On the contrary, I was the only person to guess you *might* not have meant that (*). That's what everyone else thought... quite reasonably, as it *would be* the most sensible interpretation assuming you'd actually bothered to read the summary!! That makes clear that the magazine hasn't been sold in printed form for almost a decade. In that context, saying "I'm not sure what a gamer would need a magazine for" serves no purpose unless it referred to the years it *was* being published (i.e. 1981 to 2004).

That's why everyone else thought you were utterly clueless. I was the only one who figured out that your comment was somewhat less stupid *if* you'd made the mistake others did of not properly reading the summary and assuming the printed magazine was still going (rather than it being the offshoot website under threat as is made clear).

To be blunt, my view was somewhat more charitable than it needed to be, assuming you'd committed the minor stupidity of not reading the summary, rather than the major stupidity implied by most people's understandable interpretation of your comment...

(*) Though I couldn't discount the possibility that you really *were* that clueless!

Good grief! Even the bleeding summary makes clear that CVG has been "online only" (i.e. a *website*) since 2004 and it's that "re-emerged" web-based version of the magazine that is now in danger.

If you'd paid attention, you'd have noticed that the "magazine" has been online only (i.e. a website) for the past ten years.

To be fair, if you *had* made that mistake, it would at least make your question a less stupid one, i.e. "I'm not sure what a gamer would need a [printed] magazine for [in this day and age]".

Which is of course perfectly understandable. OTOH, if you really *did* mean this to refer to its entire lifetime from the early-1980s onwards, then yes, it was an utterly stupid question that suggests you're barely old enough to remember the dial-up Internet era, let alone what things were like before the Internet became widely available to the public in the mid-90s. :-O

Depends what you mean by "still going" as the original magazine ceased publishing almost ten years ago (*) when Future publishing bought the title (apparently it overlapped with their own GamesMaster magazine, which is still going today in its printed form (**)).

I don't know how much continuity there was before and after that takeover, though to be fair, the title had already been sold previously, from its original publishers EMAP, to Dennis Publishing.

Isn't Wikipedia wonderful? :-)

(*) Apparently they briefly relaunched it a few years back- or more accurately, reused the name- as "CVG Presents", a short-lived run of magazines each dedicated to a single game series (e.g. Grand Theft Auto). But that's long-defunct too.

(**) Mind you, that was a spinoff from the TV show that finished in the late 90s, so technically that's not *its* original form!

Yo dawg, I herd you like backdoors, so we put a backdoor in your backdoor so you can.... er, sod it, you can probably guess the rest yourselves. :-/

Who claimed anything "with horror"? It was pointing out the obvious as far as I was concerned.

Yes, I agree entirely that the measure was significantly about piracy- though the vast majority of PS pirates are unlikely to pay what Adobe are charging regardless, and they certainly know this.

And yes, even though you define their "illegitimate users" as being separate from their "users", the fact remains that it *is* quite clearly also a money-grab from the non-pirating userbase, as no-one forced Adobe to convert to a subscription-based model.

No, I don't believe that it's costing them all those extra squillions to run things on their servers- which I doubt most existing users would have chosen to go for if they'd had the choice to stay with the old design anyway- especially as the software continues to work for a limited time without an Internet connection. Had they wanted to keep the old licensing model, I'm sure the price would have covered the cost of running the servers.

In short, yes, of course it was about piracy, but it's also quite blatantly about converting existing perpetual-license users into a continuously milkable revenue stream, just as MS are trying to do- albeit in a less forceful manner- with Office 360.

The "users" referred to are by implication users of Adobe's software, i.e. the people who chose to and are still using it. Adobe wish to control who uses it and how they use it.

You're putting words in my mouth, as I didn't say anywhere that they shouldn't.

Again, you're putting words in my mouth- I didn't claim that it did. But the assumptions you made and read into my comment just because I criticised Adobe, and the way you responded to them say a lot.

What I did do is something that I- and anyone else- is something I'm perfectly entitled to. I criticised Adobe and their business model. Time and time again, when a company, product or service is criticised on Slashdot, someone else answers with a would-be riposte essentially boiling down to "you don't have to buy it, so you have no right to criticise it".

