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It looks like even though Tiger has only been out a few hours, Apple is well on its way to building three more "community economies".

I find it so interesting that the iPod (in all its flavors) and Mac mini have oodles of accessories for each.

With Spotlight, Dashboard, and Automator all generating the software equvalent of these accessories, it seems appropriate to explore the "community economies" Apple is creating.

Perhaps there is a better phrase than "community economies" to describe the markets that emerge from supporting a specific product as well as the communities that for from them (take for instance, iPod community websites). Whatever they may be called, it is interesting how Apple seems more capable than other manufacturers, even in other spaces, to develop these "community economies".

But why is this becoming common for Apple products? Apple seems second only to automobile makers in creating accessory markets and communities of owners & supporters. The same doesn't exist for GAP or Sony or even Microsoft, though an argument can be made that the latter has a huge community of PC software vendors.

But more than the vendors, it is the concept of little sub-economies and users so specific to a particular product that is very interesting to me.

http://stationexchange.station.sony.com/

Actually, the first example comparing "The Old Way" and "The New Way" on the Station Exchange website specifically deals with character exchange and preventing people from being ripped off by people who take the money then change the password on the sold account before the buyer can log in.

The makers of Second Life have taken a very unique approach to player rights with in the game.

In Second life, the content player create, is owned by the player and not the company .This is totally against the grain of most online games where the company owns it all.

Additionally, they have started tying in real currency to the in game currency. I know this not unique, as Project Entropia does the same thing.

I personally hope this is the way games will go--giving ownership of virtual property to the players and allowing them to use it, sell it, convert for real $$$. I find these environments more enjoyable and rewarding that environments like Everquest, where Sony pretty much owns you.

Maybe not actual advertising, but pretty damn close:

http://everquest2.station.sony.com/pizza/

To which Blizzard responded on 1 April:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/panda ren-xpress.html

The sad part is that this has allready happened some time ago with pizza hut and everquest two in SOE's neverending quest to control all MMO players in the Universe. -link- http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/?t=archives&date= 2005-02-21 and http://everquest2.station.sony.com/pizza/ It's just sad.

Against an american company..

See this snippit from http://www.sony.com/:

© 2005 Sony Corporation of America

Notice the 'of America' part at the end.

We need a national ID system that people who choose to take part of can force all credit card transactaions other sensitive transactions to require. The ID system should be optin for each citizen, but required for 100% by all information holders. Also it should be based on a PKCS#11 tokens, and allow people to select the token that they like. So the ultra paranoid (me) can use a biometericlly locked token The only reason thiefs are intrested in our personal data is that it allows them to become us. Without that their is no intrest and our privacy can return. Forcing the banks to support a common pki will not be hard, no pki no fdic insurance. That will get all the finnacals on board. And where they go everyone will follow. These people that think we dont need a national identy system are retarted, they dont see that we already have one with all the flaws, but none of the protectons a good one will give us. A national ID system could top ID theft, put a huge clamp down on spam, and reduce the value of our personal information thus increasing real privacy levels.

Planet Side

This supports most of what you want to do.

you cant be serious in considering that Java is a reputable alternative to writing robust recent good quality 3D openGL apps can you?

Oh, get over it. People said the same thing about C++ several years ago. Back then, no one would have believed that in a few years games like Konami's Metal Gear Solid would be using scripting languages for a lot of their gameplay. Now games are a mixture of several languages - from assembly on up to scripting.

The first commercial game to use Java was Tom Clancy's Politika, and that came out in 1997!

Some commercial games that use Java include:

• Star Wars Galaxies
• Law and Order
• IL-2 Sturmovik
• Tribal Trouble

the benchmarks on this site were for all 800x600? huh? that is so dated. no one writes 3D apps/games using 800x600..and Quake 2?? come on now isnt that a bit outdated?

That's the point. The whole argument is outdated. The language has been capable for years.

Care for a pizza with your shiny and new convergent realities? ;)

Damn, I should have read the press release (emphasis mine):

The new Network Walkman models easily play back both MP3 and ATRAC3®/3plus(TM) music files, as well as support WMA and WAV formats. They are compatible with Sony's Connect(TM) online music store and include SonicStage® software to import, manage and transfer music collections.

Oh well, never mind Sony. Better luck next time.

They already are, and they run Linux.

EQ2 is almost entirely bottlenecked by the CPU of the machine. This has been proven by shader dumps, performance comparisons between card and CPUs and the fact that if you watch your GPU temp will remain idle when playing EQ2 but max out on Doom3 for example. SOE can't code a game for shit, and the fact they have the NVidia logo plastered on everything including the splash screen yet at least 1,235 posts worth of people including me get god awful frame rates at stuttering at any performance setting, proves this. Just a reminder, don't buy a new video card thinking it will help with EQ2's graphics performance. The fps difference between a Ti4200, ATI 9800, and GeForce 6800 Ultra is very small. Get a faster CPU, or better yet, spend your money on a game written by programmers who don't have "C++ for Dummies" sitting on their desk next to them as they write game engine code.

