Yeah, and a hamburger cost a nickel and you could park anywhere for free! And we had to walk to school, we didn't have these fancy buses!!!
Seriously, the gaming market is healthier than its ever been. You're just growing older, and this is what happens when you grow older: nostalgia invades your game, and you start yelling "you damned kids, get off my lawn!"
It does matter because it isn't a fact that a ton of people were enjoying the game without paying for it. The only fact is that there were people downloading it from websites. We don't know how many of them had paid for it.
If they bought it, why would they download it from a filesharing site? You're making no damned sense.
This issue is muddy because games like this require the CD to play and that's really f'n abnoxious.
Game consoles require the CD to play, and those seem to be doing pretty well. (What's obnoxious is BOTH requiring the CD AND requiring a bunch of disk space for the install. One of the many reasons I've stopped buying PC games altogether.)
Lots of people go download the pirated copy because of that. It's also really important to know WHEN that level of piracy hit. If it wasn't until two yeas after the release of the game, it's virtually meaningless.
"It's ok if they take our product without paying for it, because our product has been released for 2 years." Christ, you're doing EXACTLY what the grandparent was talking about: justifying your piracy with a LAME excuse.
The press release about the piracy rate was something like 3 months after the game hit shelves, IIRC. Not that that matters; whether the game has been out for one week or five years, piracy is still piracy.
Nope. a.) It would have been cracked anyway without taking significantly longer. b.) The invasive DRM would have strengthened the demand for a cracked copy. c.) It's entirely possible, and likely, that invasive DRM would have made some people sit back and wait for the cracked copy to come along so they can avoid all that BS. There is absolutely no guarantee that they would enjoy any more sales.
You know that and I know that, but neither of us are game publishers. What would you SUGGEST publishers do in response to stories like this? Boil it down to one sentence: "We added a level of protection and piracy was extremely high."
What response would you expect other than: "Well, then we need to add more levels of protection?"
Seriously, do you know anything about how humans beings behave at all?
In any case, none of that justifies piracy. The correct response, if there's a product you're not interested in buying (for ANY reason, including invasive DRM), the correct response is not to buy it. Pirating the product anyway just encourages more DRM in the future, it sends this message to the game's publishers: "gamers are criminals"
That cannot be proven until it is proven that restrictive copy protection would actually increase sales. Worse, it has been disproven by recent decisions to stop using it.
Oh yeah? Link me. If it's been "disproven," you should have a myriad of sources and examples to back that up.
At least Games for Windows games actually *work*. Unlike, for example, Battlefield: 2142 and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, two games I bought recently that did not, in fact, work.
The real point here is that PC games have terrible, awful, quality control. Why does Battlefield: 2142 require administrative access? Why does Dark Messiah take more than 4 seconds to integrate itself with Steam? Because PC games companies just Don't. Fucking. Care. about the quality of their product. Part of the reason is that they know the hardcore gamers also don't fucking care about the quality of the product; how many of them bought Battlefield: 2142 and will tell you, with a straight face, that it's a good game?
Have you ever asked yourself why the PC version of Oblivion needs to suck up gigabytes of HD space when the Xbox 360 version, which is virtually identical, takes no more than needed for virtual memory? Have you ever wondered why you have to type in a 25-digit annoying product key to play Dark Messiah on PC online, when you can play Dark Messiah over Xbox Live with nothing more than the disk?
I'm all for these "Gamer's Rights," and I'm all for "Games for Windows" because when you come down to it, they both have one goal: upping the quality of PC games to that of console games.
The game was a Vista and XBOX exclusive. That had nothing to do with piracy. MS didn't even want them playing on XP.... And you don't think it was at least partially because they knew releasing it on Mac would be a mistake, after the disaster that was the Halo 1 Mac release? Believe me, I know a lot of people who worked for Bungie, they love Macs, virtually all of their games have been released on Macintosh, and many have been Mac-exclusive. What changed their mind?
Okay. So what does that actually mean? Would they have sold twice as many copies? Did 100% of the people decide they wanted the noCD version?
Doesn't matter; the fact is a ton of people were enjoying their game without paying for it. It doesn't matter *why* they were pirating the game.
the game did have protection.
Of course it did, and despite that protection it was pirated to hell and back. Thus proving that they should have use more invasive DRM in the future. Thus proving the point of the grandparent that started off this entire discussion. (To paraphrase: if you really don't like DRM, you wouldn't prove to games/music/movie companies that it's needed by pirating their products.)
