Sounds to me like
"waa waa waa waa, I can't type my password on my mobile phone properly, change your website to make life easier for me"
This man should be fired for suggesting such stupid advise.
48 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Dec 2006
Your analogy is flawed.
You suggest that "the guy they hire just stands at the front door and hand the fliers to anyone already walking through the door." - which is not what Google are doing. The fliers aren't just going to anyone who are already walking through the door, they're going to thousands of other people who are looking for a resturant; any resturant.
Yes a few go to those are "already walking through the door", but not all of them, and certainly not a high percentage of them are, and the only way the fliers are getting to those people are if the original guy (Google) hires a friend (Nbcsearch) who hires a friend (LocalPages) who hires a friend (WhenU) to hand them out on his behalf.
ISP need to decide if they are content providers (like tv/radio) or service providers (like gas/electric).
If they are the former, then it is there job to censor content appropriately, they are liable for everything, and we (as customers) cannot be held accountable for their in-action.
If they are the latter, then they need to give us unrestricted access to the service they provide, it is up to us how we use it, and are therefore accountable for our own actions.
If they already know all of the websites which have child porn on them, why not shut the sites down? Or why can't they track the users who are regularly visiting these websites and prosecute them (like they do for downloading music)?
I don't like child porn, or any other form of child/adult/animal/mineral/vegetable abuse, but filtering is not going to cure the problem. They should focus on stopping the abuse at the root, not wrongly blacklisting Wikipedia pages.
I back-up my server about once a month to a USB-Drive which I keep at my parents. I imagine the same should go for anyone else - no good backing-up your desktops to a server in the same physical location. Although hardware failure is more likely, I'm more worried about a fire wiping out my entire life-times collection of photos than a disk failing.
I have one (serious) question I'd like to ask:
If you've got a home server, what are you backing up from your desktop machines? Surely all your data is on the server? Otherwise what's the point?
Everything of mine is on my server box; pictures, music, video, documents, everything. The only think I can think of which I'd need to back-up from my desk/laptops is saved games from the likes of Spore, Half-Life, or whatever. Am I alone in this? Am I doing something wrong? Am I missing something?
Surely the DS/PSP/N-series have been doing this for... 4 years? If they didn't feel the need to protect their "IP" back then, why should they do it now? Oh, I know why - it's because there's more devices out there infringing, so they can get more money! It's not like they can say "oh we didn't know these obscure devices existed until now". I think if you don't protect your IP, after a year of an "infringer" being in the market you lose all rights your patent.
I hope they crash & burn! I sold one of my Wii games on there last week, of my £19.55 sale price, eBay took £2.98 through four different fees - that's over 15%!! Why the hell any decent person would want to sell stuff on there any more is beyond me...
I'll stick to the local paper in the future - free all the way!
... I, like many other normal people, don't have a HDTV, Blu-Ray or the likes, and have no intention of buying one in the near future. I'm happy with my TV set up, DVDs look fine to me, the only HDTV footage I've ever seen a noticable difference in is football, which doesn't interest me.
Sites like The Register and Slashdot will always be biased because tech-heads read them and will always get people posting comments about the death of DVD being just around the corner. The trouble is it's not tech-heads who make this stuff main-stream, it's average people. It's your mum & dad, it's your brother and sister who would be lost on the 'net without Google and MSN.
I imagine the death of DVD will be very, VERY slow and fairly painless. Blu-Ray will eventually over-take DVD, but not in Q1 2009, maybe by Christmas 2012. Oh and at least 50% of those Blu-Ray players will be plugged into SDTVs, or setup incorrectly.
What you say is perfectly fine - if a court had found the defendant guilty of breaking copyright (which afaik is a civil, not a criminal offence, and therefore not illegal - someone please correct me if I'm wrong). Unfortunately for those who strike-out, there will be no court, no lawyers, no proof, no anything. All the copyright holder has to do is claim that an IP address is breaking copyright, the ISP match that up to an account and the account holder gets a strike.
Doesn't that sound scary to you? Shouldn't the defendant get to defend themselves?
So how much did Sony pay you to say "Whether CW’s gaming walls will welcome handheld consoles, such as the PlayStation Portable"?
Don't you know there are more than twice as many DSs in the UK compared PSPs? You'd hardly mention Dogpile when talking about search engines, or Somerfield when talking about supermarkets, so why mention the market-non-leader in this instance?
