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If you were a for-profit business, then you would open the store.

Boy, I can tell that you're not in business. Businesses that *stay* in business have these things called margins. If your margins are too low, then you go out of business.

I'm not saying that Sony is necessarily in that situation with electronic distribution, but I can tell you that simply assuming that every dollar offered for your product is a good one for your company is something that even a passing understanding of business should allow you to recognize as ludicrous. Sales don't keep you alive, profit does (to say nothing about destroying your profitable market by serving an unprofitable one).

(If you need an example of successfully *not* serving markets, think of all Apple's hardware businesses.)

Considering Sony has a significant web-presence already and they have been making billions of dollars in profits the last few years, I don't think setting-up online distrubtion would ruin their margins.

Tell me, where is The Matrix Online, or The Sims Online, etc

http://thematrixonline.station.sony.com/?

Still running.

Sony's old guard was scared that it was going to destroy this wonderful, venerable, 50-year old brand.

RootKit
RootKit

Exploding Batteries
Exploding Batteries

There ya go.

Sony's old guard was scared that it was going to destroy this wonderful, venerable, 50-year old brand.

RootKit
RootKit

Exploding Batteries
Exploding Batteries

There ya go.

Isolate the Hulu guys to providing US content only.

That's the whole thing, Hulu (and Google) doesn't own the content. They can only play it where they are licensed to.

Because Hulu is owned by NBC/Universal it may actually be easier for them to get international permission (at least for the NBC/U content).

ROOTKIT has its own site anyway: crackle.com
Not sure what they'd get out of a youtube partnership.

Anyway, anything having to do with distribution of content across national borders is a huge cluster-fuck thanks to decades of media cartel rule.
So it will be a royal pain for Youtube/Google to pry content from the MAFIAA's cold dead hands.

[flame-retardant-suit]Besides, outside the US/UK, how much good content is there?[/flame-retardant-suit]

Grab Fox Studios and maybe Lionsgate, get New Line Cinema and it's game over.

Fox already has TV, TV Movies and regular Movies on Hulu.
As does Lionsgate.
Plus plenty others.

Game over indeed.

You know what's really going to make the your head asplode?

Sony TVs come with a printed version of the GPL and LGPL!
(also the license statements for OpenSSL, FreeType2, Expat, Curl, Popt, and libjpeg)

...and, yes, they provide the link to the source code.

They're evil, but they're in compliance with the GPL.
They're evil, but they're in compliance with the GPL.
They're evil, but they're in compilance with the GPL.

*BOOM*

Mine too. Code (for products shipped) available here: http://www.sony.com/linux redirects to http://products.sel.sony.com/opensource/

Mine too. Code (for products shipped) available here: http://www.sony.com/linux redirects to http://products.sel.sony.com/opensource/

There's Infantry from Sony Online Entertainment. It's a free gateway game. Old school, top down, 2D arena game. Still has an okay population. The game's been around for about 10 years now.

There's also Subspace (originally created by the same guys that made Infantry), which is now abandonware and taken over by some elitists who created their own client (and don't share the source, but is the main client used nonetheless) called Continuum. Continuum is top down, 2D arena game kind of like asteroids, but against other ships and a whole lot more fun. Still has a very healthy population. Been around for about 12 years now.

And then there's Discretion, which is an open source version of the client. It got a lot of flak and crap from the guys who made Continuum, but it has survived and is maturing nicely. Also, since this client is OSS, it has huge potential to add in a ton of nifty features and such that the Continuum client will never have: OpenGL explosions, NEW weapons, etc.

here is a link to a Sony Bravia 32 inch TV on Amazon I don't know if it's a good TV, I don't know if it's a bad TV. It's a TV, chosen somewhat at random
The technical description is as follows:

16:9 HD 720p Resolution (1366 x 768 ) LCD Panel
HDMI Input
HD Component Input
PC Input
ATSC /NTSC tuner with QAM

If you expand the technical details, you'll find

Power
Power Requirements: AC 120V 60Hz
Power Consumption (in Standby): Less than 1W
AC Stay Off: Yes
Regulation and Standard Compliance:
Energy Star® Compliant: Yes
VESA® Hole Spacing Compatible: Yes
VESA® Hole Pitch: 200 x 200 mm

How much power is consumed during operation? I don't know.