That doesn't mean all that much. If lots of copies went around but the company never received a rightful profit, then I'd totally back you up on that.
That's exactly what did happen. Tribes is actually free at the moment, so the current success of the game is irrelevant. (I'm not even sure if the game's master server is still running or not.)
As for Halo 3, it had bigger problems than Mac people not ponying up.
I'm not talking about Halo 3, I'm talking about Halo. The first one. The reason there's no Halo 2 on Mac is because the original Halo was pirated to hell and back on that platform. (Some estimates were that over 50% of the copies in circulation were pirated copies.)
Halo 3 has NO problems with Mac people not ponying up, because it was never released on Mac (and is extremely unlikely to ever be.)
Piracy has killed several games in the past, notably Starsiege: Tribes, which was released with no copy protection or DRM and had many times more illegitimate users than legitimate ones. Arguably, Halo Mac was killed by piracy, if you consider it a different game from Halo PC.
Of course all the games you mentioned came with copy protection/DRM. The only thing it really shows is that, hey, copy protection is effective, at least for PC games. Sure, none of the copy protection schemes are perfect, but as long as there are protections in place to prevent casual copying, it seems to work just fine. You're actually arguing *for* DRM at this point.
That reason is fairly obvious: If DRM never works, there's no point in them using it. And gee golly gosh, now we're seeing music sites dropping it. It's funny what an expression of demand can cause.
DRM/copy protection has "never worked" for video games, either. But virtually all video games released still have it... so it looks like your filesharing movement is falling down on the job there, huh?
I've seen quite a few legit torrents, Linux and otherwise. It's a great way to send >1 gig files. I just purchased Modo today, for example, and I recieved a BT link to over a gig of training videos for it. When Buck Bunny, the Blender-made movie came out, you could not only download the huge-ass HD video, but you could also download all their content to play with. BT has plenty of legit uses and it's growing.
Nobody's saying it doesn't, but it's still a matter of percentages. Maybe right now, 5% of bittorrent traffic is legit, and maybe that 5% is growing every year (assuming you mean 'growing' as a percentage of total traffic, not as a number of downloads), but that doesn't change the fact that 95% of bittorrent traffic is copyright infringement.
What if I download an MP3 file and it stops a full-scale alien invasion? We can invent lots of scenarios, but let's try to keep it on Earth. My medical records going around can actually do me harm. I'd rather not let my enemies know that I'm allergic to peanuts.;)
The POINT is that you can't go around crying, "there's no such thing as virtual property! information wants to be free!" and also support HIPAA/medical privacy laws. If you do, you're a hypocrite.
GTA4 was a VERY highly anticipated game. Everybody was waiting for it. Arguably, a significant chunk of the XBOX 360 and PS3 populace would know how to download a torrent and burn it. The game was leaked a week before release. It made $500 million dollars. Fascinating.
That's a pretty damned thin argument. "arguably" a significant chunk of people know how to burn DVDs that will play in an Xbox, and/or modify the hardware of their Xbox to allow it? Seriously? If I were to be extremely, extremely generous, I'd say that's 10% of console owners, but I think 10% is still a vast over-estimation. Either way, without showing exactly what that percentage is, your entire argument dissolves away.
Thank you. I've tried to say this in the past, but you've said it far better than I ever could. The hypocrisy among filesharers on this site (and everywhere) makes me sick sometimes.
Yes, but I've used Linux and am aware of its suckage, UI-wise. The OS/2 suckage surprises me, although I've also used IBM products in general and so shouldn't be surprised.
Wow, if OS/2 hasn't, in over a decade, yet developed a common file open/save dialog... well, I think that answers a lot of questions about its popularity. Even Windows 3.11 and Mac OS 7 had that perfected.
Well, the "challenge" is obviously designed to fail, so in a few months when it expires they can sell their brilliant new drive formatting software (or whatever the hell this is trying to promote) with the marketing phrase: "this software made the drive un-recoverable, even when a cash prize was offered for recovery!" They just have to be careful not to mention that zero companies took the "Zero Challenge" and that the prize was trivial.
Well, the "challenge" is obviously designed to fail, so in a few months when it expires they can sell their brilliant new drive formatting software (or whatever the hell this is trying to promote) with the marketing phrase: "this software made the drive un-recoverable, even when a cash prize was offered for recovery!" They just have to be careful not to mention that zero companies took the "Zero Challenge" and that the prize was trivial.
