"You're a bigger moron. Rendezvous, ZeroConf, Bonjour, or whatever they are calling it this week, is a useless solution that is looking for a problem and Apple is trying hard to shove it down everyone's throats. It has no purpose beyond pandering to Mac hippies when they congregate at Starbucks. Apple is simply reinventing NetBEUI."
QFE!
Seriously, without this, people actually have to take 30 seconds to type in the IP address, or computer name, or one of the dozens of other ways to find what's on your network? TEH NOES!
This really only seems a bit useful to the Mac users that don't know how to use all the Windows tools that are there (network neighborhood) unless it has that pretty Apple logo on it.
"Intel is not evil but they do have an awful stance of we're the best and there is no reason to consider anyone else."
A great example of this happened several years ago. I was at an Intel show around the time the P4 was released. The Intel reps were takling up their 128MB MP3 player which had a price of $199. Creative had recently released their first Nomad Jukebox. A 6GB MP3 player for, you guessed it, $199.
I asked an Intel rep why someone would want the Intel 128MB MP3 player instead of the 6GB Creative MP3 player for the same price. The answer I got was...
"The Intel MP3 player has better sound quality"
I had no response, I was trying to keep from laughing in the rep's face.
Wouldn't that imply that they were more focused on the politics of the environmental movement rather than the science of it?
Seriously, 30 years to realize that nuclear power is viable, and the other environmentalists still need to figure this out?
This is the kind of thing that makes me keep my distance from most organized environmental groups. Too much political pandering without paying attention to the real situation.
As a side note, how long do you have to wait in between posting? I can't help it if I read fast and have opinions about stories faster than the system will allow me.
"Now admittedly I'd gotten out of playing these games by then, but wasn't this around 1999 -- in other words, about the time the Star Wars prequels started coming out?"
As I recall, yes. Two Words: Pod Racer.
Most of the Episode 1 centered games around that time were utter crap. As I recall, that's when it really started.
This is along the lines of something that's been floating around in my mind lately.
Video games started out mostly for kids. There weren't too many adults that played video games when they were first catching on. Now the "kids" that were playing video games in its infancy are adults and many haven't stopped playing video games.
However, the video game industry hasn't seemed to figure this out for the most part. Sure, there are "mature" games out now, but most of them appeal to the "barely legal" adult demographic. There are many gamers pushing 30 or older and probably wouldn't enjoy GTA:Ultra Hooters! too much.
Instead, the gaming industry seems to still be focusing on teenage gamers.
There are some valid reasons for this, and I'm not arguing those. However, as years go by and more and more people over 30 have grown up with video games, the industry really can't afford to continue to ignore this demographic.
Not to beat a dead horse, but Star Wars Galaxies is a great example. The game started out very in-depth with plenty of options for just about anyone to find something they liked. Now, it has been dumbed down to a VERY BAD wannabe FPS action game with nothing to do except "kill, loot treasure, repeat." They chucked out a game that should have been perfect for what should have been their target market (Most serious SW fans are 25+) in favor of a game to try (badly) to appeal to the younger "instant-gratification" crowd.
I think I'm starting to ramble so I'll stop now...
As most of us know, LucasArts USED TO make good, non Star Wars games.
In the days of X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Dark Forces, and Rebel Assault; Star Wars games were about half of the games LA made. Back then, LA had a slogan that had something to do with not making a lot of games, just making good games.
A new SW game would come out every once in awhile, not that many.
Then, the big marketing giant hit. Suddenly, LA started pumping out SW games like they were going out of style. As a result, we ended up with a lot of mediocre SW games. As we know, they began focusing on strictly SW games. They made themselves into the "Star Wars game company." They became like every other big game company that pushes out the next crappy game as fast as possible.
Now, we have Star Wars Galaxies. It's not clear exactly how much direct control LA has over that, but they have enough to stop the train wreck that's going off the cliff if they want to. The longer they continue to let that disaster continue, the more it shows their true colors. SWG is the most glaring example of going to milk the cash as much as possible and forget the customer base. They're essentially pissing on the Star Wars fans that have been fans since the original theatrical releases. These people should be their bread and butter. Instead, they're trying (badly) to appeal to the younger "too much reading; kill, loot treasure, repeat" crowd that LA VP Nancy MacIntyre referred to as their target audience.
LucasArts will NOT be able to get close to number one unless they start making quality games. They can't do that by focusing on deadlines. Release a game when it's ready. Make it something we WANT to play, not something your marketing morons like Nancy MacIntyre THINK we want to play.
