Replacing traditional education with tech training, especially at the grade school level, is not the solution for a number of reasons.
Reason #1. Apathy, and a complete lack of discipline. Take kid who sits around playing computer games all day. Send him to an undisciplined playground where he eats chips and drinks soda all day. A place where he's allowed to skip school with little or no consequence. Let him get bad grades, while weak willed parents sit around wondering "what's wrong with this kid". Throwing tech at this kid will do nothing. I'm not saying *all* kids are like this, but I'm sure most would agree that a common factor in dropouts is lack of structure. You just say "honey, now you go to school" to a kid like this. This kid needs to know that he is expected to be in school, and there will be hell to pay if he's not there. This kid most likely needs some positive adult involvement in his life. He does not need additional tech. If anything most dropouts probably need *LESS* tech.
Reason #2. Traditional education has great value. Kids need PE to build healthy bodies. Kids need history so we don't keep making the same mistakes over and over. Kids need home ec so they don't think eating chips and pop is the only way to survive. Kids need math so they can budget their money. Traditional education has great value that we should not ignore.
Reason #3. Useful tech skills are not fun to learn. There is a big difference between playing with an iPod, and debugging Java. The tech that kids find interesting, for the most part, does not translate into useful life skills.
Reason #4. Too much tech is not good for kids. Kids need to have real life social skills. Kids need to be physically active. Kids do not need to have chat buddies and video game clans.
Reason #5. The Microsoft effect. Big corporations use tech just like big tobacco. Get 'em while they're young. I'm sure the big tech companies are just dying to take our tax money, and create an entire generation of kids who learned to use their products in school.
There is no easy solution. We've made a society where both parents have to work in most cases. A lot of people just don't make enough time for their kids and it shows. There is no magic iPod that will raise our kids for us.
Ok enough complaining, now here's what I think might work. Slow down, spend more time with our kids, and have a return to traditional parenting and schooling. Make them sit down at the dinner table and eat vegetables. Read them stories at night. Make time to sit down with them and do homework. Punish them when they aren't doing what they're supposed to. Stop buying expensive cars and homes, and put some of that money into the school system. Take the gadgets away and force them to interact in the real world. Let them be kids.
Just my two cents. I'm a parent too, and it's tough. You have to be willing to pitch in and do the work if you want your kid to come out right. Throwing tech at young kids will not make them better people.
Nobody could possibly let computer fantasy worlds dictate real life behavior. Take me for example. Never once have I let imaginary things like work, school, or social life influence my behavior in a PvP match. You just have to keep things in perspective.
I am a game player, and sexuality is not a topic I want to see addressed in the games I play, or the games my son plays. My opinion is that games are the wrong place to express complex real life issues.
Maybe there needs to be a clear distinction made between actual "games" and simulations that deal with this kind of content.
...let's hit them where it *REALLY* hurts. Stop buying their overpriced, outdated, low quality, (and in some cases.. Sony) dangerous products. Contrary to popular belief, everything the RIAA ever collected a royalty on could vanish from planet earth with little or no consequence.
Lets face it, most commercial music products just aren't very good anyway.
What we need are new ways to enjoy music. By enjoy, I mean paying a fee. What I have in mind is an ear implant that uses wifi to automatically deduct $99.99 from my bank account every time I hear a song. If I am not connected to wifi, my hearing is automatically disabled until I come back into range of an access point. If my bank account runs dry (as it frequently does), my hearing is automatically disabled until more money is deposited.
I would also appreciate a way to pay a small royalty to the RIAA for telling people about my favorite songs. After all, even hearing about good music provides some small form of enjoyment.. right?
After thinking about it, there are many things in life I'm not getting full entertainment value from, simply because there is no established way to pay royalties for them. Nothing can quite replace the clean, happy feeling one gets from paying royalties to the RIAA. If only that feeling could be canned, and sold for $29.99 each!
One other area being neglected is the good feeling that lingers after listening to your favorite song. If I continue to be in a good mood 30 minutes after listening to a song, shouldn't I rightfully pay money to the RIAA for that? Failure to do so is just not fair to me, the listener.
It's hard to criticize a great organization like the RIAA for neglecting to provide enough royalty payment options; they've just done so much for us! Thank God for the 200 or so cassette tapes I bought in the 80's that no longer work! My eco footprint wouldn't be complete without that pile of highly useful plastic. Thanks also for the scratched LP's and CD's, because soon we will get to re-buy all of that music on a different format!
