It's the difference between an amature/hobbiest and a professional. Once you start making real world money off things you are at that point a professional and income from your profession should be taxed.
Don't tax me just because I have 10k in gold in WoW... But if I sell that for the $1,600 or so I could get wholesale for it, then it's income and I should give unto ceaser and all that..
I recently picked up an HDTV set finally. (Got a sweet deal on a nice Mitsubishi 62" DLP setup)
I still don't have a reason to want to bump up to and HD format. Most of the content I like and watch regularly is still only coming out on DVD's, combine that with a DVR to grab over the air stuff (including HD), and HD content through a Windows Media Center setup and I just don't see the reason to buy one or the other until there's no longer a worry about who will win.
If you really want to see the stop gap du jour I'm picking up, it's a nice upscaling 1080p DVD player. http://www.oppodigital.com/proddetail.asp?prod=DV9 81HD If you poke around a little you can even find an easily accessible code to make that puppy region free.
Yeah, the thinkpad I have has an ATI chipset video card in it. I had to hack the driver with a reg hack to get it working, but I can rotate one or the other monitor.
It sounds all "Anti-Sony fanboi" flamish but there are reasons. For years, dare I say decades, I was a Sony zealot. They had some of the best audio components available for a while. I loved the home theater products I purchased from them. I still have an AV receiver of theirs from the 90-92 range running in my gameroom.
I got turned off starting with the Mini-disc and moving forward. It became somewhat obvious to me that Sony was, as someone else mentioned, letting the media division push an agenda on the hardware division and hardware innovation suffered. The PS3 for instance was a shameless and unhidden push to get a format into prominence by loss selling a console. Any time you have a company selling hardware at a loss hoping to make up the money on software you no longer have an innovative hardware company. (I'm also looking at Apple somewhat with that statement as well , although on a computer hardware front they're starting to do some impressive things lately)
The fact is if you buy a PsP and use it in accordance with how Sony wants you have a crippled hand-held platform. If the only way to get real performance and value out of the platform involves hacks, that should be a big red flag.
If you have to look at output while editing anything two monitors tends to be more effective.
I actually started using a dual head setup years ago (think pre-AGP days) when I had two PCI cards pushing monitors and Windows 2000 had just finally gotten a semi-automatic way to span them. And I've never gone back.
You'd think "ALT-tab" wouldn't be such an effort... until you don't have to do it.
My wife made fun of it, until I upgraded my CRTs to 19" LCD. Giving me a spare CRT to hook up to the second video port on her nVidia card. Then she found the ability to have research and documentation up on one screen, and whatever she was working on on the other. She's also never gone back.
At my work they have been moving us to Thinkpads for almost all of our production network boxes (test racks are a different matter). They got us docking stations with monitors for when we were in the office. Then I realized instead of that I could use the laptops screen as primary and the docking station screen as a second monitor. On top of that the LCD's they got for us were some nice Dell model that you can rotate to portrait mode. You don't want to know how much faster and easier is it to scan a dual column diff when you have portrait mode...
From a money perspective, if a second LCD monitor costs your company $150, and you make $40 an hour all it has to do to pay for itself in a year is save you 3 hours and 45 minutes. Over a 200 day work year.... Meaning about 1 minute and 12 seconds a day and it pays for itself.
I run XP at home. I game on the system and run basic stuff like spreadsheets and e-mail. Nothing all that fancy. XP runs fine and does the job it needs to.
Vista looks pretty, but I figure at some point down the road I'll buy a system with it already on it. Unless I keep hombrewing my systems, at which point I will move XP from computer to computer.
Microsoft seems fine with this, and they seem to be warming up to the homebrew crowd as I have now seen retailers who are openly able to sell the Vista Ultimate OEM version for substantially under the $400 or whatever they were originally posting it for.
There's just no compelling reason whatsoever other then "look.. shiny!!" And even that I worry about as I have met people and seen systems that took a 50% hit in FPS in games from going to Vista. Of course Microsoft is somewhat handcuffed in this regard. They can either lose by coming out with an OS which is an incremental improvement over older code with no compelling reasons to upgrade and seem like losers, or they can integrate some great new features and get their tailed sued into the next decade.