That's a good point. It's VERY unclear about how easy it is to install other software. The tone in TFA made it sound like you had to use whatever it came with, but it would seem that the whole point of running some type of linux would be to allow other software to be loaded on it. The dude complains about being unable to open Word or Excel files. Wouldn't it be possible to load OpenOffice onto it? If it's possible to load SW packages, or even compile from source, then it would be a VERY useful device for geeks.
I may be wrong, but I'm not sure if a suit has even been filed yet. If no suit has been filed, then the RIAA is trying to negotiate a fee in exchange for not filing a suit. I believe that would still qualify as extortion. If a suit has been filed, then it may fall under negotiating a settlement. From what I've seen, most cases like this are just letters from RIAA lawyers threatening to file a suit. Most times they don't even file it, they just negotiate a fee in exchange for not filing the suit and call it a settlement. That sounds like extortion to me.
However, I could be wrong, since there's scant little background info on this article.
What the RIAA is doing is extortion. Plain and simple.
She is SUSPECTED of committing a crime. It has not been proven yet.
The RIAA is trying to extort money from her. If the RIAA simply wanted to protect their copyrights, they would simply file a suit immediately upon finding out. Instead they send threatening and intimidating letters to people to extort money.
Whether or not the girl is guilty of copyright infringement is not relevant to the fact that the RIAA is using that as leverage for extortion.
The extortion fees are for SHARING, not downloading. They can only get people for SHARING files. Every single case has been brought for sharing files. The RIAA tries (and the media usually helps) to convince everyone that they can get in trouble for downloading. The RIAA can't prove anyone is downloading. Sharing is what they're going after.
The TiVo company may be screwed, but that doesn't mean DVRs are going anywhere. Especially if they lose, there are plenty of other types of DVRs out there. For the/. types there's MythTV for Linux and Media Portal for Windows. (I haven't used either yet, still setting up a machine with decent TV tuners)
For the mainstream, Media Center PCs seem to be getting MUCH more popular. Echostar has DVRs. DirecTV is releasing their own DVR without the TiVo name on it. Comcast has On Demand, which is similar in function.
The TiVo company might collapse, but there will be plenty of other options.
I don't see why older phones are really much of an issue anymore. After the mandate in the US that ALL newly activated cell phones have GPS built in for 911 calls, older phones are being phased out. Now, once you "deactivate" an older phone without GPS, it can't be reactivated. At least, cell providers aren't SUPPOSED TO let you use it...
However, that would be an excellent argument for the tinfoil hat crowd to use a SIM card in an older phone. So the Men In Black can't track them...
This will be difficult to get across how I intend it but I need to try.
What I don't see is how a GLBT guild would even be considered by players, even if they are of one of those orientations. It seems like it's just a way to flaunt it. I don't see how your sexual orientation is that big of a deal to warrant needing to start a guild that's focused on it.
You're playing an online ROLE-PLAYING GAME. Personally I don't even THINK about the orientation of other players, or even if the person playing that female Night Elf is really a female. It just doesn't matter in the context of playing a game.
The guilds I play in and with are guilds of people I ENJOY playing with. I'm sure there's a few people in my guild that have different sexual orientations. I don't really care. It doesn't matter, especially for playing a game. I play with them because they're good people to play with.
It just seems to me that forming and advertising a GLBT guild seems to be mainly for the purpose of flaunting it and sticking it right in people's faces.
I don't have a problem with other-oriented people having EQUAL rights, but it really bugs me when some groups start clamoring for SPECIAL rights.
That's why it's SO hard to have a competitor right now. The iPod is obscenely trendy and popular. So much so that people who don't even know WHAT IT IS are getting them.
A couple years ago I was working at a retailer that sells electronics. People would come in looking for iPods but the store was out of stock. I would tell them that we have other MP3 players in stock and the response I would ALWAYS get is "What's an MP3 player?"
Right now the iPod and iTunes are too closely intertwined, and with the ridiculous popularity of iPods right now, it's NOT a good time to try and compete.
What I don't understand is why EVERYONE is so desperate to find a big name competitor.
It's still a little misleading. If the average Mac fanatic hears in the Stevenote that the InteliMacs are "twice as fast" and so he runs out and gets one.
He then doesn't see much of a performance increase when he uses it for whatever he does with it. Will he be satisfied by some Apple PR guy saying "But look! It's not using as much of the CPU as your old Mac! That means it's MUCH faster!"
The average Smoky McPotts Mac freak won't really care if it's using less of the CPU if it still takes as long to do the same stuff as before.
