Don't, however, think that Apple will allow anything like this to happen for any extended period of time.
I get where you're coming from and I'm not some elitist prick who thinks himself a "hardcore gamer" but I really don't like it when the jerks who think that hard core gaming only applies to playing Counter Strike, Halo, or something else along those lines for ten hours a day and that anything else is just "kiddie-gaming" or some lesser form of gaming.
I don't mind those games and their fun to play, but it's unhealthy if they're the only games that are ever developed. I really like what Nintendo has done in providing something new. I was talking to my mother on the phone just the other day and she was talking about how much the old folks at the nursing home she works at are enjoying the Wii that they just got. She told me a story about a lady who had never bowled before in her life managed to get a score of 150 the first time she tried and was absolutely thrilled. As someone who's passionate about gaming I find something like this incredible, but all the self-proclaimed "hardcore" and "mature" gamers somehow view that as worthless.
If they want to play games like that for days on end I really don't care, but when they start talking as though that's the only way to game and that nothing else is important or worthwhile, it annoys me. It's not just because it's irritating to hear them talk like that, but also because it further reinforces that notion among developers that pretty graphics and big explosions are what make great games. A lot of people gripe about the lack of creative third party titles on the Wii or DS and I almost wonder if it's because developers have been trying to cater to that noisi^H^H^H^H^Hmost vocal segment of the market and have forgotten how to actually make something original or creative. Even Nintendo is somewhat guilty with constantly milking their key franchises, but at least they attempt to keep the game play fresh.
I don't think they're really after any money that Pystar may have made from their sales. Sure they'll sue Pystar for tens of millions of dollars, but I don't think it's really about that. To Apple their brand image is worth more to them than any small amount of money that Pystar has possibly made over the last few months.
My best guess is that the only reason that they took this long is that they were curious to see exactly how many units Pystar could ship over a certain period of time. The sales data would obviously be brought up during the trial so that Apple could "determine potential losses" to determine how much they should get from the lawsuit.
This sales data gives them so insight into how a similarly configured Mac computer would do in the market without having to actually spend the time designing one or marketing it. The only fees they incur are legal fees, but they're already paying their lawyers just to be there, regardless if they're wasting time on stupid court cases or not. Or perhaps they're interested in gauging how much interest there would be in licensing their OS (not that they ever would, but they might just be curious in having that information) to a generic PC vendor.
Unless their legal team was overly busy back when Pystar first opened shop, I can't think of any other good reason for them taking so long to take legal action other than having a passive interest in how the results of their business would turn out. They let them run free for long enough to get some good data, but now they're blowing the whistle and probably going to put the company out of business since they probably don't want everyone and their grandmother setting up something similar.
Please don't start using the term "hard core" either. I'm sick of people using this term to refer to people who spend hours upon hours playing a "mature" game. Those are just people who have too much time on their hands and spend all of it gaming. It doesn't necessarily make them "hard core" in much the same way that "mature gamers" doesn't refer to people who enjoy games with excessive violent content or other adult themes. Those are just people who like games with violent themes.
"Hard core" should be used to refer to the gamers who are constantly challenging themselves by finding new ways to play games. They're the people doing a speed run of an FPS and restricting themselves to only using a pistol or playing through an RPG with some severe form of handicap. Sometimes they also fall into the other categories such as gamers with a lot of disposable time on their hands or gamers who enjoy content and themes generally regarded as not suitable for children. But using "hard core" to refer to people in the other two categories annoys me. Hard core gamers are always looking for new and interesting ways to challenge themselves.
I think most people who refer to themselves as "hard core" fall into one of the other two categories and just want to identify themselves as "hard core" because it somehow makes them appear more awesome. To me they just look like idiots who would like to think they're cool, "l33t", or whatever other new hipster term is out there.