All the Linux evangelizers who boast about how low the specs are to run a system on Linux. But then if you want something like, say, any kind of serious DB pushing (SQL), or number crunching suddenly the specs go up?
Advertising is all about making the most out of the least. If a version of Vista will run on a system, no matter how stripped down, then you get to call it Vista capable.
By the same point I am , to the best of my knowledge, marathon capable. My car is baja rally capable. My weenie dog is "burglar killing" capable. (Although the burglar in question would probably have to lay down very still, and rub meat juice on his neck or something)
Jobs can come out now and say he's against DRM. That's because riding the inherent lock ins that went along with iTunes/iPod have already done their job.
Ask him back about the time the iPod was released if he wouldn't rather have an open format which didn't restrict which player you could play your music on after you bought it, and didn't keep you from moving the music around and I am fairly willing to bet you would get a different answer. Or let people use iTunes more easily with non Apple players... See where I'm heading?
Serenity suffered because Mr Joss over there had laid out the basics of about 4 seasons worth of plot arcs in the series. Then realized he would never get to finish the story so he had to wrap all that up in one 90 minute movie. For example, if the series got to live out it's life like Angel/Buffy it would have probably been more like:
Season 2 : Our bad guys get good at being bad, Doc figures out more about his sisters issues. Season 3 : The operative hunts our favorite psycho killer teen all season. End of season has her remembering the planets name. Season 4 : We learn about how the core planets caused the reavers Season 5 : Our good ships Doctor finds a partial cure for the reavers, they unite with the outer worlds, and start a civil war with the core planets.
With side arcs for the romance angles (doc/hailey and that other obvious elephant in the room...)
Problem was, he had to condense ALL THAT into about 90 minutes. With that much to get in he couldn't go into half the depth he probably wanted to. Just MHO. Also, people should hasten to think about how many will remember Firefly or Serenity in say.. 20 years. I still vividly remember going to see Star Wars on opening weekend with my uncle. (I was about 7 at the time)
I think Apple has the taint of evil for it's pushing of DRM and lock in's to it's hardware. I think the EU is silly for how it tries to legislate things, and often causes itself undue issues.
Who am I supposed to be snarking at on this topic?
The core problem to all this is that the United States and most other world governments have yet to realize that the internet is not something existing within their bounds, and not something which can be regulated in the same way the phone networks are. Yes, the United States created the internet as we know it today. No, they do not have legal jurisdiction over things which happen on it outside the US. If someone calls a person in Mexico from inside the US and says "GO around the corner and kill Pedro for me" that doesn't make the crime one which would be persecuted of tried under the US law. (iirc)
On this particular matter we're seeing what happens when some very potent lobbying groups (i.e. the Indian and Vegas casinos) decide they don't like what they see as undue competition. They have a very profitable existence carved out because the more socially conservative in our country want to partition off where people can go for their "vices".
I think it's more that a computer is like a very fancy notebook in which can you keep a wide variety of information. As such, it's very legal and very viable for it to be searched/read if you're facing charges in court pertaining to information you might have on it.
You're argument would be viable if it were something attached to the body that augmented natural brain processes, but we're still a few years away from that.
Since I was talking about non DRM'd music the DCMA argument isn't quite as solid. And if they REALLY want to make money as a service? It's simple.
Band sets up a laptop with wireless at it's gig to "squirt" out a free sample track to people. If someone wants to buy the album they open the screen on the Zune and choose to "buy" it from the squirting source. A price is verified and OK and the album is downloaded.
On the bands laptop you have a service which takes the Zunes ID number (serial number) which normally would be associated with the user name. Verifies it with the MS music service. If all verifies OK as the person has a Zune account in good standing then they songs are downloaded with cover art or whatever, and the persons Zune music account with MS is billed whatever for the album (determined by artist).
MS could make money on this by saying "We charge a 5% service fee (or 25 cent minimum) for album sales through our service." Then the band could also have their album up on the Zune service for purchase. Eliminating the record companies all together from the mix. A band who wanted an album could mix up the songs themselves, or have a small studio put together a master set of tracks they could upload. Bands make money, MS makes money, people get music, probably a LOT cheaper than the current model.