The manual, however offers a clue

Power consumption in use: 155 W.

But I had to go beyond the product literature, beyond what amazon offered me to find this little figure-- which might be high, it might be low.

Multiply this research process by 20 or 30 models and a customer starts to question their "responsibility" to the environment-- which means that the aggregate effect of "environmentally responsible television buyers" becomes rather small.

Even a labeling requirement would be helpful.

Wow, that IS interesting !
Thanks for tha link.

http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/ext/ZEGO/ZEGO.shtml

Well, you can use a PS3 as a desktop, I do it myself, like I did the PS2 before it. But is this more of the kind of thing you're thinking about:

http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/ext/ZEGO/ZEGO.shtml

It's a rackmount server though.

So, basically this is an upgraded version of Station Exchange, except that it's active on all servers?

I am actually prohibited from using GPL software at work

Considering the proliferation of GPLed software in everything from Televisions to Routers and Switches I'd say your employer should just close up shop now because they will not be able to avoid the "risk" and still do business.

We're running a web-based service on a razor-thin margin

And thankfully there are a multitude of open source licensed packages on which you can base your business, however as an end user and not a software distributor there is no reason to avoid GPL licensed software. Stop believing the FUD as you are greatly limiting the pool of software at your disposal.

The aggregator company could also gain leverage by selling access to multiple games for one price.

Sort of like... SOE's Station Access?

... I forgot to add, in case anyone is wondering, yes, I have captured full discs in the field from our shooting F350 onto a white, base level Macbook.

When a client asks you, when you're hours away from home base on a simple shoot, to stay around for 3 more days and shoot a lot of extra material at the last minute and you realise you've only got enough PDs for about 2 full days of shooting....

I know "always come prepared" but we were shooting light on purpose, and you can't exactly run down to your local store and pick up fresh media like this.

It's not unique to Dell. My primary onlining deck for HDV source material is a Sony HVR-M10E and it also has a bit of a dodgy 4 pin firewire connector, but then this deck has a battery dock that mates with sony's Z1E style batteries, and it's pretty small, so it makes a great on-location capture deck.

After a while though, that port starts to feel a little loose, especially since it's at the bottom of the chassis at the back and thus stresses the connector/connection combo if you prop the front of the deck up on some tape boxes so you can look at the screen more easily.

I think it's just a weakness in the design of the connector, since the cage looks like it's folded around at the top and thus begins to open up like a flower over time.

No such problems on our F350 - it has a full-size 6 pin firewire port in case you need to online in the field with it, but there's more room to fit the bigger port.

Look at this camera comparison - all these cameras are firewire. That's a little old, so here are some newer ones :

Cannon XL H1S : IEEE 1394 (i.e., Firewire)

Sony XDCAM EX : Sony I.Link (i.e., IEEE 1394, i.e., Firewire)

I bet the (very Mac centric) video community will be pissed.

I know this comment will probably get buried but I am one of the people who CAN NOT wait for MMORPGs to hit the console. I will resub EQ (or any other MMO) as soon as it will work on my PS3.

Your wait was not needed.

http://everquestonlineadventures.station.sony.com/ It's a PS2 game but works just fine on the PS3. You did do the smart thing and buy a PS3 with PS2 backwards compatibility. If you didn't, PS2's are cheap, and that'll run on a slim PS2.

It's available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Everquest-Online-Adventures-Frontiers-Playstation-2/dp/B0000CDZB9

There's also Final Fantasy XI: http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/

You have to create a PS2 partition on your PS3 hard drive for that one, and it won't work on a slim PS2 without a hard drive.

This is curious..

Let us not forget that Everquest II was the only MMORPG to offer a slash pizza command a few years ago that opened up a browser window for you to place an online Pizza Hut order.

Research (at the time) must have indicated that there was a market for such a command.

it is probably due to them being too engrossed by the game to go buy junk food.

If only there was some way to solve that problem... I'm sure that somebody must be working on this somewhere.

guess i'll need to wait until I can call their hotline or something. (1-888-526-6219 if you're that interested...)