There's WAY too much flawed logic comparisons going on right now to make ANY sense of it. Benchmarks matter to a certain point, but what really matters is how long it takes to do stuff that you use it for. If it takes forever to do most of the tasks you want it to do, it doesn't matter what kind of benchmark scores it got by which review site.
The game was on the seat.
Nothing says either of them have ever PLAYED the game.
I don't know about you but I ALWAYS bring my favorite video game with me whenever I go out.
Seriously, how many people bring their games out with them when they go somewhere?
They probably just bought the game or rented it and hadn't even played it yet.
Is Jack Thompson going to sue the retailer now for SELLING the game? (Don't answer that, he probably will)
As the Toronto cop said, it's just ironic. Nothing more.
Slashdot Mirror
QFE!
Seriously, without this, people actually have to take 30 seconds to type in the IP address, or computer name, or one of the dozens of other ways to find what's on your network? TEH NOES!
This really only seems a bit useful to the Mac users that don't know how to use all the Windows tools that are there (network neighborhood) unless it has that pretty Apple logo on it.
A great example of this happened several years ago. I was at an Intel show around the time the P4 was released. The Intel reps were takling up their 128MB MP3 player which had a price of $199. Creative had recently released their first Nomad Jukebox. A 6GB MP3 player for, you guessed it, $199.
I asked an Intel rep why someone would want the Intel 128MB MP3 player instead of the 6GB Creative MP3 player for the same price. The answer I got was...
"The Intel MP3 player has better sound quality"
I had no response, I was trying to keep from laughing in the rep's face.
Seriously, 30 years to realize that nuclear power is viable, and the other environmentalists still need to figure this out?
This is the kind of thing that makes me keep my distance from most organized environmental groups. Too much political pandering without paying attention to the real situation.
As a side note, how long do you have to wait in between posting? I can't help it if I read fast and have opinions about stories faster than the system will allow me.
As I recall, yes. Two Words: Pod Racer.
Most of the Episode 1 centered games around that time were utter crap. As I recall, that's when it really started.
Video games started out mostly for kids. There weren't too many adults that played video games when they were first catching on. Now the "kids" that were playing video games in its infancy are adults and many haven't stopped playing video games.
However, the video game industry hasn't seemed to figure this out for the most part. Sure, there are "mature" games out now, but most of them appeal to the "barely legal" adult demographic. There are many gamers pushing 30 or older and probably wouldn't enjoy GTA:Ultra Hooters! too much.
Instead, the gaming industry seems to still be focusing on teenage gamers.
There are some valid reasons for this, and I'm not arguing those. However, as years go by and more and more people over 30 have grown up with video games, the industry really can't afford to continue to ignore this demographic.
Not to beat a dead horse, but Star Wars Galaxies is a great example. The game started out very in-depth with plenty of options for just about anyone to find something they liked. Now, it has been dumbed down to a VERY BAD wannabe FPS action game with nothing to do except "kill, loot treasure, repeat." They chucked out a game that should have been perfect for what should have been their target market (Most serious SW fans are 25+) in favor of a game to try (badly) to appeal to the younger "instant-gratification" crowd.
I think I'm starting to ramble so I'll stop now...
I've been wondering that for awhile
In the days of X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Dark Forces, and Rebel Assault; Star Wars games were about half of the games LA made. Back then, LA had a slogan that had something to do with not making a lot of games, just making good games.
A new SW game would come out every once in awhile, not that many.
Then, the big marketing giant hit. Suddenly, LA started pumping out SW games like they were going out of style. As a result, we ended up with a lot of mediocre SW games. As we know, they began focusing on strictly SW games. They made themselves into the "Star Wars game company." They became like every other big game company that pushes out the next crappy game as fast as possible.
Now, we have Star Wars Galaxies. It's not clear exactly how much direct control LA has over that, but they have enough to stop the train wreck that's going off the cliff if they want to. The longer they continue to let that disaster continue, the more it shows their true colors. SWG is the most glaring example of going to milk the cash as much as possible and forget the customer base. They're essentially pissing on the Star Wars fans that have been fans since the original theatrical releases. These people should be their bread and butter. Instead, they're trying (badly) to appeal to the younger "too much reading; kill, loot treasure, repeat" crowd that LA VP Nancy MacIntyre referred to as their target audience.
LucasArts will NOT be able to get close to number one unless they start making quality games. They can't do that by focusing on deadlines. Release a game when it's ready. Make it something we WANT to play, not something your marketing morons like Nancy MacIntyre THINK we want to play.