And as a COMPLETELY unrelated side note that could only be considered a silver lining, the RIAA gets nothing.
just MHO here, but the WiFi is possibly the most groundbreaking thing it does and it could be much more.
The problem is MS neutered it so badly that it is simply worthless. Ways to fix? Some of these were mentioned before.
A) Full sync over wireless B) If a file does not have DRM on it, dont PUT DRM ON IT. C) Allow people to have a "Sharing" folder or flag. People within wifi distance could then listen to a snip of songs that were sharable and request if they wanted a copy of the song. D) Allow for an architecture that would let people set up a "broadcaster" to send/sell songs out to those who request them. For instance, at a live local show the band could have a laptop running in the merchandise booth that gives out a free song from the band to whoever has a Zune and is nearby. Maybe giving them an option to buy the album electronically. Places like Starbucks could then also be music retailers selling their music they play electronically. E) Give people a "listen along" option other than "squirting" a song across. That way if you're doing something like working out with a friend you can listen to the friends play list at the same time they are.
Now admittedly, these won't happen because as has also been mentioned MS would have to tell the media industries to shove DRM requirements up somewhere which makes stuff the same color as some Zunes.
What would happen if a city posted the following...
"We are aware that several citizens have been speeding and running red lights. We are preparing to issue citations based on our evidence. We will not be disclosing what this evidence is, but if you wish to pre-pay for your infractions you can do so at a reduced rate by going to www.givethecityyourmoney.gov and choosing the 'pre-settlement' option."
"My grandmama could beat you at this..." (Al due apologies and considerations to Larry Johnson)
Well, thanks to new technology soon your Grandmama and many countless other octogenarians may in fact be the person beating you at something at any given moment in time...
I'm waiting for the first time I'm playing some FPS against some other people online (which the Wii doesn't have right now, but I am sure will at some point...) And I get fragged in a most compromising and embarrassing way, and instead of a teabag the person just stands over me and utters those words..
"...and get off my lawn"
On the actual topic, I suppose to some degree my wife and I also represent an expanding demographic, but in another way. We're both in our 30's and neither of us has bought a console new in easily over a decade, I just lost interest in console gaming as we both game on the PC. But we bought a Wii and have been loving it. Currently only have three games for it, but we're picking up about a new one a month.
My bet is that Sony realizes that the PS3 is only really a value for people needing HD, and many people simply aren't running HD yet. (I have a 36" standard def tube set at home which still looks great for everything I watch).
That known the best way to get people evangelizing about the product is to make sure they are using it in the most optimal scenario.
Also, I am willing to bet he knows the PR quagmire/sinkhole the PS3 is in and knew it would get him good publicity pop.
See, now I will be giggling all day imagining someone in full CS body armor with a rifle sitting quietly in the shadows of a delivery ward at the hospital.
Then someone busting in and going "Dude, camping spawn points is so not cool!"
He has managed to see the forest to spite all the trees.
My wife and I already plan on her staying at home to raise our kids when they are spawned. For reasons just like this. Parents have a responsibility to be the safeguards of their children. If you aren't up to that responsibility, don't have kids.
Now , if we could just get clones of this judge to march on Washington.. maybe curtail this damned Nanny State we have brewing.
Does his company have a vested interest in seeing the platform they are doing most of their development work on succeed? Probably so.
Is that platform the Wii? Probably not.
What I wonder is what Nintendo has up it's sleep in the hardware development cycle. They could be playing the "get the Wii established, then in a year or two when the costs are going down come out with the HD version." I really don't know.
I also don't agree with him over Wii Sports, the models in that game do exactly what they need to. But it's a "realism v. gameplay" argument and obviously he has his side.
Slashdot Mirror
It's the difference between an amature/hobbiest and a professional. Once you start making real world money off things you are at that point a professional and income from your profession should be taxed.
Don't tax me just because I have 10k in gold in WoW... But if I sell that for the $1,600 or so I could get wholesale for it, then it's income and I should give unto ceaser and all that..