Well, Planetside (an MMOFPS) has done this since the beginning. When you capture a base or a tower it stays captured and becomes a spawn point for your side. Then because of the lattice structure between bases, it opens up new bases that are vulnerable to attack. The lattice structure is there to cause a front line to the battles.

I'm at the SOE Fan Faire 2008 right now.
For what it's worth, at the keynote speech it was claimed that this summer's "Living Legacy" promotion increased the number of paying subscribers for EverQuest and EverQuest 2 by 20%. That's not bad at all, particularly for EverQuest which is close to 10 years old.

A lot of those color spaces are for video and film post production applications.

There are plenty of devices that output that data type, including HDMI 1.3 and some DVI display cards, but I expect that most of the output devices that people will want to use are going to want to use dual link SDI connectors. Knowing the industry, that is probably an expensive add on option.

Here is the Sony BVM L230,type of device it is competing against

Hmm... for those not in the know, what are the tricks for a $230 PS3?

Most people should be able to get it for $280 using the following. I got an extra $50 knocked off thanks to my Amazon HDDVD credit.

1) Sign up for a Sony credit card using this URL: www.sony.com/sonycard/ps3 If approved you'll get a $100 credit off your first purchase of $300 or more (can take a few weeks for the credit to show up though).
2) Once you have the credit card, head over to Amazon and do the Gold Box trick. I actually did this a few days before I got my card and just made sure not to visit Amazon in the meantime. Once I had the card in hand, I activated it, then went to Amazon. I logged in, clicked the gold box, and the 40GB PS3 was sitting there waiting for me under the Quick Picks section.

Multi-User Dungeon - MUD1 Version 1E

* NASA's Super Happy MUD *
* It's Edutainment! *

Origin of version: Sat Sep 15 10:00:50 2007

Welcome! By what name shall I call you?

>> Buzz

Hello, Buzz!

Cape Canaveral Launch Pad.
You stand in your Converse (tm) Brand space suit on the Launch Pad, before you is a towering shuttle with the huge Coca-Cola (tm) logo on the side of it. A crowd watches in anticipation and enjoys the T-Mobile (tm) cameras broadcasting the cabin and crew live to their cell phones.
[Exits: shuttle, bathroom]

>> bathroom

Bathroom Adjacent to Launch Pad.
You rush into the bathroom and rip off your helmet to deposit your stomach contents in the toilet. Luckily you have Rolaids (tm) antacid in your Converse (tm) Brand space suit. You pop a few pills into your mouth ... ahh much better, Rolaids spells relief.
[Exits: door]

>> door

Cape Canaveral Launch Pad.
You stumble out of the restroom and back on to the launch pad. Oh no, a congressman spots you! "Hey, why if it isn't Buzz!" he says as he moves in for a photo op!
[A Congressman] is at [quite a few]
Your pierce *** MASSACRES *** A Congressman!
A Congressman's pound scratches you.
Your pierce *** MASSACRES *** A Congressman!
Your pierce DISEMBOWELS A Congressman!
[A Congressman] is at [big nasty]
You stop using A diamond-tipped dagger.
You wield a legendary greatsword.
A Congressman sees your attempt to trip him in time to avoid your foot.
[A Congressman] is at [big nasty]

Your fiery slash *** DEMOLISHES *** A Congressman!
[A Congressman] is at [pretty hurt]
A Congressman sees your attempt to trip him in time to avoid your foot.
Your flaming slash *** DEVASTATES *** A Congressman!
[A Congressman] is at [pretty hurt]
Your burning slash *** OBLITERATES *** A Congressman!
You trip A Congressman, sending him sprawling to the ground!

Your flaming slash *** OBLITERATES *** A Congressman!
A Congressman is mortally wounded, and will die soon if not aided.
[A Congressman] is at [dying]

You trip A Congressman, knocking him unconscious. A Congressman is mortally wounded, and will die soon if not aided.
[A Congressman] is at [dying]

You trip A Congressman, knocking him unconscious.
A Comgressman is mortally wounded, and will die soon if not aided.
Your burning slash *** DEMOLISHES *** A Congressman!
The Congressman's body becomes limp and the politician drops to the ground DEAD!!