What I REALLY want is a way to buy my music in blocks of 500 songs. For instance, if I want to buy the song "In A Silent Way" by Miles Davis, I'd like it to be lumped in with 499 other songs that I'll never listen to. That way I'm able to enjoy it 500 times more than if I just paid for one song! We'll call this the 500x licensing model. I should also be able to pay a monthly 500x licensing fee for that song to simulate media format changes in the digital era.
I'm an iTunes / iPod user. Not because I'm an Apple fanboy, but because that combo worked so easily and reliably in the beginning.
Then my first iPod quit working for some reason, and I had to get a replacement. I sync'd the replacement, hopped on the eliptical machine, and none of my songs would play. Turns out I have to log into the iTunes store in order to activate the replacement. After that some songs play, some don't. It's been a hassle.
My wife won an iPod at work, which we have connected to her laptop and out home PC. Now songs that she purchases on her laptop, then sync's with our home computer won't play on my iPod. I'm not sure if this is how it's supposed to work or not, but it's sure a pain in the ass and I have zero time / patience for iPod troubleshooting. The reason I bought it was because it was "plug and play".
DRM, in my opinion, is just another consumer hostile device put in place by the entertainment industry to maximise profits. The entire industry obviously could care less how well their products work, how much people enjoy them, or whether they are perceived as "bad" people. They want our money, money, money bottom line and NOTHING else.
So sure, I would buy more products with DRM IF THEY WORK WELL. As it stands now I have ripped all of my itunes to mp3, and will continue to do this with any DRM songs I buy. I'm also planning on purchasing a different mp3 player that allows me to manually copy my mp3's to the device with a file manager (no fancy sync mechanism that stops working).
As a consumer, the only thing I want is to put songs (that I have paid for) on my mp3 player and have it play ALL of them EVERY time when I'm working out. Can the consumer hostile entertainment industry ever accomplish that? I doubt it.
So in theory it will go 10 years. In practice we'll probably have an industry wide recall by March 2007.
New hard drive technology is scary. Anyone remember the IBM Death Star? Yeah. Supposed to have newer faster tech. Replaced over 100 of them in our Dell Optiplex GX110's. I think I'll wait for the bleeding edgers to bleed a little before I even consider one of these.
By "Forgotten Realms" I mean the game table. Cool dice. Cooler hand painted miniatures. Pizza. Pop. 12 hour sessions where nobody even remembers what day it is, let alone the time.
I was a big (huge) fan of NWN1. It came really close to actual PnP, but (IMHO) still fell way short. What it accomplished in graphical wizardry, instant gratification, and streamlining game play, it fell way short of in all the rest. NPC's were something you'd find from the worst PnP DM on his worst day (God forbid you talk to them more than once). Combat was a little planning and a few mouse clicks. More importantly, it never felt like you were actually gaming with other people. Sure, someone would occasionally make a funny remark in chat, but it wasn't like it came from a real person. And the cheating! One of the fun parts of AD&D (for me anyway) was that it provided a VERY complete set of balanced game rules. A good PnP DM (and no, not all of them are good) could take those rules and craft them into an actual GAME. Not some fiasco where people give themselves the best possible gear, highest attribute points, and instant level 20. Of course it was possible (with much work) to accomplish these things in the toolkit, but most people (myself included) had trouble finding reference material for the scripting language.
Interestingly enough, right around that time I got the urge to run an AD&D campaign PROPERLY. We started with U1, "The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh". I spent weeks rehearsing NPC roles, exploring possible plot branches, adding content to fill plot holes. I bought miniatures for every NPC and PC. Also bought a full table grid mat, clear plastic overlays, dry erase markers, combat and PC management for my laptop, etc. I also planned out an adventure progression leading from U1-3, through A1-4, T1-4, and later planned to add in X-13, and the timelords module. It was super fun.
The game went great. We averaged 15 people per session. Needless to say I was completely exhausted at the end of every session. People were developing character personalities, the plot was simmering. We had a Yahoo group getting dozens of posts talking about the plot, game, etc. People were giving me DM suggestions, and I added them into the game. This was without a doubt how gaming was supposed to be. 3.5 rules, old school adventures (ported to 3.5 by some good person), TONS of enthusiasm. It was pure gaming magic.
Then my father in law got real sick and had to move in with us. A few months later my son was born. My spare time withered up and blew away, and with it went that great PnP game.
