Emulation Explosion On the PS3 Via Linux

Marty writes "The PlayStation 3 has recently seen an explosion of releases of emulators and games for the Yellow Dog Linux distro for PS3; once you have installed Yellow Dog Linux you then have the ability to try out MAME, SNES, Amiga, Dos, Commodore and Atari emulators (that's the tip of the iceberg) and such games as Quake 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Hexen 2 and Alephone. Time to start installing Linux on your PS3?"

Comments

Sweet!

[weirdcrashingnoises]

I've been wondering for some time now if I should try and get linux going on the PS3. this sounds like a great place to start.

Re:Sweet!

[John Betonschaar]

I'd recommend not to. It's dog slow because you can only use 256 MB RAM, you don't have video acceleration, last time I checked I didn't have bluetooth (which means no wireless keyboard and mouse and no sixaxis), and Sony regularly (mostly unintentionally) breaks the system with firmware updates (at least up to the point you need to spend time to get it booting again). Unless you really want to program the Cell CPU Linux on the PS3 is pretty much worthless. Aside from some simple emulators for ancient systems you can forget doing anything useful on it.

The PS3 programming scene is also about as dead as it can be. I've been lurking on ps2dev for years and it's still the same 5 people and nothing has really been achieved yet...

Re:Sweet!

[salmaklak]

You've obviously never used Linux on the PS3 at all and are trolling. I've used my bluetooth keyboard on Linux with the PS3 since first installing it 2 years ago. That's on YDL, Ubuntu, and Fedora. Secondly, all the RAM has been usable for some time now so once again you are trolling.

Re:Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bzzt.. Wrong...

YellowDog 6.1 allows access to the GPU memory too...

It's the only distro that ships with the kernel patches that allow it to do so, but there is nothing stopping any distro picking up the kernel patch.

http://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/9858/

Re:Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

not too much

indeed you are right about bluetooth, but using the video mem is not of much help with the ram shortage

why?

because its video mem

you can copy very fast into it, so swapping out to it works well

-but- reading from it is painfully slow, and all in all using hdd's for swap is more convenient

i wish we would get some more acceleration than using the cpu dma for pushing data around - that would make ps3 linux quite usable

but in its current state it is really only for those usable, like me, who wish to train cell programming (which is not that difficult as some like to explain in the media)

Re:Sweet!

[John Betonschaar]

I said 'last time I checked' the bluetooth did not work, after which I haven't bothered to check on it again because it was already obvious it sucks for anything but Cell development.

And using the ps3vram driver you do _not_ have full access to the 256 MB video RAM, you can use it, but the bandwidth is terrible because it actually uses the GPU to DMA memory back and forth to a window in (directly accessible) XDR memory, because the bandwidth of the 2nd half of memory to the CPU is about 8MB/s (or something similarly slow, you get the point). The way it's used with ps3vram this is only useful as swap space, and even then swapping to the HD is almost as fast.

You obviously don't really know much about how PS3 linux works at all and are astroturfing.

Re:Sweet!

[Sam36]

Stupid fan boys. You should be trying to get windows vista running on it so you can see real innovation.

Re:Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

In salmaklak's defense, your first post is rather trollish.

In the first post, you clearly state that "you can only use 256 MB RAM", yet in the second you retract that and say "you can use it, but the bandwidth is terrible".

Also, You really really really should have said something more like "...last time I checked (though this was X years ago), I didn't have bluetooth...". I'm betting you already know that, though.

You also talk about Sony regularly breaking the system (yet you haven't booted Linux on it in an unspecified number of YEARS).

So, in short(?), your first post does read like a troll. Your second is only marginally better.

Re:Sweet!

[JoeMerchant]

Depends on your idea of what is a fun game. If I can have an Atari 800 emulator and M.U.L.E. on my PS3, that pretty much doubles the entertainment value of the machine for my family.

Yeah, GT5 is more impressive, but racing split-screen isn't nearly as easy or fun as playing a highly multi-player oriented game like M.U.L.E.

Re:Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you high?

You can't install anything but the "official" PS3 Linux. Once you have that going you can bootstrap anything you want into it.

HOWEVER, the only one which isn't broken by the firmware updates is the official port. This is also why bluetooth works for some people but not others, you don't get it by default.

For all people complain the XBOX is a PC, the PS3 is most certainly not.

Re:Sweet!

[Phasma Felis]

"Only" 256MB RAM? Accurate or not, what do you think we're emulating here? The SNES had a total of 256 kilobytes of RAM, with cartridge ROMs topping at 6MB. Quake 2 ran on a Pentium/90 with 16MB.

The PS3's specs might be a problem for a Windows box that demands half a gig for OS overhead, but Linux isn't supposed to have those problems.

Re:Sweet!

[Doc Ruby]

There are several projects, like spu-medialib and mesa3d, which accelerate PS3 graphics/video on the Cell's SPEs. spu-medialib is actually a general framework for acceleration, while mesa3d offloads OpenGL onto the SPEs as a GPU. Why don't you put some of those people you say you're training to program the Cell onto those projects and give something back to the community that's given you the programmable platform?

Re:Sweet!

[neokushan]

You can't install anything but the "official" PS3 Linux.

Well that's wrong right there. I installed Fedora on my PS3 and my PS3 has never had YDL on it.

Maybe you can't install anything but the official PS3 Linux (Why didn't you call it YDL? Did you even know that was it's name?), but I, someone who has quite literally never used Linux for more than 5mins at a time, managed to install Fedora 9, accidentally corrupt the bootloader trying to increase my default screen resolution, fix it through vi (now I see what all the fuss is about) and, finally, rebuild the kernel so it was a little bit faster.

Re:Sweet!

[the_humeister]

The PS3's specs might be a problem for a Windows box that demands half a gig for OS overhead, but Linux isn't supposed to have those problems.

Well, actually you can try running Windows 2k in qemu on the PS3 and I think you'd have more than enough ram to spare still. As I recall, I loaded Windows 2k on a old Pentium laptop with 128 MB of RAM and it still ran pretty well.

Re:Sweet!

[John Betonschaar]

Listen, I've tried PS3 linux before, I know what the hardware is, and I know what the limitations of PS3 linux are. These have not changed (apart from the bluetooth thing), and these are not bound to change. ie: the 2nd half of memory will always be basically useless, and the RSX will never be fully accessible from PS3 linux.

So effectively, there is no hope PS3 linux will get more useful than it already is, which is how it was when I checked it out. I've been running it for a few months which was about a year ago, and back then it broke 3 times on firmware updates. How you would know better how much time I spent with it eludes me...

If you don't believe what I'm saying about PS3 linux: go ahead and try it anyway, I couldn't care less, not my PS3, not my spare time. Just find out yourself how terrific it works and how much I'm trolling here. Don't see why I would be trolling about PS3 linux on Slashdot anyway but hey, some people here obviously feel better screaming troll all the time.

Re:Sweet!

[John Betonschaar]

Actually I know the guy who's working on spu-medialib, he's unsolo from ps2dev.org. I've actually been exchanging some thoughts with him back when I was playing around trying to do video decoding on the PS3. Anyway, spu-medialib is far from complete and doesn't nearly make up for the lack of GPU acceleration, there hasn't been any major improvements since back when I was playing around with PS3 linux. You can still forget even getting 720p playback on PS3 linux. Don't know about the state Mesa/Gallium/anything else to do 3D on the Cell, but judging from the activity on PS3 dev forums there's nothing interesting for end-users there either.

Re:Sweet!

[Doc Ruby]

I get 1080p HD playback (and all the lower frame/bitrates, too) just fine using unsolo's spu-medialib mplayer -vo driver on my PS3, as I have for about a year now.

The mesa3d project is highly active, including this month, on their dev email list.

There seems to be quite a lot of interest in PS3 programming to both developers and to end users - like playing video (directly to an HDMI TV) on a $400 PS3 that would crush a PC costing 2-5x as much, that includes all that other stuff like Blu-Ray, Bluetooth, and lots of games (in GameOS mode).

Re:Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running FVWM (on Etch) on a Latitude CPI (266mhz, 128mb RAM). It runs _relatively_ well. I can only imagine the PS3, even given the memory and GPU limitations, will emulate (16bit or less) gaming systems without much trouble.

Re:Sweet!

[ArcherB]

Listen, I've tried PS3 linux before, I know what the hardware is, and I know what the limitations of PS3 linux are. These have not changed (apart from the bluetooth thing), and these are not bound to change. ie: the 2nd half of memory will always be basically useless, and the RSX will never be fully accessible from PS3 linux.

So effectively, there is no hope PS3 linux will get more useful than it already is, which is how it was when I checked it out. I've been running it for a few months which was about a year ago, and back then it broke 3 times on firmware updates. How you would know better how much time I spent with it eludes me...

If you don't believe what I'm saying about PS3 linux: go ahead and try it anyway, I couldn't care less, not my PS3, not my spare time. Just find out yourself how terrific it works and how much I'm trolling here. Don't see why I would be trolling about PS3 linux on Slashdot anyway but hey, some people here obviously feel better screaming troll all the time.

But does it run a web browser, email app, word processor and download porn? After that, everything else is just gravy.

Re:Sweet!

[kalirion]

Quake 2 ran on a Pentium/90 with 16MB.

Sure you're not talking about Quake 1 here (at least for software mode)?

Re:Sweet!

[Phasma Felis]

Quake 2 ran on a Pentium/90 with 16MB.

Sure you're not talking about Quake 1 here (at least for software mode)?

I didn't say it ran well. ;) You'd want a fair bit more to get best performance out of it, but 90mHz/16MB is the official minimum spec. Either way, the PS3 should have no trouble handling it.

Re:Sweet!

[Khyber]

One of my pals here in SoCal is getting closer and closer to destroying the hypervisor restrictions. He's managed to get a few commands directly to GPU and memory, and once he figures out how to get all commands to it (although from what I'm told there is a performance hit of about 40%, for reasons I'm not technically competent enough to understand,) then it's going to be a much more fun system to play with. Hell, if I could run games and whatnot through the PS3 with Linux I'd unhook my PC from the TV and just let the PS3 handle it instead. There is serious power potential in the PS3. Sony should have unlocked it and dropped the price another 50 bucks. I'm willing to bet that would have a LOT of new customers coming to it.

Re:Sweet!

[Doc Ruby]

The evidence is the dozens of hours of MPEG and AVI I've watched, from SD through 720p and 1080p HD. If you want to see that evidence yourself, install the driver and test some video. NASA has some great footage from a shuttle launch that puts 1080p to the test, and is a joy to watch.

You don't know what you're talking about. You're insulting, calling me a liar. Just go test it yourself. If indeed you are not lying, and you actually can program some codec on the SPEs, you can prove that to me by adding H.264 to the driver, or finishing its X driver version, helping with the mesa3d Cell project, or any of the many other tasks remaining for someone as smart and capable as you on the fully capable PS3 Cell platform.

Re:Sweet!

[hierophanta]

yes, but IMHO Windows2k was the best OS microsoft has made to date. man i loved that OS.

a part of me thinks they pulled it because they knew it wasnt going to outdate itself and they couldnt get the premium it.

Re:Sweet!

[John Betonschaar]

You sound a lot like that unsolo dude himself you know? Like a Sony/IBM advertisement.

Anyway, I'm not calling you a liar, maybe you do have some video's that somewhat work in 1080p, maybe you don't, I don't know but I highly doubt that you actually have a setup that reliably plays random 1080p videos. The reason is that no-one I know of can confirm an OSS player exists that can do that, and there's loads of people confirming even 720p MPEG with mplayer -vo ps3 is choppy and h264 is a slideshow. In other words just like it was a year ago. I can't find any videos on Youtube that seem very suspect to be fake either, and there's no-one on the dev forums saying he got 1080p h264 working either. But all the better if you can prove me wrong...

If I'd be able to write a codec on the SPE's: I don't know. I gave up when all hope for GPU acceleration on linux was lost. Just like most other people hacking away at the PS3. There's hardly a scene left for PS3 linux, mostly straightforward porting of simple emulators, and besides that some research stuff like Gallium3D.

Re:Sweet!

[Doc Ruby]

I pointed out that I'm playing MPG and AVI, not H.264. If you're going to use H.264 as proof this doesn't work, you're not really very logical. Therefore probably not really a good programmer.

The many videos I watch without a problem, including 1080p ones, are the proof. Proof that there's more than just "hope" for GPU accelaration, there's actually running GPU acceleration (though I wouldn't call it GPU).

You are just speculating about something you clearly don't have a grip on. Why don't you just install the driver on a PS3 and try it yourself, instead of wasting both our time. The sparse PS3 Linux scene is shrunken in no small part because of all the naysayers in an echochamber, belied by the people who actually do something themselves and see the results. Maybe I sound like unsolo because I've actaully done that, and have gotten the benefit. You're on your own with your choice.

Re:Sweet!

[Krneki]

Whait until they enable IE on PS3.

Re:Sweet!

[salmaklak]

Yet more garbage from you. VLC plays all my video just fine over NFS on my 1080p television. First you claim to not have seen a working bluetooth keyboard/mouse on your PS3 Linux install, which for me and everyone else has been working for over 2 years. Therefore by that statement you have not tried Linux on a PS3 for longer than 2 years. Now you are claiming in a later post to have been using Linux on your PS3 about a year ago. You've caught yourself out there with your own lies. Go troll elsewhere scumbag.

Re:Sweet!

[John Betonschaar]

Don't know why you seem to want to make a mud-throwing fight out of this, but you can stop now, I don't really care that much about your esteem of my programming skills. As long as my employer does I'm happy, and apparently he is because I'm making a really good living off of it.

Just let me add that '1080p (MPEG) video' sounds a bit like 'a 300MPH car (when pushed down a 20-story building)'. People don't generally encode HD video in MPEG, because MPEG (at least MPEGI/II) was specifically intended for SD video. Compared to VC-1 or H264 (which you now seem to agree you cannot play on your PS3) it's a ridiculously simple and lightweight codec, but also completely unsuitable for HD video. An SD video in MPEGII looks almost about as good as one at 1080p resolution if you use a good scaler (which actually _is_ in spu-medialib, maybe that's what you're getting so high on?).

So I'll give you that: you probably *can* play '1080p video (if it isn't interlaced like most MPEGII content anyway)' but I still don't think you can play 'high-definition video encoded in one of the modern codecs that are actually used for this purpose'. Don't know about the state of MPEG4 (divx/xvid) on Cell, but that's not what people use for HD content either. So all in all the PS3 is still not nearly a capable HD video player, which was what I was arguing before you started yelling back.

And AVI is not a video codec by the way, but a container format...

Re:Sweet!

[John Betonschaar]

Sure it does, and it is still 'basically useless', because you can only use it for swap and it's only marginally faster than swapping to disk.

Interesting to see how hard it apparently is to properly read what people are saying :-/

Re:Sweet!