You receive 212000 experience out of 280012 total. [neutral]
[Exits: shuttle, bathroom]

>> shuttle

You stagger into the elevator paid for by Playboy Magazine and begin your assent to the cabin. The slow motion walking thingy starts to happen as you cross the bridge ... Before you enter the cabin, you hug the Doritos (tm) "Who Wants to Meet an Astronaut" Sweepstakes winner and step inside. You turn on your Sony Brand headset that sounds like a dream and prepare for blastoff ...

That's all we have so far. I think you can see just how exciting this game is goi

What's interesting about Sony and their TV's is that they tend to run Linux. They're a very weird company to say the least.

Seriously,

I work in the consumer end of IT and I have installed MANY times from my basic Windows XP CD. For the majority of OEMs, they have all of the drivers on a disk or have them on their website.

Seriously. Are /.ers so Linux-centric that they don't know what a reinstall of Windows is like anymore?

Vista isn't much different. Yes it takes a couple of hours but you really think that Sony wouldn't provide Vista drivers for it's computers on the internet?

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/select-system.pl?DIRECTOR=DRIVER&PRODTYPE=24

Check your google-foo at the door. Sony's specs are still online for this machine (click on "Marketing Specifications").

Either way, it's still thicker and heavier for a smaller, lower-res screen, slower machine than the Apple, especially if you include the extended battery, which is necessary to make the Vaio run as long as the Apple (3.0-6.0 hours with the double-capacity battery for the Vaio, which takes the machine weight up to 3.1lbs and increases the height of it.

Oh... you meant an Apple laptop. Well, Apple is late.

Sony just announced a $200 PC BD-ROM.

Of course, you'll need an HDMI-enabled video card and monitor to fully utilize it. And then that also doesn't address the myriad HD audio problems that PC playback presents--no support for some of the newer codecs, or arbitrary downsampling of the audio. As much as I would like to be able to put together an HD HTPC, things aren't nearly ready enough for it yet.

does it run XP?

Tanarus is a great tank game that Sony recently opened up as a freebie:

Tanarus Home Page

http://www.station.sony.com/casualProduct.vm?Id=039

I've been playing this game since before Sony bought it, stuck it up as Pay-to-Play, let it die, then made it free again. Now it's gaining popularity again and I think it's worth checking out. Think of it as a massive, multiplayer SMASH TV, with different game types like Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, Mechanized Skirmish, Warzone, and even an RPG.

Check this site out:
http://www.sonycard.sony.com/sonygateway/gateway.aspx?offerlink=iklipze

Most likely Sonys new "Bravia Internet Video Link". Seems like it's only for streaming for now... and perhaps Sony will realise that people wants a hdd to save to as well. But judging from past behaviour from Sony it might really take some time since customer lock-in has been pretty high on the list of priorities.

http://news.sel.sony.com/en/press_room/consumer/television/flat_panel_displays/lcd/release/27475.html http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/gallery-and-hands-on-sony-bravia-internet-video-link-box-226824.php

Some factors affect the uptake of Vista:
1. It needs a lot more RAM. Or atleast people seem to think so.
2. People are waiting for it to "settle down" - probably until Service Pack 1 is released.
3. There is a lot of confusion about different Vista versions.

There is also the issue of some drivers not being available. But things will settle down soon enough. One year is not that long of a timeframe to wean marketshare away from one operating system monopoly to another.

Sadly true. I attended Purdue myself and (years before the RIAA started mailing out these letters) knew several people who had received notices that they must cease and desist or face the possibility of not graduating. To support this effort, certain parties would periodically identify Purdue IP addresses on common sharing grounds (i.e., Kazaa) and notify the school. To their credit, the official use policy of on-campus internet included a "I will not pirate" paragraph, and the administration only seemed to target the excessive bandwidth users.

God forbid someone make a profit. I suppose Google should just survive off of funds from the People's Republic of America while promoting peace and love along with open source software.
If you'd crane your head out of the bong smoke once in a while, you might actually consider a world in which people have a right to invest and produce capitol. Furthermore, people with ideas like yours kill open source- "Oh hey Google supports open source that means they have to adhere to these strict anarcho-communist guidelines or I call them evil", why don't you call out someone who deserves it for once?

Well ... FinalFantasy XI was released on the PS2, and then ported to the XBox360.

The people who brought you Crackdown are working on a MMORPG for the XBox 360.