That's a good point. It's VERY unclear about how easy it is to install other software. The tone in TFA made it sound like you had to use whatever it came with, but it would seem that the whole point of running some type of linux would be to allow other software to be loaded on it. The dude complains about being unable to open Word or Excel files. Wouldn't it be possible to load OpenOffice onto it? If it's possible to load SW packages, or even compile from source, then it would be a VERY useful device for geeks.
I may be wrong, but I'm not sure if a suit has even been filed yet. If no suit has been filed, then the RIAA is trying to negotiate a fee in exchange for not filing a suit. I believe that would still qualify as extortion. If a suit has been filed, then it may fall under negotiating a settlement. From what I've seen, most cases like this are just letters from RIAA lawyers threatening to file a suit. Most times they don't even file it, they just negotiate a fee in exchange for not filing the suit and call it a settlement. That sounds like extortion to me.
However, I could be wrong, since there's scant little background info on this article.
What the RIAA is doing is extortion. Plain and simple.
She is SUSPECTED of committing a crime. It has not been proven yet.
The RIAA is trying to extort money from her. If the RIAA simply wanted to protect their copyrights, they would simply file a suit immediately upon finding out. Instead they send threatening and intimidating letters to people to extort money.
Whether or not the girl is guilty of copyright infringement is not relevant to the fact that the RIAA is using that as leverage for extortion.
The extortion fees are for SHARING, not downloading. They can only get people for SHARING files. Every single case has been brought for sharing files. The RIAA tries (and the media usually helps) to convince everyone that they can get in trouble for downloading. The RIAA can't prove anyone is downloading. Sharing is what they're going after.
The TiVo company might collapse, but there will be plenty of other options.
Yeah, because John Smedley is SO reliable and tgrustworthy... /rolleyes
However, that would be an excellent argument for the tinfoil hat crowd to use a SIM card in an older phone. So the Men In Black can't track them...
/sarcasm on
/sarcasm off
The phone companies?
What I don't see is how a GLBT guild would even be considered by players, even if they are of one of those orientations. It seems like it's just a way to flaunt it. I don't see how your sexual orientation is that big of a deal to warrant needing to start a guild that's focused on it.
You're playing an online ROLE-PLAYING GAME. Personally I don't even THINK about the orientation of other players, or even if the person playing that female Night Elf is really a female. It just doesn't matter in the context of playing a game.
The guilds I play in and with are guilds of people I ENJOY playing with. I'm sure there's a few people in my guild that have different sexual orientations. I don't really care. It doesn't matter, especially for playing a game. I play with them because they're good people to play with.
It just seems to me that forming and advertising a GLBT guild seems to be mainly for the purpose of flaunting it and sticking it right in people's faces.
I don't have a problem with other-oriented people having EQUAL rights, but it really bugs me when some groups start clamoring for SPECIAL rights.
FLAMEBAIT!?!?!?!?
What kind of crack do these mods smoke?
Or are there that many Apple freaks that have had their sense of humor surgically removed?
"Why do you keep saying that word? I don't think it means what you think it means."
Or have I been listening to the anti M$ people too much?
A couple years ago I was working at a retailer that sells electronics. People would come in looking for iPods but the store was out of stock. I would tell them that we have other MP3 players in stock and the response I would ALWAYS get is "What's an MP3 player?"
Right now the iPod and iTunes are too closely intertwined, and with the ridiculous popularity of iPods right now, it's NOT a good time to try and compete.
What I don't understand is why EVERYONE is so desperate to find a big name competitor.
He then doesn't see much of a performance increase when he uses it for whatever he does with it. Will he be satisfied by some Apple PR guy saying "But look! It's not using as much of the CPU as your old Mac! That means it's MUCH faster!"
The average Smoky McPotts Mac freak won't really care if it's using less of the CPU if it still takes as long to do the same stuff as before.
There's WAY too much flawed logic comparisons going on right now to make ANY sense of it. Benchmarks matter to a certain point, but what really matters is how long it takes to do stuff that you use it for. If it takes forever to do most of the tasks you want it to do, it doesn't matter what kind of benchmark scores it got by which review site.
The game was on the seat. Nothing says either of them have ever PLAYED the game. I don't know about you but I ALWAYS bring my favorite video game with me whenever I go out. Seriously, how many people bring their games out with them when they go somewhere? They probably just bought the game or rented it and hadn't even played it yet. Is Jack Thompson going to sue the retailer now for SELLING the game? (Don't answer that, he probably will) As the Toronto cop said, it's just ironic. Nothing more.