It's one of the very few Game translations of a movie/book that actually embellishes the story and adds to the world rather than just acting as a vehicle for making a quick buck. The gameplay and graphics might be a little dated by todays standards (it's been years since I've played it) but I recall it being a very well crafted game and in the Adventure genre no less.
Basically you take on the role as another police agent (not Harrison Ford's Character). The story you play through takes place roughly the same time as the movie but through experiences in completely different parts of the world. It's rather interesting because as you're going along hunting down a few replicants your character begins to have affinity for them and then starts questioning whether he himself is a replicant.
Of course you saw a lot of familiar things in the game as you got to drive the same vehicles, shoot the same guns, and even administer VK tests. In addition to traveling through a lot of the same locations.
No idea how much justice it does the novel but it did well by the movie.
I've always considered humans at their core to be problem solvers... Most people face the same common problems: making money/paying the bills, balancing home life and work life, etc.
When we start seeing people who have "solved" those problems or at least got them into a comfortable equilibrium they start going out of their way to find new problems to solve... like saving our children, or reshaping politics, etc.
Ideally, they will eventually put you into a rental mode where you will pay a fee every time you play the content and then when the storage goes bad or they change the format (again), you'll have to pay for (not buy-- never buy & own content again) the content again.
Funny you should mention the Open source aspect. I'm all for open source (I even make donations to several projects) but on more than one occasion I received tips from various sources to "not upgrade to the latest Azureus because of..." it seems that regularly people would slip trojans, viruses, spyware and other nasties into the official releases. It was enough make me turn off the auto-update feature and wait for the "all clear". Though I never really looked into any of those claims, it certainly made by decision to switch clients easier when I was looking for something less bloated.
As for dubious intentions of uTorrent's developers, you're mention is the first I've heard of it.
in all honesty I wasn't really trying to make an entirely valid analogy... more than anything I wanted one just good enough to point out how incredibly wasteful the whole thing is.
Personally I just print most stuff at work and I have an old printer at home that I'll fire up if I need something in pinch. The quality of the printers on the market has plummeted dramatically IMO due in part to this model of paying for the ink. When I walk into staples and I see someone wheeling out a cart with 5 of the same printer because it's cheaper to buy that than 5 sets of ink cartridges there's something very wrong with the way things are setup.
Despite your snaky cynicism (which is probably what got your the flamebait mod) I tend to agree with you sentiment. I ditched Azures months ago for uTorrent due mostly to it's unnecessary bloat. Are there even any worth while plug-ins for it?
For the type of app that generally runs consistently in the background bloat is the last thing you want, similarly a pretty interface isn't all that necessary based on the amount of time most users will actually spend looking at it.
Why don't we get the cars for free and get charged $500 per gallon of gas, that'll teach those people who like to drive. Before you know it we'll all be driving brand new cars and just replacing them when the tank runs out because they each come with a free tank of gas... better yet why not have it read "E" when we're really down to half a tank.
...the distinct impression I'm left with, is that they want to both make a "duh, it was for adults game" _and_ then sell it to kids anyway.
My sentiments exactly. In part I can understand why Rockstar might not want an AO rating. There are a number of store that refuse to carry it such as Walmart, Best Buy, etc. and if you're product isn't available for sale it makes it a whole lot harder to sell.
The no licenses for AO games from the big 3 console makers seems quite two-faced to me. That is definitely a case of selling an "adult product" and then intentionally blocking products designed just for adults. I guess I don't understand why it would matter for content you view in the privacy of your own home.... What about all of those "unrated" DVDs that sell so damn well.
When it comes down to it the difference between an M and an AO rating is one freekin year... 17 or 18 years old... you can't tell me that SO much of their market rides on customers between those ages that they have to outright ban the deny the content on their platform...
You can guarantee that with all this press once the game does get toned down to an M rating it will sell like hotcakes... people love their barely legal.