Whats taxing your system on Extreme Quality setting is all CPU related, your GFX card is still sitting idle mostly.

Awful Link of the Day

Everquest II Pizza (thanks OMGWTFBBQ) - Great news for those of you too lazy to actually use a telephone while playing Everquest II; you can now order a pizza from inside the game. Blue faggot needs food badly.

[Image of Everquest Guy Holding a Pizza Here]

I play an MMOFPS occasionally: Sony's PlanetSide. We have the same problem there with TK'ing, but it isn't tolerated for long. A grief system locks a player's weapons for a period of time if he is persistent (or just incompetent :-). Repeat offenders will get suspended or even banned if enough players complain and a review of the logs show a pattern of abusive behavior.

I have sat and watched someone spend half an hour stacking planes on an aircraft carrier deck so no one could take off (Coral sea,BF1942) before an admin joined and kicked him. What kind of mentality must a person have to waste half an hour doing something incredibly dull and repetitive (enter plane, taxi forwards, exit plane, wait for new plane to spawn, repeat) purely to piss off people he doesn't know who are trying to have fun?

Planetside offers the ability for a player to lay down high explosive mines that can be triggered remotely. Someone discovered they could lay down hundreds or even thousands of mines in one place and set them all off at one time. The ripple effect would trigger some problem in the code (stack overflow?) and crash the server. Even though it took a long time and a lot of effort to do it, it happened often enough that the code was changed to limit the number of boomers that a player could deploy at one time.

I don't understand it either. I attribute it to pre-teen and early-teen players that think it is funny to screw things up.

XBoxes outselling PS2s? Hmmm, it couldn't be because the PS2 installed base is so large that there aren't many more people to sell to.

XBox 2 before PS3? Clearly the PS3 is doomed, just like the Sega Dreamcast doomed the PS2.

The iPod is killing the Walkman? A clear sign of doom. Hey, I heard that the iPod is also killing 8-tracks! The end of the world is nigh!

And of course, the PSP's failure is the key. Sure, Sony has managed to exist all of these years without a portable system, yet suddenly it's absolutely critical and proof that they're doomed.

We'll see where we are in a year or two, but I'm confident that Sony will be alive and well. Sony will remain profitable. In a worst realistic case scenario Sony might fall to second place in total installed base, but even then it would be a close race.

I suppose the only way this could work is if you went in on a subscription with some friends who all play a different game. I would imagine that SONY has some kind of safeguard against this though. It almost certainly violates the EULA.

You are correct.

A quick google found me the KDF-70XBR950 (and Here) with GPL'd software. Also, Sony's GPL Downloads

Or EverCrack II.

Predictability: All NPC's should have loot and players should have a rough idea of what loot is available from which NPC and to some degree the lewt should be phat.

Ugh...

Sony has a similar idea with LocationFree TV. You get an LCD that can get TV both wirelessly when you're at home, as well as streamed over the Internet when you're not.

press release

SonyStyle store

Well, if not, then let me join in on the fun! Nothing like a good ole' DDoS

I have always disliked LCD screens, the image quality is just poor. I would never own an LCD TV or monitor. I have several laptops but I hook them up to 22" CRT's. Yeah, I know they are big, heavy, hot and suck juice but they please my eyes. (I use 22" Iiyama's and 21" Trinitron's CRT's only)

Watching video on an LCD is a horrible experience, just as watching mpeg video on digitial satellite or digital cable sucks.

I prefer analog anyday. Compressed video looks like crap and compressed video on LCD is unbearable. It looks like kids on acid drew it with crayons and graph paper.

I will always stick with CRT's.. NO LCD screen can compare to the performance level and image quality of a CRT..

Sony U750P has 802.11 b/g.

Sony U750P Specifications (pdf)

Well according to people actually playing the retail game, the servers are great. No lag at all.

Just found the link to Tome of Destiny on the EQ II site for those interested in the lore of the game.

Sony already has started releasing its XDCam Technology, a Blu-Ray disc Based video system. Look at their Broadcast/Pro site for details:
Search for XDCam on Sony's Site

--
NAB Rocked!

Everyone is too used to doing it the old way, though, so I doubt it would ever happen.

However, if your Jedi character you've been paying tons of money and time to level up gets blown to smithereens by some kid, you're gonna be pissed. Is it hard to get killed in this expansion? Is it just an accepted risk?

It seems that you know zero about how any MMORPG works*. SWG handles death like any other game of it's genre: it's a reversible inconvenience that at most sets your character back a few days worth of grinding. Most games are in fantasy worlds and explain it as magical resurrection, but SWG calls it "cloning".

