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| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=14124 |  BubbaT (160) Feb 01, 2007 - 10:08 am
| Bringing a good (book/PSP/whatever) manufactured outside the EU and re-selling it in the EU without consent of the good's manufacturer violates the copyright of the manufacturer, according to EU law (Levi Strauss v. Tesco, 2002).
EU law holds that the right of the manufacturer to control the trademark on the good also includes the power to ban the sale of imported trademarked goods. In Tesco's case it was Levi jeans, in Lik-Sang's it was PSPs. It could just as easily be Bantam or Doubleday in the place of Sony or Levi.
First Sale in the EU applies only to goods manufactured inside the EU. The Lik-Sang case affirmed the Tesco precedent. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=14124 | BubbaT (160) Jan 31, 2007 - 05:47 pm
| That's a good article, except for the part where he talks about how he can bring a book from the US to the UK and re-sell it there, bypassing the local authorized book distributor.
That's why Lik-Sang is bankrupt. They did the exact same thing with PSPs, and Sony killed them for it. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=14124 | BubbaT (160) Jan 31, 2007 - 10:39 am
| Huh, FS? DRM has nothing to do with the quality of the music or movie being copied.
As for the book example, not only do bookstores allow reading (the equivalent of radio for music), but there are also these things called "libraries" where you can take a book home with you for free and use it as much as you want. If you want to keep the book longer than the set rental period, all you have to do is tell the library. Where's the Hollywood equivalent of that?
People will be more accepting of DRM if it were to work in accordance with principles of fair use, instead of defecating all over them. Why should I be prevented from backing up an album or DVD, so as to preserve the original copy?
This was even more prevalent with analog tapes that were designed to degrade with use, but even today's optical media suffer from wear and tear. Each time you move a disc on or off its peg, and every time that disc spins up, you're stressing the material and increasing the chances of it breaking. Why should only the consumer have the risk of degredation? It's not like you can pay in money where the ink will disappear after 3 years, rendering it worthless. Yet each usage of the original disc increases the chance of it becoming useless.
This isn't like driving a car for 3 years and having it break down and you want your money back. You own that specific car. You don't own that movie, but you did buy the right to access the content of the movie. That's what a license is - the right to access content.
Nor do you give up your rights to access the movie simply because you're away from your DVD player. Your rights are yours, whether you're on your couch or in an airplane. Even if you don't own a DVD player or CD stereo you still have the right to access the content of the disc. That's why fair use includes the right to access content through your MP3 player, PC, PSP, Xbox, etc., and yes, even a CD/DVD-R.
You buy the right to access content. You don't lose it just because you leave the house. You don't lose it because the original disc breaks or gets scratched. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=14086 | BubbaT (160) Jan 29, 2007 - 11:58 am
| Actually it would allow them to re-scale to XXXX*720. Going from 720 vertical to 1080 vertical would require a vertical scaler, not a horizontal one.
The 1280*1080 resolution supported is a re-scale of 1920*1080, not of 1280*720. This is more of a way to somehow get a 1080-line vertical image (960*1080) while only using hardware resources comparable to what's needed for a 720-line vertical image. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=14038 | BubbaT (160) Jan 24, 2007 - 11:45 am
| I think it is significant. Mainly the requirement of a standalone, DX9 graphics card.
The sooner we can get away from the integrated Intel garbage and people still using ancient GeForces, the sooner developers can quit wasting time programming for them.
In short, Vista raises the baseline. Much like how stores stopped selling VHS movies and cassette music, it forces people to finally upgrade. If you want Vista you need discrete graphics - no more integrated. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=13799 | BubbaT (160) Jan 05, 2007 - 03:44 pm » Edited on Jan 05, 2007 - 03:46 pm
| Here's where the quote is out of context:
Firingsquad writes:
"There's nothing there that hasn't been written about before about the console but Scott Henson, product unit manager for Microsoft's game technology group, does have one telling quote about the HD-DVD add-on drive that suggests the company is hedging their bets in the next-gen disk war:
'We don't want to charge customers $200 extra for something that may be the next Betamax.'"
Implication: MS has little confidence in the HD-DVD format, and believes it will fail in the consumer marketplace along the lines of Betamax.
Arstechnica (the original article) writes:
"'We don't want to charge customers $200 extra for something that may be the next Betamax,' Henson told me (whoops).