Fry's exchanged a video card that I'd installed a third-party cooler on (incorrectly; I wired the fan backwards and it overheated), even after I told them I was fully responsible for destroying the card. I know a lot of people say they have terrible experiences at Fry's, but they've done quite a few questionable returns for me with no problems.
My only gripe about Fry's, especially now that fuel prices are up, is that there ain't enough of them. Hey Fry's: Build one NORTH of Seattle, maybe in Lynnwood or Everett, that would make me very happy. Even with the deals and good service, I can't justify driving 40 minutes to get to your store.
Interesting tidbit in this article [abc.net.au]: According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, less than 1% of plastic bags used in Australia are reused, however 82.6% of Australian households say that they reuse plastic bags.
BTW, maybe it's worded poorly, but isn't this statistic entirely non-alarming?
I mean, you're comparing apples (percentage of households) to oranges (percentage of bags). If each household has 200 bags, which doesn't seem out-of-the-question if they're regular grocery shoppers, then it's quite possible and normal for 82.6% of households to reuse plastic bags, and still only have less than 1% of the bags reused. Plus, for all we know, the other 199 bags in each household are taken back to the store and recycled, your number says nothing about that.
Even when I do get statistics, they're not very convincing. This study seems to tell me nothing at all.
Is it really so bad to want to be convinced of a problem before wanting laws solving it?
They may be breaking down, but they still leave a huge mess behind and when let loose on the environment, a lot of animals end up eating them, or they end up on the side of the road or on river banks where they take years and years to break down - where a paper bag would decompose very quickly and pose very little to no harm to animals.
Ok, but what I want to see if PROOF, not just bleeding heart "oh animals might eat them!" emotional responses. Show me a multi-year study showing me that those plastic bags are worse for the environment.
When one's needless, wasteful and thoughtless actions result in a reduction in the quality of life for others and simple alternatives exist but people refuse to change their behaviour because it may save them a few bucks or just don't give a damn, then yes, that requires regulation. Or do you forget that you share this planet with billions of other people?
What bothers me isn't legislating the problem, it's legislating the problem without ever showing that there is a problem in the first place! Your "82.6%" figure is the first actual fact I've seen, not only in this thread, but among the entire environmental movement dedicated to banning plastic bags. The first!
I just want people to pass laws based on facts and statistics. I don't think the environmentalist movement even gives half a crap about whether anything they do is actually, measurably effective-- in fact, that this point I don't think they even care that it's measurable.
Most of the hippies here in Australia live so deep in the bush that they are commonly refered to as "bush bunnies", but maybe it's different where you live. How many hippies have you actually met and what proportion of them tried to "boss you around"?
I live in the Seattle, WA area. "Hippies that try to boss me around" describes something like 85% of the population here.
You could just not give a shit about your "karma." I find not giving a crap about what number that doesn't matter is next to my name in some buggy website's database to be a good philosophy in general.
The vast majority of those you linked were simply spoofs of the Mac vs. PC ads, used stolen footage, were far too long (3:40 for one, and over 4 minutes on another), or were made by IBM. I hate IBM. This ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x35AIGJaM5M
is the best of the bunch, but it's a bad bunch.
(Attention Slashdot developers: I was DRAWING AN ARROW with a less-than and dash, I wasn't trying to insert a HTML tag! Any parser that isn't made of Fail would figure that out, yours sucks shit and always has.)
Why the shrinkable requirement? Are you expecting your saved videos to take *less* space over time? I can assure you that I've never felt the need to downgrade the drives in my media server, in fact it's nearing time to upgrade it again as I finish ripping my DVDs.
But what the heck do I know, I just use the filesystem that my OS installs by default, like 99.999% of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, and a hamburger cost a nickel and you could park anywhere for free! And we had to walk to school, we didn't have these fancy buses!!!
Seriously, the gaming market is healthier than its ever been. You're just growing older, and this is what happens when you grow older: nostalgia invades your game, and you start yelling "you damned kids, get off my lawn!"
It does matter because it isn't a fact that a ton of people were enjoying the game without paying for it. The only fact is that there were people downloading it from websites. We don't know how many of them had paid for it.
If they bought it, why would they download it from a filesharing site? You're making no damned sense.