Personally I have no interest in an AO game, but I would buy one if one were made available that interested me.... I would also go to see an NC-17 movie if I saw advertisements for one that interested me. While I can understand the reasoning behind extreme violence getting that kind of rating I find it quite troubling that so much as a single pixelated nipple is capable of breaking that point.... I mean it's not like it's something no one has ever seen before.
I don't think it really changes anything but a lot of times it can come as a shock or surprise, like seeing a picture of a radio personality that you've listened to for years but never seen. Or seeing someone cast in a movie reproduction of book that is nothing like the person you imagined.
I'm a head moderator on the Xbox-Scene forums so I imagine some people view me as an authority figure... a few months ago I made a video documenting one of my projects. I received a number of emails from forum members who basically told me that "the illusion was shattered" after hearing my voice and having it be completely unlike what they expected.
Now I'm not an 11 year old boy, I'm a 24 year old engineer/programmer but the concept is the same.
Sometimes when the voice doesn't fit the personality it's hard to take someone seriously... If you had a politician that really knew their stuff and could do great things for the people but he had a high pitch voice and stuttered it would be hard for people to take him seriously no matter how good his positions were... Similarly regardless of the that 11 year old boy's leadership skills I would imagine it can be difficult for a grown man to "look up to" a child as a role model or superior. It really doesn't have much to do with discrediting them because of their age but the way our society is setup that our natural tendencies tell us otherwise.
What about a system where the Plaintiff pays in full for the defendants legal fees as well as the court fees if the defendant is found not guilty?
That would have the benefit of plaintiffs not bringing frivolous lawsuits to court, less they risk losing a bit of money themselves. Not only that it would remove the burden of court costs from the tax payers and place it on those who would bring ridiculous lawsuits to court.
There's no law of natture which says which "right" is right.
True, but that's assuming there's a conflict... there are very many "natural rights" that are taken away by government bodies that don't conflict with anyone else's' rights.
For instance, owning/Playing this game doesn't interfere with the rights of others.
First of all: do you have any source links about how the game has been "gimped" claims are useless pile of mush without backbone.
Second: How is this any different then last generation where the Xbox crowd got titles gimped due to the PS2's shortcomings? Games are developed for the lowest common denominator. They're not in it to make the highest quality game possible, they're in it to make money by selling to the largest market possible.
If MS had included HD-DVD and a hard drive standard they might not have sold as well.. and instead we might have been looking at GTA on Wii and getting ported from that. Who's to say their inclusion of different hardware wouldn't have lost them their current market status. Who's to say that if Sony left out the BRD that it would have been a much more popular console and had us seeing GTA made for that and then toned down for the other consoles?
I don't really see this as anything other than business as usual.
...It is now just a question of when the plug gets pulled. Does Microsoft want to spend the billions to to keep the 360 artificially alive in the market just to save face or pull the plug now and deal with the short term PR hit and move on to other markets.
Are you kidding? Reports from most financial analysis claim MS has been turning a profit on the Xbox business since last November and plan on getting back into the black after the next holiday.
MS extended the warranty on the Xbox 360 for over a year, they repair these boxes without question or hesitation... if the problem was really THAT widespread one would think it'd be cheaper to do a recall or maybe fix the problems earlier in the consoles life when they could have started producing consoles that didn't come back in for repair.
I find the idea of Ms leaving the console business over this positively absurd given their current market position.
If the system has a heating problem don't buy it. MS has no obligation to inform anyone about their hardware design.
How do you know it has a heating problem until you buy it? Even reports from other consumers are inconsistent and the only "facts" on the return numbers are being produced by MS themselves. How can you expect a consumer to make an educated purchase decision in this situation?
Speaking of "facts on the return numbers" am I the only one who noticed that they went from:
-No problems at all
-Below the Industry standard of 3%
-Below the Industry standard of 5%
and now in TFA -A Majority of the people haven't had problems
despite their overly optimistic spin on the situation... it does get considerably worse everytime the issue is brought up.