[adam.ec]

I agree..... and I don't. As a development platform for the PS3 installing Linux isn't the best idea in the world. There is a lot of hardware that although it could be supported, you just don't get access to because Sony doesn't want. Same story for PS2. Most of the chips inside were customized so unless you'd got your own fab plant and could resolder a few hundred pins you were pretty much locked out of the hardware. On the other hand, folks trying to hack these systems may just have a chance of eventually convincing these proprietary monsters like Sony to support some homebrew development. Maybe they might actually have some capable programmers left by the time PS4 is released. I'm sure they would sell a lot more consoles if they were to open these systems up a bit more - just look at the success of the 80's - C64, TRS-80, ZX Spectrum, Atari XE, Amstrad CPC. Okay so they weren't necessarily consoles but at least programmers had a chance to develop using the whole system and these guys have been writing our games for years now. I use my PS3 for Cell programming training. I'm not that good yet so I can't work for the big boys but I hope to use it at some stage on server boards not on a games console.

Re:Sweet!

[MikeBabcock]

Move along, its just a troll.

Re:Sweet!

[squiggleslash]

MPEG-3 was going to be HD MPEG until they found they could get it out of MPEG-2. Hence there is no MPEG-3.

MPEG-2 was used by the bulk of cable and satellite broadcasters until relatively recently for HD content. It is currently the core (and only) video codec for the ATSC television standard. It is the primary means of transporting content to cable and satellite providers, although for bandwidth reasons they'll recompress the streams to lower bitrate H.264 streams. Even early Blu-ray discs were encoded with MPEG-2.

Usage of H.264 and VC-1 is restricted to the following at the moment: (1) Most cable and satellite companies use them for the "last mile" link, in order to squeeze as much as possible into limited bandwidth links. (2) Online downloads tend to use these codecs. (3) HD DVD, and newer Blu-ray, discs used/use these codecs, again to maximize use of available space and bandwidth.

MPEG-2 is as unsuited for HD content as it is SD content. Newer codecs are better, but they're also better than MPEG-2 when it comes to SD or even LD content. On a technical level, the major disadvantage of MPEG-2 is more bits for the same quality, and at higher bitrates, the difference between MPEG-2 and H.264/VC-1 quality is relatively minor.

What you're saying - that MPEG-2 is unsuited to HD content - makes little sense and is unsupported by real world usage. MPEG-2's simplicity and fifteen years of being able to optimize compression algorithms means it can be a great choice for many applications. And while there's some criticism of ATSC's noise handling (unrelated to codecs), when the data gets to the receiver without issues the picture is generally very high quality with few visible artifacts, despite the use of real time, difficult to optimize and correct, compression.

Yes, newer codecs are better. But MPEG-2 isn't bad. And it's completely ridiculous to claim it's "unsuited" to HD, as if it can't actually do a decent job.

Re:Sweet!

[bandmassa]

PS3 + Linux + Virtualisation + Mac OS X = ...
 
:D

pist frost? rly?

[poolmeister]

Yellow Dog Linux is sooo buggy and is based on the now comparativley ancient Fedora 6, why don't just install Fedora 10 for PPC on the PS3 instead, .
There plenty of emulators in the Fedora repos and Fedora works fine on the PS3.

Re:pist frost? rly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no. YDL is based on CentOS 5 not Fedora 6. Clearly your info on it is quite erroneous and out of date.

Re:pist frost? rly?

[socsoc]

Fedora? Where do you get that? It's Red Hat/CentOS based.

Re:pist frost? rly?

[diamondsw]

Just because it's called Yellow Dog Linux v6, does NOT mean it's based on Fedora 6. Rather, it's based on the latest RedHat and CentOS code, and is much more similar to an upcoming version 6 of these products.

Re:pist frost? rly?

[hawkinspeter]

Or you can try Xubuntu for the ppc - they now simultaneously release for the ppc architecture.

Re:pist frost? rly?

[beef3k]

The latest version of RHEL/CentOS (5.2) is based on Fedora 6, so the OP is still correct.

Re:pist frost? rly?

[CronoCloud]

YDL 6.1 is very very stable, much less buggy than 6.0 was. YDL is currently based on CentOS because it's actually an enterprise oriented distro, they wanted the stability of RHEL. Fixstars sells PS3 clusters for HPC use.

Oblig.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo, Dawg! I herd you like playin' consoles so I put a console in yo console so you can play while you play!

I now feel somewhat happier.

Re:Oblig.

[Joebert]

Install a Linux emulating emulator and ask: Yo Dawg, Y U playin ya self ?

Re:Oblig.

[Sj0]

You misspelled the typo. It's "I herd you liek[...]"

I don't know how to feel about that...

Re:Oblig.

[RMingin]

Grammar Nazis for internet memes. *Now* I have seen everything.

No

[Tatsh]

1. First of all, there are more options for PS3 then YD including Gentoo, Ubuntu, Fedora, and others.

2. Access (due to Sony scared of people making good games for PS3 Linux for 'free') to the RSX (graphics card) is very restricted. A few firmware revisions ago it was accessible but of course that gets fixed. And without the latest firmware, you cannot play certain games.

The PS3 is a flop anyway. If you want to emulate these mentioned systems, you are way better off with a PC, Xbox 1, or Wii.

Re:No

[Gerzel]

Flop? I don't think that word means what you think it means.

PS3 has made money. It might not have caught on like the creators hoped it would or like the PS2, but it is slowly getting its market share.

It isn't a huge success story but I'd hardly call it a flop.

Re:No

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

I'll drink to that. I got the NES and SNES emulators working on the Wii, and in all honesty I haven't played many modern games since. Getting back into the Megaman and Final Fantasy series is a pretty neat experience, especially on a new HDTV with a wireless controller. All my childhood dreams of having remote access to all of my games without having to blow in the cartridge have finally come true. Now kindly get off my lawn!

Re:No

[Cyrcyr]

Not sure what your point is, but it is the "ecosystem" that is making money. If you sell something at a loss, but make more money on peripherals, you're still making money.

Re:No

[Cheapy]

I don't know. When the company claims that a product is still for "early adapters" two years after it's release...that's almost flop-worthy.

Re:No

[Elementalor]

No, PS3 has not made any money and it may never make any.

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/index.html
Sony videogames division in the past three years (PS3 era+R&D, including PS2 and PSP):

2006 ===== 75 (positive)
2007 = -1,969 (negative)
2008 = -1,265 (negative)
2009 ===== 51 (positive)

Total 2006-09 === -3,108

(in million US$)
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=111003

Re:No

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The one thing i love about PS3 haters is that they try to state that each console are sold at a loss.

but there's no way to actually *prove* that with out Sony actually saying so. Sony hasn't released any loss/gains on the per-unit for a ps3. So at this point it's no better than wildly guessing.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Prove 100%? No.

But analysts have priced out the cost of components in the PS3. They came to the conclusion that the PS3 costs about $1000 a unit, based on what information Sony has been offering.

And by "analysts" I don't mean "random nerds on websites" I mean "financial analysts who do this for a living to try and offer valuable information to investors to determine the financial health of companies." It was on Slashdot a while back, I don't feel like dredging it up. A Google search will turn it up.

Re:No

[ShadowFalls]

You think that is great? Get a big screen TV and play Super Mario Bros. 3 on big world.

Re:No

[Tatsh]

The one thing I hate about console-proponents is that they exist. Each console has its pros and cons. Just because you bought a PS3 instead of an Xbox 360 or Wii does not make you better than someone else. AFAIK, nobody is paying you to advertise for Sony either.

Re:No

[ciderVisor]

It's 6.7m units less.

Re:No

[Computershack]

The one thing i love about PS3 haters is that they try to state that each console are sold at a loss.

but there's no way to actually *prove* that with out Sony actually saying so.

OF course there is. It's done all the time. An analyst company buys the product, dismantles it to individual components then prices up the parts list factoring in volume discounts to come up with a price that's not far off. Ford did it in the 60's with British Leylands Mini and conluded that every one of those was being sold at a loss and they weren't far off the actual figure. So if the ability to do it in the 60's was there, you sure as hell can do it now.

Re:No

[sortius_nod]

One thing I love about PS3 fanboys is that they try to defend the PS3 by picking holes in others' statements rather than giving examples of why PS3s are good machines.

Re:No

[CarpetShark]

No, PS3 has not made any money and it may never make any.

I haven't been keeping track of consoles much, but I can imagine that being true, from how many kids I've (dismayingly) heard talking about their XBoxes. Also, many kids and adults (a niche market which Playstations have traditionally been strong in) have gone with Wii.

I've definitely do idea on the veracity of those figures. BUT, even if they've lost a ton of money on PS3, there is perhaps still light at the end of the tunnel for Sony. They based it on Cell, which is designed to scale easily. If that really happened in practice, and if the PS3 didn't bypass all that and just use the raw power without the scaleability, then it should be a relatively simple process to make a PS4, based on their existing, mass-producible tech, but with a few more Cell chips on the bus.

Re:No

[MadKeithV]

Is that early adapter a 9v, 12v or 220v? Would running a higher voltage make my PS-3 faster?

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

> It was on Slashdot a while back

Yes, it really was a very long while back.

You obviously haven't noticed the several revisions it has went through since then.
It is significantly cheaper for them to build it now.

Re:No

[Fred_A]

The PS3 is a flop anyway.

I thought it was a MegaFLOP which led to it being occasionally used in scientific simulations.

But then I don't really follow the console gaming scene. Of course running Sinclair or C64 games on a PS3 has a little something to it...

Re:No

[sortius_nod]

adults (a niche market which Playstations have traditionally been strong in)

Are you high? Can I have some?

Since when has adult gaming been a "niche market" or one that "Playstations have traditionally been strong in"? I am an adult, most of my gaming is done on PC. I know a lot of adult gamers, most of their gaming is done on PC. The ones that don't, own an Xbox (1 or 360 depending on what year you want to go back to)... before the Xbox, it was all PC.

So, again, are you high?

Re:No

[sortius_nod]

no, but I am... hah, damn quote marks.

Re:No

[ciderVisor]

It's less units sold. It's a greater rate of units sold. Do you know when the market's going to become saturated ? Do you ? Really ?

Re:No

[supernova_hq]

You mean like:

• Raw Power
• Linux install in the freaking menu (no cracking required)
• Standard USB cable for controller charging
• Free online play (no subscription BS)
• Nearly flawless upnp video/music/image viewer (no need to install xmbc, etc)
• Power adapter is BUILT IN (standard desktop power cord goes straight in the back)
• Very low failure rate (unline some other console out there)
• Can be run 24/7 without heat issues (I do folding@home CONSTANTLY while not playing games on it with no problems)
• card reader built into the front (5 or 6 in one)
• Folding at home (sponsored by sony themselves) as a native app

Remember, some of us actually have REASONS for picking a particular console!

Re:No

[supernova_hq]

Actually, they are already working on the PS4. There was an article on /. a couple weeks ago regarding Sony getting together with nvidia or ati (can't remember which) about designing it.

Re:No

[supernova_hq]

Oh God, the pixels, the pixels are coming to get me!!!!

Re:No

[Cowmonaut]

+1 Underrated / Insightful.

That really can't be put more fairly, and is true more so now than in the past. The Xbox360, PS3, and Wii all have their high points and low points. For the Xbox, it seems to be getting "all" the games (and woo i get to use it as a bridge from my PC to my TV without buying a TV tuner card that wouldn't fit on my already fully loaded motherboard), the Wii gets a lot of "just plain fun" games that are also great with groups of people, and the PS3 gets some pretty games and is the only bluray player worth buying if Sony hasn't stopped changing the format already. And all of them get Rock Band / Guitar Hero which are a pretty solid money making fad (and unusually fun for a rhythm game).

There's something for everyone. The pissing contest is kind of moot.

Re:No

[tommeke100]

...or Dreamcast !!!

Re:No

[supernova_hq]

First of all, ANY console in a closed cupboard will overheat, but leave a PS3 and XBOX360 in the middle of the floor, and there will be a CONSIDERABLE heat difference. You would think that moving the power adapter inside would make it warmer, which it probably does, but considering it's still cool to the touch after 4 straight days of gaming+folding@home is pretty remarkable.

As for failures, it's true, I was mainly comparing it to the 360, but every person I know (save 1) who ever bought a wii played with it for a week (or maybe 2), then put it in the closet till they had a party. Wii fail less partly because the hardware is not as powerful (less heat), but mostly because you don't get as many hours worth of use out of them.

Re:No

[Pollardito]

are you sure it has? I see a June article saying they were down 3 billion dollars and an October article saying that the games division was still losing money. I'm sure Christmas helped, but that's a big deficit to overcome

Re:No

[tepples]

For the Xbox, it seems to be getting "all" the games (and woo i get to use it as a bridge from my PC to my TV without buying a TV tuner card that wouldn't fit on my already fully loaded motherboard)

I don't understand this. Xbox 360 acts as a Media Center Extender, or an output device. If you have an HDTV, or you have an SDTV and a $50 VGA-to-S-Video-and-composite scan converter, you can output PC signals to your TV. A TV tuner card, on the other hand, acts as a video input device. Besides, USB TV tuners don't take up more space on a motherboard.

And no, you don't get all the games even if you buy all three consoles. PC gets the games self-published by developers operating out of home offices, including open-source games.

Re:No

[Sj0]

All this fanboy talk can cease.

Sony's gaming division lost $1.24 billion in 2008. This means that anyone who lost less than 1.24 billion dollars in 2008 is more profitable than Sony's gaming division. Sony did NOT make money on the PS3 in 2008.

That said, your other statement is more accurate. Third party developers have finally stepped up and begun releasing games people might actually want to play, and Sony finally lowered the price of the console, leading to an increase in sales of 156%. Their share of the market increased by about 5% in 2008, but it's still a tiny slice of the market.

By most measures, the PS3 is a flop. It's trailing both it's competitors by double digits in market share, their gaming division is losing money while both competitors are making money hand over fist, and there's very little light on the horizon, since they're selling the most expensive console in the middle of a recession. The only real upside for Sony is everyone who wanted a Wii and 360 has bought one, so the PS3 is next on the list.

Re:No

[slackbheep]

If the 360 had an internal power adapter the thing would skip RRoD and just be reduced to ash. Console fanboyism is stupid at this point anyway. This time last year the 360 would have been the better investment as far as available games, but the gap has been closing and the Wii arguably isn't even really competing for the same market as the PS3/360.

Re:No

[adisakp]

You forgot to mention that it has a built-in BluRay player. For your old DVD collection, it's a very nice upscaling DVD player as well.

Re:No

[Xest]

You're making a lot of assumptions there and missing some important points:

"First of all, ANY console in a closed cupboard will overheat, but leave a PS3 and XBOX360 in the middle of the floor, and there will be a CONSIDERABLE heat difference."

Depends which generation you compare really, when the PS3 came out it was locking up due to overheating problems in the display cabinets in various electronics retailers quite frequently. Sony did a good job of fixing this fairly quickly (hence the early rapid iteration of console versions). The latest versions of the 360 are also fairly cool, they certainly run not hotter than the latest iterations of the PS3. Microsoft certainly took longer to get their systems cooler though that's for sure. If we're comparing early consoles though there was no difference, they both got too hot, if we're comparing the latest hardware iterations, there's also no difference as they both run pretty cool. It was only the mid-way systems for about a 6 months to a year starting around 3 - 6 months after the original PS3 came out where there was a noticable disparity.