This issue is muddy because games like this require the CD to play and that's really f'n abnoxious.
Game consoles require the CD to play, and those seem to be doing pretty well. (What's obnoxious is BOTH requiring the CD AND requiring a bunch of disk space for the install. One of the many reasons I've stopped buying PC games altogether.)
Lots of people go download the pirated copy because of that. It's also really important to know WHEN that level of piracy hit. If it wasn't until two yeas after the release of the game, it's virtually meaningless.
"It's ok if they take our product without paying for it, because our product has been released for 2 years." Christ, you're doing EXACTLY what the grandparent was talking about: justifying your piracy with a LAME excuse.
The press release about the piracy rate was something like 3 months after the game hit shelves, IIRC. Not that that matters; whether the game has been out for one week or five years, piracy is still piracy.
Nope. a.) It would have been cracked anyway without taking significantly longer. b.) The invasive DRM would have strengthened the demand for a cracked copy. c.) It's entirely possible, and likely, that invasive DRM would have made some people sit back and wait for the cracked copy to come along so they can avoid all that BS. There is absolutely no guarantee that they would enjoy any more sales.
You know that and I know that, but neither of us are game publishers. What would you SUGGEST publishers do in response to stories like this? Boil it down to one sentence:
"We added a level of protection and piracy was extremely high."
What response would you expect other than:
"Well, then we need to add more levels of protection?"
Seriously, do you know anything about how humans beings behave at all?
In any case, none of that justifies piracy. The correct response, if there's a product you're not interested in buying (for ANY reason, including invasive DRM), the correct response is not to buy it. Pirating the product anyway just encourages more DRM in the future, it sends this message to the game's publishers: "gamers are criminals"
That cannot be proven until it is proven that restrictive copy protection would actually increase sales. Worse, it has been disproven by recent decisions to stop using it.
Oh yeah? Link me. If it's been "disproven," you should have a myriad of sources and examples to back that up.
At least Games for Windows games actually *work*. Unlike, for example, Battlefield: 2142 and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, two games I bought recently that did not, in fact, work.
The real point here is that PC games have terrible, awful, quality control. Why does Battlefield: 2142 require administrative access? Why does Dark Messiah take more than 4 seconds to integrate itself with Steam? Because PC games companies just Don't. Fucking. Care. about the quality of their product. Part of the reason is that they know the hardcore gamers also don't fucking care about the quality of the product; how many of them bought Battlefield: 2142 and will tell you, with a straight face, that it's a good game?
Have you ever asked yourself why the PC version of Oblivion needs to suck up gigabytes of HD space when the Xbox 360 version, which is virtually identical, takes no more than needed for virtual memory? Have you ever wondered why you have to type in a 25-digit annoying product key to play Dark Messiah on PC online, when you can play Dark Messiah over Xbox Live with nothing more than the disk?
I'm all for these "Gamer's Rights," and I'm all for "Games for Windows" because when you come down to it, they both have one goal: upping the quality of PC games to that of console games.
The game was a Vista and XBOX exclusive. That had nothing to do with piracy. MS didn't even want them playing on XP. ... And you don't think it was at least partially because they knew releasing it on Mac would be a mistake, after the disaster that was the Halo 1 Mac release? Believe me, I know a lot of people who worked for Bungie, they love Macs, virtually all of their games have been released on Macintosh, and many have been Mac-exclusive. What changed their mind?
Okay. So what does that actually mean? Would they have sold twice as many copies? Did 100% of the people decide they wanted the noCD version?
Doesn't matter; the fact is a ton of people were enjoying their game without paying for it. It doesn't matter *why* they were pirating the game.
the game did have protection.
Of course it did, and despite that protection it was pirated to hell and back. Thus proving that they should have use more invasive DRM in the future. Thus proving the point of the grandparent that started off this entire discussion. (To paraphrase: if you really don't like DRM, you wouldn't prove to games/music/movie companies that it's needed by pirating their products.)
That doesn't mean all that much. If lots of copies went around but the company never received a rightful profit, then I'd totally back you up on that.
That's exactly what did happen. Tribes is actually free at the moment, so the current success of the game is irrelevant. (I'm not even sure if the game's master server is still running or not.)
As for Halo 3, it had bigger problems than Mac people not ponying up.
I'm not talking about Halo 3, I'm talking about Halo. The first one. The reason there's no Halo 2 on Mac is because the original Halo was pirated to hell and back on that platform. (Some estimates were that over 50% of the copies in circulation were pirated copies.)