There was a lot of discussion about this when the Wii's controller was first unveiled. The best explanation that I read is that the control would play a sound signifying two blades crossing, letting you know to stop your swing and to draw the remote back. Until then, it would just treat your virtual sword as though the blow had been deflected or as though it had glanced off until the remote is returned to some neutral position and the virtual sword is ready to be swung again. Eventually you would train your own body to act as your own force feedback mechanism as you become better at reacting to the visual and audio cues from the game. If you continue to wildly flail about the game simply leaves your virtual self open to attack and you die.
Of course everything was speculative at the time and the Wii controller didn't seem as though it had the precision for something like this when the system initially launched, but if the improvements are as good as they're being hyped-up to be, then I suppose it's possible for someone to implement a good sword fighting game, but anything I've played on the console up until now has been a serious disappointment.
There are probably a few other ways to implement a good system, but short of this new gadget having some inertia-defying properties as well, I haven't heard of anything else that was likely to work any better.
Unfortunately, this still wouldn't do much if anything to prevent movie or song piracy. Have they forgotten that pirating music is as easy as purchasing a CD or DRM-free song and simply burning a CD and giving it to a friend? At best this just stops a few poeple from having an Internet connection, but when they could easilly haul a 500 GB external HD over to a friends house and load up all on manner of content, there's no way that it will curb the overall level of piracy to any extent. Hell, even if you were cut off, internet is only an unsecure access point or location with free internet away.
There are always going to be a certain subset of people who feel that prices are too high and will seek alternative methods of acquiring songs, movies, or any other similar form of media. They could probably reduce the price to reduce the amount of people who resort to such methods, but the current price might be the one that maximizes revenue for all I know.
Personally, I think the ideal solution is for the bands, songwriters, et al. to ditch the **AA (or equivalent in their countries) and use a model similar to what Radiohead or Trent Reznor used. Even when they offered their music for free, some people still donated money. Hell, if they were independent and sold tracks through Amazon, iTunes, or some other music store they'd get to keep everything that Amazon, Apple, etc. doesn't keep to cover distribution costs. That'd be somewhere in the neighborhood of $.75 or more per song sold. How much more likely would the poeple who either don't buy music now or refuse to pay the currents rates be to donate money to a band for purchasing their album if they knew that most of it wasn't going to a middleman that has a history of acting hostile towards its customers or that they would only need to offer up a few dollars, if anything?
I don't want to come of as pro-DRM, but I have a simple question for you?
Do you plan to purchase or play this game?
Considering that it's a heavily anticipated game and generally recognized as being one of the more creative and innovative titles to come in in a while, it's probably reasonable for me to expect that you want to play Spore. Your stated hate for DRM leads me to believe that you couldn't bring yourself to actually pay for any product that comes with any type of DRM. Assuming that you both want to play this game and don't want to deal with the DRM, would you pirate it?
If so, you're contributing to the reason why these companies think they need to have DRM. I can understand why people will pirate things when cost is a factor since I did it myself once upon a time, but if you pirate this game simply to spite the paid version which has DRM you're probably not doing the cause any help.
I appologize in advance for potentially mislabeling you or constructing a situation involving you from so little information, but I have a feeling that there are a few people who will pirate the game just because they dislike the notion of DRM despite the fact that they're going to play the hell out of it and had the money to easily purchase it.
My understanding from my following of the game since it was first announced is that due to the way in which the various creatures that inhabit a universe are defined, it's possible to download thousands of them with relatively little effort. I forget which conference or event it was at, but Will Wright explained that due the fact that everything in the game is proceedurally generated, it is possible to express a creature design not in terms of graphics skins and other large files, but as something very similar to DNA. The game reads a few thousand bytes worth of data and is able to take that information to recreate the creature that someone else uploaded. Even if you're playing on dial-up, you'll be able to get this new content ridiculously fast.
You've also made the assumption that you have to enter a validation code. Why wouldn't the game just store the key that was used to register it and automatically take care of it? It probably won't be a hastle unless the key has been orgied out to all of your friends and the authentication server flags it as suspicious and bans it. There might be a few false positives but for the most part I don't forsee you getting locked out unless you're playing with a pirated copy.