Anyway, my point is that if you're going to put in hours and hours playing computer RPG's, you might also try PnP. Many of the technical frustrations, rude player frustrations, and just general aloneness of computer RPG's do not exist in PnP when done right. Don't get me wrong, not every PnP game is fun, but with a little effort and the right people you can put together something far beyond what any computer RPG could ever hope to accomplish.
Most of the artists now being screwed are / were helping the RIAA screw consumers.
Not to mention that 90% of the new music I hear is either a bad cover, has the entertainment equivalent of a root canal, is performed by a freak of nature I don't want anywhere near my kid, and is overpriced by about $.98 (assuming you pay $1.00 per song). So yeah, I really care.
Let the entertainment industry consume itself with greed. I hope they screw Dr. Dre and Metallica first.
I love that idea. One other thing that came to mind is musical tracks for "interactive fiction". Nobody really knows if interactive fiction as a concept will ever go anywhere, but from what I've seen of it dropping some mood music would help spice things up.
I was surprised to see Miles Davis' "In A Silent Way". One of Miles' many experimental records that doesn't get much attention. Also one of my favorites.
1. If consumers like you, they will buy more of your product. 2. If you stop suing consumers, they will hate you less. 3. If you create something new, consumers will be more inclined to buy your products. 4. If you create something that's not easy to steal, people won't steal it so much.
Here's something new that I (a consumer) would LOVE to buy. The tools for this idea are already widely available and used by almost everyone.
Take a Wii with that new style nunchuck controller (or whatever it's called. The thing you wave around in the air). Add a wireless dance pad. Create a dancing game that uses foot movements and hand gestures. You know, dancing. Then put an online store for ordering additional dance tracks, game accessories, etc. Make is so you can link several of these dance mats together at a party. Make international online tournaments with prizes, titles, and a televised championship. Put them in arcades. Put them in fitness centers.
Is that a perfect idea? Hell no. Is it something I would pay $600.00 for this Christmas? Hell yes.
And by the way, it's really annoying that Slash code treats everything in braces as an hmtl insert, and just drops everything that's not allowed. *Some* of us have been typing clever, non-html things in braces for years.
if tag does not equal something in our allowed list of tags then treat it like text. Geez.
Huzzah! Well said BWjones. I realize by simply agreeing with you I'm not saying anything of value, but a great post like that deserves some "hurrumphs"!
Nothing on my iPod is stolen either! For the music not purchased from iTunes, I still have ALL of the original CD's (even though my 2 year old son has ruined most of the original overpriced media).
So I'll repeat the wonderful message you just stated to the record labels. GO F$@% YOURSELVES! According to these assholes, I (the customer) am guilty until proven innocent??? I'm treated like a criminal for the crime of purchasing their products??? GO F$@% YOURSELVES!
You made another *fantasic* point that *they* (the entertainment industry) make the decisions about which media their "product" is sold on. They should sue themselves for a COMPLETE inability to produce a secure product! Boo to the lazy, greedy, litigious gang of crooks known as the entertainment industry!
I have another message to our good and loving entertainment industry middle men... COME ON OVER AND SEARCH EVERYTHING I OWN! If you find a single piece of music that I did not pay for, I'll pay you $100.00 per song. If you don't find anything I get to kick every single one of you in the nuts as hard as I can. Deal? No? WELL THEN SHUT THE F$@% UP!
Man, all the anger. It reminds me of the dilbert cartoon where the marketing guy tells Wally that everyone who bought his product wants to kill him.
You're Joe OSS User (a fictitious person haha), and your spouse demands quality photo editing on the home computer.
Do you use Gimp, digikam, picassa, F-Spot, or ? You try program after program, and none of them work very well, not user friendly, and the printing looks bad on your Photogizmo 4732039nxtgi printer you bought just last year (and the integrated card reader doesn't work).
There you go. A bunch of sub-par choices, and nothing that works really well.
**Note, a clever response would not be "switch to XP".:)
You see these "fake debunkers" all the time. Even here on Slashdot. They post a bunch of "pseudo scientific gibberish", and just outright mincing of words. Are they flamers? Lazy scientists looking for a pseudo scientific forum with zero accountability? Wankers looking for self justification through mindless modding? My favorite fake debunker even finishes off his masterpiece by agreeing that global warming is, in fact, a problem.