Halo 3 has NO problems with Mac people not ponying up, because it was never released on Mac (and is extremely unlikely to ever be.)
You have no idea what you're talking about.
Piracy has killed several games in the past, notably Starsiege: Tribes, which was released with no copy protection or DRM and had many times more illegitimate users than legitimate ones. Arguably, Halo Mac was killed by piracy, if you consider it a different game from Halo PC.
Of course all the games you mentioned came with copy protection/DRM. The only thing it really shows is that, hey, copy protection is effective, at least for PC games. Sure, none of the copy protection schemes are perfect, but as long as there are protections in place to prevent casual copying, it seems to work just fine. You're actually arguing *for* DRM at this point.
the best movies made are not top grocers.
Well, that's a relief! I wouldn't want to see a bunch of movies about middle-aged men washing tomatoes.
That reason is fairly obvious: If DRM never works, there's no point in them using it. And gee golly gosh, now we're seeing music sites dropping it. It's funny what an expression of demand can cause.
DRM/copy protection has "never worked" for video games, either. But virtually all video games released still have it... so it looks like your filesharing movement is falling down on the job there, huh?
I've seen quite a few legit torrents, Linux and otherwise. It's a great way to send >1 gig files. I just purchased Modo today, for example, and I recieved a BT link to over a gig of training videos for it. When Buck Bunny, the Blender-made movie came out, you could not only download the huge-ass HD video, but you could also download all their content to play with. BT has plenty of legit uses and it's growing.
Nobody's saying it doesn't, but it's still a matter of percentages. Maybe right now, 5% of bittorrent traffic is legit, and maybe that 5% is growing every year (assuming you mean 'growing' as a percentage of total traffic, not as a number of downloads), but that doesn't change the fact that 95% of bittorrent traffic is copyright infringement.
What if I download an MP3 file and it stops a full-scale alien invasion? We can invent lots of scenarios, but let's try to keep it on Earth. My medical records going around can actually do me harm. I'd rather not let my enemies know that I'm allergic to peanuts. ;)
The POINT is that you can't go around crying, "there's no such thing as virtual property! information wants to be free!" and also support HIPAA/medical privacy laws. If you do, you're a hypocrite.
GTA4 was a VERY highly anticipated game. Everybody was waiting for it. Arguably, a significant chunk of the XBOX 360 and PS3 populace would know how to download a torrent and burn it. The game was leaked a week before release. It made $500 million dollars. Fascinating.
That's a pretty damned thin argument. "arguably" a significant chunk of people know how to burn DVDs that will play in an Xbox, and/or modify the hardware of their Xbox to allow it? Seriously? If I were to be extremely, extremely generous, I'd say that's 10% of console owners, but I think 10% is still a vast over-estimation. Either way, without showing exactly what that percentage is, your entire argument dissolves away.
Thank you. I've tried to say this in the past, but you've said it far better than I ever could. The hypocrisy among filesharers on this site (and everywhere) makes me sick sometimes.
Yes, but I've used Linux and am aware of its suckage, UI-wise. The OS/2 suckage surprises me, although I've also used IBM products in general and so shouldn't be surprised.
From the list:
Common File Open/Save Dialog ($180)
Wow, if OS/2 hasn't, in over a decade, yet developed a common file open/save dialog... well, I think that answers a lot of questions about its popularity. Even Windows 3.11 and Mac OS 7 had that perfected.
Yes; it's COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE that it's just a publicity stunt!!!
(Seriously, Slashdot, where are these people coming from? My guess: 1948.)
To quote myself:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=955869&cid=24905381
Well, the "challenge" is obviously designed to fail, so in a few months when it expires they can sell their brilliant new drive formatting software (or whatever the hell this is trying to promote) with the marketing phrase: "this software made the drive un-recoverable, even when a cash prize was offered for recovery!" They just have to be careful not to mention that zero companies took the "Zero Challenge" and that the prize was trivial.
For $40?
I don't do anything IT-related for $40. I'd charge $120 to lean down and press your power button.
Well, the "challenge" is obviously designed to fail, so in a few months when it expires they can sell their brilliant new drive formatting software (or whatever the hell this is trying to promote) with the marketing phrase: "this software made the drive un-recoverable, even when a cash prize was offered for recovery!" They just have to be careful not to mention that zero companies took the "Zero Challenge" and that the prize was trivial.