Reviving as a clone apparently only drains 1-5% of your powers. Most likely, a JTL ship that gets destroyed will be recoverable in a similar way.

* Except possibly a totally nonviolent one, like Tale in the Desert.

but it's got /rude.

That alone is worth the $30.

I think Planetside is a different MMORPG from Sony.

SOE is notorious for launching games with content that is not finished or buggy (SWG Launch, EverQuest Expansion end game content, etc.). Blizzard on the other hand is known for at times delaying a game, and then delaying a game again just to work out all the minor bugs.

The question I would like to ask Slashdot readers is if it worth launching a game early, yet buggy to grab a certain market from competition? I know Themis group thinks a poor launch can cost a company millions of dollars http://www.themis-group.com/uploads/Cost%20of%20La unch.xls, but will the benefit of launching early exceed the costs?

Brian Whitener

http://www.gameguidesonline.com/

Let me just say I think this site is great! It's got a ton of neat stats and useful information, including listings of every item found in the game, and the first person to find it.

You can also chat with people in game, both via your guild channel, and also via tells (private messages).

I am a bit concerned about the update rate, as my character's information hasn't updated since the 24th, but I suspect this will be worked out. It's still in beta. I've seen a few other minor glitches too, such as spelling the name of the class one of my characters is (coercer, not coercor), but I'm not concerned about it.

Here's one of my beta characters:

http://eq2players-beta.station.sony.com/en/pplayer .vm?characterId=121640001

Sony is rolling out their Professional Disc line of professional video equipment. The central part of their XDCAM tapeless system is a 'Blu-ray' disc, storing approximately 24 Gigabytes of data. Professional cameras and VTRs supporting XDCAM can use multiple formats, including DVCAM [DV25] and MPEG-IMX.
Sony already had support for XDCam from AVID at the National Association of Broadcasters converntion in Las Vegas in April, one of the big names in Non-Linear (computer-based) video editing systems (NLEs).
Sony plans to make computer drives able to read and write XDCAM discs, allowing Non-Linear Editing without re-capturing.

Links:
XDCam FAQs (pdf)
MPEG-IMX White Paper [v2] (pdf)

Sony is rolling out their Professional Disc line of professional video equipment. The central part of their XDCAM tapeless system is a 'Blu-ray' disc, storing approximately 24 Gigabytes of data. Professional cameras and VTRs supporting XDCAM can use multiple formats, including DVCAM [DV25] and MPEG-IMX.
Sony already had support for XDCam from AVID at the National Association of Broadcasters converntion in Las Vegas in April, one of the big names in Non-Linear (computer-based) video editing systems (NLEs).
Sony plans to make computer drives able to read and write XDCAM discs, allowing Non-Linear Editing without re-capturing.

Links:
XDCam FAQs (pdf)
MPEG-IMX White Paper [v2] (pdf)

I'd rather spend $1000 on a Sony DCR-DVD301 (Google'd info) that records directly to Mini-DVD's.

If you're looking for EQ2 to be the same game as EQ you may be disappointed. The website FAQ answers a lot of these issues you seem to have in your post. An example: Reducing the number of starting cities follows the story. EQ2 is supposed to be a good/evil type game with two towns being the light/dark side of the world. There was a reason why they chose to do that. In the same vein, each town consists of many more zones than in the old EQ.

IMO, EQ2 is attempting to do some different and interesting things for the social aspect of MMORPG's. There are more dimensions (guilds, families, guild status points) to this than there were in previous games.

For more info, FAQ here.

they either sell the movies [they own the rights to LOTS and LOTS of movies, new and old and yet to be made.] or if you to rip the movie while you rent it or have a download in the right format, they will sell you the recorder...they make the bucks at one end or the other...that's the Sony solution to the whole copywrong battle.

burning appliance
or
Appliance that burns DVDs


--
want $10?

...and they still IMO are the best MMORPG development group in the world -- at least the Verant portion

Have you even played PlanetSide? Wow... talk about a good idea mercilessly bludgeoned by poor management and greed.

For starters, the game has been wrought by ridiculous balance issues, graphical engine problems, and unreliable servers since (and even before) its inception. Even the newest of computers grind to a halt or crash to desktop at times. Good luck trying to attract attention to these issues, though. At best, you'll get defensive and downright hostile responses from the devs--in the unlikely situation you hear anything at all.

Secondly, before I cancelled my account, gameplay was atrocious. Strategy basically amounted to "zerging" or getting as many people in your faction to attack at one base and then jump around to all of the completely identical bases nearby. There was no point in defending. It was ridiculous. SOE's solution? An incoherrent version of capture the flag. Wow... real original, guys. What's crazy is that they released this solution--if you can call it that--when there were some amazingly good ideas floating around from the community.