This article was written for the 37 people (all employed by the entertainment industry) who believe any of the entertainment industry numbers. The rest of us know that the entertainment industry P2P loss reports are created with this tool:
I can't believe this crap got modded 5. Completely scientifically sound, and yet misses the entire point of the article. Are you saying that polar bears, who live on ice, have zero problems with the surface they live on melting? Are you denying that ice of all kinds is melting world wide? No. You're not doing anything except mincing scientific jargon. Come back when you have something worth a shit to say.
Mohammed Azawi Ali, former Baath official - Acquitted of all charges and ordered released from custody immediately.
Who is this guy, and why was he the only defendant in the Al-Dujail trial acquitted of all charges? Googling reveals that he was acquitted for lack of evidence.
So 3 guys get death, 1 gets life in prison, 3 get 15 years in prison, and this guy is immediately released for lack of evidence?
I won't be buying Microsoft anything service pack 0. Sorry. In Microsoft language, service pack 0 is beta quality at best.
Take the one year old slow computer (from last Christmas), which in reality probably just has spyware and virus problems, and install a good desktop Linux OS like Ubuntu. Then next Christmas when the computer still works you can smile and give them a fruit cake.
The world IS ready for Linux, and this is proven by it's world wide use as a server and desktop OS.
I use Ubuntu Linux at home, and I love it. It's easy to install, and all of my hardware worked after the initial installation. Applications are widely available and easy to install. There is strong community support, making almost all problems easy to solve. I have zero virus or spyware problems. It's free. It's good. It's fun. There has never been a case where I felt that my knowledge of computer hardware was insufficient to use Ubuntu. On the contrary I have never even had to think about my hardware at all.
On the other hand, I constantly get calls from Windows users who cannot even use their computers because of spyware, viruses, BSOD's, can't figure out how to install drivers, etc. Anyone who claims to have a trouble free XP experience is either an expert (not the target audience for this article), or has an IT department on call. Joe User (the target audience for this article) does not generally have a trouble free XP experience.
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Replacing traditional education with tech training, especially at the grade school level, is not the solution for a number of reasons.
Reason #1. Apathy, and a complete lack of discipline. Take kid who sits around playing computer games all day. Send him to an undisciplined playground where he eats chips and drinks soda all day. A place where he's allowed to skip school with little or no consequence. Let him get bad grades, while weak willed parents sit around wondering "what's wrong with this kid". Throwing tech at this kid will do nothing. I'm not saying *all* kids are like this, but I'm sure most would agree that a common factor in dropouts is lack of structure. You just say "honey, now you go to school" to a kid like this. This kid needs to know that he is expected to be in school, and there will be hell to pay if he's not there. This kid most likely needs some positive adult involvement in his life. He does not need additional tech. If anything most dropouts probably need *LESS* tech.
Reason #2. Traditional education has great value. Kids need PE to build healthy bodies. Kids need history so we don't keep making the same mistakes over and over. Kids need home ec so they don't think eating chips and pop is the only way to survive. Kids need math so they can budget their money. Traditional education has great value that we should not ignore.
Reason #3. Useful tech skills are not fun to learn. There is a big difference between playing with an iPod, and debugging Java. The tech that kids find interesting, for the most part, does not translate into useful life skills.
Reason #4. Too much tech is not good for kids. Kids need to have real life social skills. Kids need to be physically active. Kids do not need to have chat buddies and video game clans.
Reason #5. The Microsoft effect. Big corporations use tech just like big tobacco. Get 'em while they're young. I'm sure the big tech companies are just dying to take our tax money, and create an entire generation of kids who learned to use their products in school.
There is no easy solution. We've made a society where both parents have to work in most cases. A lot of people just don't make enough time for their kids and it shows. There is no magic iPod that will raise our kids for us.
Ok enough complaining, now here's what I think might work. Slow down, spend more time with our kids, and have a return to traditional parenting and schooling. Make them sit down at the dinner table and eat vegetables. Read them stories at night. Make time to sit down with them and do homework. Punish them when they aren't doing what they're supposed to. Stop buying expensive cars and homes, and put some of that money into the school system. Take the gadgets away and force them to interact in the real world. Let them be kids.
Just my two cents. I'm a parent too, and it's tough. You have to be willing to pitch in and do the work if you want your kid to come out right. Throwing tech at young kids will not make them better people.