I should note that I have a launch day unit and I've never had and problems with it, nor have any of my friends IRL... though I've seen hundreds and hundred of reports of consoles failures on a daily bases on the Xbox-Scene forums where I moderate.
it's pretty apparent that consumers go for convenience over quality... at least in terms of their media.
Right, because we must pick one over the other..
Yes, sometimes you do. Obviously not all the time but sometimes that is a choice consumers have to make.
If you're looking at portable media players you will never get the same quality out of those that is delivered by a SACD or DVD-A in a full high end surround sound setup... Not only is the music compressed way beyond what you'd get on SACD or DVD-A the equipment in that form factor just isn't capable of reproducing it in the same high quality you could get from an audiophile grade surround sound system... It doesn't matter how much money you spend on it.
Take a look at phones, hard lines almost always offer better voice quality and reliability, but most people prefer the convenience of a cell phone to the point where there are a lot of people without a hardline anymore.
Similarly with technology today any streamed HD content is going to be compressed more and probably in a lower (720p) resolution when compared to disc based media like HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.
Sometimes you can get convenience and quality like the move from VHS to DVD... but YES sometimes it is a choice of one over the other and looking at the choices consumers have made with new products in the past it seems to me that more often then not people will adopt the more convenient product, quality be damned.
The day you can download an entire HD movie in the time it currently takes to download an MP3 is the day your comparison will start to make sense.
I think you're confused
"On Demand" Download before you can watch
"On Demand" is content streamed immediately and immediately watchable. I decide I want to watch X... I click the option to pay for it and then I start watching it... there's nothing to download and it's not like pay-per-view where it plays all day and I have to wait for the next time it starts. Online Rentals are not the same thing as IPTV or On Demand content... you're completely confusing the two. There's no computer hook up or dongles it's the same Set-top box provided by the cable company.
As for the other stuff in my area there are no OTA HD broadcasts, I don't live in a city or even a suburb of a city... I'd be lucky to get any broadcast TV at all nevermind HD. I don't know anyone who owns a PS3 or is even considering one and the Home Theater fanatics I know are all waiting out the format war before they make the plunge.
That's great that you get good OTA content, most of the rest of the world isn't nearly that lucky, I'd be all over it if I could get that too but unfortunately I can't. If I want to watch TV in HD I have to get a cable or satellite package, and this is how most HDTV owners get TV shows in HD... if the same equipment that provides your TV can also provide all of your movies and have those movies be even more easily accessible then the TV shows (you can pick your start time... pause, etc.) then where is the incentive to buy additional equipment for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD?
Digital distribution does not mean you're downloading a file, just because that's what it generally means for music doesn't mean that's what it has to be for video content... IT also doesn't mean you have to get it over the internet... it simply means that the content is piped specifically to you digitally with no physical media... nothing more nothing less.
Everyone I know with an HDTV has some form of "On Demand" for getting HD movies... I don't know a single person who owns either an HD-DVD or BRD player.
The cost of ownership is significantly lower too... pay your cable/satellite company $5 for the movie you want to see using the equipment you already have or buy a $500+ player and go to the store (or wait for delivery of) a rental + however much that costs.
I see the HD-DVD vs BRD debate along the same lines as the DVD-Audio vs SACD debate... which format one that war? NEITHER the equipment was over priced, crippled by DRM and only a fraction of the market owned the supporting equipment to fully utilize it nevermind become actually interested in it.... who won that war? technically it still rages on but the real victor was the MP3 and other digitally distributed forms of music... far and wide technically inferior to the DVD-A and SACDs but it's pretty apparent that consumers go for convenience over quality... at least in terms of their media.
I think the point is most of the things that the PS3 can do don't appeal to the people who consider it to be over priced...
Maybe that $3000 MP3 player also plays games and Blu-Rays discs... but it's still just an MP3 player to those consumers who don't want to play games or Blu-Ray. To use another analogy if you were looking at two houses that were equal in all aspects except one had an extra 5 car garage and cost twice as much... if you have no cars, it doesn't matter if those 5 bays are "worth" the extra cost because you have no intention of ever using them, it's just a useless extremity that needlessly drives up the price.
