I read the implied criticism as being that he'd have to subscribe to yet another service to get whatever content was exclusive to that one (as already happens with many video streaming services).

I didn't get the impression from his tone that he was actually moaning about being forced (as in, absolutely no choice in the matter) to buy Apple's service.

Even if Apple's streaming was just a poxy generic service with no exclusives, though, he'd still have the right to slag it off on that basis! :-)

Yes, I did. That sounds like what the author was getting at.

Yes, and part of the mechanism that determines this involves the free exchange of information and opinion on a given product. Whether or not people own it or not.

That was the point. What did you *still* not understand after having it explained three times?

As I *already* explained, it's an illogical and defensive extrapolation; why would someone having the right to freely sell something imply that someone else didn't have the right to share their opinion on it, regardless of whether they own or intend owning it?!

Yet people- yourself included- seem to act as if this is somehow an attack on the "free" market. It isn't; quite the opposite, as I said, the free market requires freedom of information to operate efficiently.

Go and reread what I said; you had it explained to you and you still made the same stupid mistake of assuming that "free market -> no freedom of speech to criticise" (which is what it boils down to). I'm not rehashing what I said a fourth time.

Adding "PERIOD" in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS doesn't make your argument any stronger.

Don't get the impression that anyone was denying this; rather they were criticising it. *You* were the one who jumped to this conclusion, presumably because you assume that (valid) criticism of a product is an attack on the free market- even though it's quite the opposite- and defensively start making assumptions about what people were actually saying.

That doesn't negate anyone's right to criticise the product. But we're going round in circles here.

Nobody claimed that they were, though if Apple have exclusives through their service, people still may miss out if they're not using it.

That aside, your implication that any criticism of the service is invalid because people aren't being forced to buy it is the same argumentative fallacy that crops up here over and over again.

I just used to think about doing that, I never actually did it. I guess you could say I did it on imaginary to imaginary tape. ;-P

Real to imaginary tape was quite easy too (but with little benefit), but I never figured out how to do it the other way around.

NSFW, 'nuff said. (^_^)

I live in Britain and I've never heard 500g called a "metric pound" nor just "pound". Probably because the imperial pound (454g) is still in quite common use and different enough that it'd be an issue. (*)

OTOH, the term "metric tonne" is quite common and only slightly different from the imperial (long) ton. Which, of course, isn't the same as the American (i.e. "short") ton that *does* vary quite a bit from the other two. That brings me on to something else... the traditional units that Americans use aren't even the same worldwide (e.g. the American pint is around 20% smaller than the UK one, fluid ounces are also different), i.e. the Americans' so-called "English" units aren't the same as the imperial ones used in England- or the rest of the UK- any more!

FWIW, pigs will fly before the Americans go decimal. Not my problem for the most part- I'm not planning on living there- but I do find it ironic that the Americans chose a sensibly decimal currency instead of adopting the "pounds shillings and pence" system (used in Britain before 1971) like they did with weights.

Though decimalisation only happened around five years before I was born, growing up in the 1980s, any remnants of that system I encountered (and hearing about it from my parents) seemed bizarre, confusing and anachronistic even then, like something from another age more like 100 years previous.

Admittedly, when you're 8 years old, anything even a few years before your time seems old, but while I understand most of the "LSD" money now, it still seems like something from another era, alien to me.

Anyway... I'm surprised that Americans didn't reject that Euro-socialist godless commie decimal system for their money and adopt LSD. How about it? Twelve pennies in a shilling, twenty shillings to the pound (240 pennies to the pound), guineas (one pound and one shilling), and coins like florins (two shillings), 2/6 (two-and-six, i.e. two shillings and sixpence), tanner (half a shilling), blah blah blah....

It was called "LSD" because you had to be *on* LSD to understand it. ;-)

So... since you all love your bizarre, non-decimal "English but no longer used in England" measurements so much, I'm sure you'll love Pounds, Shillings and Pence. And farthings. And thrupenny bits. (^_^)

(*) Ironically, according to Wikipedia, they do use that term elsewhere in Europe.