Nobody could possibly let computer fantasy worlds dictate real life behavior. Take me for example. Never once have I let imaginary things like work, school, or social life influence my behavior in a PvP match. You just have to keep things in perspective.
I am a game player, and sexuality is not a topic I want to see addressed in the games I play, or the games my son plays. My opinion is that games are the wrong place to express complex real life issues.
Maybe there needs to be a clear distinction made between actual "games" and simulations that deal with this kind of content.
...let's hit them where it *REALLY* hurts. Stop buying their overpriced, outdated, low quality, (and in some cases.. Sony) dangerous products. Contrary to popular belief, everything the RIAA ever collected a royalty on could vanish from planet earth with little or no consequence. Lets face it, most commercial music products just aren't very good anyway.
Seriously, is there a Greasemonkey script or something that will blot out all articles containing the text "RIAA"?
What we need are new ways to enjoy music. By enjoy, I mean paying a fee. What I have in mind is an ear implant that uses wifi to automatically deduct $99.99 from my bank account every time I hear a song. If I am not connected to wifi, my hearing is automatically disabled until I come back into range of an access point. If my bank account runs dry (as it frequently does), my hearing is automatically disabled until more money is deposited.
I would also appreciate a way to pay a small royalty to the RIAA for telling people about my favorite songs. After all, even hearing about good music provides some small form of enjoyment.. right?
After thinking about it, there are many things in life I'm not getting full entertainment value from, simply because there is no established way to pay royalties for them. Nothing can quite replace the clean, happy feeling one gets from paying royalties to the RIAA. If only that feeling could be canned, and sold for $29.99 each!
One other area being neglected is the good feeling that lingers after listening to your favorite song. If I continue to be in a good mood 30 minutes after listening to a song, shouldn't I rightfully pay money to the RIAA for that? Failure to do so is just not fair to me, the listener.
It's hard to criticize a great organization like the RIAA for neglecting to provide enough royalty payment options; they've just done so much for us! Thank God for the 200 or so cassette tapes I bought in the 80's that no longer work! My eco footprint wouldn't be complete without that pile of highly useful plastic. Thanks also for the scratched LP's and CD's, because soon we will get to re-buy all of that music on a different format!
What I REALLY want is a way to buy my music in blocks of 500 songs. For instance, if I want to buy the song "In A Silent Way" by Miles Davis, I'd like it to be lumped in with 499 other songs that I'll never listen to. That way I'm able to enjoy it 500 times more than if I just paid for one song! We'll call this the 500x licensing model. I should also be able to pay a monthly 500x licensing fee for that song to simulate media format changes in the digital era.
Using Enron as precedent to rip off customers. How funny. That's almost like using OJ as a precedent to murder someone.
I'm an iTunes / iPod user. Not because I'm an Apple fanboy, but because that combo worked so easily and reliably in the beginning.
Then my first iPod quit working for some reason, and I had to get a replacement. I sync'd the replacement, hopped on the eliptical machine, and none of my songs would play. Turns out I have to log into the iTunes store in order to activate the replacement. After that some songs play, some don't. It's been a hassle.
My wife won an iPod at work, which we have connected to her laptop and out home PC. Now songs that she purchases on her laptop, then sync's with our home computer won't play on my iPod. I'm not sure if this is how it's supposed to work or not, but it's sure a pain in the ass and I have zero time / patience for iPod troubleshooting. The reason I bought it was because it was "plug and play".
DRM, in my opinion, is just another consumer hostile device put in place by the entertainment industry to maximise profits. The entire industry obviously could care less how well their products work, how much people enjoy them, or whether they are perceived as "bad" people. They want our money, money, money bottom line and NOTHING else.
So sure, I would buy more products with DRM IF THEY WORK WELL. As it stands now I have ripped all of my itunes to mp3, and will continue to do this with any DRM songs I buy. I'm also planning on purchasing a different mp3 player that allows me to manually copy my mp3's to the device with a file manager (no fancy sync mechanism that stops working).
As a consumer, the only thing I want is to put songs (that I have paid for) on my mp3 player and have it play ALL of them EVERY time when I'm working out. Can the consumer hostile entertainment industry ever accomplish that? I doubt it.
Otherwise you may soon be getting a similar lecture.
So in theory it will go 10 years. In practice we'll probably have an industry wide recall by March 2007.