The problem with adding features that drive up the price of your console is that every feature you add shrinks the potential market of people who will find 100% of your features useful and valuable.
Would be PS3 buyers who aren't interested in Blu-Ray see the blu-Ray features valued at $0... would be PS3 buyers who aren't interested in WiFi see the WiFi features valued at $0 etc... Eventually you have a machine that "just plays games" because a large group of gamers don't care about the noise and your console suddenly isn't valued at what you thought it was in the eyes of the consumer.
It's not that I think it's a bad idea I just think it's effort spent that could have been better spent elsewhere.
I have no problem with a blog, and keeping your customers informed about what is on your mind is always a good thing to do IMO... my point isn't that it's a bad thing, it's that Sony has promised a lot this generation, and so far they've only delivered a very small fraction of what they've promised. I guess I just see the blog as another place for them to talk about how great their console will be at some uncertain point in time down the road. Meanwhile there are customers using their PS3s as nothing more then Protein folders while they wait for something... anything.
If they were using this blog as a vehicle to talk straight and start showing off the few titles that are available now and maybe worth owning a PS3 for. But reading through the posts on the blog so far all I see is the same PR and corporate jargon that I've been listening to since they announced the PS3.
I WANT to like the PS3... I WANT them to deliver the best damn games in the world... and I WANT them to give me games that encourage me to march to the store and hand over $600+ of hard earned cash... A blog isn't going to do that for me, I could care less what some corporate suit says about potential and their market position compared to last generation. Give me something tangible, or at very least something beyond just words to whet my appetite.
I don't know how the RIAA found out about it but I do know that when I was in college a few years back (RPI) the RIAA brought several lawsuits against students with open folders on the network... Despite the fact that it's a private LAN it's not all that difficult to coerce some random student into giving you access.
Also they DONT KNOW who it is... the whole point of these case is the guy going after them is one of 21 anonymous students counter suing the RIAA for even attempting to obtain their real identities.
...or did marketing decide to restate the doesn't-deserve-to-be-restated obvious in hopes of getting a bunch of people to nod their heads and say: "yep, Sony is definitely now a contender in this race (I'm willing to put money on it...).
Sony's been all talk and no action this generation and I think most people have woken up to that fact, and I think for most that's a much larger factor then just Sony "losing touch" with the market. I honestly don't think a blog is really what they need right now nor do I think it's really going to change anyone's mind.
Maybe that's a typo, but I fail to see how an employee that can do their job like other workers, is dead weight, and should be fired...
yes that was a typo... my apologies I mean to say "unable". It's one thing when an employee is working below the company average but there are a number of employees here that over the past couple of years have cost the company over 1 million dollars worth in scrapped parts each, yet there is nothing we can do to get rid of them and since they've been here so long the union wont let us move them into another position where they'll do less damage.
Companies do exactly the same things. At least Unions provide a counter-balance.
I can't speak to most companies but I can honestly say that none of the companies I've worked for have EVER instructed me how to use my vote, not even friendly suggestions. so maybe it does create a counter balance in some situations but at my company and in my experience the union isn't creating a counterbalance to anything.
That one doesn't even make sense. You've provided no possible reasoning for why the union is doing, or would want to do this. It sounds like something that has some rational reason behind it, but you're not providing it.
I didn't provide any reasoning because there is no apparent reason. The union demands that we have X amount of people in the office on Saturdays or they wont allow their workers to volunteer for overtime work. My job is to write software for the engineers. I've had to work Saturdays to help fill their quota as have people in sales and marketing. We quite literally have no ties to the shop floor workers so our coming in on a Saturday is pretty useless, especially when there is no new work to do. the Sales people sure aren't getting orders on weekends. My only guess is it's the union trying to flex their muscle as more of a political showpiece then anything else.
That sounds perfectly reasonable. If a company wants to remove worker's benefits in some way, they should compensate in another, or better yet, find another plan which doesn't cut-back on their benefits.