But the real kicker, the slap in the face that made me cancel my account: Not even three months after the game had been dubiously released, SOE, as any hardened EQer' would expect, released the Core Combat expansion pack. It's main features? Vehicles and gameplay elements that were promised on the box of the original game, of course. Oh and just incase you were thinking you could get away with not buying their thirty dollar patch, be prepared to get killed by the new unbalanced, uber weapons wielded by everyone who did.

Sorry to disagree, parent, but SOE sucks. Their market share isn't due to brilliance or innovation. It's from stringing customers along from expansion pack to expansion pack and letting the competitive and addicting nature of MMORPG communities do the rest for them.

-Grym

Several weeks ago there was a major shake-up in the Planetside universe - the story was that the Ancients (the alien race known as the Vanu) briefly returned, activating technology that displaced the landscape. This was, of course, just cover for the developers to delete one of the maps (which sucked and was the least-liked) and add three completely new maps to the game instead.

This laid the groundwork for the series of additions coming this month to owners of the Core Combat expansion pack - a whole new class of vehicles. Battle Frame Robotics (BFRs). Yes, giant robots - which will make for the coolest and most epic battles yet. (You can still kill and be killed by BFRs if you don't own the expansion pack, you just can't pilot them or visit the regions required to obtain them).

To coincide with the release of the upgrades, a brand-new bundle, Aftershock will be released at retail - which includes the base game and the previous expansion pack, Core Combat. Additionally - the price of the expansion pack has been dropped to $9.99 for existing subscribers.

(not a developer, just a rabid fan who's been playing this game since release over a year ago. Any and all additions to this marvelous game are welcome, but the community (and me!) wants SOE to forget this Everquest crap and start making Planetside 2 RIGHT NOW, dammit.)

Several weeks ago there was a major shake-up in the Planetside universe - the story was that the Ancients (the alien race known as the Vanu) briefly returned, activating technology that displaced the landscape. This was, of course, just cover for the developers to delete one of the maps (which sucked and was the least-liked) and add three completely new maps to the game instead.

This laid the groundwork for the series of additions coming this month to owners of the Core Combat expansion pack - a whole new class of vehicles. Battle Frame Robotics (BFRs). Yes, giant robots - which will make for the coolest and most epic battles yet. (You can still kill and be killed by BFRs if you don't own the expansion pack, you just can't pilot them or visit the regions required to obtain them).

To coincide with the release of the upgrades, a brand-new bundle, Aftershock will be released at retail - which includes the base game and the previous expansion pack, Core Combat. Additionally - the price of the expansion pack has been dropped to $9.99 for existing subscribers.

(not a developer, just a rabid fan who's been playing this game since release over a year ago. Any and all additions to this marvelous game are welcome, but the community (and me!) wants SOE to forget this Everquest crap and start making Planetside 2 RIGHT NOW, dammit.)

On the other hand, he set the stage for an empire that had a decent run, and was more viable than the republic had been at the end. Of course, I'm not into empires.

Is this really a historical parallel you want to explore?

Those who do not study their history are doomed to repeat it -- Santayana.

Sorry but you are not correct. The 19" Flat Screens do about 100-140W. My Sony G400 19" does about 140W and <1 W in standby.

Samsung Syncmaster 957 MB 19" CRT: 110 W
ViewSonic E90 19" CRT: 100 W
Benq Professional P992 19" CRT: 110W

What happened to their promise that all new portables would do MP3, and they'd have firmware updates for existing ones?

The article only mentions ATRAC, but from the translation it's hard to tell whether ATRAC is the main format or the only format. This article on the larger model mentions mp3 support.

Sony Puppy Fingerprint Identity Token

The HDR-FX1 Handycam® camcorder records and plays back high definition video with 1080 interlaced lines of resolution - the highest resolution (1440 pixels x 1080 lines) of any consumer camcorder available.

Squeezed 16:9 is not that unusual, considering the price of the camera. If you want native 16:9 resolution, you might want to get this one instead of the new camera.

The HDR-FX1 Handycam® camcorder records and plays back high definition video with 1080 interlaced lines of resolution - the highest resolution (1440 pixels x 1080 lines) of any consumer camcorder available.

Squeezed 16:9 is not that unusual, considering the price of the camera. If you want native 16:9 resolution, you might want to get this one instead of the new camera.

None of the sub-notebooks introduced since Sony released the C1 series has given us a reason to upgrade. My C1XS (PII 400Mhz, 128Mb RAM, 30gig HD) is 5 years old and is still thinner and smaller (9.81"x5.99"x1.14", 2.21lb) than its later lookalikes.

Only one model is even up for consideration, in my mind (no, not even the Sony U50/70 - you -gotta- have a real keyboard attached). The Flybook is gonna have _everything_, including GPRS, and it's a tablet, too. Exactly what I've been waiting for. Would the rest of you Far East-whipped toy companies wake up and get us computers like these?