They seem committed to the optional aspect of the HD DVD drive as it keeps the price down for consumers who don't care about HD DVD. It's a much different strategy than Sony's bundling a Blu-ray drive with every PS3."
Implication: MS will not justify a $100-300 higher price per unit by mandating the purchase of a disc format that may fail, but rather leave that up to individual consumers.
The implication is clearly belied by the fact that Henson's quote comes directly after being asked if the HD-DVD drive would ever be standard, and NOT after a question about which format was going to win. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=13761 | BubbaT (160) Jan 03, 2007 - 04:55 pm
| Spore and Hellgate London, then Bioshock.
I agree on the concerns for Crysis. It seems similar to the Quake 3 situation, where I had more fun playing later games that used the Q3 engine than I did playing Q3 itself. Still, I liked FarCry, so they get the benefit of the doubt until there's a reason they shouldn't. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=13736 | BubbaT (160) Jan 02, 2007 - 05:25 pm
| Still, everyone who's already bought a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player has to pretty much be a videophile, right? Those are exactly the people who notice small differences. They also tend to be the people sought out for advice by the less knowledgeable.
A lot of people wouldn't notice the difference between 45fps and 55fps the way people here do. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=13742 | BubbaT (160) Jan 02, 2007 - 05:21 pm
| Doesn't Utah have the highest per capita rate of receiving mail-order porn and using in-room porn at hotels (spanktravision)? They like porn the same as everyone else, they just don't want to admit it.
Also, didn't Utah just pass a law (HB 0257) that basically equated video games with porn? I'm sure the regular Madden screen = porn by that idiotic logic. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=13737 | BubbaT (160) Jan 02, 2007 - 04:54 pm
| It depends.
A mouse beats an analog stick for aiming, but an analog stick beats keyboard buttons for movement. Even a d-pad for movement is better than keyboard buttons, hence the Nostromo n50 and similar designs that stomp all over the standard 104/101-key.
Keyboards are pretty much useless for fighting, driving, flying, and sports games. KB/M is basically only good for a few specific genres (FPS, TPS, RTS). Gamepads don't handle those specific genres as well as KB/M, but handle the whole of gaming better. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=13752 | BubbaT (160) Jan 02, 2007 - 04:31 pm
| | I'm looking forward to Halo 3 more than any game on that list except Mass Effect. Playing splitscreen co-op on the same TV is just more fun to me than playing a PC FPS over a LAN. Yeah, the series is overhyped, but I enjoy it a lot more Metal Gear Fanfiction-with-a-budget or Grand Theft Auto 3: the 80s/Boyz n tha Hood Skins. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=13716 | BubbaT (160) Dec 27, 2006 - 11:44 am
| A few disagreements with the article:
360 upscales DVDs over VGA, which is an analog connection, but not subject to the DVD Forum's agreement.
If Square-Enix is so obsessed with hi-res CGI, how do you explain the exclusivity of Dragon Quest 9 on the Nintendo DS, of all things?
You're underestimating the Wii, by a lot methinks, as well as the power of the non-traditional gamer. You need only look at the latest gaming hardware battle. PSP had better graphics, multimedia support, web browsing, appeal to the "traditional" gamer - and it got stomped by an underpowered machine that appealed to non-traditional gamers. I wouldn't exactly call them un-passionate either - I've seen 6 year olds rattle off Pokemon stats and battle strategies more in depth than most modern RTSes. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=13501 | BubbaT (160) Dec 11, 2006 - 01:04 pm
| You're basically asking for a review based more on speculation than on what FS actually has in hand.
That's like reviewing a game and saying "This game sucks, but buy it anyways because screenshots of the expansion pack look cool." Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=13198 | BubbaT (160) Nov 16, 2006 - 10:47 am
| Careful now. If you re-release Star Wars games that are too good, people will start to realize how far LucasArts has fallen. Heck, if you go to LucasArts' website, under "PC Classics" they don't even list TIE Fighter or X-Wing.
I'm just thankful they didn't Rebel Assault 2 and Galactic Battlegrounds in there to make their current games look better. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=13217 | BubbaT (160) Nov 16, 2006 - 10:38 am
| Well, that settles that for me. My Mitsu HDTV accepts 1080i but not 720p, and Resistance was the PS3 game I was most looking forward to.
Graphics aren't everything, but when you're talking about spending $660 they aren't nothing either. Flag this | Edit this post |
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