Sony also announced a whole bunch as being "in development", ("Endless Saga" from Webzen, an untitled MMORPG from Square Enix (rumored to be a new version of FFXI), a DC Comics based MMORPG (hopefully targeting PCs and PS3s), "The World" (from Namco/Bandai based on .Hack)). The only MMORPG that we've seen anything about though has been "The Agency". Which looks like an MMORPG, in a spy world.

I wonder where I've heard this here "We'll ship it when it's finished" rhetoric before?

Oh, from Artifact Entertainment, who shipped a lame duck called Horizons when their last surviving developer left for a higher paying job in the fast food industry. The company promptly burned down, fell over and sank into the swamp before being bought out by... well, lets be generous and say they were bought by someone else.

We heard it again from Sigil Games shortly before they kicked a tech demo of Vanguard to the curb with a resounding plop. When it somehow failed to be a resounding commercial success the company... burned down, fell over and sank into the swamp before being bought out by Sony.

"We will ship when it's ready" is an industry code phrase for "I don't know if we can make this work or not, but we're going to keep shoveling money into it until we either get something good or go broke. You'll find out which one comes first when we do."

SW:G

'nuff said.

I think your wattmeter is broken, seriously and not kidding. You won't find a single CRT-based appliance with a screen larger than 19" consuming noticeably less than 90-100 Watts. No, no and no, sorry.

Compare this spec sheet picked at random from the Sony US website. Stated consumption of 160W in operation for a run-of-the-mill 36" CRT model. Feel free to pull up some more specs from other manufacturers to prove me wrong, but the 27" model of the same series still uses 130W in operation. And that's a marketing sheet from Sony, so I don't think they're exaggerating their energy usage.

If your 27" CRT-TV really uses less than 50W, make sure your space-time-continuum is in working condition, because it seems out of tune with the rest of the world's.

What's much more interesting than that is the fact that most Sony LCD TV sets actually use MORE power than their comparable sized CRT counterparts. You wouldn't believe that, but Sony tells me that a high-end 32" model uses 155W in operation, a 40" model even 200W. That's a bit shocking, so I've to thank you for your trollish post, because I learned something new that way. Feel free to scoot around their or another manufacturer's website to find some more real world numbers.

50W for a larger CRT is still preposterous, sorry.

Now for the PSU stand-by consumption: I'll post a photo of my old AMD 1800+ system with the wattmeter aside, if you really want to. It has a standard Enermax PSU and draws 35W with all LED blinkenlights except for ones from the NIC dark. Maybe it's damaged, but it clearly gives off warmth and a barely audible hum.

And get some manners dude, don't try to be that rude to real people within striking distance of your nose. Your offhanded remarks were uncalled-for and you know that.

Sony Fan Faire

https://store.station.sony.com/digitalDistribution /base/detail.jsp?SKU=EQMAC-DD-SW0605-EQMACD

There you go. Sony DOES mane Evercrack for OSX.

Other advantages of PC games (I've got karma to burn, so why not jump in?)

1. A greater sense of agency. Because of a lack of save file size limitations and oodles of ram, players can make tons of changes to the world in PC games.

2. Greater variety of PC games. As anyone can make pc games, you get titles from pirate themed MMOs to massive to galaxy spanning adventures to the Switzerland-sponsored Catch the Sperm

3. PC screens just look better

Cons:

1. Quality assurance. PC companies are getting better about this, but I've never played a PC game I couldn't crash.

Other advantages of console games:

1. Brain-dead simple... which is usually what I am by friday after work. No installation, no patches, no driver conflicts. It all just works with never an issue. I can't tell you how many PC users who have come to me trying to figure out how to shut down their consoles without damaging Windows.

2. Local Multiplayer. Want a 4 player game of Gears of War? Plug in 4 controllers.

3. Twitch games. Ikaruga would not work on a pc.

4. TV screens are just bigger.

cons:

1. Where did that Xbox 360 warranty card go again?

Wrong again

What is wrong with YOU? Idiot.

On their support site: esupport.sony.com http://esupport.sony.com/ : I'm sure it is just a coincidence that the 'Home Entertainment' and 'Television' links both return a '404 - Page not found', while the other links work >:-}