Weekend tech reading: TechSpot's PC Buying Guide, always up to date!

Status
Not open for further replies.

Matthew DeCarlo

Posts: 5,271   +104

Our desktop buying guide has undergone yet another update, and with your help, it has greatly improved from the first day of publishing. Since December, all of the systems have reduced in price -- mostly thanks to the launch of new products, such as Intel's Core i3-530 and AMD's Radeon 5670. We've reached somewhat of a dry patch as far as major product launches go, but Fermi and more is just around the corner. Feel free to share your thoughts on the current guide here.

MPAA brags about how awesome the movie business is; right after it claims file sharing is destroying the industry You gotta love the MPAA for the sheer Hollywood brashness of two recent press releases, that the Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro decided to compare and call the MPAA on its blatant dishonesty. The first press release, from back in December, was all about how the internet and file trading were killing the industry... Techdirt

Microsoft and Sony's strategy in the motion controller business It is no great surprise that, despite Microsoft's slowly building focus on Natal, Sony is likely to beat it to market with its PlayStation Move motion controller. The noise and heat generated by the rumbling PR campaigns behind both technologies occasionally mask the reality... Eurogamer

Google to shut China search engine Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now "99.9 per cent" certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse, according to a person familiar with the company's thinking. Financial Times

Apple's spat with Google is getting personal It looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Three years ago, Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, jogged onto a San Francisco stage to shake hands with Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, to help him unveil a transformational wonder gadget -- the iPhone -- before throngs of journalists and adoring fans at the annual MacWorld Expo. NY Times

5 Browsers and the modes of transportation they resemble Firefox: Fairly well-rounded, but nearly unusable because of all its stupid add-ons. CollegeHumor

Permalink to story.

 
Wow, some pretty great content this weekend.

I wonder why people don't like things like the MPAA...

Sony's 'Move' is a ridiculous looking 'magic wand' that any sane person would feel stupid even being near it and Microsoft's 'Project Natal' is something truly insane that may end up one of the most bizarre 'innovations' of all time.

As I said on the main article, Google should just flip China the bird and get out of there pronto, it's simply not worth their effort.

It's a shame to see Apple and Google turning into petty children but hopefully it won't effect either of the companies too badly, I feel like Apple is going to come off second best.

As for the browser, well, College Humor are always just hillarious and this is no exception, pretty true, although Firefox doesn't need to have those add-ons, people just put on a billion and then blame the browser.
 
"MPAA brags about how awesome the movie business is; right after it claims file sharing is destroying the industry"

Hate to say I told you so but..
 
That's a pretty slanted MPAA article. Now granted, I don't think the movie industry isn't being harmed to the extent that PC gaming is with the theft going on there, but let's take a look at some of the quotes in the article:

The author makes the claim that theft is "killing" the industry and then follows it up with a quote from the MPAA about the "relentless challenge of the theft of its creative content....creating an increasingly unbearable cost." I would hardly quantify that as "killing the industry."

Then he uses a quote that is the "VCR's are going to kill us" quote from damn near a quarter century ago.

Lastly, you can't just look at box office sale figures only and say everything is rosy. Unless you also look at the cost of making and promoting movies. Not every movie makes money - in fact, most don't. That's like all the morons saying "look at all the money EA made on such-and-such game. They're not hurting at all and entitles me to steal it."

At any rate, the author took some real liberties in putting together his material to make it look like the MPAA is Darth Vader for having the nerve of wanting to protect their products from theft.
 
I think the MPAA is going to clean house with the new 3D wave of movies.Until we all get 3D monitors, then it's back on.
 
Lol, look at how the ineternet explorer is compared to a horse @ "5 Browsers and the modes of transportation they resemble" in college Humor.

This is a summary or "re-look" on this weeks article! Wow, so I'm updated...
 
TomSEA said:
That's a pretty slanted MPAA article. Now granted, I don't think the movie industry isn't being harmed to the extent that PC gaming is with the theft going on there, but let's take a look at some of the quotes in the article:

The author makes the claim that theft is "killing" the industry and then follows it up with a quote from the MPAA about the "relentless challenge of the theft of its creative content....creating an increasingly unbearable cost." I would hardly quantify that as "killing the industry."