I'm not sure I undestand why you're less likely to buy it after the changes. There's no regularily set phone-home-and-authenticate functionality so after the intial install an online registration you never have to bother validating your copy of the game if you don't want to get new patches or play online (both of which require you to have an internet connection in order to accomplish.) so I fail to see what the fuss is about.
I suppose it sucks if you don't have internet access (but then how are you posting to Slashdot?) to begin with, but considering they dropped the overly silly requirement of having the CD/DVD in the drive while playing the game, they've more than made concessions. I'll also mention that this allows you to easily install and enjoy the game on multiple systems since you don't have to haul the stupid CD/DVD around.
Either I've completely misunderstood you or I can't even comprehend what you're objections to the new scheme that they've developed are.
There probably isn't a lot of love for EA around here (or many parts of the internet in general) but you do have to admit that they responded fairly well to the situation. From what I've read the approach that they're planning to take now is actually pretty good, if not better than what most of us are probably used to dealing with. The fact that I don't need to have the CD in the drive while playing the game is a nice touch, especially for anyone who likes to switch between games frequently.
The only thing that you could really complain about is the necessity of an internet connection to validate on install. The only other time it bothers to validate is if you're downloading an update or using some other online feature which means you're already connected to the internet.
As someone who was a little put off by the overly encumbering DRM that was originally planned to be included, I'd like to tip my hat to EA for listening to their customers and making a wise decision.
You've completely slanted the argument with your assessment.
You assume that if we pull out of Iraq we'll loose influence with the middle east and that nothing positive could come out of it. This would also significantly reduce the budget in coming years by a considerable amount.
I don't see how spending more money on education will automatically cause students to develop political awareness that will shield them from corrupt politicians. We've been increasing spending on education for decades now and a majority of the country is still politically inept. More money will probably not solve this problem in my opinion.
I feel as though NASA could do things differently or better with the money it has, such as sharing the information possess and data it collects with anyone else interested in obtaining space travel. I'm interested in seeing humans move out among the stars and I've had nothing to do with NASA. I think your statement is complete hyperbole.
Perhaps if you'd care to back up your assertions with something more than your own opinion I might be lead to believe your point of view.
I don't do it because I hate the Republicans or any other political party. I push for it in order to establish that these electronic voting machines are easily susceptible to tampering and that they should be replaced with machines that are running open source software so that I can verify myself (if so inclined) that it wouldn't be possible for anyone to tamper with the machine in order to rig an election and leave no method of determining that any damage had been done. I'm not say that this has or hasn't happened in the past, I just want to ensure that it never happens again or a first time.
A lot of states have been waking up to just how insecure these electronic voting machines are and that without a paper trail there's no way of getting an accurate vote count if the results have been doctored. A person's vote really doesn't count if someone has gone into the machine and altered it or completely wiped it out.
There really isn't a lot of substance to what he has to say on any particular view point. Then again it's pretty damned hard for one of the other candidates to attack your point of view if you haven't made it specific enough.
Like you said, there's not much there with which one can disagree. All of the things he listed are viewpoints that most people would agree with. Of course renewable energy and getting off of foreign oil is good. Until he lays out an exact plan for how to do so, which may or may not be crap, criticizing him for any reason other than "he seems to have a very broad message with no particular specifics" would only make the person attacking him look stupid.
Personally, I don't think I'd vote for him simply based on the fact that he hasn't really gone into detail. It's nice that you want to do all of those things, but what indication is there that you have a plan for doing them or are even capable of formulating one. I don't feel like a gambling man when it comes to choosing the leader of the nation.
I don't think it really matters what you use: video games, religion, television, books, or just casual conversation. Any of these are capable of taking people who are predisposed towards violence and pushing them to actually taking action. In all of my years of dealing with any of these, I don't think any of them have ever pushed me towards committing violent acts. I've never had a problem distinguishing between a video game or movie and reality and have always felt that my religious beliefs are my own and don't need to be forced upon anyone else. Reading a good book or listening to a motivated speaker has stirred up strong feelings inside of me, but no message has ever made me more prone to commit a violent act.