I recently picked up an HDTV set finally. (Got a sweet deal on a nice Mitsubishi 62" DLP setup)
9 81HD If you poke around a little you can even find an easily accessible code to make that puppy region free.
I still don't have a reason to want to bump up to and HD format. Most of the content I like and watch regularly is still only coming out on DVD's, combine that with a DVR to grab over the air stuff (including HD), and HD content through a Windows Media Center setup and I just don't see the reason to buy one or the other until there's no longer a worry about who will win.
If you really want to see the stop gap du jour I'm picking up, it's a nice upscaling 1080p DVD player. http://www.oppodigital.com/proddetail.asp?prod=DV
Yeah, the thinkpad I have has an ATI chipset video card in it. I had to hack the driver with a reg hack to get it working, but I can rotate one or the other monitor.
Sony makes it.
It sounds all "Anti-Sony fanboi" flamish but there are reasons. For years, dare I say decades, I was a Sony zealot. They had some of the best audio components available for a while. I loved the home theater products I purchased from them. I still have an AV receiver of theirs from the 90-92 range running in my gameroom.
I got turned off starting with the Mini-disc and moving forward. It became somewhat obvious to me that Sony was, as someone else mentioned, letting the media division push an agenda on the hardware division and hardware innovation suffered. The PS3 for instance was a shameless and unhidden push to get a format into prominence by loss selling a console. Any time you have a company selling hardware at a loss hoping to make up the money on software you no longer have an innovative hardware company. (I'm also looking at Apple somewhat with that statement as well , although on a computer hardware front they're starting to do some impressive things lately)
The fact is if you buy a PsP and use it in accordance with how Sony wants you have a crippled hand-held platform. If the only way to get real performance and value out of the platform involves hacks, that should be a big red flag.
The only dual 30" setup I have heard of was a friend playing the "Exactly what is the most expensive 8 core mac I can build" on the apple website ;)
If you have to look at output while editing anything two monitors tends to be more effective.
I actually started using a dual head setup years ago (think pre-AGP days) when I had two PCI cards pushing monitors and Windows 2000 had just finally gotten a semi-automatic way to span them. And I've never gone back.
You'd think "ALT-tab" wouldn't be such an effort... until you don't have to do it.
My wife made fun of it, until I upgraded my CRTs to 19" LCD. Giving me a spare CRT to hook up to the second video port on her nVidia card. Then she found the ability to have research and documentation up on one screen, and whatever she was working on on the other. She's also never gone back.
At my work they have been moving us to Thinkpads for almost all of our production network boxes (test racks are a different matter). They got us docking stations with monitors for when we were in the office. Then I realized instead of that I could use the laptops screen as primary and the docking station screen as a second monitor. On top of that the LCD's they got for us were some nice Dell model that you can rotate to portrait mode. You don't want to know how much faster and easier is it to scan a dual column diff when you have portrait mode...
From a money perspective, if a second LCD monitor costs your company $150, and you make $40 an hour all it has to do to pay for itself in a year is save you 3 hours and 45 minutes. Over a 200 day work year.... Meaning about 1 minute and 12 seconds a day and it pays for itself.
"OK.. so whats the difference between the 'a zombie is on me get it OFF!' shake and the 'I need to chop the head off a zombie' shake???"
Actually, this could be a pretty fun title done right.
I run XP at home. I game on the system and run basic stuff like spreadsheets and e-mail. Nothing all that fancy. XP runs fine and does the job it needs to.
Vista looks pretty, but I figure at some point down the road I'll buy a system with it already on it. Unless I keep hombrewing my systems, at which point I will move XP from computer to computer.
Microsoft seems fine with this, and they seem to be warming up to the homebrew crowd as I have now seen retailers who are openly able to sell the Vista Ultimate OEM version for substantially under the $400 or whatever they were originally posting it for.
There's just no compelling reason whatsoever other then "look.. shiny!!" And even that I worry about as I have met people and seen systems that took a 50% hit in FPS in games from going to Vista. Of course Microsoft is somewhat handcuffed in this regard. They can either lose by coming out with an OS which is an incremental improvement over older code with no compelling reasons to upgrade and seem like losers, or they can integrate some great new features and get their tailed sued into the next decade.