"Wii fail less partly because the hardware is not as powerful (less heat), but mostly because you don't get as many hours worth of use out of them."

I guess you don't own a Wii? Even in it's low power standby mode it gets pretty warm so it certainly doesn't get any less hot, this is presumably because it's a smaller system though and has less surface area across which the heat can spread and dissipate.

Regarding failure rates, it's also a pretty irrelevant point now, the 360's RROD problem has long been solved and there are no issues with the PS3 nowadays either, the Wii is solid too. From what I've seen in terms of recent figures, all 3 consoles are within the standard acceptable bounds for electronic goods so there doesn't seem to be anything here worth arguing between each of the consoles anymore. For what it's worth though, I got bored of the Wii too, but I think the reason it failed less early on was simply because it was using last generation hardware that had already been pushed to the point it could be squeezed in a small box with no stability issues (even if it does still get warm of course).

A lot of console fanboyism arguments are based on now obsolete arguments- the 360 has buggy hardware, the PS3 has no games, the Wii gets boring quick. All systems have taken steps to shed these old stereotypes to the point they really are a little ignorant now. I'll admit as an early adopter of consoles, out of the 3, the 360 is my favourite purely because the choice of games are more to my taste (PS3 games are too my taste too, there's simply less of them) and those games that are available across all platforms just integrate much more nicely on the 360 thanks to Live, the Achievements and that sort of thing.

Most people presumably bought their console if they only have one because it's more to their tastes. Buying a PS3 because it can run Linux seems stupid to me because you can just stick it on a PC and have more flexibility but I guess some people like the feature. I'm not sure what the target market for PS3 Linux is when pretty much anyone interested in Linux will have a PC anyway and when you can't make full use of the graphics hardware anyway though.

As an aside, I'm not sure what you meant about the PS3 having standard USB was? Both the Wii and 360 do also. The 360 and Wii also both have flawless image galleries and the 360 similarly has flawless video support including streaming from media player or compatible computers if required too. It's also debatable whether the PS3 is more powerful, Cell potentially is certainly but the graphics card certainly isn't and the memory architecture is not. Regarding Folding@Home I also struggle to see why that's a benefit, just outright turning your system off helps save your power costs and hence the environment so there's an equal feel good (and financial benefit!) to just not having that feature or turning it off too.

For what it's worth

Re:No

[WaroDaBeast]

• card reader built into the front (5 or 6 in one)

This is only true for some versions, none of which are still in production. That's too bad, I know.

Re:No

[Tatsh]

You missed my point completely. If I wanted to right now, and had the funding, I could make a game 'for PS3' and give instructions on how to use it. Perhaps, 'you need Linux installed, and you need to do blah blah with the disc'. But guess what. I would not be licensed to do that (Sony would probably sue), and even if I had the money to take on the risk, it would never be worth it because of the limitations put on Linux for PS3.

Linux for PS2 and Linux for PS3 are just Sony's feeble attempts at saying 'We support open source'.

Re:No

[juenger1701]

sony went from top of the heap to last place in 1 generation most of it's exclusive games have jumped GTA 360 and PS3 both devil may cry same thing Final Fantasy 13 is being delayed on PS3 so that 360 gamers get it at the same time in the US square has exclusive RPGs on consoles other than sony for the first time in what 10 years? a quick check shows that for every 2 PS3s nearly 3 360s have sold and almost 5 WIIs have sold (20.81m vs 28.91m vs 47.57m respectively) when you drop from a distant first vs a first time console maker to third with a nearly 3-2 deficit from 2nd place that's a flop it's not an epic level blunder i'll grant but it's by no means a success.

oh and a personal rant from a retail employee: stop changing the fucking hardware! i am sick and tired of explaining the differences between the like 6 different SKUs and why the new one you want to buy won't play PS2 games at all unlike the one your buddy got 2 years ago does.

Re:No

[Yvan256]

I had to send my 6 weeks-old Wii in for repair because the GPU overheated and started to display garbage. Nintendo sent me a shipping box and took care of the shipping cost both ways and I had my console back in less than two weeks.

It's the only Nintendo console that ever game me trouble though, and I have them all except for the Virtual Boy and Nintendo 64.

Re:No

[Sj0]

You know, when I bought my Wii, it was becuase it represented a new paradigm in gaming, and the games that were already available for it were incredibly fun and interesting.

When I bought my 360, I knew it would be the PS2 of this generation, filled with the interesting titles other consoles wouldn't bother publishing. I just finished Braid this weekend.

When I bought my PSP, I thought it was really cool I could hang out in front of a hotel and press a few buttons and have any one of a huge selection of playstation games at my fingertips for less than a meal at McDonald's.

When I bought my DS, I was impressed by the massive library of dependably solid titles, as well as backwards compatibility with the GBA.

So you're saying your PS3's power cable plugs right into it? That's great...

Re:No

[Zero__Kelvin]

No, but dropping it from an airplane will make it very fast.

Re:No

[drinkypoo]

The Wii is a quite capable platform for emulation. The best part is how amazingly easy it is to install the Homebrew Channel. On the other hand, the maximum storage device on the Wii is 8GB, which is where the Xbox starts, and a used Xbox is $60. For someone who already has both, it's a toss-up as to which you play your roms on, but if you have neither and want to play them by far your best bet is the Xbox. It has about the same amount of processing power, basically all the emulators have already been ported, and you can stick as much disk space in there as you like. Yes, a complete set of roms for the emulators on the Xbox will be dramatically more than 8GB (think GBA.)

Re:No

[Gizzmonic]

Regarding failure rates, it's also a pretty irrelevant point now, the 360's RROD problem has long been solved.

If you consider November of 2008 to be "long," then okay. The Jasper motherboard is the latest in a series of Xbox 360 motherboards. All of them claimed to solve the RRoD problem. None have succeeded so far. A buddy of mine personally knows the engineer who was in charge of the cooling system on the 360-he resigned in protest after Microsoft told him that they were releasing at Christmas, no matter what.

The Xbox 360 is a crappy rush job of a console, and they're just now (maybe) fixing the heat issues. Make no mistake about it, those fixes don't involve shrinking the massive power brick or dampening the hair-dryer-like sounds of the internal fans. That doesn't take away from the fact that the 360 is the primary next-gen platform in terms of software. I'd have one today if I wasn't convinced it would RRoD within a year. Every single person I know that has a 360 (except one who never plays it) has gone through RRoD.

Re:No

[drinkypoo]

The only real upside for Sony is everyone who wanted a Wii and 360 has bought one, so the PS3 is next on the list.

Wrongo! I want a Wii and 360, I am waiting for yet another 360 price drop, I have a Wii (finally bought it less than a month ago) and do not have a 360. I only got a HDTV very recently, so there wasn't much point to having a 360.

The only thing that would get me to buy a 360 before another price drop hits would be if it were totally hacked, like the original Xbox. When you can port all that Xbox XDK stuff to the 360 so that all the emulators and most especially XBMC can run there, I won't need my Xbox any more.

Re:No

[Sj0]

Sorry, everyone who isn't cheap who wanted a Wii and a 360 have bought them.

Re:No

[Tharsman]

Its not only how much they sell, but the architecture itself is so expensive the machine keeps being sold at a loss in expectation that the royalties they get from licensing to publish games will bring in profits.

That works fine for Nintendo since the machine is not pumped up, it used average tech that was already cheap so the machine itself was always profitable.

The XBox had losses, but have been profitable for a long time now, being based on existing tech made production prices go down quite fast.

On top of the PS3 being non-profitable hardware wise, there is the point you noted: the machine is not selling that well so they are not bringing in the license fees they hoped. They got to still be profitable somewhere, those numbers may be just a combined profit of hardware sale (that include PS3, PSPs and PS2s, witch are still being sold.)

License revenue is unlikely to be included there, or they would had quit on the thing already. Investors would only take so many quarters of loss before they started screaming.

Re:No

[drinkypoo]

You would think that moving the power adapter inside would make it warmer, which it probably does, but considering it's still cool to the touch after 4 straight days of gaming+folding@home is pretty remarkable.

No, I would think that it would mean you'd have to have more fans inside the case to keep it cool.

Wii fail less partly because the hardware is not as powerful (less heat), but mostly because you don't get as many hours worth of use out of them.

My Wii stays turned on 24/7 because I run WiiConnect so that I can get news and weather immediately after turning on the machine. The power light goes amber, but the system is running in the background. Like your PS3 it has a memory card slot in front; unlike your PS3 it is a SD/SDHC, the only card which is actually useful to have there. (I'm not going to read RAWs off a CF and Memory Sticks are for Sony Fanboys.) Also, the amount of processing power in the system is completely irrelevant. Hardware overheated before the invention of the Wii, yet it was less powerful than it is. The only thing which matters is whether your design is able to carry enough heat out of the system to operate in its temperature range. I have a PDA which is designed to operate at 180 degrees, the machine can get too hot to comfortably hold and still be well within tolerances.

I understand that it must be hard to type with one hand on the keyboard and the other hand on Sony's cock, but please, stop jerking them off long enough to examine your bullshit arguments. They have no basis in reality whatsoever. If you want to say "The Xbox has poor thermal design compared to the PS3" that's okay, it could even be true.

Re:No

[Tetsujin]

You mean like:

• card reader built into the front (5 or 6 in one)

They removed it, remember?

Though honestly, that doesn't bother me nearly as much as the fact that they reduced the number of USB ports from 4 to 2. The card reader was kind of an extaneous, unnecessary function, but the USB ports are used for charging controllers and attaching peripherals. Their frikkin' chipset probably supports four ports anyway, so removing the connectors is just a horribly cheap move.

Re:No

[Doc Ruby]

You don't need a license to write, distribute or sell Linux programs or games running on PS3. You don't even need a license to sell any games for PS3 that are downloaded, just those distributed on physical disc.

If you buy a PS3 and produce and distribute/sell a downloaded program/game, you haven't agreed to anything with Sony (except that console unit's support warranty from Sony, which says nothing about your programming it except that it's allowed in the official "OtherOS" option).

You probably can't use the Sony or PS3 logo to market your program, out of trademark requirements. But you probably can say in text (or your own graphics) that it's "Sony PS3 compatible", because that is a fact. That makes it harder to market the program, but not impossible.

Of course you should ask a lawyer exactly what you need to do if you're going to launch a game, but the basic rights and obligations don't prohibit you AFAIK.

Re:No

[Tharsman]

Since when has adult gaming been a "niche market" or one that "Playstations have traditionally been strong in"? I am an adult, most of my gaming is done on PC. I know a lot of adult gamers, most of their gaming is done on PC. The ones that don't, own an Xbox (1 or 360 depending on what year you want to go back to)... before the Xbox, it was all PC.

During the full life of the PS1 and the early life of the bulk of the PS2 life, Sony was competing with Nintendo. Nintendo's machine was considered by many a kiddy machine with childish games. Adults that wanted their gore went to the PS1/PS2 and stayed away from the N64/GC.

Although the Xbox had some bloody games, the original one was not that successful, heck, I heard it being labeled as a Halo TV Adapter!

The PC market may be your thing, but there is a huge amount of adults out there that play games and hate computers. I myself only play MMOs on the PC, I prefer my fun on the couch... all of it :P

Re:No

[Tharsman]

Actually, they are already working on the PS4. There was an article on /. a couple weeks ago regarding Sony getting together with nvidia or ati (can't remember which) about designing it.

Good to know they plan to ditch their mentality about making their own graphic processor again. So many millions wasted on develop their own thing only to have the X360 match their performance with an off-the-shelf chip... that was a huge waste.

BTW, MS is not behind, they have confirmed that they are working on the X720 (community given name) with small tidbits like saying the x360 achievements will not be lost in the next machine, they will transfer over.

Re:No

[wastedlife]

Up the voltage high enough and it might go pretty fast. Well, at least some parts might.

Re:No

[FunkyELF]

If you want to emulate these mentioned systems, you are way better off with a PC, Xbox 1, or Wii.

Xbox 1 is the way to go. The emulators and XBMC make it so worth it. I'm thinking about buying another Xbox 1 just in case mine dies some day.

Re:No

[drinkypoo]

Sorry, everyone who isn't cheap who wanted a Wii and a 360 have bought them.

I hope that someday you realize that attempting to insult someone who is frugal by calling them cheap only makes you look like a dumbshit.

Also, there are lots of people out there who want a 360 but are currently losing their house. Have you seen what the economy looks like right now? Prepare for superinflation...

Re:No

[222]

You forgot to mention that its the least proprietary system out there in regards to accessories. I can use any standard bluetooth headset I want, and upgrading the HDD to a 500GB one is going to set me back around 100 bucks.

Re:No

[the_humeister]

Linux for PS2 and Linux for PS3 are just Sony's feeble attempts at saying 'We support open source'.

I always thought it was an attempt to bypass some European import law(s) by saying "Hey look! It runs Linux so it's really a computer and not a game console!"

Re:No

[Sj0]

And yet this thread continues to add absolutely nothing to the discussion, which is why I made fun of you in the last post. Interesting.

Re:No

[Sj0]

According to the site I linked to, Microsoft's game division made half a billion dollars last year.

Re:No

[drinkypoo]

And yet this thread continues to add absolutely nothing to the discussion, which is why I made fun of you in the last post. Interesting.

There is more to life than adding to "the discussion". Your comment clearly added nothing, but you made it anyway. This comment adds nothing to the discussion either, but it does provide another venue for me to suggest to you that you find some way to amuse yourself other than insulting people. I mean, if you're going to insult someone, couldn't you at least be funny or insightful in the process?

Re:No

[Xest]

It was fixed in the Falcon motherboard which was released around autumn 2007 so hasn't been an issue for around 18 months now.

Certainly systems bought before this time are prone, arguably all of them at some point in fact will possibly fail.

I've also gone through 3 RRODs but all 3 were consoles prior to the Falcon variant systems. The Falcon variant system I've received as a replacement has yet to fail, similarly I do not know anyone with a failed Falcon system. Speaking to an old school friend who is a regional manager for DSG in the UK covering quite a few major electronics retailers, he mentioned that around this time they saw a big change and in all the stores he covered have not had a single RROD Falcon based 360 returned. They have had a few failed units, but in each case the systems were either completely dead or just locking up and the numbers compared to sales were well within the expected averages for electronic goods hence my earlier comments.

This is also reflected by much fewer reports of the problem in forums compared to the early days and more importantly it's reflected by the fact that it was shortly before the release of the Falcon systems that Microsoft was able to put a figure on the amount they'd need to put aside for repairs of the RROD system. They could not have put a specific figure aside like this had they not been confident the issue was solved as they'd have no way to predict future sales and hence factor in future repair costs for this scale of problem if it was still going to be an issue.

The only advantage of the Jasper board based systems is simply that they're cheaper for MS to produce (hence the price drops) and run cooler and quieter than ever.

Re:No

[Sj0]

What do I look like, your dancing monkey?

So far, I've made a contribution to this discussion, and you've made none. I could keep on talking, and the score won't change.

Re:No

[kaizokuace]

There is another reason besides market share that less exclusive games are released for PS3. Sony has the uncanny ability to develop systems that are increasingly difficult to develop games on. Where as Microsoft has made the dev process on the 360 very easy and developer-centric. The Wii is easy to work on because people have been making gamecube games since the gamecube was released. I hate Balmer but "Developer, Developers, Developers" is key.