What I'm talking about here isn't cutting benefits... I'm talking about switching from a plan that highly benefited only 2 or 3 people in the company (mainly the president of the union) and was just "ok" all around for everyone else and switching to a plan that highly benefited 90% of the employees but cost a bit extra for those 2 or 3 people... Basically the union president fought on behalf of himself and screwed over pretty much everyone else in the company, including nearly all of his own union members. THEN he played it off like it was the rest of the company management that wouldn't let them switch plans.
I'm sure some unions out there have presidents and reps that actually fight on behalf of their members rather then their own self interests but this just struck me as being just a corrupt as any other political structure.
if you're even attempting to impart wisdom on your child I think you're doing better then the parents the GP was talking about.
Most of the time theses cases are children not with "bad" parents but parents who just weren't even in the picture. Columbine for instance, the parents didn't even realize that the shooters were making bombs in the garage, nevermind goose-stepping around the house to KMFDM. The problem are the parents who neglect their children and expect the TV and or school system to just raise their child for them. If you're even attempting to talk to your child and find out what's going on in their head, in their life, then you're not who we're talking about.
I was a bit of an outcast in high school, I dressed, acted, and listened to the music that by todays standards would probably get me pegged as a potential school shooter. But the difference was my parents actually made an effort to find out what I was doing and what I was thinking. They'd listen to my music, they'd talk to my friends and my friend's parents and they made every effort they could to get to know me and the person I was becoming despite the fact that I made it difficult for them every step of the way.
As far as I'm concerned parents are responsible for the actions of their children, just because the way society is setup makes it hard to do shouldn't make a difference. That's what you signed up for when you decided to become a parent.
If you neglect your child and your child dies or is injured as a result you're responsible. How is it any different if your neglect results in the death of someone else? There's more to raising a child then just feeding and sheltering them. This isn't some test you can just keep retaking, this is someones life, this is a part of society's well being on a whole. Just because it's hard or difficult to figure out doesn't make it any less serious or make you any less responsible for the outcome.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you ever play the PC game?
It's one of the very few Game translations of a movie/book that actually embellishes the story and adds to the world rather than just acting as a vehicle for making a quick buck. The gameplay and graphics might be a little dated by todays standards (it's been years since I've played it) but I recall it being a very well crafted game and in the Adventure genre no less.
Basically you take on the role as another police agent (not Harrison Ford's Character). The story you play through takes place roughly the same time as the movie but through experiences in completely different parts of the world. It's rather interesting because as you're going along hunting down a few replicants your character begins to have affinity for them and then starts questioning whether he himself is a replicant.
Of course you saw a lot of familiar things in the game as you got to drive the same vehicles, shoot the same guns, and even administer VK tests. In addition to traveling through a lot of the same locations.
No idea how much justice it does the novel but it did well by the movie.
I've always considered humans at their core to be problem solvers... Most people face the same common problems: making money/paying the bills, balancing home life and work life, etc.
When we start seeing people who have "solved" those problems or at least got them into a comfortable equilibrium they start going out of their way to find new problems to solve... like saving our children, or reshaping politics, etc.
Funny you should mention the Open source aspect. I'm all for open source (I even make donations to several projects) but on more than one occasion I received tips from various sources to "not upgrade to the latest Azureus because of..." it seems that regularly people would slip trojans, viruses, spyware and other nasties into the official releases. It was enough make me turn off the auto-update feature and wait for the "all clear". Though I never really looked into any of those claims, it certainly made by decision to switch clients easier when I was looking for something less bloated.
As for dubious intentions of uTorrent's developers, you're mention is the first I've heard of it.
in all honesty I wasn't really trying to make an entirely valid analogy... more than anything I wanted one just good enough to point out how incredibly wasteful the whole thing is.
Personally I just print most stuff at work and I have an old printer at home that I'll fire up if I need something in pinch. The quality of the printers on the market has plummeted dramatically IMO due in part to this model of paying for the ink. When I walk into staples and I see someone wheeling out a cart with 5 of the same printer because it's cheaper to buy that than 5 sets of ink cartridges there's something very wrong with the way things are setup.