I and millions of other people are able to clearly draw the line. There are some people who aren't very good at that, however, and when they are exposed to a violent message, regardless of the medium, they become more aggressive and violent themselves. You could suggest that none of this should be allowed because some people won't be able to handle it, but I don't think that's the right way to go. Everyone is responsible for their own actions and if some person feels that such material affects you in a negative manner, then perhaps that person shouldn't consume that content.
Regardless of what you believe, humans are a violent animal and it's a big part of our history. I don't think that ignoring the problem is somehow going to solve it. If you think that any of the recent video games, movies, books, etc. are overly violent, just look at some of the ancient methods of torture on Wikipedia or other web sites. They tend to make anything you see in Manhunt or Hostel seem fairly tame by comparison. The big difference is that the movies and games are just imagination whereas these methods of torture were actually used.
One of my friends purchased a video card from Best Buy once and after opening the box found an old sound card in its place. He was able to get the store to substitute the purchase for a new video card after raising a fair amount of hell over the problem. Recently I had to return a coffee bean grinder to the store after I found out it was defective. They asked for my name when I returned it, but I'm not sure if they'd do this if the package was unopened.
I'm assuming it's not terribly hard to pull something like this off. Simply buy something from the store, take it out of the package and substitute it for something else. Return it a few days later and tell them that you accidentally purchased the wrong item and ask for your money back or some store credit. If you put new shrink wrap around the box so that it looks completely unopened they probably won't check inside the package or think much of it. Paying in cash also eliminates a paper trail and depending on how long it takes them to restock the product and for someone else to buy it, they may not even have any surveilance footage of the person who did it. It's probably not something that's heavily repeatable, but if the store is fairly careless about returns, it's going to happen.
Anyone work at a store like Best Buy that knows how often stuff like this happens?
I think the jury is still out on Super Mario: Galaxy. I've read a few different impressions from various journalists who play tested some levels at E3 this summer and they've said that it's amazing. If you compare Super Mario Bros. to Super Mario Bros. 2 (The Japanese version, not the American one.) how much changed between the games? They were both 2D side-scrolling platformers with a lot in common. Super Mario Bros. 3 was also fairly similar, but did feature some upgrades. In a similar fashion, I don't expect huge changes to Galaxy. It's still going to be a 3D platformer, but from what I've heard that concept for the game allowed for level design that easily lends itself to a great camera, something that can easily get in the way in other 3D games, platformer or not. I don't expect Nintendo to come out with some blatantly obvious, mind-blowing feature that will change the series or the genre, but I expect there to be an incredible amount of subtle changes that overall create an incredible play experience. The overall package might not be innovative or original, but I'm willing to bet that some components of the game will be.
Before we start using this as a reason to promote a universal health care solution, keep in mind that the United States is probably one of the least healthy countries in the world. If there were fewer people who drink, smoke, and do other drugs and more people who ate healthy and exercised I think we'd see dramatic decreases in the amount that we're spending. A lot of the problems we have are self-inflicted and results of poor lifestyle choices.
It's also private citizens who are paying for the healthcare. He's saying that because Canada's government isn't sinking loads of money into a military, it has something else to sink it into. If we cut our military down to something similar to the size the Canadians have, we could probably have budget surpluses as well. At least until the politicians found something else to waste it on anyhow. I'd rather just have them trim that fat and give me back more money and cut taxes, but maybe that's just me.
Personally, I wouldn't trust facebook to begin with. I haven't read their policy in regards to this storage, but almost anything else that you put on facebook, whether it's pictures, a blog, or anything else that you could they claim that they own it. You're still allowed to repost that material on other websites, but only for non-commercial purposes. So in other words, if you or I were to write the next great American novel and post chapters of it on facebook, they now own it.
I don't care whether they offer ulimited storage or offer any storage for free. If they maintain that storing my data on their servers grants them some form of ownership over that data, then I will never use their service and won't encourage that anyone else use it either. This kind of thinking and corporate greed disgusts me, but there's no law requiring me to use it. Caveat emptor, I suppose.