Re:No

[tepples]

a used Xbox is $60.

Plus the price of the exploitable game and memory card adapter. Even then, if I want to buy an Xbox to soft-mod it, how do I make sure that I'm buying a console with a sufficiently old dashboard version and a sufficiently early revision of the exploitable game?

Re:No

[Kn0w1]

Don't forget non-proprietary, upgradeable hard drive. It uses a standard 2.5" SATA hard drive. And the tools to backup, format the new drive, then restore your data are all built-in.

Re:No

[CronoCloud]

No, it was YaBasic on the PS2 that was the attempt to evade the import duty. The law/duty was revoked shortly thereafter, before Linux on the PS2 was released, and doesn't exist anymore. And thusly has nothing to do with Linux on the PS2/PS3.

Re:No

[drinkypoo]

So far, I've made a contribution to this discussion, and you've made none.

You related some nonsense. That's a contribution? Meanwhile I've made a contribution to your education. Too bad it hasn't yet borne fruit; you're still ignoring the fact that your statement was both asinine and ignorant.

I could keep on talking, and the score won't change.

As long as you see life as a zero-sum game, it certainly will not.

Re:No

[Nick Ives]

Good to know they plan to ditch their mentality about making their own graphic processor again. So many millions wasted on develop their own thing only to have the X360 match their performance with an off-the-shelf chip... that was a huge waste.

The PS3 RSX uses a part from Nvidia that's roughly equal to a 7900GTX. If anything the 360's graphics part is more off the wall what with the tiny 10MB framebuffer which is the reason why so many new releases are running at below 720p.

I think Sony intended for developers to use the SPEs on the Cell to make up for the fact that the graphics hardware has a less powerful shader hardware. In the even though it seems like most developers aren't bothering to do that, after all why would you when your title will sell less on that platform anyway?

Re:No

[elrous0]

I'd say a distant 3rd-place for three Christmases in a row for a console whose predecessor had something like 70%-80% of the console marketshare in the previous generation would fairly qualify as a "flop."

Re:No

[drinkypoo]

Plus the price of the exploitable game and memory card adapter. Even then, if I want to buy an Xbox to soft-mod it, how do I make sure that I'm buying a console with a sufficiently old dashboard version and a sufficiently early revision of the exploitable game?

It doesn't work like that. All Xboxes can be softmodded. A memory card adapter can easily be made from an Xbox controller pigtail and a USB extension cable (you can also make an Xbox to PC controller adapter in the bargain, for the same low price.) There are no dashboard version restrictions; you DO need an early version of the game. However, there are forums where you can find someone to help you (or do it for you for a fee) all over the country. Even if you had to buy a modchip, it would still be less than half the price of the Wii. Finally, the Xbox actually has HD-resolution output, so it is actually a more capable platform overall than the Wii. It can run XBMC; Wii can't.

Do you make these half-assed objections just to watch people like me dance? All the answers are out there, an intelligent person could spend two or three minutes and get them all. I take it you are not one of these.

Re:No

[Sj0]

Let's go back to what I actually said to begin with -- ah, a third party site which shows that Sony's game division didn't make a profit last year. See, this is an actual contribution to discussion. By contrast, you've now wasted 4 posts on some lame aside about how you don't have a 360. Nobody cares that you don't have a 360. It doesn't add anything to the discussion. Quit wasting everyone's time.

Re:No

[CronoCloud]

Having only 2 ports isn't a big insurmountable problem, because USB hubs work. More convenient to have 4, of course. I currently have an Apple USB keyboard (the mouse is plugged into it), an inactive Dual Shock 3, external hard drive, and printer plugged into mine.

Re:No

[Mango Fett]

Good points Nova - PS3 is technically the best of the bunch, but it's not my preferred platform.

I see a lot of parallels between the PS3 and the original Xbox. Superior hardware, specs, and potential all tie together to make it the best machine - from a technical point of view.

Even going back to the Xbox vs. PS2 - the PS2 was riddled with DRE failures, which weren't as widespread as the 360's RROD, but had a higher than normal occurrence (as I remember).

The 360 beat the PS3 out of the gates and has enjoyed a more robust library. Another factor that had contributed to the lukewarm reception of the PS3 is that developers have been largely using the 360 as the lead platform - resulting in most games not fully exploiting the power of the PS3 - similar to the lament of the first Xbox. Finally, remember that Sony put a ridiculous price tag on the PS3 at launch, which made it so only an idiot fucktard (see below) would justify the $600 outlay with not many games to play.

The library's advantages are starting to narrow now with the recent additions the PS3 has made (MGS4, LBP, Valkyria Chronicles, KZ2, Resistance 2 and MLB 09). However, the perception seems to be that the 360 has more going for it software wise than the PS3.

For full disclosure - I have had a 360, PS3 and Wii all since their launch dates.

I prefer the 360 due to the controller and Xbox Live. The PS3 is mainly for rental games and Blu-Ray, and the Wii is only used when there are kids over who want to play Mario Kart.

Now, I am concerned that this is the second video game machine that Sony has made with terrific specs, but under-delivering on the "WOW" factor. The PSP has been another with drool inducing visions of a complete package, but software and odd controller design (single analog nub?) holding it back.

Re:No

[xero314]

Lock the PS3 up in a small contained space and it'll fry too.

The difference between the PS3 and other consoles in this regard is that the PS3 displays a warning and shuts down processes to allow the system to cool down, where as, the XBox360 for example, just allows it self to be permanently damaged.

Re:No

[Tetsujin]

Having only 2 ports isn't a big insurmountable problem, because USB hubs work. More convenient to have 4, of course.

Yeah, my first accessory purchase was one of those Nyko conformal hubs with the card reader built in. Still would be a lot nicer if they'd just included the ports, though.

It's much more convenient to simply have the needed ports built in.

Re:No

[default luser]

No. The small EDRAM is not the sole reason games aren't pushing 720p. It's because the graphice hardware in both consoles cannot display 1280x720+ without giving-up framerate or details. Since details sell (why they keep increasing), and framerate is mandatory, designers have been pushing things at the cost of resolution.

Even many PS3 games don't run at 720p these days, and there's no EDRAM to make that happen.

I owned a 7900, and I'm well-aware of what it can do. Oblivion brought the card to it's knees (had to settle for 1152x864, medium settings, HDR). They were able to run it at 720p on the 360, despite the 10MB EDRAM limit, and despite the overhead of HDR.

Today, games look even better than Oblivion, and take more graphics power to render. The only solution is to reduce the resolution, or your framerate will go all to hell.

And no, Sony didn't intend Cell to supplement shaders - they intended Cell to BE the shader. That's why RSX wasn't added to the PS3 until the last-minute, once they realized that Cell wasn't fast enough to render 3D.

And yes, you could use Cell to do supplemental effects, but that's a difficult undertaking: you have to properly synchronize the Cell thread so that the GPU isn't waiting on it, and you have to make sure that your shader isn't cannibalizing too much memory bandwidth (rendering is bandwidth-intensive, usually heavily-offset by the complex cache architecture of the GPU, something an SPE can't do).

Re:No

[harry666t]

What part of the world do you live in? Even in Poland we already have 230v.

Re:No

[Maudib]

Nonsense. Most of us who got Wii quickly grew tired of it (Literally dozens of friends) and have gone back to adult consoles.

I have a PS3 and I love it.

Re:No

[spectecjr]

Raw Power

Sorry, but I prefer my power cooked, thanks.

As in, I prefer it to actually be usable. And not to have to use half of it to make up for a lousy GPU.

On the PS3, the Cell (SPUs) are mostly used for:

• Audio decoding, output & mixing
• Vertex culling to reduce the load on the woefully underpowered and bandwidth limited GPU
• Shader patching, again to reduce load on the woefully underpowered and bandwidth limited GPU

Sure, it occasionally does other things, but all of the above are things that the 360 has dedicated hardware to do. Your Cell processor? It's not doing what you think it should be.

Re:No

[jaavaaguru]

The same could be said for Windows/Linux/Apple fanboys.

Re:No

[jaavaaguru]

from how many kids I've (dismayingly) heard talking about their XBoxes

What's dismaying about it? /me is confused

Re:No

[cbreaker]

Don't worry. There's a lot of PS3 haters out there, and they love to be heard. The folks that like the PS3 don't care enough to post how much they enjoy the system.

I have a PS3 and I like it a lot. I don't play too many games on it, but I do play some. I play a lot of media with it - it's my main media head to my collecton of music, movies, etc. The uPNP media support is superb.

I have played around with Linux on it a lot and it's great being able to do so. Boots a little slow, but it works pretty well.

I like that I can attach any USB mouse, keyboard, drive, etc to it. I like that I can charge the controllers with my cell phone charger.

And I have about 40 bluray movies to play on it so far.

It's a great machine. Never a glitch or problem to speak of. It just works, and it's fun. I don't really care if 360 sales are higher. Why would anyone? Does that make the PS3 any less awesome to me?

Re:No

[Khyber]

Nope.

Neighbor has gone through every board revision for his 360. RROD still happens. He comes over to play my PS3 for GTA and Assassin's Creed. Now he wants one.

There is a good reason I won't touch Microsoft 'hardware' and that is because Microsoft is a software company. They can barely get an OS working, let alone get their hardware to work with their own OS (Lifecam installations are near impossible under Vistax64) so I sure wouldn't trust stand-alone hardware from them.

My neighbor is just anecdotal evidence but add in my medical pot distributor having the same issues and that's more than enough to convince me that I made the right choice staying away from them.

Hell, I only had one issue with my Wii, and that was caused by Super Smash Bros. That only took a week to get fixed, and I have had no issue since.

Also, all of my consoles are in a cabinet, behind the heat-emitting 32" LCD. PS3, Wii, and PS2. I bet a 360 wouldn't survive back there, but my other consoles have done just fine.

Re:No

[Khyber]

Except the problem you mention for the PS3 exists in the 360 as well.

The GPU blows. Fallout 3 on PS3 and 360 can't even render a fucking fence.

My LAPTOP can render the fucking fence. These systems are supposed to be more dedicated for gaming than my laptop, better for gaming than my laptop, yet my laptop beats them in both higher resolutions and more detail, with a more solid framerate. Assassin's Creed ran like glass in max everything on my laptop, on the PS3 it would get laggy, or run too fast and tearing would show on the screen.

And that, my friend, is what I call absolute BULLSHIT.

Re:No

[geminidomino]

So far, I've made a contribution to this discussion, and you've made none. I could keep on talking, and the score won't change.

I must have missed that in your flood of acting like a self-righteous, irresponsible prick.

Re:No

[Khyber]

Guess you don't own Budokai Tenkaichi 3 for the Wii.

I don't care much for DragonBall but this game ROCKS. There is no fighting game with anywhere near as smooth gameplay. And this is true three-dimensional fighting. In the air, under water, on the ground, in space. The Wiimote actually uses the accelerometers and positional sensors so you actually have to mimic some moves in order to use them, and it's a bit more intuitive than using a regular controller.

By comparison, I played MK vs DC, and it BLOWS. The novelty of new fatalities wears off quickly (Joker's fatality FTW,) and then there's not much else going for the game.

Re:No

[geminidomino]

Ignoring the numbers, then...

Metal Gear Solid 4 was a disappointment.
Heavenly Sword was a ripoff (I've had games of tetris last longer).
Street Fighter 4 was unimpressive.
Playing "The Fifth Element in HD" could easily be accomplished sans PS3.

I am by no means a console fanboy (My greatest concentration of games is PS2, followed by 360, both in the high-double- if not triple-digits) but honestly, I've been disappointed with the PS3. It's been over 2 years since it came out, and honestly, there's still only one game that a) still interests me and b) can't be had on the 360, and as much as I love Ratchet & Clank, I can't justify getting one just for that game...

Re:No

[Hatta]

adults (a niche market which Playstations have traditionally been strong in)

The age of the average gamer is 35. Adults are certainly not a niche market by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, even adult female gamers outnumber the teenage male gamer.

Re:No

[forgottenusername]

The PS3 has a lot of limitations.

- Linux installation isn't very complicated on it, but not terribly useful. As others have mentioned, it's a limited RAM system and with current firmware there is no access to the accelerated hardware. I've ran Xubuntu and Yellow Dog on it. Both worked fine, but the system was too slow to play HD movies etc. Also, you need a keyboard to boot between PS3 os and Linux. There is a project to be able to select using a controller at boot but it wasn't functional.

- No IR support. That means in order to use any kind of all-in-one remote you need to buy something like the Nyko blue wave (gives you a USB IR device). Even with that, you cannot power the system on and off. Not everyone wants to waste power by leaving their components on indefinitely

- To your point of "nearly flawless" video etc, the fact that it _requires_ upnp to play over network is silly. Most everyone would prefer a simple CIFS share, which would work on windows and Linux. Installing a totally unsecured upnp server == suck.

Also, the video formats it supports is highly restrictive, requiring many folks to reencode or transcode their media files. It seems almost arbitrary what formats they support. This is the list. The fact is even if you have files encoded in their 'blessed' list, there are options that cause playback failure (compression settings etc). Very frustrating.

I was unable to reliably play fairly low bitrate avi's over a upnp server using the wireless adapter. I had to hardware it to my network.

- As a gaming console, it's okay. It has much longer than expected loading times for games across the board, though. For instance, GTA4 takes ~ 3-5 min from disk insertion until it's ready to play. EA Fight Night 3 is constantly taking 1-2 min to switch contexts (different fighting modes, training etc).

I bought it as a cheap console addon to replace my broken DVD player. For that, it does well. It certainly has gotten much better with the firmware updates - the travesty of limited to no ps2 game compatability (depending on which version of ps3 you get) is a joke.

With gaming consoles, you either need to do something breakaway awesome (like WII) or vastly improve on old stuff (like 360). A slightly better but buggy and limited release will give you small initial adoption, and without a large initial explosion the platform will never truly be successful compared to its rivals.

They basically got owned by the R&D time & costs of developing their architecture making the 360 development much quicker and less buggy. Also by their arrogance in thinking the market would be happy with an inferior product they'd patch up later with firmware.

Re:No

[Ninnle Labs, LLC]

I mean "financial analysts who do this for a living to try and offer valuable information to investors to determine the financial health of companies."

Hopefully they weren't the same "experts" who were rating junk subprime mortages as AAA. We all know how well their ratings ended up being in the end.

Re:No

[mattack2]

I don't have either, but doesn't the Xbox 360 have just as many different configurations? Arcade, etc..? and one of the big differences being that some don't have hard drives, thus can't do backward compatibility with Xbox games.

(My hope for this thread was that there were PS2 emulators available. Even if from a third party, as long as it played the games I wanted, having the ability to play my PS2 games would make me more likely to get a PS3 sooner, though still not *soon*. I've never played a PS1 game on my PS2, but the backward compatibility ability is something I would generally pay extra for "just in case"..)

Re:No

[randyest]

Um, the entire ecosystem of video gaming consoles, games, and peripherals at Sony is losing money, and has been since the PS3 was released. That's his point.