I take it you haven't seen The Manchurian Candidate ;)
All the Linux evangelizers who boast about how low the specs are to run a system on Linux. But then if you want something like, say, any kind of serious DB pushing (SQL), or number crunching suddenly the specs go up?
Advertising is all about making the most out of the least. If a version of Vista will run on a system, no matter how stripped down, then you get to call it Vista capable.
By the same point I am , to the best of my knowledge, marathon capable.
My car is baja rally capable.
My weenie dog is "burglar killing" capable. (Although the burglar in question would probably have to lay down very still, and rub meat juice on his neck or something)
Mildly deceptive? probably. Lawsuit worthy? no.
Jobs can come out now and say he's against DRM. That's because riding the inherent lock ins that went along with iTunes/iPod have already done their job.
Ask him back about the time the iPod was released if he wouldn't rather have an open format which didn't restrict which player you could play your music on after you bought it, and didn't keep you from moving the music around and I am fairly willing to bet you would get a different answer. Or let people use iTunes more easily with non Apple players... See where I'm heading?
Serenity suffered because Mr Joss over there had laid out the basics of about 4 seasons worth of plot arcs in the series. Then realized he would never get to finish the story so he had to wrap all that up in one 90 minute movie. For example, if the series got to live out it's life like Angel/Buffy it would have probably been more like:
Season 2 : Our bad guys get good at being bad, Doc figures out more about his sisters issues.
Season 3 : The operative hunts our favorite psycho killer teen all season. End of season has her remembering the planets name.
Season 4 : We learn about how the core planets caused the reavers
Season 5 : Our good ships Doctor finds a partial cure for the reavers, they unite with the outer worlds, and start a civil war with the core planets.
With side arcs for the romance angles (doc/hailey and that other obvious elephant in the room...)
Problem was, he had to condense ALL THAT into about 90 minutes. With that much to get in he couldn't go into half the depth he probably wanted to. Just MHO. Also, people should hasten to think about how many will remember Firefly or Serenity in say.. 20 years. I still vividly remember going to see Star Wars on opening weekend with my uncle. (I was about 7 at the time)
I think Apple has the taint of evil for it's pushing of DRM and lock in's to it's hardware.
I think the EU is silly for how it tries to legislate things, and often causes itself undue issues.
Who am I supposed to be snarking at on this topic?
The core problem to all this is that the United States and most other world governments have yet to realize that the internet is not something existing within their bounds, and not something which can be regulated in the same way the phone networks are. Yes, the United States created the internet as we know it today. No, they do not have legal jurisdiction over things which happen on it outside the US. If someone calls a person in Mexico from inside the US and says "GO around the corner and kill Pedro for me" that doesn't make the crime one which would be persecuted of tried under the US law. (iirc)
On this particular matter we're seeing what happens when some very potent lobbying groups (i.e. the Indian and Vegas casinos) decide they don't like what they see as undue competition. They have a very profitable existence carved out because the more socially conservative in our country want to partition off where people can go for their "vices".
I think it's more that a computer is like a very fancy notebook in which can you keep a wide variety of information. As such, it's very legal and very viable for it to be searched/read if you're facing charges in court pertaining to information you might have on it.
You're argument would be viable if it were something attached to the body that augmented natural brain processes, but we're still a few years away from that.
What happens if someone shares a file in Europe and someone gets it in America. (assuming the law passes).
I can already see the RIAA being very unhappy. Tides not going well for them lately.
Actually...
Since I was talking about non DRM'd music the DCMA argument isn't quite as solid. And if they REALLY want to make money as a service? It's simple.
Band sets up a laptop with wireless at it's gig to "squirt" out a free sample track to people. If someone wants to buy the album they open the screen on the Zune and choose to "buy" it from the squirting source. A price is verified and OK and the album is downloaded.
On the bands laptop you have a service which takes the Zunes ID number (serial number) which normally would be associated with the user name. Verifies it with the MS music service. If all verifies OK as the person has a Zune account in good standing then they songs are downloaded with cover art or whatever, and the persons Zune music account with MS is billed whatever for the album (determined by artist).