Time and time again I've pointed out that it doesn't work like that. Adobe and friends have the freedom to run their business how they like (within reason). Others have the freedom to criticise their behaviour or anything they don't like about it, even if they're not being forced at gunpoint to use it.

I bet you've never criticised a car model (because you don't *have* to buy it), a company's uncompetitive prices (because you don't *have* to buy there) or the way a business in general is run (because... well, you get the picture). In fact, I bet you're never said a word against *anything* you had the choice to reject (including advising those who might be making the same choice). Right?

It's funny how so many of those who rush to defend the freedom of companies to run themselves how they like in a free market seem to forget that freedom cuts (or rather, should cut) both ways.

No, that was only the rationale used to justify it to Photoshop users. The *reason* for it in many cases- such as this one- is quite obviously to increase software companies' control over users, and to get them used to a subscription model that provides those companies with a continuous income stream, rather than having the hassle of creating upgraded versions of software (gratuitous or otherwise (*)) and then having to convince users to pay for that upgrade when they might not feel the need for it.

That's not to say that cloud computing (i.e. distributed computing and distributed storage) is a bad idea in itself; of course, it has many theoretical benefits. But the concept has been co-opted and distorted by marketing, who have reduced the meaning of "cloud" to little more than a buzzword that applies to anything with online connectivity, even if that's not designed in a cloud-like way. And they've used that to make a method of control a selling point- or at least to try to sweeten the pill Photoshop users are being forced to swallow (**).

Really, what major cloud-like benefit does the latest Photoshop offer users? Does it let them harness the enormous power of a distributed computer network to massively speed up processing times on slow operations (vs. doing it on their own computer) in short bursts?

(*) Canonical example, Microsoft Word, which reached what most people needed several versions ago, but had to force upgrades to keep it selling, so kept adding new features, which also force other users who want to interoperate with those using the latest versions to *also* upgrade.
(**) Along the lines of (*) above, while some may argue that "you don't *have* to upgrade", those in industry who wish to interoperate with others and keep up with latest developments probably *will* need to upgrade eventually

That's nice- but it's not what was being asked.

The question is, was Blu-Ray ever really *popular* (i.e. popular in the mass-market sense) as Sony claimed? And the answer has to be... certainly not to anything like the extent that DVD was, and arguably far less than might have been expected when it was launched.

You must have got a very good price on it then, because even today the typical price of the cheapest Blu-Ray writers still hovers around the £60 mark and they've been stuck there for a long time now. In fact, that's the problem, prices gradually fell for a while... then they didn't.

The media is very affordable now- you can actually get packs of 10 discs for the equivalent of 27p each- but while £60 for a drive isn't much if you *really* want one, it's still too expensive to be a "no brainer" replacement for a DVD writer (*) for customers who might go for it if it was only a few quid extra- in much the way that DVD writers did when they got to be only a few quid more than a CD writer. Even a £40 premium on a computer (**) is a big increase on a low-end model if the person really isn't *that* bothered about Blu-Ray anyway.

Personally, I could easily afford to go out and buy a £60 Blu-Ray drive, but I'm not really into films, 25GB really *isn't* that big for data storage or backup any more (it's piggy in the middle between the stuff I can store on DVD-R and stuff that needs HDD capacities) and I don't even burn many DVDs these days. Why bother?

(*) eBuyer are selling an LG *writer* for under £12!
(**) I suspect most of these people would only be upgrading their drive as part of a new computer, probably a laptop. I'm assuming that £40 would be the bulk wholesale price differential- ironically, since that's still too expensive to include a BD writer in the cheapest laptops, I suspect manufacturers would probably market it as a "premium" feature and increase the price *more* (to make a profit-increasing virtue out of a drawback).

No, the banks don't have to cover the cost of fraudulent credit card transactions (although I bet they love basking in the warm glow of the widespread misconception that they do). It's the retailers who get screwed when that happens, both in the US (I assume that reference to Newegg means it's American) and in the UK.

As I posted in this comment, the banks don't give a **** because they don't have to; they're not the ones paying for it. Fraud report? Yank the money back from the retailer (even if they've performed reasonable diligence (*))

Even though chip and pin is very common in the UK (I can't remember the last time I used a swipe-and-signature terminal), credit card fraud still exists and it's the retailer that gets screwed.