Re:No

[Cyrcyr]

Except that is not at all what he's saying.

as almost every other console, ps3 are sold at a loss. maybe the ps3 as ecosystem has made a lot of money to sony, but only when factoring in the extra pricey developer kit, game signature fees, and royalty on each game sale.

Game consoles today are selling at a loss BECAUSE the margin per sold game/peripheral is enough to keep them afloat. Technically it makes sense too. Put more money into developing a solid platform and let the content bring in the money for a longer time than if the platform would be lesser than it is.

Re:No

[spire3661]

Nintendo is just as evil as their counterparts.

Re:No

[Sj0]

So is my point less valid when applied to how much folding@home he can do?

Re:No

[spire3661]

I have a 360 and a PS3 in the same cabinet, and I can tell you the PS3 pumps out ALOT of heat as well.

Re:No

[spire3661]

IM sorry, but but RROD is NOT an obsolete argument considering the VAST majority of the install base has a machine with this design flaw. You cant just sweep it under the rug and say "MS fixed it"

And yes the 360 does have a standard USB port, BUT it is not nearly as useful as the PS3s.

Re:No

[Sj0]

Self-righteous and prick I'll take. It's the Internet. You either piss people off, or suck people off, or people don't bother stopping.

Irresponsible is a ridiculous charge, however. I'm debt-free, have a chunk of change in the bank, and a sizeable severance if I'm ever laid off. How's it irresponsible to own a few consoles?

Re:No

[spire3661]

MS relented a bit and now allows limited 3rd party Wifi dongles, but the MS branded one is still mind-bogglingly $99. THat price point REALLY makes me want to choke a market product placement exec.

Re:No

[csartanis]

300 watts an hour makes for a pretty expensive F@H machine. Your electricity bill must be huge!

Re:No

[spire3661]

When I bought my PS3, I was inpressed by its fit and finish, its overall completeness as a package, and its ability to use my old PS2 force feedback steering wheel in new games.Oh btw, and Killzone 2 IS a Halo killer in EVERY sense of the word.

Re:No

[geminidomino]

Irresponsible is a ridiculous charge, however. I'm debt-free, have a chunk of change in the bank, and a sizeable severance if I'm ever laid off. How's it irresponsible to own a few consoles?

It isn't irresponsible to own a few consoles if you can afford it. To advocate that others, want them but cannot afford it, are simply "cheap" is advocating irresponsibility.

Re:No

[spire3661]

I play Mario 64 on my HTPC sometimes with a Xbox 360 wireless controller. Mario 64 @ 1920x1080,
8x AA, 8x aniso is something to behold

Re:No

[spire3661]

Cant you provide SMB access to your roms over the network?

Re:No

[Sj0]

There are two sides to every equation. Truly responsible people can afford it, because they've made the choices and sacrifices they needed to be secure enough to get what they want.

Re:No

[anomaly256]

YOU mean like:

• Raw power mitigated by an overly restrictive hypervisor that pretty much negates the raw power of the device
• Install a linux with only a SLOW framebuffer that can't even play back HD media smoothly and makes no use of the CELL VME cores at all, only the slow PPC front end that run slower than a G4 and is pretty useless for any desktop tasks due to lack of any substantial amount of ram
• CELL is limited to 6 of the would-be 8 cores due to the actual HIGH failure rate at the factory
• Only decent app/game out there that makes full use of the hardware at all is folding@home. Yep, ONLY folding@home...
• Card reader that was REMOVED from later models because some sony suit wanted to bump returns slightly to make it look like they were doing their job
• Again.. ONLY folding@home.. whoopydoo

You mean like:

• Raw Power
• Linux install in the freaking menu (no cracking required)
• Standard USB cable for controller charging
• Free online play (no subscription BS)
• Nearly flawless upnp video/music/image viewer (no need to install xmbc, etc)
• Power adapter is BUILT IN (standard desktop power cord goes straight in the back)
• Very low failure rate (unline some other console out there)
• Can be run 24/7 without heat issues (I do folding@home CONSTANTLY while not playing games on it with no problems)
• card reader built into the front (5 or 6 in one)
• Folding at home (sponsored by sony themselves) as a native app

Remember, some of us actually have REASONS for picking a particular console!

Re:No

[anomaly256]

This is what truly frustrates me about the ps3 (btw I do own one): It could have been so much better if they had just been willing to let it be better. I know.. It's a game console etc etc not a super computer or a desktop replacement. But it could have been..

Re:No

[Sj0]

FINALLY. Someone actually says something about games.

I tip my hat to you.

I'm probably going to end up with a PS3, if history is any indication. I ended up with a bunch of gamecube games for my Wii, and the GC had more going against it than the ps3. At the end of the day, it's not going to be linux, or some ethereal "power", it's going to be the games that make me buy a PS3, just like it was ironically the lack of games that convinced me to get rid of my Wii.

Re:No

[Tatsh]

Agreed. They are working hard with the US government (instead of fixing the problems themselves) to fight piracy, preventing things like the M3 or R4 products.

Re:No

[Tatsh]

Ever buy a Chiquita banana? A GE lightbulb? Hugo Boss shirt?

No Hugo Boss shirt. Abercrombie however...lol

Re:No

[Tatsh]

Very true. Microsoft has made programming for 360 nothing too new, which can be good and bad.

For PS3, you get SPE's and PPU's (6 SPE's) to handle threads (sort of like cores). It can be automatic, but it is better if you optimise your code for each SPE. This extra work does not look like it is being done. Games on PS3 vs Xbox 360 are looking pretty much EXACTLY the same or WORSE. Sony made PS2 hard to work with at first as well. New technology (like the Cell processor or the Emotion Engine (MIPS-based)) is good, but developers need to just say 'no' to making PS3 games if they are not going to take advantage of the system. But hey that's why Sony has its 3rd party developers who will do PS* only right? Actually, they are all almost gone now, including Rockstar (who used to make GTA only for PS* and PC).

On Xbox 360 you have 3 cores and I bet most developers rely upon the library to choose which thread goes to which core. Easier.

Re:No

[geminidomino]

Now you're just back to self-righteous and prick, but you're adding outright falsehoods. Being responsible doesn't imply having the money to do/have whatever you want. Rather the opposite, in that it means recognizing that you DON'T have the money and NOT doing it anyway.

Re:No

[supernova_hq]

...causing them to be responsible for the burning of more coal and oil which raise cancer rates on their own...

Ah, how I love Canada and it's ability to sustain itself mainly on Hydro and Nuclear power (Hydro here on the west coast).

Re:No

[spectecjr]

Hmmm... weird. I assume you're talking about this:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6202552/index.html ... which is very odd, because in the screenshots, I can indeed see the fence on the 360 one. I can't see it on the PS3 though.

Re:No

[ogl_codemonkey]

Did you *deliberately* top-post on Slashdot? That's an interesting choice...

Re:No

[Sj0]

My ex-girlfriend and I show the dichotomy. Between the two of us, our income was easily in the six figures. Because of the irresponsible way money was spent, we never had any money, we ended up deeply in debt, always waiting for our next paycheque to barely keep our heads above water. We lived in a house we couldn't afford, driving vehicles we couldn't afford, we took trips we couldn't afford, and at the end of the day our unsustainable lifestyles were more stressful than it was worth.

By contrast, today I drive a vehicle that's paid for, I live in an apartment I can easily afford the rent in, and rather than being one paycheque from oblivion and months behind on my bills, all my bills are paid several months ahead. As a result of my responsibility, I could easily run out and buy anything I want. I have savings, I have disposable income, I have the money to do whatever I want.

Maybe you're just not as responsible as you think?

Re:No

[geminidomino]

Maybe you're just not as responsible as you think?

Hardly. I own my car and motorcycle, my rent+bills account for less than 50% of my income, and I've got 3 months' pay (7 months living expenses) liquid at any given moment, and I can still treat myself to gadgets every month or two.

You're mistake is assuming that everyone has a 6-figure income. The man making just enough to survive can be responsible with money and still unable to afford a $500 game system. That doesn't make him "cheap." It makes him poor.

Re:No

[Sj0]

So what decisions did that man make that lead to him making so little money?

Responsibility is two sides of a coin, as I said before. It's easy to live within your means. What's hard is making sacrifices for years to really build a future.

Re:No

[geminidomino]

So what decisions did that man make that lead to him making so little money?

Responsibility is two sides of a coin, as I said before. It's easy to live within your means. What's hard is making sacrifices for years to really build a future.

Now you're contradicting yourself. Either he's sacrificing something he really wants (A wizz-bang new game console) for his future, or he's not buying it because he's cheap. Which is it?

Re:No

[Sj0]

The cool thing is, there's no paradox.

Putting money in the bank for school instead of partying. Studying in college instead of partying. Moving to a small town and making good enough money to get on your feet instead of insisting on living in the big city and making starvation wages. There are plenty of sacrifices that are purely lifestyle. It's the responsible thing.

On the other hand, my rent and bills are 17% of my income, and not because I make six figures. It lets me have a different lifestyle than most people.

Re:No

[Khyber]

Something LIKE that, yes. I didn't know about that article. I did comparisons of Fallout 3 across my friend's 360, my PS3, and my laptop. My laptop renders far more than either system, and it's by far less powerful than either system.

Re:No

[geminidomino]

Way to kick the hell out of that strawman, but I never said there was a paradox between sacrifice and responsibility. I said there was a difference between being responsible and being cheap.

Re:No

[Sj0]

And I'm saying if you're really responsible, you've positioned yourself in such a way that you can afford things you want. The 360 has been out for years. If you still can't afford one but you want one, how responsible can you be?

Re:No

[geminidomino]

Responsible enough to know you can't afford one. You don't even have to be on subsistence wages to not be able to afford $400 game systems (plus another $400 for a TV to make it worthwhile. The 360 looks like SHIT on a standard TV).

All you need are a couple of kids that need school clothes and a college fund, auto insurance for two cars, a mortgage, etc...

Just because you WANT something does not mean it is, or ever will be, a high priority.

Re:No

[Sj0]

See, in my view, you shouldn't have a couple kids if you can't afford a few hundred dollars to spend on yourself at some point over a few years. You'd have to be cutting the margins way too close for comfort.

Just because you WANT kids, a mortgage, and two cars doesn't mean you can afford it. It certainly doesn't mean that it's responsible to have all those things if you're barely scraping by with such a life.

Of course, I looked at the housing market and realised I couldn't responsibly afford a mortgage, so I rent. Then the housing market collapsed because prices were way too high.

As I've consistently said: Part of being responsible is being responsible enough to be positioned to do the things you want. Doing it even though you can't afford it might be in vogue, but that doesn't mean it's responsible.

Re:No

[kiatoa]

Uh, 300 watts an hour? Watts are a unit of power. It is "300 watts". I guess you could say that the energy consumption will be 300 watt-hrs per hour. We pay 0.06 $/kWhr here in AZ last time I checked. That means it will cost you roughly 0.3 * 0.06 * 24 = 0.43 $/day to run or about $160 per year.

Re:No

[db32]

Not after I learned of their asshat behavior, Yes, Never

Now, my point is that for as much as people bitch and moan about Company X doing Evil Thing X hardly any of them actually quit buying their fucking products as a result. They instead rant and bitch and moan and then pay up. So...they cry that these asshat companies enlist the aid of government or other strong arm tactics to get their way, and then would rather someone else come swoop in and use strong arm tactics against them instead of just quit buying their fucking shit. I don't expect everyone to be perfect, or to deeply research the makers of every product that they purchase. However, this is slashdot and the antics of Sony and Microsoft are WELL known the this crowd...yet this same crowd continues to purchase the wares of the companies in question. If you know a company is up to know good then you shouldn't buy their shit and support it. I actually do have a rather lengthy "blacklist" of companies I avoid dealing with because of their antics. When they knock off the bullshit I buy their products again, when they pick up the bullshit I quit buying them. Market forces only fix things when people actually vote with their dollars.

I think Dow Chemicals is the scum of the earth too for their Bhopal thing. It is damned near impossible to track down every product that could be related to Dow, so I try to avoid their shit when it is obvious and I try to make other people aware of it.

So...in the end...fuck you. Learn how to take tongue in cheek humor and maybe some understanding that knowingly buying from companies with track records of being assholes and buying from companies without knowing their track records for being assholes isn't even remotely the same thing. The only way things will EVER get better is if people sound the alarm on shithead companies and then actually quit buying their products rather than finding lame justifications for filling those company coffers...

Re:No

[db32]

Could be. I have not seen nearly as much of a track record of shithead behavior out of them as the other two. However, I don't exactly keep up on them either. Getting modded as flamebait for talking trash on PS/XBox is rather telling though. For all the bitching that is done here about those two corporate entities daring to insult their product lines (or those who purchase them) is "flamebait".

Re:No

[Cowmonaut]

The dangers of not being verbose.

Basically, I can't get a onboard TV-tuner on my PC so I can't just buy a large monitor and have it double as a TV. I don't actually have any more USB slots available due to other USB devices being connected and I'd really rather not get a USB hub on top of all the other junk I have taking up space on my desk attached to my computer, especially for one more device.

A long enough cable to be outputting from my PC to a TV is more expensive than 50 bucks and that means my computer *always* has to be in the same room as my TV. Since I'm planning on moving inside of 6-8 months (or at least packing for moving) that may or may not be acceptable.

So using the XBOX is a good solution for me. I have a home server for files anyways as I didn't want a bunch of music and movies on my WD 'raptors which have limited space, so I can throw Windows Home Server on it and use my XBOX to play stuff to my entertainment center.

I'm choosing Windows Home Server + XBOX over an open source solution mainly to save on space. I have an XBOX already so why build yet another box to do something that I can do if I just put WHS on the file server currently running linux. Plus since I have Vista Ultimate for DX10 for Crysis/UT3 (how I wish there were more games that ran well with DX10...) WHS is an added advantage as I can manage backups and stuff from the server. Or watch/listen to stuff from my PC if I'm working at the same time.

Re:No

[ustolemyname]

I don't think you understand the difference between running Folding@home vs. leaving something in a reduced power state so it can scrape data from the internet.

Next you're going to tell me you're confused that your phone lasts for three days with out charging (in sleep mode), and so it's pathetic that the iPhone* has less than 12 hours of talk time.

* (note - I choose this only because it's a popular, recognizable "less then crappy" handset)

Re:No

[yoda-dono]

Though you have to consider that Sony didn't give us this Linux install method out of the goodness of their hearts, but to placate most of the crackers that would try to get Linux onto the system. Instead they have people trying to work within the constraints that Sony set for Linux. I almost wish that they hadn't given us the Linux install option as they did, because by now perhaps someone would have hacked in a much more usable Linux. By the way, though this has nothing to do with what I was saying above, I just want to say aloud how much their partitioning options suck. You are only able to pick whether Linux or PS3 gets stuck with 10gb to work with, that's it... pathetic.

PS3 without linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a gamer and for the longest time I have been trying to decide if I want to buy a PS3. If only it had more ram.

Re:PS3 without linux?

[ciderVisor]

It's a damn fine Blu-Ray player and upscaling DVD player. Dunno why you'd want to run linux on it, though; If you're not going to play games on it, you'll get lots more bang for your buck buying standard PC hardware, especially pre-owned.