Fry's exchanged a video card that I'd installed a third-party cooler on (incorrectly; I wired the fan backwards and it overheated), even after I told them I was fully responsible for destroying the card. I know a lot of people say they have terrible experiences at Fry's, but they've done quite a few questionable returns for me with no problems.
My only gripe about Fry's, especially now that fuel prices are up, is that there ain't enough of them. Hey Fry's: Build one NORTH of Seattle, maybe in Lynnwood or Everett, that would make me very happy. Even with the deals and good service, I can't justify driving 40 minutes to get to your store.
Interesting tidbit in this article [abc.net.au]: According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, less than 1% of plastic bags used in Australia are reused, however 82.6% of Australian households say that they reuse plastic bags.
BTW, maybe it's worded poorly, but isn't this statistic entirely non-alarming?
I mean, you're comparing apples (percentage of households) to oranges (percentage of bags). If each household has 200 bags, which doesn't seem out-of-the-question if they're regular grocery shoppers, then it's quite possible and normal for 82.6% of households to reuse plastic bags, and still only have less than 1% of the bags reused. Plus, for all we know, the other 199 bags in each household are taken back to the store and recycled, your number says nothing about that.
Even when I do get statistics, they're not very convincing. This study seems to tell me nothing at all.
Is it really so bad to want to be convinced of a problem before wanting laws solving it?
They may be breaking down, but they still leave a huge mess behind and when let loose on the environment, a lot of animals end up eating them, or they end up on the side of the road or on river banks where they take years and years to break down - where a paper bag would decompose very quickly and pose very little to no harm to animals.
Ok, but what I want to see if PROOF, not just bleeding heart "oh animals might eat them!" emotional responses. Show me a multi-year study showing me that those plastic bags are worse for the environment.
When one's needless, wasteful and thoughtless actions result in a reduction in the quality of life for others and simple alternatives exist but people refuse to change their behaviour because it may save them a few bucks or just don't give a damn, then yes, that requires regulation. Or do you forget that you share this planet with billions of other people?
What bothers me isn't legislating the problem, it's legislating the problem without ever showing that there is a problem in the first place ! Your "82.6%" figure is the first actual fact I've seen, not only in this thread, but among the entire environmental movement dedicated to banning plastic bags. The first!
I just want people to pass laws based on facts and statistics. I don't think the environmentalist movement even gives half a crap about whether anything they do is actually, measurably effective-- in fact, that this point I don't think they even care that it's measurable.
Most of the hippies here in Australia live so deep in the bush that they are commonly refered to as "bush bunnies", but maybe it's different where you live. How many hippies have you actually met and what proportion of them tried to "boss you around"?
I live in the Seattle, WA area. "Hippies that try to boss me around" describes something like 85% of the population here.
You could just not give a shit about your "karma." I find not giving a crap about what number that doesn't matter is next to my name in some buggy website's database to be a good philosophy in general.
(Fucking shit, Slashdot's software sucks ass. Let's try again.)
Did you watch any of the links you just provided?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hJ10Dr9_og&NR=1 - This is a better ad? Seriously!?
The vast majority of those you linked were simply spoofs of the Mac vs. PC ads, used stolen footage, were far too long (3:40 for one, and over 4 minutes on another), or were made by IBM. I hate IBM. This ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x35AIGJaM5M
is the best of the bunch, but it's a bad bunch.
(Attention Slashdot developers: I was DRAWING AN ARROW with a less-than and dash, I wasn't trying to insert a HTML tag! Any parser that isn't made of Fail would figure that out, yours sucks shit and always has.)
Did you watch any of the links you just provided?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hJ10Dr9_og&NR=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x35AIGJaM5M
is the best of the bunch, but it's a bad bunch.
No joking. Could this "280slides" site be more of a ripoff of Powerpoint? I doubt it.
Oh, and the default font is Comic Sans. That alone makes it worthy of derision.
Why the shrinkable requirement? Are you expecting your saved videos to take *less* space over time? I can assure you that I've never felt the need to downgrade the drives in my media server, in fact it's nearing time to upgrade it again as I finish ripping my DVDs.
But what the heck do I know, I just use the filesystem that my OS installs by default, like 99.999% of the world.
What last model? This is the first netbook Dell's made. (Thus the Slashdot story; it's actually news.)