Despite your snaky cynicism (which is probably what got your the flamebait mod) I tend to agree with you sentiment. I ditched Azures months ago for uTorrent due mostly to it's unnecessary bloat. Are there even any worth while plug-ins for it?
For the type of app that generally runs consistently in the background bloat is the last thing you want, similarly a pretty interface isn't all that necessary based on the amount of time most users will actually spend looking at it.
Why don't we get the cars for free and get charged $500 per gallon of gas, that'll teach those people who like to drive. Before you know it we'll all be driving brand new cars and just replacing them when the tank runs out because they each come with a free tank of gas... better yet why not have it read "E" when we're really down to half a tank.
The no licenses for AO games from the big 3 console makers seems quite two-faced to me. That is definitely a case of selling an "adult product" and then intentionally blocking products designed just for adults. I guess I don't understand why it would matter for content you view in the privacy of your own home.... What about all of those "unrated" DVDs that sell so damn well.
When it comes down to it the difference between an M and an AO rating is one freekin year... 17 or 18 years old... you can't tell me that SO much of their market rides on customers between those ages that they have to outright ban the deny the content on their platform...
You can guarantee that with all this press once the game does get toned down to an M rating it will sell like hotcakes... people love their barely legal.
Personally I have no interest in an AO game, but I would buy one if one were made available that interested me.... I would also go to see an NC-17 movie if I saw advertisements for one that interested me. While I can understand the reasoning behind extreme violence getting that kind of rating I find it quite troubling that so much as a single pixelated nipple is capable of breaking that point.... I mean it's not like it's something no one has ever seen before.
I don't think it really changes anything but a lot of times it can come as a shock or surprise, like seeing a picture of a radio personality that you've listened to for years but never seen. Or seeing someone cast in a movie reproduction of book that is nothing like the person you imagined.
I'm a head moderator on the Xbox-Scene forums so I imagine some people view me as an authority figure... a few months ago I made a video documenting one of my projects. I received a number of emails from forum members who basically told me that "the illusion was shattered" after hearing my voice and having it be completely unlike what they expected.
Now I'm not an 11 year old boy, I'm a 24 year old engineer/programmer but the concept is the same.
Sometimes when the voice doesn't fit the personality it's hard to take someone seriously... If you had a politician that really knew their stuff and could do great things for the people but he had a high pitch voice and stuttered it would be hard for people to take him seriously no matter how good his positions were... Similarly regardless of the that 11 year old boy's leadership skills I would imagine it can be difficult for a grown man to "look up to" a child as a role model or superior. It really doesn't have much to do with discrediting them because of their age but the way our society is setup that our natural tendencies tell us otherwise.
What about a system where the Plaintiff pays in full for the defendants legal fees as well as the court fees if the defendant is found not guilty?
That would have the benefit of plaintiffs not bringing frivolous lawsuits to court, less they risk losing a bit of money themselves. Not only that it would remove the burden of court costs from the tax payers and place it on those who would bring ridiculous lawsuits to court.
For instance, owning/Playing this game doesn't interfere with the rights of others.
I'm wondering who will be the first to send in a swap from a Monkey.
First of all: do you have any source links about how the game has been "gimped" claims are useless pile of mush without backbone.
Second: How is this any different then last generation where the Xbox crowd got titles gimped due to the PS2's shortcomings? Games are developed for the lowest common denominator. They're not in it to make the highest quality game possible, they're in it to make money by selling to the largest market possible.
If MS had included HD-DVD and a hard drive standard they might not have sold as well.. and instead we might have been looking at GTA on Wii and getting ported from that. Who's to say their inclusion of different hardware wouldn't have lost them their current market status. Who's to say that if Sony left out the BRD that it would have been a much more popular console and had us seeing GTA made for that and then toned down for the other consoles?
I don't really see this as anything other than business as usual.