Re:PS3 without linux?

[CronoCloud]

Installing Linux doesn't remove your ability to play PS3 games, it works in a dual-boot fashion. Which is what makes it nice. You get commercial games like Fallout 3 and Linux without needing to run Windows to play games, and it's all on a box that's designed to hook up to a TV, even an SDTV. Plus all the other stuff the PS3 does.

Re:PS3 without linux?

[broeman]

Well, it looks like a dual-boot, but it is a virtual guest (and therefore you cannot "see" the real partition structure when you load the linux guest). The PS3 can allocate 10GB to _either_ XMB or Linux (annoying choice), but you could use a USB- or NAS-server with your media/retro games.

Why do they always forget Freespace?

[Vu1turEMaN]

I cry everytime people don't remember the hardworking folks over at the Freespace SCP when it comes to Linux gaming....
http://scp.indiegames.us/
and
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php
for more info.

Over a million posts in their forum debugging an amazing game.

Re:Why do they always forget Freespace?

[Yfrwlf]

Yay. Gotta love those forums where you have to dig around for centuries just to try to figure out what in the hell is going on, and where to download the damn game from.

From the main page: "The Source Code Project was started roughly five years ago, when Volition released the source code to the game known as 'Freespace 2'. This virtually unknown game consistently won awards for being a great action space sim, but never really caught on when it was released. The Source Code Project has worked, and continues to work, on improving the graphics and gameplay of this ten-year-old game. See the screenshots page; I think they pretty much speak for themselves."

Oooh awesome! I'll try it out! So you go to the downloads section and find...tools....and two launchers...and a "viewer". So you're like WTF. Your only alternative is to dig around on the stupid forums to try to find out where to download it from, which is frustrating in and of itself, and usually gets very cryptic, involving lots of Firefox tabs and links to see other things if you need this part, and these links over here to get that part, and oh you have to compile this part...

In other words, this game isn't ready to be played so that I can see those pretty screenshots for myself. Maybe that's why no one mentions it when they mention Linux gaming! But hack on, hack on, maybe in five more years you'll actually share some of that goodness with everyone else by having the actual game for download.

Re:Why do they always forget Freespace?

[Vu1turEMaN]

If you would have just asked for help, I would have mentioned the automated installer button in the top left of the first link. Run the JAR file if you have Java installed, and let the installer download everything for a few hours (Comes to 2.4GB on most installs).

Seems parent is +5 and the others could find that link also. Next time try not to be a smartass.

Re:Why do they always forget Freespace?

[argiedot]

You are right about this, it is incredibly hard to find the download links. It was torturous trying to get them. But the game does function, it plays just like the original but cross-platform and with better graphics.

Re:Why do they always forget Freespace?

[captainpanic]

Huh?
I have searched many times for open source games and linux games, and this Freespace doesn't seem to appear in the lists:

http://rangit.com/software/top-8-linux-games-of-2007/
http://www.linuxgames.com/

And many more sites like that...

Some people don't remember, but even more people might never have heard of it.

Re:Why do they always forget Freespace?

[Yfrwlf]

Wasn't trying to be one, didn't see the link as it's ABOVE the title of the website instead of in the download section where normal surfers might look. So, maybe it's just me and being blind, but that was really unexpected and they might want to change the layout a little but that's JMO. Thanks tho. ^^

Re:Why do they always forget Freespace?

[Yfrwlf]

Well with some games that's how it is, though I didn't see the link at the very top of the page, above the page title.

http://scp.indiegames.us/bnr_installer.php

So, your eye has to look above and below the title to see everything, which is a pretty poor site layout IMO. Not to mention my eye didn't find even the link to download the auto installer at first, since it has a dark grey background like the other non-important parts of the page. Seriously, their website maintainer needs to change a few things. =P

Re:Why do they always forget Freespace?

[Hatta]

Didn't they just change the installer, so it doesn't download the data files anymore? The license on the data files was pretty iffy, and since Good Old Games is around, they've been encouraging people to go there instead.

Last I played on my IBM T23, there were some show stopping graphical bugs. But the S3 on that thing is crap, so I'm not surprised.

Re:Why do they always forget Freespace?

[Yfrwlf]

ERROR: " Web cursor bitmap not found. This is most likely due to one of three reasons: 1) You're running FreeSpace Open from somewhere other than your FreeSpace 2 folder; 2) You've somehow corrupted your FreeSpace 2 installation; 3) You haven" at graphics/2d.cpp:1526

Re-installation didn't do anything. I wasn't running Freespace from somewhere else. Oh current state of Linux application installation, how we all hate you.

Re:Why do they always forget Freespace?

[geminidomino]

I presume there's actually discussion on the bugs. This isn't ubuntu we're talking about.

Re:Why do they always forget Freespace?

[Vu1turEMaN]

Go report the error on the forums, and they'll be sure to help.

Re:Why do they always forget Freespace?

[Vu1turEMaN]

There were never any graphical bugs for me with the standard releases, and even with 90% of the nightlies I used to download. Its probably related to your S3 and the fact its not ATI or nVidia unfortunately.

Re:Why do they always forget Freespace?

[Vu1turEMaN]

It was developed for windows. Upon death of the company, the source code for Freespace 2 was released (about 90% of it, atleast) and the community began working on fixing the missing pieces (a proprietary cutscene codec had to be replaced, and the actual game launchers for every OS were the main missing pieces). Also, in the original EULA on the CD (or maybe it was in one of the original patches), it said that it was ok to distribute FS2 to friends and family (read the wiki on the argument about it).

So i guess it isn't a typical open source project, but it was adapted to work on any OS. I remember trying it out on Ubuntu 2 years ago and it ran fairly well.

Re:Why do they always forget Freespace?

[Yfrwlf]

That's cool, I could do that yeah, or I could just not play it and stick to stuff that's not buggy and broken, and could come back later for their stable version. I mean, if you can't even bother to test your own software on a "normal" Linux machine, that's just sad.

Maybe it's bugs like this that has caused Linux gaming sites not to "remember" it as a "great Linux game". Just saying. Pretty bad when you can't even install and run the thing...doesn't even get into the game where normal bugs might be found on a normal stable game, so I'd call this a, what, alpha release?

Linux on PS3?

[DemonBeaver]

I really can't see a good reason to install Linux on a PS3 except for once again proving that Linux goes on everything with a microchip. I'd rather buy a cheap pc for Linux, and have a working keyboard...

Re:Linux on PS3?

[skreeech]

a usb keyboard works fine on it. I think you need one for most installations. I am not disputing that a cheap PC is a much better alternative.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[palegray.net]

I'm wasting mod points I used earlier in this story just to correct your idiotic point of view (I've seen this before, mostly from kids who have no clue that there's a world beyond gaming).

Linux on PS3 clusters, used for scientific computing, is a huge success. Sony openly supported Linux from the start on their console with precisely this sort of work in mind.

Get off the couch and go do something productive.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[Tokerat]

but why? why put yourself through the trouble of making it run, when you could run Linux on a computer way easier and keep playing games on the PS3?

This is the fucking problem with geeks today, and why the dot-com boom ruined the tech scene.

Why? Because you fucking CAN! There doesn't need to be a point. It's INTERESTING, and you can learn about a new system by doing it. Hell, maybe you'll even find a way to unlock the graphics hardware instead of waiting for someone else to do it so you can just download the patch and be all l33t.

Now we've got all these lazy pseudo-geeks running around like "Oh, Linux on the PS3 is stupid, why not just use a PC?" and "Oh, pattern-recognition technology in video cameras is stupid, why not just use a bar-code scanner?" etc. Not sure if it applies to parent poster here or not (either way, shame on you, parent) but this is a result of all the people who went to school for computer science because it was the "hot new thing" and you could "get rich and retire when you're 30!". Now we have clusters of lazy, jaded nerds who resist change and new technology because they had a hard time leaning what little they know in the first place.

</rant>

Re:Linux on PS3?

[DemonBeaver]

I think you are confusing actual research with "lets run Linux on everything including a toaster powered by a grandma on a hamster wheel". The PS3 is a gaming console. It was designed to run a specific type of software as smooth as (arguably) possible. You want to research it? Crack it? Fine. Have fun. Don't get all worked up over me buying it to play games on it. There are amazing technologies being developed as we argue here, but I doubt having emacs on a PS3 is creating the next great breakthrough.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[Anonymous Coward]

It also meant that all the rather smart hackers who want to run linux on it didnt have to break the DRM schemes like they had to on the first xbox.

This means Sony effectively eliminated a large chunk of the hackers by just plain offering most of the functionality the group wanted :)

I loathe Sony in many ways, but this -was- a smart and somewhat clever move on their part.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I would so love a Beowulf-Cluster of Linux Grandma powered toasters. Grandma would get her exercise. I would be able to start my toaster from my cellphone. Everyone would get toast. There could be toast preference presets that auto adjust with biometrics, I could sell my toast data to Google Trends and eat it too. EVERYONE WINS WITH GRANDMA POWERED LINUX TOASTERS!

Re:Linux on PS3?

[zwei2stein]

I have seen what you loathe happen over and over again before .com. Your conclusions are too hasty.

Certain percentage of geeks simply matures and "doing cool stuff" is not enough. Or maybe it is exposure to actual, non-academic, world of software development where cool ideas tend to work out as dumb waste of time.

If you have your pet project, it also has to be useful. It needs to be something worthy your time when not with family/working. It ideally should give you job-translatable skills (haha). And you definitely do not want to reinvent wheel or spend time making someone elses reinvented wheel working.

More on topic:

Installing Linux on PS3 is easy. Installing emulators on Linux is easy. Its nothing to write home if you do both. Hell, its wasted time if you do it because you could be actually look for those hidden hardware gems instead making videos of you playing Mario.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM will have a patent on this in 3 weeks

Re:Linux on PS3?

[ciderVisor]

Could you tidy up the difference between smart and clever for me ?

Re:Linux on PS3?

[ciderVisor]

Best AC post of the year !

Re:Linux on PS3?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are amazing technologies being developed as we argue here, but I doubt having emacs on a PS3 is creating the next great breakthrough.

I find your lack of vision disturbing :P

Re:Linux on PS3?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new yourself. It has always been like that.

In fact, it's like that in every field. There are a few dedicated people and a whole lot more "poseurs". Work still gets done.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[numbski]

You're missing a very valuable piece of information here, which is that anyone that openly supports Linux on their platform deserves praise. Sure, it's annoying that they abstracted away the hardware, but STILL. They are trying to protect their IP (gawd, did I really just say that???), but instead of locking it down to the hilt, they provided abstraction and gave us Linux anyway. It's hard to complain about. Given time, that hardware abstraction will probably be bypassed for good - of course it will be after the PS3 is past it's prime, and despite the sales numbers, the hardware itself definitely has a few more good years under it.

No - I won't open fire on Sony on this one. I really wish they would license the ability to get direct hardware access for a reasonable price for homebrew, but I won't hold my breath.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[numbski]

Um...

Why are you blaming this on the dot-com bust exactly? I can and should be as jaded as anyone else. I worked for a dot-bomb, and I've even since started, run, and failed at my own business.

I don't think this has anything to do with dot-com, and everything to do with a trend that's been going on for a LONG time now: each generation is lazier than the last. The last generation had mortgages and homes, this generation didn't know the work involved and presumed buying a home was and should be easy, greedy people accomodated, and here we are: trashed economy (I'm over-simplifying of course). There are kids straight out of college (I'm only 10 years out myself!) that my wife administers at work, and their expectations of what they should have and be able to do while on business time is ridiculous. They're LAZY. I was and still am lazy to a degree, but it's as though they saw my lazy and took it to a whole new level.

I'm not saying every single person coming out of college right now and for the last 3 years is a useless pile, but it's a trend that is going to continue - the next generation is going to see how lazy THIS one is and take THAT to a whole new level. The economy getting trashed like it is might be the best thing for us. Once upon a time, people were encouraged to grow gardens in their yards for food, to go out of their way to work not just for themselves, but the betterment of everyone around them. I would hope it doesn't come to that again, to people living in Hoover^H^H^H^H^H^HBushvilles, etc, but dang it - we all need to become less lazy.

How does that translate? Well - "Linux on the PS3 is stupid, why not just use a PC?" really translates to "That's too much work, I can just use a PC instead." LAZY.

Being a really good geek - I don't care what area of technology or science you work in - requires a desire to learn. You soak up new information like a sponge, and you're always looking for new information. The desire to hack something at it's core comes from that desire for new information, along with a healthy dose of ADD usually. ;) OOOH! New! Shiny!

But hey, I'm talking like the old man here, and I'm 31. I've been in my career for almost 13 years now - did some of my time while still in college. If I'm talking this way about 21, 22, and 23 year olds now...woooh boy. My own niece and nephews, the oldest is soon to turn 12 - they're laziness just oozes from their pores. I'm sure I didn't appear much better to my parents, but the way they demand that everything be given to them without any work being required - it's not a value my family has bestowed upon them that I can tell. It's a societal trait.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[supernova_hq]

Any idea if you can use a bluetooth keyboard for installing? I don't have a usb keyboard (unbelievable, I know), but I do have a bluetooth on. Well, actually, it's an N810 with blue-maemo, but it does the same thing ;)

Re:Linux on PS3?

[hairyfeet]

Which frankly was about the stupidest damn thing they could have ever done! Hell I wouldn't be surprised if it was 360 supporters writing all those "supercomputing on PS3" articles, because Sony takes a bath on the sale of every PS3 and has to try to make it up in software(which last I saw the all important games-to-console sell through ratio was 8-1 for 360 and 3-1 for PS3 so they are getting crucified) and when you buy a cluster of PS3s they are taking a bath MULTIPLE times and are never going to see squat in profit because nobody is building clusters to game with, therefor no sell through. If I was the head of Sony the guy that came up with that "cluster of PS3s for supercomputing" BS would be living in a van down by the river.

Of course the hard part for a PC gamer in all this "360 VS PS3" is that BOTH companies are giant douchebags so it kinda makes it hard to root for anybody. Sadly after the rootkit, the funky proprietary formats, and screwing PS3 owners by sticking an expensive BD player in the PS3 just to win a VHS/Betamax format war I'm going to have to go with Sony being the bigger douche this round. MSFT, after getting their asses royally handed to them over the RROD has at least boosted the warranty and from what my console gamer buddies tell me the new 360s are actually good. Sony on the other hand with their "we WANT the console to be hard to develop for" gets double douche points for trying to be elitist while being stuck firmly in last place everywhere on the planet except Japan.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[Nursie]

"Don't get all worked up over me buying it to play games on it."

Umm, he's not, did you even read his post?

He's getting upset at people criticising him for playing with linux on it. That's what. That all these people pretending to be geeks are now criticising folks for playing with new things on new systems.

You want it to play games, fine, but asking why he plays with other options for it, telling him (or me for that matter) that it's stupid and a waste off time is not acceptable, intelligent or inquisitive.

What if Torvalds had rolled over and decided Linux was a waste of time because it would be quicker just to buy windows?

Re:Linux on PS3?