Not really; I don't recall having heard about it at that time because I didn't have a PC then (*). IIRC, it's one of those games whose name popped up often enough over the years that I recognise its name as a famous computer game- if little else- and am surprised that the OP isn't.

(*) Owned and gamed on an Amiga until circa 1996, by which point that machine was no longer mainstream and I was out of touch. (Hadn't played Doom then, have still never played Quake). Bought a Playstation in late 1997 and sold it a year later after realising it wasn't fun (for me); though I had a few PS mags, I don't recall hearing about Fallout there, probably because it was never a PS game. Bought a PC in early 1998, but while I owned a few games for it over the next few years (all very cheap), I hardly played them and didn't follow the gaming scene at all.

Are you sure? The Wikipedia article claims that they sell:-

Looks like there's quite a lot of overlap with the geek demographic there.

We don't have Hot Topic where I live (sob!) but from what I've heard their business model essentially consists of appropriating "alternative" cultures and trends, commercialising them into a very consumerist form.

ThinkGeek's business model seems hardly any different- essentially using flattery and identity marketing ("smart geeks buy this stuff!") to push a very consumerist "lifestyle" view of what it is to be a geek. (I've commented on this previously in more depth).

Anyway, my point is that Hot Topic and ThinkGeek- far from being opposites- seem to be quite complementary. And that observation isn't intended to be flattering to either company...

Oddly, I also used to used to use a Midi of an entirely different type (*) to listen to music "back in the day" (cough). Always used to find it strange that MIDI had the same name as cheap all-in-one 80s hifi systems...

Get off my lawn et al.

(*) That's not actually mine- which I got rid of around a decade back- but it's the exact same model

Have to admit that's exactly the conclusion I came to when I did a double-take on "Isro's 1.5 [metric] tonne vehicle".

To put this in perspective, that's about the same weight as the current Ford Mondeo (AKA Ford Fusion in North America, apparently); i.e. a typical upper-midsize car by European standards, and lighter than the average American car(!) (*)

(The NASA Space Shuttle orbiter alone is (according to Wikipedia) 78 tonnes when empty.)

I might have dismissed that as a mistake, but the rest of the article seems to suggest that it isn't.

(*) I guessed that was almost certainly the case, and was correct- around 4000 lbs is 1.8 metric tonnes.

"Fury Road" isn't a remake of any of the existing Mad Max films.

Also, you seem to forget (or maybe didn't realise) that "The Road Warrior"- i.e. the film known as "Mad Max 2" outside North America!- wasn't the original either. Granted, the name change (which was apparently because the original "Mad Max" wasn't well known over there) obscures that, and to be fair, "Mad Max 2" *is* probably the closest to what people associate with the series.

If you watch the original "Mad Max", it's quite obviously a much lower budget (*) (and smaller-scale) exploitation film- around a tenth of the budget of Mad Max 2- and IIRC *was* more character based. For someone who had seen the sequel first, I suspect that it might almost come across as a prequel or set-up for its better known follow-up. From what I remember, the basic elements associated with the later films *are* in place, but don't come together until surprisingly late in the film.

Something like "The Road Warrior" *couldn't* have been done on the budget of the (actual) original. That said, the budget of "Fury Road"- at a supposed US$150m is still *way* higher than even the Hollywood-bloated "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" (supposedly US$12m in 1985, which would be around $27m today)!

(*) Something that Wikipedia confirms; the second film was apparently AU $4.5m, whereas the original was around $400,000!

Which is ironic, because even in the mid-90s (i.e. almost as soon as the web had become popular), people were already slapping crappy, pixelated pre-rendered GIF animations of all manner of spinning crap onto their "home pages"!

Please see this historical documentary of the phenomenon.

Shame I didn't have mod points- not just for the joke itself, but because- in a discussion thread that could otherwise have been mistaken for one on Fark or whatever- it says something that this is by far the most reminiscent of the traditional Slashdot audience and style.