MS extended the warranty on the Xbox 360 for over a year, they repair these boxes without question or hesitation... if the problem was really THAT widespread one would think it'd be cheaper to do a recall or maybe fix the problems earlier in the consoles life when they could have started producing consoles that didn't come back in for repair.
I find the idea of Ms leaving the console business over this positively absurd given their current market position.
Speaking of "facts on the return numbers" am I the only one who noticed that they went from:
-No problems at all
-Below the Industry standard of 3%
-Below the Industry standard of 5%
and now in TFA -A Majority of the people haven't had problems
despite their overly optimistic spin on the situation... it does get considerably worse everytime the issue is brought up.
I should note that I have a launch day unit and I've never had and problems with it, nor have any of my friends IRL... though I've seen hundreds and hundred of reports of consoles failures on a daily bases on the Xbox-Scene forums where I moderate.
If you're looking at portable media players you will never get the same quality out of those that is delivered by a SACD or DVD-A in a full high end surround sound setup... Not only is the music compressed way beyond what you'd get on SACD or DVD-A the equipment in that form factor just isn't capable of reproducing it in the same high quality you could get from an audiophile grade surround sound system... It doesn't matter how much money you spend on it.
Take a look at phones, hard lines almost always offer better voice quality and reliability, but most people prefer the convenience of a cell phone to the point where there are a lot of people without a hardline anymore.
Similarly with technology today any streamed HD content is going to be compressed more and probably in a lower (720p) resolution when compared to disc based media like HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.
Sometimes you can get convenience and quality like the move from VHS to DVD... but YES sometimes it is a choice of one over the other and looking at the choices consumers have made with new products in the past it seems to me that more often then not people will adopt the more convenient product, quality be damned.
"On Demand" Download before you can watch
"On Demand" is content streamed immediately and immediately watchable. I decide I want to watch X... I click the option to pay for it and then I start watching it... there's nothing to download and it's not like pay-per-view where it plays all day and I have to wait for the next time it starts. Online Rentals are not the same thing as IPTV or On Demand content... you're completely confusing the two. There's no computer hook up or dongles it's the same Set-top box provided by the cable company.
As for the other stuff in my area there are no OTA HD broadcasts, I don't live in a city or even a suburb of a city... I'd be lucky to get any broadcast TV at all nevermind HD. I don't know anyone who owns a PS3 or is even considering one and the Home Theater fanatics I know are all waiting out the format war before they make the plunge.
That's great that you get good OTA content, most of the rest of the world isn't nearly that lucky, I'd be all over it if I could get that too but unfortunately I can't. If I want to watch TV in HD I have to get a cable or satellite package, and this is how most HDTV owners get TV shows in HD... if the same equipment that provides your TV can also provide all of your movies and have those movies be even more easily accessible then the TV shows (you can pick your start time... pause, etc.) then where is the incentive to buy additional equipment for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD?
Digital distribution does not mean you're downloading a file, just because that's what it generally means for music doesn't mean that's what it has to be for video content... IT also doesn't mean you have to get it over the internet... it simply means that the content is piped specifically to you digitally with no physical media... nothing more nothing less.
Everyone I know with an HDTV has some form of "On Demand" for getting HD movies... I don't know a single person who owns either an HD-DVD or BRD player.
The cost of ownership is significantly lower too... pay your cable/satellite company $5 for the movie you want to see using the equipment you already have or buy a $500+ player and go to the store (or wait for delivery of) a rental + however much that costs.
I see the HD-DVD vs BRD debate along the same lines as the DVD-Audio vs SACD debate... which format one that war? NEITHER the equipment was over priced, crippled by DRM and only a fraction of the market owned the supporting equipment to fully utilize it nevermind become actually interested in it.... who won that war? technically it still rages on but the real victor was the MP3 and other digitally distributed forms of music... far and wide technically inferior to the DVD-A and SACDs but it's pretty apparent that consumers go for convenience over quality... at least in terms of their media.