[dbIII]

Linux on PS3 clusters, used for scientific computing, is a huge success

Sadly that's mainly because you can get half a dozen dual quad core Xeon nodes for the price of a rackmounted Cell computing node. A bit of greed and presumably an ability to get purchased on black ops military budgets has put the Cell out of reach of scientific computing for anyone with a budget accountants get to look at. The MASSIVE price jump between the 256MB playstation3 and a 2GB system that is otherwise similar is depressing - it would be better to get twenty PS3's instead and live with the memory limitation (or xeons, nvidia's Tesla etc).

Re:Linux on PS3?

[SageinaRage]

And people wonder why the year of Linux on the desktop never comes.

It's because all the linux geeks waste their time on stupid shit instead of actual useful things.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[Sj0]

Clever is designing a padded suit that lets you wrestle bears without lethal injury. Smart is not wrestling bears.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[Xtravar]

I don't think it's that people purposely choose lazy over not-lazy. I think it's that there's no fear of failure anymore.

It started when all the WW2 veterans came home and decided they wanted their children to never face anything difficult in their lives. Their children turned out decent, but then their grandchildren were twice removed from hardship.

It used to be that children feared authority, feared failure in school, etc. But nowadays, everyone's accommodated for. Suck at math? Well, you can join the class for the slow kids. Act up in class? The only way to discipline you is by calling the Police because your parents aren't going to give a shit (and will actually want the teacher disciplined).

And I guess there are good things and bad things about these cultural changes. Less children are growing up being abused by authority figures; less children are growing up with emotional scars of not living up to impossible standards. Then there's the flip-side: they don't have ingrained goals/ideals, respect for authority, they don't know how to deal with hardship, etc.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[Antisyzygy]

Hahaha. I can totally relate to your point of view. I am going to school for computational math, and I run into alot of computer science guys in my course load. Some of them are just doing it because they think its cool to be a "nerd", not for the sake of doing it because its interesting. One guy in particular said something like "Im a CS major! Why do I need to learn this math?!" after being dismayed that he couldnt complete his homework after starting it the day prior.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[SliceofPi]

I have to agree with numbski on this one. I am working on 9 years out in online development and have internally analyzed this situation because I can see senior dev architects that have years on me working exponentially harder. I, personally, see individuals that were educated in generations before me working much harder than I ... they want to know why it works, how it works, how they can re-make it better. They ask the right questions instead of complaining that it isn't built right or able to place a definition of 'good' on its attributes. Then I look at the generations coming up and in the work force now and they make up all that is lazy. I realize and see that my generation is less "let's learn why it doesn't work" and go-getter than previous gens and I also see the kids coming up and pray my security in this world will not be dependent on the technology and programs they are going to develop.

The thing is, who is to blame? I blame us... every other geek out there, every maniacal dot-com geek who knew profit and gain could be made from flooding the market with dump, stupid dump. Dump that makes people lives easier... I blame diarrhea code producing WYSIWYG editors, I blame faceBook, I most definitely blame mySpace, I blame napster, shareBear, AIM. I blame user centric desktop systems, I blame tech support and systems build in office conference rooms around words like user friendly, user experience, group penetration (ta-hehe) and behavior models. What happened to the good days when we had to work for the crap we wanted online? I blame every 2000 douche with a VC account that knew they could ring profit and gain from developing every possible tool and program that we can think of to deliver information, easy of use, communication and all done with a first release non-buggy stamp on it. Most of all I blame text messaging - seriously, full words people.

Younger generations expect it (whatever it may be) put in their hands - for it to work effortlessly and if they have to bend their mind a bit to make the thing function properly they run and tell mommy that it doesn't work and they need a new one. There is no concept of what else could this be user for, what else could I do with this, how can I purge a few more cool functions from this?

There is a learning curve that is growing so large that one day it will become a tsunami and it is going to crash down on the US' ability to produce a meaningful work force. I don't see our world imploding because of some slaptard with an explosive and a weeks worth of fear - I see our country failing it's self. We are building drones who have no work ethic... no desire to work for their knowledge, no "this is needed to get where I want to go". Everything should be shiny, new and disposable - and yet they cry when they realize their work ethic is disposable... We have given them to tools to be utterly lazy instead of making them build the tools to be make themselves lazy.

I think I started a rant when I didn't want to start a rant... sorry. And this is totally off topic, but to bring it back... my PS3 gets #1 position in the bed before my GF. She gets to sleep at the foot of the bed.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[CronoCloud]

You'll need USB for the install, it's a kboot/YDL installer limitation.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[CronoCloud]

Installing Linux on the PS3 has to be one of the easiest installs ever, considering the fixed hardware. It's even easier than installing it on the PS2 was, and that was pretty easy. (As long as you didn't have to install blind, before people figured out the installer supported NTSC and PAL and not just the PS2's VGA dongle)

Also, installing Linux on the PS3 does not remove it's ability to play PS3 games, or use what Sony calls GameOS. It's a dual-boot thing, you can boot between GameOS and Linux as you desire.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[swillden]

Certain percentage of geeks simply matures and "doing cool stuff" is not enough. Or maybe it is exposure to actual, non-academic, world of software development where cool ideas tend to work out as dumb waste of time.

This argument doesn't hold water.

Yes, geeks mature, get families and jobs that take up a lot of time so they lose interest in doing geeky stuff "just because".

But real geeks never lose the understanding that cool hacks are their own reward, and never start asking "why would you bother", because they remember when they would have bothered, and are perfectly capable of being impressed by the cool and the useless, even if they don't have time for it.

No the "Why bother?" arguments come from the posers, who never did see the value in doing something just because it was there to be done.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[palegray.net]

I agree, although that's more reproductive.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[DemonBeaver]

Cool, I didn't know that, thanks!

Re:Linux on PS3?

[TrekkieGod]

Certain percentage of geeks simply matures and "doing cool stuff" is not enough.

That's not maturity. That's no longer being a geek. What separates us from the rest of the population isn't really that we're more intelligent that others, or that we work with technology. What separates us from the rest is that we're curious about things and we want to try them out, whether they work well or not.

Or maybe it is exposure to actual, non-academic, world of software development where cool ideas tend to work out as dumb waste of time.

In the industry of software development anything that doesn't make a profit or has a chance of making a profit is a "dumb waste of time." In the world of hobbies, wasting time is the goal, as long as you have fun while doing it.

If you have your pet project, it also has to be useful. It needs to be something worthy your time when not with family/working. It ideally should give you job-translatable skills (haha). And you definitely do not want to reinvent wheel or spend time making someone elses reinvented wheel working.

By definition, your "pet project" is worthy of your time as long as you enjoy working on it. And if what you're after is knowledge, then reinventing the wheel is the only way to get knowledge as to how to manufacture the damn wheel. Sure, you could buy one, but then you haven't intellectually gained anything. Obviously it's not what you want to do at work, because it's not profitable, but it's often what you want from your pet project.

Installing Linux on PS3 is easy. Installing emulators on Linux is easy. Its nothing to write home if you do both. Hell, its wasted time if you do it because you could be actually look for those hidden hardware gems instead making videos of you playing Mario.

It's time well wasted as long as it's something you want to do and you had fun doing it. Turn in your geek card and have fun with your MBA.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[rriven]

The guys who created the Rouge Equifax Signing Certificate used 200+ PS3 to help find the MD5 collision.

We had more than 200 PS3s at our disposal, located at the "PlayStation Lab" of Arjen Lenstra's Laboratory for Cryptologic Algorithms at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/rogue-ca/

There are tons more you can do with a PS3 than play games.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[Khyber]

256MB of RAM is just fine, considering it's XDR RAM that blows away just about anything you have in your desktop or laptop RIGHT NOW. Hell it almost beats out GDDR4. 256MB of XDR is like having 2GB of PC2-5300, if only Sony would open the damned platform up.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[fuckinshitmotherfuck]

I don't see this as lazyness. I see this as a different culture coming into IT over the last 5 years. 10 years ago CS degrees were few and far between. People fell into IT because they were good at it, or because they really loved it. Now IT is one of the most stable career paths available, every university has multiple IT tracks, and IT is mainstream (see NBC's Chuck)... People are now getting into IT for normal reasons. It has become more of a "normal" job. I work with a bunch of people who come to work, do their jobs, and go home. We have a couple of old schoolers who live their job, and live their geek life. Most IT people I know now are married, have children, hobbies, and live a pretty full life. This life does not always lend itself to building clusters in your basement to turn your dvr into a file share...

I don't really have a preference for one or the other. I generally agree that people today are more lazy than their parents, but there may not be any direct correlation between this and the lack of tinkerers... Oh, and if you don't want your kids to be lazy, don't give them anything other than the essentials. I think this tactic is coming sooner than later with the pending economic disaster.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[turing_m]

But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[deek]

You are being a tad cynical, but I do generally agree with you.

I've often thought about this issue. Each generation has generally been more prosperous than the last. This prosperity leads to levels of expectations that exceed the previous generation. We are, in a way, a victim of our own successes. Or, in other words, we're being spoilt.

Each generation of children have been given more, without much effort at all. It's only human nature that they learn to expect to be given what they want. This is just a natural consequence of having a high standard of living, and is very difficult to overcome. It takes conscious effort on the part of the parent, to teach children that life will not give them what they want. That they've got to work hard to achieve their goals, and even then it's no guarantee.

People, all people, not just children, generally appreciate what they had only after it's gone. This is the crux of the issue; the real difficulty of parenting. It's hard for a parent to deprive their child. You want to give your child every opportunity, want to make sure that they're well provided for, and that they have many choices in life. Problem is, if you give it to them, they cannot understand what they've been given. It has to be taken away before they can truly understand the value of it.

I do believe it's possible to appreciate what you have, without being deprived of it. It takes conscious effort, and continual reminders. Giving thanks before meals is a good example, although I guess most people don't really listen to the prayer, but just recite it by rote. Another good example is to wake up every morning and think "how lucky I am that I have a bed, a house, and food on my table". It's not something I'd expect of children though, as it takes considerable maturity to really appreciate that statement.

As far as children are concerned, it's a tough issue. Getting them to work for their basic needs can help. Education, in all forms, should also be able to increase their awareness. Not sure what else can be done, but whatever it is, I'm sure it'll involve hard work for parent and child. .... and to drag this post, kicking and screaming, back on topic ... I've already installed Linux on my PS3. Why? Because. No real reason, other than to experience it, to learn what it's capable of, and to have it as an option to solve a possible future need.

Re:Linux on PS3?

[palegray.net]

That's the best illustration of the difference between smart and clever I've ever seen.

from the like-your-very-own-time-machine dept.

[skreeech]

Most of those programs worked on the PS3 day one. I am not aware of what makes this a new development.

Re:from the like-your-very-own-time-machine dept.

[allaunjsilverfox2]

Because slashdot says so! n.n

Re:from the like-your-very-own-time-machine dept.

[retro.sufi]

Yes I agree. But oh well ps3 needs some +ve propaganda since there has been a lot of it against it for no reason. The keyword here is "propaganda". ;)

Re:from the like-your-very-own-time-machine dept.

[CronoCloud]

The actual emulating isn't a new development, but the increasing number of people doing it (because installing Linux and emulators on the PS3 is easy) is a new development. We're seeing tons of "I just want to get my PS3 set up to run a few emulators, can you give me a little bit of help in doing so" people over on the Yellow Dog Linux boards.

Re:from the like-your-very-own-time-machine dept.

[skreeech]

Sounds reasonable then.

I set it all up before but performance was not very good so I never boot it up.

Why buy a PS3...

[lazycam]

What is the point of purchasing the most expensive consoles on the market to play emulator games? This is not news. Linux on the PS3 is news. Seti at home on the PS3 is news. Running an emulator, solitaire or Tux racer on the PS3 is a waste good hardware (unless this is your primary Linux rig).

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[feepness]

What is the point of buying the most expensive console on the market to run Seti at home? You aren't buying the PS3 to do emulation. You're buying it to play the library of hundreds of games. The fact that you can stream content from the computer, watch BluRays, and do emulation is just a bonus. Running Seti at home is the silly thing. I can do that on my computer. Playing an emulator with a real pad on my big screen not so much.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[dancingmad]

Who modded this insightful? I run emulators on my PC (actually my Mac) mostly of games I own or never were released in the U.S. (I'm looking at you Mother 3).

Mac emulators are far behind their Windows and even Linux counterparts. While I hope the situation will get better as Macs gain more market share, for a lot of emulation tasks, Mac OS doesn't cut it (Boot Camp is great, of course, but no one wants to boot into Windows just to play Rhythm Tengoku).

However, even on a Windows PC, it's not nearly as great an experience. To get the real feel of the game you have to hook a joypad into the computer (on my precious MacBook Pro, I only have 2 USB ports, expanded to five with a hub). And most of the best game pads are console ons with a USB adaptor. Even full screened, sitting at a chair with a game pad is different from being sprawled out on the couch playing say, Fire Emblem Genealogy of The Holy War. Some time's it's OK to run an emulator and have my IM and web browser in the background, but usually I just want to concentrate on the game. While it's not quite as "pick up and play" as having the original console and game, it's awful close. With easy multiplayer, console emulation can be great, and it's one of the major reasons I am thinking of getting a PS3.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Tokerat]

What is the point of purchasing the most expensive consoles on the market to play emulator games? This is not news. Linux on the PS3 is news. Seti at home on the PS3 is news. Running an emulator, solitaire or Tux racer on the PS3 is a waste good hardware (unless this is your primary Linux rig).

What is the point of purchasing the most expensive consoles on the market to play emulator games? So I can play them on my 52" HDTV. With an actual game pad. From the same rig that plays the latest releases. And my BluRay movies. In my living room, sprawled out on my comfortable couch with a metric assload of snack food instead of at my desk in my office chair where I can spill beer in my server.

You must be a hit at parties.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[IrquiM]

Because you can!

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Yfrwlf]

Then you should hook up a Linux PC to your TV sometime, like we've done. Your PS2 and PS3 controller should work out of the box from my experience, the only trouble I'm having with the PS3 controller is for some reason it powers off now instead of staying on. Weird. Maybe Jaunty will fix it. Xbox controllers also work but you have to use the following commands to make them recognized as a joypad if it moves the mouse pointer when you move the stick, posted here in case anyone needs it:

$ xinput list
See which device number the Xbox controller has...
$ xinput set-int-prop THATDEVICENUMBER 'Device Enabled' 32 0

It's sad really that those joypads have been out for so long and don't work out of the box, when the PS2 and PS3 ones do. I haven't tried any other controllers with Linux, so can't recommend anything else. One problem though is that some emulators are better than others, and can't sense things like the D-pad sometimes, while others can. This is either due to a lack of Linux input standards, or, it's a lack of an update to the emulators to make them work with the Xinput standards if it actually is a standard. In any case, our Linux HTPC is quite nice, even have XBMC installed which is pretty nice, or you can install MythTV which is probably more powerful but more of a pain to install. (XBMC requires a repository add, and then Synaptic download of it, which means everyone not using Ubuntu is screwed which sucks, but until all distros can decide to incorporate the use of some package installation system which can be cross-distro, like Zero Install, things will continue to suck in that regard.)