(*) In fact, as far as I'm aware, retailers- in the US, at least- are suposedly *prohibited* from checking ID, which makes this even worse

(Still don't know if you're the same guy/girl/whatever that posted the original comment, it's hard to have a conversation with an AC...)

The whole point of an analogue-modelling digital synth like that is that it's designed to replicate the sound of an analogue synth by mimicking its operation! If people want to buy digital synths that imitate classic analogue models (without their unreliability!), I'd say that proves that most buyers think there's a clear difference in sound between analogue and "classic" digital (FM/wavetable) synths that the latter can't entirely bridge. And vice versa, but that wasn't the point.

The original complaint was that analogue synths were allegedly preferred purely because they were "analogue" and their "warmth" was spurious romanticism. Well, "warmth" and preference for sounds is in the eye of the beholder, but it's pretty obvious that the two types sound different!

Whether that's true or not, it says bugger all about the quality of the synths they made and/or whether analogue was better than digital, which is what was being discussed.

When I was at university (just over ten years ago) I used to do quite a lot of my writing with a cheap cartridge-based fountain pen I got out of Woolworths for something like £1 or £2. I can't remember why I got into the habit, I just found them nicer to write with than a ballpoint (biro). (Nothing to do with snobbery or credibility when the pen itself was clear luminous yellow plastic!)

I don't use them much nowadays, but that's probably because I don't do remotely as much handwriting full stop, mainly just short notes, and it's easier to just to grab a ballpoint. I have a lot of respect for the ballpoint, as it's a good example of the benefits of mass production, and very convenient, but I do agree with the "resistance" bit above... well, maybe it's not so much "resistance" unless you're using one of the fine-lined ballpoints, so much as the cartridge/fountain pen just felt more fluid and pleasant for extended use.

(I'm assuming you're the same AC that posted the original comment above, so see my answer to that also).

Nice strawman you're constructing there. While I've heard many musicians extolling the virtues of how analogue synths *sound*, I can't recall any of them *ever* having claimed that the reliability issues that some vintage models undoubtedly suffer from were A Good Thing, as opposed to something that had to be tolerated and lived with if you enjoyed those synths and the sound they produced.

The only person I can imagine claiming that this is a virtue (I've never actually heard this argument made) might be the sort of hipster who buys old equipment for its retro-cachet and overstates its flaws as a virtue as a reaction against more modern technology (*() and doesn't actually produce anything of note with it.

(*) A la Lomography a few years back, people buying overmarketed low-quality point-and-shooters at a premium price and taking photos with intentionally wonky "analogue" colours and contrast. I assume that this *must* be passe now, as the underground cachet of such photographs was probably blown to bits when Instagram took that whole aesthetic mass-market (ironically via entirely digital means on the ultimate manifestation of digital technology, smartphones on the Internet). And even Instagram must surely have peaked by now? - something which I assume is passe since Instagram took that whole "crappy old photo" aesthetic mass-market, ironically via all-digital-means

Do you actually like synths, or are you just using this as an excuse for an anti-analogue rant? Yes, I agree that much analogue festishism is just as tedious, smug and wrongheaded as the early "digital is always better" hype it was reacting against, but anyone who actually likes synth music could tell you that analogue and digital synths sounded different, at least until "analogue-modelling" ones came along (*).

That's not to say that digital synths don't have their advantages- that's why they were very popular when the first came out in the mid-80s until the early-90s. They can generate sounds that analogue synths couldn't, and have a very "clean" feel.

Analogue synths made a comeback when it turned out that digital ones (or at least the first generation) couldn't entirely replicate the sound and fluidity of analogue ones either, and that polished-bordering-on-clinical late-80s production (all crystalline digital synths, fake piano and digital recording) started to go out of fashion.

(*) The whole point there being that people *did* want the sound and fluidity of analogue synths that the early digital synths couldn't provide- so they intentionally mimicked the way analogue synths worked, with increasing degrees of success. Fact remains that they were trying to mimic analogue because it *did* sound different to (e.g.) FM and "ROMpler" digital synths.