I think the point is most of the things that the PS3 can do don't appeal to the people who consider it to be over priced...
Maybe that $3000 MP3 player also plays games and Blu-Rays discs... but it's still just an MP3 player to those consumers who don't want to play games or Blu-Ray. To use another analogy if you were looking at two houses that were equal in all aspects except one had an extra 5 car garage and cost twice as much... if you have no cars, it doesn't matter if those 5 bays are "worth" the extra cost because you have no intention of ever using them, it's just a useless extremity that needlessly drives up the price.
The problem with adding features that drive up the price of your console is that every feature you add shrinks the potential market of people who will find 100% of your features useful and valuable.
Would be PS3 buyers who aren't interested in Blu-Ray see the blu-Ray features valued at $0... would be PS3 buyers who aren't interested in WiFi see the WiFi features valued at $0 etc... Eventually you have a machine that "just plays games" because a large group of gamers don't care about the noise and your console suddenly isn't valued at what you thought it was in the eyes of the consumer.
It's not that I think it's a bad idea I just think it's effort spent that could have been better spent elsewhere.
I have no problem with a blog, and keeping your customers informed about what is on your mind is always a good thing to do IMO... my point isn't that it's a bad thing, it's that Sony has promised a lot this generation, and so far they've only delivered a very small fraction of what they've promised. I guess I just see the blog as another place for them to talk about how great their console will be at some uncertain point in time down the road. Meanwhile there are customers using their PS3s as nothing more then Protein folders while they wait for something... anything.
If they were using this blog as a vehicle to talk straight and start showing off the few titles that are available now and maybe worth owning a PS3 for. But reading through the posts on the blog so far all I see is the same PR and corporate jargon that I've been listening to since they announced the PS3.
I WANT to like the PS3... I WANT them to deliver the best damn games in the world... and I WANT them to give me games that encourage me to march to the store and hand over $600+ of hard earned cash... A blog isn't going to do that for me, I could care less what some corporate suit says about potential and their market position compared to last generation. Give me something tangible, or at very least something beyond just words to whet my appetite.
I don't know how the RIAA found out about it but I do know that when I was in college a few years back (RPI) the RIAA brought several lawsuits against students with open folders on the network... Despite the fact that it's a private LAN it's not all that difficult to coerce some random student into giving you access.
Also they DONT KNOW who it is... the whole point of these case is the guy going after them is one of 21 anonymous students counter suing the RIAA for even attempting to obtain their real identities.
I'm sure some unions out there have presidents and reps that actually fight on behalf of their members rather then their own self interests but this just struck me as being just a corrupt as any other political structure.
if you're even attempting to impart wisdom on your child I think you're doing better then the parents the GP was talking about.
Most of the time theses cases are children not with "bad" parents but parents who just weren't even in the picture. Columbine for instance, the parents didn't even realize that the shooters were making bombs in the garage, nevermind goose-stepping around the house to KMFDM. The problem are the parents who neglect their children and expect the TV and or school system to just raise their child for them. If you're even attempting to talk to your child and find out what's going on in their head, in their life, then you're not who we're talking about.
I was a bit of an outcast in high school, I dressed, acted, and listened to the music that by todays standards would probably get me pegged as a potential school shooter. But the difference was my parents actually made an effort to find out what I was doing and what I was thinking. They'd listen to my music, they'd talk to my friends and my friend's parents and they made every effort they could to get to know me and the person I was becoming despite the fact that I made it difficult for them every step of the way.
As far as I'm concerned parents are responsible for the actions of their children, just because the way society is setup makes it hard to do shouldn't make a difference. That's what you signed up for when you decided to become a parent.
If you neglect your child and your child dies or is injured as a result you're responsible. How is it any different if your neglect results in the death of someone else? There's more to raising a child then just feeding and sheltering them. This isn't some test you can just keep retaking, this is someones life, this is a part of society's well being on a whole. Just because it's hard or difficult to figure out doesn't make it any less serious or make you any less responsible for the outcome.