</fanboy rant>
It must be such a hard job thinking up rumours, hmm now let me think:
- Wii launched in 2006 + 5 year console cycle = 2011
- Wii is a HUGE brand for Nintendo, so they wouldn't want to ditch that advantage (Although I'd go with Super Wii, like the Super NES)
- HD will probably be in over 50% of first-world homes by 2011, but of course it'll still be viewable in SD for those without
- Storage space only grows over time, so it's VERY unlikely that Super Wii would contain the same, or less storage than Wii does
- Keeping the brand name Wii means there's a damn good chance it'd play Wii games
I only hope Super Wii will come with Motion Plus integrated into the Super Wiimotes.
we need a "rolls eyes" icon
"The lawsuit asks the judge to ... award the plaintiffs the purchase price of Spore plus damages"
No no no!! They should be asking for a big red box, at least 10cm² to be on the front cover of the physical box, and there should be a huge warning that you have to tick a little box agreeing to on digital downloads saying that this software installs "malware" and you realise that you can only install the game five times. But ask that this be done not only on Spore, but ALL games that use "malware" copy protection.
Refunds wont hurt EA that much, but warning customers off will.
> Give me Android on a sexy slimline phone with a nice big touchscreen, standard headphone and USB sockets, and a decent camera with flash, and I'll happily pay you up to £500 for it.
Ditto, but without the camera stuff (I have a camera that is a camera), bigger storage would be a nice addition (unless it could happily stream audio over the Internet).
I wish someone would have the balls to ask EA why they're bothering with DRM in Spore - it's _already_ been cracked, those who don't _want_ to pay for it know how to download it, the DRM is *not* stopping people pirating the game. If they removed the DRM entirely they would get more sales from those people who want to buy it but wont because of the DRM. But no-one would ever dare ask them that, no-one has the guts to stand up to the almighty EA.
Beside we all know that this is not about piracy, it's about second-hand sales. Selling on your copy of Spore would be a nightmare as the game is linked to your EA account, whoever you sell the game to would need to know your details to access the on-line content, which is a significant part of the game.
</FUD>
Surely both the 360 and PS3 violate their very vague "navigation interface display system that graphically organises content for display on television" patent?
Or is there no money in suing the Microsoft & Sony gaming divisions?
Idea for new icon: we need a big question mark or a "WTF?" icon!
I agree with A J Stiles - put an end to exclusivity deals in broadcasting rights.
It's not like Sky/BBC/ITV cameras record the games, would it really be so bad to send those video signals to multiple broadcasters at the same time? No monopoloy, no need for multiple subscriptions, no worries! Personally I'd watch "a modern version of a pigs bladder around for 90 minutes" on BCC HD (thanks freesat) just to skip all the adverst & get my TV Licence's worth!
Which reminds me, if you're paying ~£500pa for Sky & Sanata, rememeber to add you TV Licence - £660+ to watch sports on TV? Owch...
Can anybody really see Nintendo saying - "Our sales are astronomical, so to piss off our shareholders, and make less profit, we're going to drop the price by £50"?
Even *if* they were planning on a Christmas price drop, they wouldn't tell us, they'd hardly want to put people off buying one now and making more money off them. There in the console business to make money, plain & simple.
As you say, the PS3 (and Wii) has a Flash 7 player, the iPlayer requires Flash 8+ (different video encoders), well, it did until Wednesday when they made a Flash 7 compatible iPlayer which, as Graeme pointed out, works fine with the PS3 browser.
Shame there's no full-screen option though, otherwise I'd ditch VM in a heartbeat (especially after they're trying to charge me £10 for a missed payment - I pay by direct debit, so how's that possible?)
The BBC have also said they are working on an iPlayer for Wii that will not require the web browser. A iPlayer Channel on Wii? I live in hope.
Completely agree. I can rememeber "back in the day" when DVD was first announced, they seemed to be marketing it as a mass storage device saying things like "every episode of The Simpsons on a disc the size of a CD!", but that seems to have gotten dropped in favor of "extras" - woohoo(!)
Why on earth can they only fit four episodes of Voyager on a single DVD? Like you, I'd have one disc with everything on in acceptable quality over HD on multiple discs any day.
Can't believe how much hate there is for this report, surely by now we all know that MPs and people in power don't have any common sense (otherwise they wouldn't be MPs - ha!), they need things spelt out for them, and this is what the Byron report does.
Some people don't seem to have read TFA which says:
"On video games, Dr Byron recommends a range of high profile and *targeted efforts* to help *inform parents* what games are right for their children"
One of the problems is that while the current ratings system is voluntary, yet somehow legally enforceable, it’s confusing! I’m a parent, and a gamer and having different rating systems (or none at all) on different games is just backwards! It needs to be standardized, and it makes sense to mirror an existing system.
The report also recommends that computers are brought into communal areas of the house. I agree with this, we have five consoles (from various generations) most are setup in our dining room, and our Wii is setup on our main TV in the living room. There’s nowhere for my six year old to game without me or his mum being able to monitor what he’s up to. We also spent time educating him on which games he can and can’t play, and he respects and abides by the rules.