MS could make money on this by saying "We charge a 5% service fee (or 25 cent minimum) for album sales through our service." Then the band could also have their album up on the Zune service for purchase. Eliminating the record companies all together from the mix. A band who wanted an album could mix up the songs themselves, or have a small studio put together a master set of tracks they could upload. Bands make money, MS makes money, people get music, probably a LOT cheaper than the current model.
And as a COMPLETELY unrelated side note that could only be considered a silver lining, the RIAA gets nothing.
just MHO here, but the WiFi is possibly the most groundbreaking thing it does and it could be much more.
The problem is MS neutered it so badly that it is simply worthless. Ways to fix? Some of these were mentioned before.
A) Full sync over wireless
B) If a file does not have DRM on it, dont PUT DRM ON IT.
C) Allow people to have a "Sharing" folder or flag. People within wifi distance could then listen to a snip of songs that were sharable and request if they wanted a copy of the song.
D) Allow for an architecture that would let people set up a "broadcaster" to send/sell songs out to those who request them. For instance, at a live local show the band could have a laptop running in the merchandise booth that gives out a free song from the band to whoever has a Zune and is nearby. Maybe giving them an option to buy the album electronically. Places like Starbucks could then also be music retailers selling their music they play electronically.
E) Give people a "listen along" option other than "squirting" a song across. That way if you're doing something like working out with a friend you can listen to the friends play list at the same time they are.
Now admittedly, these won't happen because as has also been mentioned MS would have to tell the media industries to shove DRM requirements up somewhere which makes stuff the same color as some Zunes.
What would happen if a city posted the following...
"We are aware that several citizens have been speeding and running red lights. We are preparing to issue citations based on our evidence. We will not be disclosing what this evidence is, but if you wish to pre-pay for your infractions you can do so at a reduced rate by going to www.givethecityyourmoney.gov and choosing the 'pre-settlement' option."
"My grandmama could beat you at this..."
(Al due apologies and considerations to Larry Johnson)
Well, thanks to new technology soon your Grandmama and many countless other octogenarians may in fact be the person beating you at something at any given moment in time...
I'm waiting for the first time I'm playing some FPS against some other people online (which the Wii doesn't have right now, but I am sure will at some point...) And I get fragged in a most compromising and embarrassing way, and instead of a teabag the person just stands over me and utters those words..
"...and get off my lawn"
On the actual topic, I suppose to some degree my wife and I also represent an expanding demographic, but in another way. We're both in our 30's and neither of us has bought a console new in easily over a decade, I just lost interest in console gaming as we both game on the PC. But we bought a Wii and have been loving it. Currently only have three games for it, but we're picking up about a new one a month.
My bet is that Sony realizes that the PS3 is only really a value for people needing HD, and many people simply aren't running HD yet. (I have a 36" standard def tube set at home which still looks great for everything I watch).
That known the best way to get people evangelizing about the product is to make sure they are using it in the most optimal scenario.
Also, I am willing to bet he knows the PR quagmire/sinkhole the PS3 is in and knew it would get him good publicity pop.
See, now I will be giggling all day imagining someone in full CS body armor with a rifle sitting quietly in the shadows of a delivery ward at the hospital.
Then someone busting in and going "Dude, camping spawn points is so not cool!"
He has managed to see the forest to spite all the trees.
My wife and I already plan on her staying at home to raise our kids when they are spawned. For reasons just like this. Parents have a responsibility to be the safeguards of their children. If you aren't up to that responsibility, don't have kids.
Now , if we could just get clones of this judge to march on Washington.. maybe curtail this damned Nanny State we have brewing.
Does his company have a vested interest in seeing the platform they are doing most of their development work on succeed? Probably so.
Is that platform the Wii? Probably not.
What I wonder is what Nintendo has up it's sleep in the hardware development cycle. They could be playing the "get the Wii established, then in a year or two when the costs are going down come out with the HD version." I really don't know.
I also don't agree with him over Wii Sports, the models in that game do exactly what they need to. But it's a "realism v. gameplay" argument and obviously he has his side.
A better way to control my armored battle suit...
Every try using a mouse inside one of those things? I thought not.