"The funny thing is, you wouldn't know that the movie business was doing so well from other MPAA announcements. Take, for instance, the December press release (PDF) in which MPAA chairman Dan Glickman suggested that unauthorized copies of movies were running the industry into the ground:

Yet our industry faces the relentless challenge of the theft of its creative content, a challenge extracting an increasingly unbearable cost."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/03/mpaa_box_office_bragging.html

The MPAA made the claim, not the author of the article.

Then he uses a quote that is the "VCR's are going to kill us" quote from damn near a quarter century ago.

"Of course, this is quite ironic, since the MPAA fought about as hard as possible against the very concept of a secondary market, with former MPAA boss Jack Valenti once declaring: "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."" http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100312/0039048529.shtml

This quote is about how the MPAA fears that any new technology. If the MPAA can't control it, it is evil. The VCR came out and the movie business still thrives. The VCR is all but dead now and the movie industry STILL thrives.

Lastly, you can't just look at box office sale figures only and say everything is rosy. Unless you also look at the cost of making and promoting movies. Not every movie makes money - in fact, most don't. That's like all the morons saying "look at all the money EA made on such-and-such game. They're not hurting at all and entitles me to steal it."

What was the movie MPAA excuse back in the 40s and 50s for movies not making money? TV? Radio?

At any rate, the author took some real liberties in putting together his material to make it look like the MPAA is Darth Vader for having the nerve of wanting to protect their products from theft.

Face it, the MPAA just shot themselves in the foot. If they want public sympathy, they shouldn't lie about the facts. Now which is worse, a thief that steals from a liar or a liar that lies to a thief?
 
TomSEA said:
That's a pretty slanted MPAA article. Now granted, I don't think the movie industry isn't being harmed to the extent that PC gaming is with the theft going on there, but let's take a look at some of the quotes in the article:

The author makes the claim that theft is "killing" the industry and then follows it up with a quote from the MPAA about the "relentless challenge of the theft of its creative content....creating an increasingly unbearable cost." I would hardly quantify that as "killing the industry."

Then he uses a quote that is the "VCR's are going to kill us" quote from damn near a quarter century ago.

Lastly, you can't just look at box office sale figures only and say everything is rosy. Unless you also look at the cost of making and promoting movies. Not every movie makes money - in fact, most don't. That's like all the morons saying "look at all the money EA made on such-and-such game. They're not hurting at all and entitles me to steal it."

At any rate, the author took some real liberties in putting together his material to make it look like the MPAA is Darth Vader for having the nerve of wanting to protect their products from theft.

Personally, I don't download movies because Redbox is basically on every corner and only costs $1. That being said, I rarely actually rent movies at all because if there is any movie I truly want to watch, I usually watch it in the theater.

Regardless of my personal choices, I still completely despise the MPAA. How much time, effort, and money have they wasted chasing an impossible dream of halting piracy? As the article points out, they claim that piracy is hurting their industry but then go on to have a record-breaking year. Go figure. And if they try to claim piracy is hurting the secondary market, they are most likely only looking at DVD sales. If they examined the entire secondary market including Netflix, Redbox, digital distribution methods (think PS3 or Xbox), etc. I'm sure their figures would be way off.
 
The movie industry is nowhere near as prone to piracy as say the music or games industry. Reason being that if you download a song or a game, you get the same product as if you had bought it (sometimes a better one if it's an Ubisoft game), but watching a camcorder recording is definitely not the same as going to the cinema (e.g. Avatar). Anyway watching a movie is more of a social thing and sometimes you're going for the experience rather than the actual film.

Churning out statements like this and jumping on the pirate-bashing bandwagon isn't going to make people buy more cinema tickets or DVDs.
 
Thanks for updating the PC buying guide and I hope you always update it regularly like this :)
lol @ the collegehumor article :D , looks like they don't like Firefox because add-ons = more usability not less...
 
Woot! thanks for the new buying guide. so useful.

@the MPAA thing, I have to laugh so hard. Their whole "Piracy is killing the movie industry" ploy just got shot by selves. Its great.
 
I wonder how good and how much the new fermi card from nvidia are going to be... =) And for the motion controller... it wont be the revolutionary... it gonna be a phase and then you probably wont hear much of it
 
+100 Respect for Google.
China's government thinks there the big boss of the world, guess what.
I really wish China became a democracy, then a great China would appear.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back