New hard drive technology is scary. Anyone remember the IBM Death Star? Yeah. Supposed to have newer faster tech. Replaced over 100 of them in our Dell Optiplex GX110's. I think I'll wait for the bleeding edgers to bleed a little before I even consider one of these.
By "Forgotten Realms" I mean the game table. Cool dice. Cooler hand painted miniatures. Pizza. Pop. 12 hour sessions where nobody even remembers what day it is, let alone the time.
I was a big (huge) fan of NWN1. It came really close to actual PnP, but (IMHO) still fell way short. What it accomplished in graphical wizardry, instant gratification, and streamlining game play, it fell way short of in all the rest. NPC's were something you'd find from the worst PnP DM on his worst day (God forbid you talk to them more than once). Combat was a little planning and a few mouse clicks. More importantly, it never felt like you were actually gaming with other people. Sure, someone would occasionally make a funny remark in chat, but it wasn't like it came from a real person. And the cheating! One of the fun parts of AD&D (for me anyway) was that it provided a VERY complete set of balanced game rules. A good PnP DM (and no, not all of them are good) could take those rules and craft them into an actual GAME. Not some fiasco where people give themselves the best possible gear, highest attribute points, and instant level 20. Of course it was possible (with much work) to accomplish these things in the toolkit, but most people (myself included) had trouble finding reference material for the scripting language.
Interestingly enough, right around that time I got the urge to run an AD&D campaign PROPERLY. We started with U1, "The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh". I spent weeks rehearsing NPC roles, exploring possible plot branches, adding content to fill plot holes. I bought miniatures for every NPC and PC. Also bought a full table grid mat, clear plastic overlays, dry erase markers, combat and PC management for my laptop, etc. I also planned out an adventure progression leading from U1-3, through A1-4, T1-4, and later planned to add in X-13, and the timelords module. It was super fun.
The game went great. We averaged 15 people per session. Needless to say I was completely exhausted at the end of every session. People were developing character personalities, the plot was simmering. We had a Yahoo group getting dozens of posts talking about the plot, game, etc. People were giving me DM suggestions, and I added them into the game. This was without a doubt how gaming was supposed to be. 3.5 rules, old school adventures (ported to 3.5 by some good person), TONS of enthusiasm. It was pure gaming magic.
Then my father in law got real sick and had to move in with us. A few months later my son was born. My spare time withered up and blew away, and with it went that great PnP game.
Anyway, my point is that if you're going to put in hours and hours playing computer RPG's, you might also try PnP. Many of the technical frustrations, rude player frustrations, and just general aloneness of computer RPG's do not exist in PnP when done right. Don't get me wrong, not every PnP game is fun, but with a little effort and the right people you can put together something far beyond what any computer RPG could ever hope to accomplish.
Most of the artists now being screwed are / were helping the RIAA screw consumers.
Not to mention that 90% of the new music I hear is either a bad cover, has the entertainment equivalent of a root canal, is performed by a freak of nature I don't want anywhere near my kid, and is overpriced by about $.98 (assuming you pay $1.00 per song). So yeah, I really care.
Let the entertainment industry consume itself with greed. I hope they screw Dr. Dre and Metallica first.
I love that idea. One other thing that came to mind is musical tracks for "interactive fiction". Nobody really knows if interactive fiction as a concept will ever go anywhere, but from what I've seen of it dropping some mood music would help spice things up.
I was surprised to see Miles Davis' "In A Silent Way". One of Miles' many experimental records that doesn't get much attention. Also one of my favorites.
Here's some helpful hints for the RIAA.
1. If consumers like you, they will buy more of your product.
2. If you stop suing consumers, they will hate you less.
3. If you create something new, consumers will be more inclined to buy your products.
4. If you create something that's not easy to steal, people won't steal it so much.
Here's something new that I (a consumer) would LOVE to buy. The tools for this idea are already widely available and used by almost everyone.
Take a Wii with that new style nunchuck controller (or whatever it's called. The thing you wave around in the air). Add a wireless dance pad. Create a dancing game that uses foot movements and hand gestures. You know, dancing. Then put an online store for ordering additional dance tracks, game accessories, etc. Make is so you can link several of these dance mats together at a party. Make international online tournaments with prizes, titles, and a televised championship. Put them in arcades. Put them in fitness centers.
Is that a perfect idea? Hell no. Is it something I would pay $600.00 for this Christmas? Hell yes.
Beetis beetis. Die uh beetis.