I don’t want to go off on a tangent here, but the whole thing is part of a bigger issue of kids doing as they please with no consequences. Be it at home, school, or out & about kids *know* that they can pretty much get away with anything, and some have enough lack of respect for others that they often do.
When my son is old enough, he’ll have his own PC and I’ll trust him to do the responsible thing, when it comes to “bad sites” (i.e. porn) I’ll teach him about it, not just lock him out. Like Mick said – “You can't, and shouldn't, protect them from everything otherwise they'll grow up totally unprepared for the world.” I think that sums it up nicely.
“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society” - Theodore Roosevelt
I didn't know chart positions defined quility or affordability! Learn something new every day! </sarcasm>
All-in-all this is obvious really. MS back HD-DVD, so *if* HD-DVD fails (which they think wont happen), they will make a Blu-Ray player for the 360 *if* there's enough demand.
Remember - *if*!
I seriously doubt many people will look back and think "you know, it was great when we got VS2008, such wild parties we had" *ahem*
Somehow I think 2007 will be remembered for the year that:
- Nintendo finally got their revenge on Sony (if you're a Nintendo fan)
- Sony outsold Wii for two whole weeks (if you're a Sony fan)
- You bought a Wii to complement your 360 (if you're a Microsoft fan)
- or the year that you started gaming (if you're a normal person)
Wii is over a year old, so your proposed ban wouldn't affect Wii anyway.
Sounds to me like Wii is in high demand in the *UK* but not in *Europe*, Nintendo don't appear to see it at that level though and distribute Wiis all over Europe evenly, with them piling up in countries where the demand is low, and sold out in the those where it's high.
"Factor in PS2 and PSOne sales, of course, and Sony remains the market leader in games consoles"
Even when you factor in all of Nintendo's home consoles (including the two before the PS-era) Sony's way ahead with over 226m console sales vs Nintendo's 175m (Source: Wikipedia).
If you add the GameBoy + DS vs PSP to the mix, well, that's a different story....... (424m vs 251m in Nintendo's favor if you're wondering)
It looks nice, and I'm sure it'll cure cancer, or something, but why do keyboard manufactures these days seems to want to mess with the basic keyboard layout?
The 6 Keys of Insert/Delete/Home/End/PgUp/PgDown have been rearranged on this particular one, a massive bug-bear of mine being a developer and a high-frequency user of those keys.
They also appear to have gone with the perhaps even more annoying trait of replacing the Function-Keys with "Function"-Keys - replacing the different modes in The Sims 2 with Back/Forward/Stop/Refresh! Yes there's an "F-Lock", but that's off be default.
The last keyboard I bought was second-hand off of eBay because it seems impossible* to buy a normal keyboard anymore. *sigh*
* may not be true
Anyone leaving Virgin to join Sky just so they can get SkyOne is mad.
Since we left Sky (We had everything, except sports, but incl Sky+) and moved to ntl we've watched MORE TV. Why? On Demand.
the amount of stuff they offer on demand is staggering. Ok yes I know they don't really provide it, but they make it damned easy to access. We now what TV when WE want, watch the programs WE want to at times to suit US. It really is what this whole on demand stuff is all about.
I'd take On Demand over SkyOne anyday, who really wants to watch re-runs of The Simpsons for 2 hours every day? One episode on Channel Four is good enough for me.
Now all we need is a V+ box to record the stuff that isn't On Demand!
Sorry, but isn't the PS3 just a "souped-up" PS2? Isn't the "gimmick" of motion sensing in the PS3 controller? Isn't Sony screwing over Europe by launching here in March AT THE EARLIEST? Isn't the Blu-Ray an unproven tech that we'll get bored of in 2 years when we've either all got blu-ray (or HD-DVD to be fair) players, or digitally downloading our movies?
It seems the people knocking it (including my MS- & Sony-fanboy friends) knock the Wii and say it's crap... all up until they play it. Now they want one and have been round here all Wiikend playing.
"The Wii [is] the first **games console** to get you up off your rump and onto your feet" - afaik eye toy & DDR are not "games console"s.
PS. Also, bare in mind in relation to the price is that our price has 17.5% VAT on top, the US price never includes tax, and in most states they don't pay any anyway, so it's our government that's ramping up the price, not Nintendo.
PPS. In reply to Matt Crerar - from what I've heard from shop owners (Woolworths, Tesco & Asda - game/station seemed unaffected by this -), Nintendo shipped the number of units they promised, but a ship got "lost" at sea (I don't know if they meant sunk, or just caught up in a bad storm) which is why those units didn't arrive on time. Still, I got mine, played it for 20:40hrs yesterday and am very happy (and lucky it would seem!) :o)