And by the way, it's really annoying that Slash code treats everything in braces as an hmtl insert, and just drops everything that's not allowed. *Some* of us have been typing clever, non-html things in braces for years.
if tag does not equal something in our allowed list of tags then treat it like text. Geez.
Hi. I'm a Mac.
Huzzah! Well said BWjones. I realize by simply agreeing with you I'm not saying anything of value, but a great post like that deserves some "hurrumphs"!
Nothing on my iPod is stolen either! For the music not purchased from iTunes, I still have ALL of the original CD's (even though my 2 year old son has ruined most of the original overpriced media).
So I'll repeat the wonderful message you just stated to the record labels. GO F$@% YOURSELVES! According to these assholes, I (the customer) am guilty until proven innocent??? I'm treated like a criminal for the crime of purchasing their products??? GO F$@% YOURSELVES!
You made another *fantasic* point that *they* (the entertainment industry) make the decisions about which media their "product" is sold on. They should sue themselves for a COMPLETE inability to produce a secure product! Boo to the lazy, greedy, litigious gang of crooks known as the entertainment industry!
I have another message to our good and loving entertainment industry middle men... COME ON OVER AND SEARCH EVERYTHING I OWN! If you find a single piece of music that I did not pay for, I'll pay you $100.00 per song. If you don't find anything I get to kick every single one of you in the nuts as hard as I can. Deal? No? WELL THEN SHUT THE F$@% UP!
Man, all the anger. It reminds me of the dilbert cartoon where the marketing guy tells Wally that everyone who bought his product wants to kill him.
You're Joe OSS User (a fictitious person haha), and your spouse demands quality photo editing on the home computer.
:)
Do you use Gimp, digikam, picassa, F-Spot, or ? You try program after program, and none of them work very well, not user friendly, and the printing looks bad on your Photogizmo 4732039nxtgi printer you bought just last year (and the integrated card reader doesn't work).
There you go. A bunch of sub-par choices, and nothing that works really well.
**Note, a clever response would not be "switch to XP".
Cats: All your base are infected with cybernetic insect assassins. Keep them.
You see these "fake debunkers" all the time. Even here on Slashdot. They post a bunch of "pseudo scientific gibberish", and just outright mincing of words. Are they flamers? Lazy scientists looking for a pseudo scientific forum with zero accountability? Wankers looking for self justification through mindless modding? My favorite fake debunker even finishes off his masterpiece by agreeing that global warming is, in fact, a problem.
This article was written for the 37 people (all employed by the entertainment industry) who believe any of the entertainment industry numbers. The rest of us know that the entertainment industry P2P loss reports are created with this tool:
http://www.random.org/
I can't believe this crap got modded 5. Completely scientifically sound, and yet misses the entire point of the article. Are you saying that polar bears, who live on ice, have zero problems with the surface they live on melting? Are you denying that ice of all kinds is melting world wide? No. You're not doing anything except mincing scientific jargon. Come back when you have something worth a shit to say.
Mohammed Azawi Ali, former Baath official - Acquitted of all charges and ordered released from custody immediately.
Who is this guy, and why was he the only defendant in the Al-Dujail trial acquitted of all charges? Googling reveals that he was acquitted for lack of evidence.
So 3 guys get death, 1 gets life in prison, 3 get 15 years in prison, and this guy is immediately released for lack of evidence?
Anyone know more about him?
Take the one year old slow computer (from last Christmas), which in reality probably just has spyware and virus problems, and install a good desktop Linux OS like Ubuntu. Then next Christmas when the computer still works you can smile and give them a fruit cake.
The world IS ready for Linux, and this is proven by it's world wide use as a server and desktop OS.
I use Ubuntu Linux at home, and I love it. It's easy to install, and all of my hardware worked after the initial installation. Applications are widely available and easy to install. There is strong community support, making almost all problems easy to solve. I have zero virus or spyware problems. It's free. It's good. It's fun. There has never been a case where I felt that my knowledge of computer hardware was insufficient to use Ubuntu. On the contrary I have never even had to think about my hardware at all.
On the other hand, I constantly get calls from Windows users who cannot even use their computers because of spyware, viruses, BSOD's, can't figure out how to install drivers, etc. Anyone who claims to have a trouble free XP experience is either an expert (not the target audience for this article), or has an IT department on call. Joe User (the target audience for this article) does not generally have a trouble free XP experience.
Maybe the world is not ready for Windows.