Only annoyance which isn't too bad is the small black boarders around the screen when you switch to the PC on the TV. I've heard that some TVs don't do this though and display the resolution correctly. Why TVs are having a problem fitting a 1080p resolution perfectly to their 1080p screens is beyond me though. Next time I buy a TV I'm taking a laptop/notebook/wtfever with Linux on it to the store to find one that will display it correctly.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[grumbel]

It's sad really that those joypads have been out for so long and don't work out of the box, when the PS2 and PS3 ones do.

The problem is that Xorg added automatic configuration while not implementing any proper way to override it from the Xorg side. So its not the joypads drivers faults, its Xorg that is the guilty one, it will happily grab all the devices it can find and turn them into a mouse (aka making them unusable), a little HAL config file however can easily fix that permanently.

This is either due to a lack of Linux input standards,

/dev/input/eventX works perfectly fine, the trouble is that dpad comes in a numerous different variants of events, some gamepad have it as first and second axis, in some other it comes much later and thus in not recognized by the games since they only check first and second. Other gamepads report the dpad as buttons, which again doesn't work when the game is looking for an axis. And of course there is SDL, which will report the dpad sometimes as Hat, so even if you have config options for buttons and axis it will not work. If you use some PS2-to-USB adapter things can even more funny, since then two gamepads might end up registering as a single device. And then there is of course the whole deadzone issue, which will screw up some games as well. It happens almost never that a game properly handles all of these cases. This however really isn't a Linux-only problem, gamepads are totally fucked up on Windows as well (to properly use the Xbox360 pad on Windows you have to throw the official driver away and use a homebrew one and the chatpad isn't even support at all). In the end I think the only short time fix is to have an input driver that is actually configurable enough to handle all those situations, which is why I wrote one, its however right know limited to Firestorm pad and Xbox360 gamepads.

it's a lack of an update to the emulators to make them work with the Xinput standards if it actually is a standard.

I don't know any game that actually uses Xinput, most use either the old /dev/input/jsX directly, the new /dev/input/eventX or just a wrapper library like SDL. And just to add a bit of naming confusion, there are actually two Xinput, one is the Xorg input system and the other one is Microsoft new input system mainly used for Xbox360 controller I think, both however are completly unrelated.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Yfrwlf]

Thanks for your knowledgeable response instead of a "you noob"-type one. :)

"a little HAL config file however can easily fix that permanently"

Would be nice to see it included by default then in either HAL or come with Xorg, or the problem fixed in Xorg perhaps would be a better solution instead of a "patchier" solution, if it is.

"In the end I think the only short time fix is to have an input driver that is actually configurable enough to handle all those situations, which is why I wrote one, its however right know limited to Firestorm pad and Xbox360 gamepads."

So in other words, if I understand right, Xorg is doing some interpreting as to what goes where, instead of just letting the driver do it's job? You're saying the driver knows what to do and how to interface correctly with specific controllers, but Xorg is ignoring/overriding the driver? Why is it doing that? This just sounds like a really stupid problem with communication, and that would mean that standards are being ignored/changed and/or not communicated about. That's a pretty major problem, if you were Xorg, to suddenly decide "lets change this core functionality, and screw over all these drivers that were working fine before, so now they don't work". This is what I mean by a lack of standards on Linux, the OS which should be brimming full of standards.

I don't know any game that actually uses Xinput, most use either the old /dev/input/jsX directly, the new /dev/input/eventX or just a wrapper library like SDL."

All I know is that instead of re-inventing the wheel every time, when a program wants to interface with an input device like a keyboard or mouse or joypad, there should be a single, standardized, easy way of doing so without having to create a joypad communication framework every time they want to make a game. In other words, joypad configuration in Linux should be defined and done once, and games should then simply communicate with that standard. If Xinput is that standard, that's what everyone should use. Gnome and KDE can then easily interface with that standard and show those joypad configuration settings, in case the user wants to tweak anything.

Linux can have different ideas, it can have different ways of doing things, "standards" doesn't mean removing choice, you can implement a simple communication "portal" that gets everyone on the same page as far as communication goes, but still lets them do anything they want. Makes me wonder how many Linux developers out there are concerned with playing nicely with others at all enough to work together to create these standards.

Linux needs all the development help it can get, and the easier it is to develop Linux software the better it will be for all Linux users everywhere (and Windows and Mac users too).

P.S., even if someone didn't like communicating with Xinput for whatever reason, and wanted to do it some other way, you can still make that new interface be a dependency of your game, and make it compatible with the Xinput configuration settings so that users can still use those GUI tools so that you don't completely break everything.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[grumbel]

Would be nice to see it included by default then in either HAL or come with Xorg, or the problem fixed in Xorg perhaps would be a better solution instead of a "patchier" solution, if it is.

The problem with that fix is that you need a database of all the possible joystick names, which isn't practical and undermines the whole benefit of USB-HID (i.e. any input device 'just works'). However a more permanent fix seems to be available, haven't checked it myself.

Xorg is ignoring/overriding the driver?

No, the Xorg problem is just that Xorgs thinks your joystick is a mouse, once that is fixed Xorg is completly out of the way, since games access the joystick/event interface directly. The whole problem with games not recognizing the dpad is a completly different beast and in large part simply caused by gamepads having a wide variety of different configurations (some have one digital stick and two digital buttons, other have two analog sticks, a digital dpad and a dozen of buttons, some buttons are analog, some digital, ...) and games simply are not able to handle all of them, because hardly anybody has all those input devices floating around to test all those things. I don't think that problem will go away anytime soon, since there just doesn't seem to be a clear solution. Microsofts solution was to basically say "fuck you, buy our gamepad instead", which of course isn't a pretty solution. The other solution is that games just tries to handle all the possible cases and allows users configuration, which many try to do, but which many fail, since there is always a weird edge case that they haven't thought of (analog-trigger for example often fail to be recognized as buttons). The cleanest solution at the moment seems to be to just to allow to remap things at the driver level so that the game gets to see an input device which it can handle, which my xboxdrv app does, but that of course means that you have to configure each game individually, but at least it works after that.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Yfrwlf]

"games access the joystick/event interface directly. The whole problem with games not recognizing the dpad is a completly different beast and in large part simply caused by gamepads having a wide variety of different configurations (some have one digital stick and two digital buttons, other have two analog sticks, a digital dpad and a dozen of buttons, some buttons are analog, some digital, ...) and games simply are not able to handle all of them, because hardly anybody has all those input devices floating around to test all those things."

I'm sorry, I just don't see why this joystick interface isn't standardized, or why a standardized one isn't made. If you had the interface report the following:
(5) digital buttons
(3) analogue triggers
(2) analogue sticks
that's three different classes of input "sub"-devices being reported as belonging to that joystick. You also have the joystick interface report the name of the joystick when available. Then, you make a game which recognises those different types of input so that they are re-definable in the game if the player wants. The driver needs to know what kind of joystick it is and should tell the interface things like appropriate sensitivity levels for the detected device, and other such specific information like that, when available. Then, there should be a calibrator program that you know, actually works and doesn't break anything, which preferably comes with Gnome and KDE, so you can calibrate and adjust things correctly when the specific joystick isn't listed. Yes, that would involve making a library of names and descriptions, so what? That's how it is with remotes too, it doesn't know which buttons to map to which things until it's told via a mapping config file or whatnot. It's the driver's job to detect and use devices directly. I agree that these companies suck if they don't make their devices more standardized in their communication, but for now that's what needs to be done.

There's no reason it can't work out of the box in Linux and no reason there can't be a good API for programs to interface with joysticks through that removes the pain from the game developers and moves it to maintainers of the API/standard interface. If the simple interface reported to the game the information I gave above and maybe a little bit more, it'd be cake for the game maintainer.

In other words, programmers of Linux apps like games and others should not be the ones required to interface correctly with every conceivable device, that should be the job of the Linux OS.

I'm not arguing with you, I'm sure you're right, I'm just telling you that it should be easier. If making Linux apps is difficult, it slows down the growth of Linux. That's bad.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Yfrwlf]

Sorry, the driver's job to work correctly with the devices, I mean.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[grumbel]

that's three different classes of input "sub"-devices being reported as belonging to that joystick.

Thats already the case, the trouble starts when a game should actually use those. Since then you get into situations where you have a simplistic SNES-like game and somebody wants to have his analog-trigger act as L/R, but the programmer himself used a pad without analog trigger and hasn't bothered to insert the configuration options for the trigger stuff. Or when the programmer used a dpad and thus needed no deadzone, while the gamer wants to use his analogstick and thus needs a deadzone for the thing to function. There are lots of issues that only pop up with this or that gamepad, because they simply are different. When you throw joysticks in the mix it gets even more complicated, since then you stuff like throttle and hats.

If making Linux apps is difficult, it slows down the growth of Linux.

As mentioned before, its not Linux specific, Windows has the exact same problem, many games there don't even bother to support a gamepad at all and force you to keyboard/mouse. Even the PS3 has the problem when you plug in an third-party gamepad into the USB, it sort of works, but most buttons and axis are messed up.

I'm just telling you that it should be easier.

I absolutely agree, getting a gamepad to work currently can be hard. However I just don't see a way to make it work easily and out of the box. Beside xboxdrv I also have inputdrv, which is sort of a universal input event rerouter, if I ever finish that up, it should be able to make games work with pretty much any pad, it however won't be an out of the box. The way its supposed to work is that you have the hardware driver talk to a userspace driver which then transforms the events into something that can be handled by a specific game, so you are basically building up a virtual gamepad for the game to use, instead of letting the game access your gamepad directly.

In the end, while the input system on Linux has a few problems, especially in the upper layers (Xorg, SDL, ...), the lower layer (/dev/input/eventX) are actually quite pretty and simple and Linux also allows you to write user space input driver with which you can fix up basically any game if you really need to.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Khyber]

"LINUX OS"

Doesn't exist. Linux is the Kernel. Windows doesn't run a Windows Kernel, it runs an NT Kernel.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Yfrwlf]

You're not telling me anything I don't know. Linux and Ubuntu are names that get recognized publicly as being "the operating system". Saying GNU/Linux is even more awkward than the word Linux is, or Ubuntu for that matter. Get over it, society uses easier words for things, it's called slang.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Yfrwlf]

This isn't directed at all at you, and I'm sure your drivers will help patch things up better for the current state that Linux is in, but I still think that an out of the box solution is implementable, because as long as you know the model/type/identification of the input device, the OS should be smart enough to use it correctly while at the same time presenting an easy API for games and other programs to use to allow them to easily interface with those input devices without having to do so directly and to know how to use each device. I believe that's possible, but maybe Linux can't do it right now because it needs a new smarter system/API/framework/whatever. Maybe your programs are what will do that, but I guess I'm saying that instead of patching the existing system, maybe it's a bad system and should be replaced with something smarter. Again, I believe this is possible, because I believe anything with software is possible. ^^ Maybe it's a project for Xorg, dunno where it would fall...but Freedesktop.org should definitely get behind it, as standards are their thing.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Khyber]

Slang does nothing but serve to confuse.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[grumbel]

I still think that an out of the box solution is implementable

The problem basically boils down to this:

* you have a device that supports a set of events X
* you have a game that requires a set of events Y

Since X and Y are not equal, you have to find a way to map the events of X to Y. And thats where the trouble starts, since you don't know which combination of events in X are good to produce the events in Y, you don't even know if its possible at all in a comfortable manner (i.e. you don't want to emulate a mouse with a gamepad, you want a menu system that you can navigate with a stick). But of course thats not all, input devices aren't necessarily clear about their capabilities, so if a device says it has 8 buttons, it might in reality have 4 buttons and a dpad or worse you have something like the WIZ which reports the dpad has 8 buttons, since the diagonals are handled separately. You need a big fat table of information to clean that up. But even if you have it cleared up you are still left with a lot of ambiguity, shall a emulator use the dpad or the analogstick, shall button 5 and 6 get mapped to L/R or to C/Z (gamepad with 6 face buttons), which gamepad shall the emulator use when there are multiple available and so on.

Some of this is fixable, but most is not, unless you actually hack the game. The problem is most obviously demonstrated when you look at PC to console conversions or the other way around, those that end up with a good interface need to basically redesign large part of it, since different input devices have just very different capabilities.

This problem might look simple from far away, but it gets really really tricky when you go into the details and thats mostly because its a damn hard problem and not because lack of API or driver support.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Yfrwlf]

Trying to explain to a normal computer user what a kernel is, why they should care, and what all the different "Linuxes" actually are, will confuse, not to mention be a very boring conversation for them. GNU/Linux needs some names to get behind to make it simple, Linux and Ubuntu are two that are becoming somewhat common.

Is all I'm saying. ^^

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Yfrwlf]

Since X and Y are not equal, you have to find a way to map the events of X to Y. And thats where the trouble starts, since you don't know which combination of events in X are good to produce the events in Y

Right, so you'd need to break a controller down into it's component parts, and then register those parts with the API, so that a) a gamer can map any of those parts that they want to any of the buttons defined in any game easily, and b) provide a calibration program so that if the default settings are off for that controller, or if the controller isn't recognised by the "system" at all, you can still teach it.

But of course thats not all, input devices aren't necessarily clear about their capabilities, so if a device says it has 8 buttons, it might in reality have 4 buttons and a dpad or worse you have something like the WIZ which reports the dpad has 8 buttons, since the diagonals are handled separately. You need a big fat table of information to clean that up. But even if you have it cleared up you are still left with a lot of ambiguity, shall a emulator use the dpad or the analogstick, shall button 5 and 6 get mapped to L/R or to C/Z (gamepad with 6 face buttons), which gamepad shall the emulator use when there are multiple available and so on.

So you have specific default settings being mapped if the controller is being recognized, but if the "system" recognizes them incorrectly or doesn't at all or whatever, the joystick program that should come with KDE and Gnome should not only be able to calibrate, but change the input type. Say, change what came up as a "button" to a "trigger", if that is necessary. Once the inputs are all defined and calibrated, those standardized input classes that the system is now configured for can be easily passed to any game that uses the standardized API/system. In the game, you can then adjust those further as far as what buttons on X controller should be used for the Y controller for the gaming system.

So, what I'm saying then is desktop GNU/Linux needs to do as good of a job as it can to get things right, but then it should offer the ability to easily allow users to tweak and define what it detects, and to even make big adjustments if necessary like changing a sensed button to a trigger or whatnot. If it takes care of all of that part of it, developers of Linux games and other software won't have to deal with it themselves. You offload lots of work and headaches to the system developers, so that Linux development is easier for them and programs are easier to make.

Microsoft has invested a lot of interest in doing this, so that their OS is easier to program for. I'm not saying they were successful or anything about them, believe me I hate many many things Microsoft has done as much as the next informed Linux user, but the goal to make it easier for developers is a very good goal. It will help increase the adoption of Linux, not to mention make it easier for developers to flex their brains and creativity, which is exactly what an open OS should be focused on. I want to help make Linux more user friendly than Windows in every way possible, that will be how Linux succeeds on the desktop.

Some of this is fixable, but most is not, unless you actually hack the game. The problem is most obviously demonstrated when you look at PC to console conversions or the other way around, those that end up with a good interface need to basically redesign large part of it, since different input devices have just very different capabilities.

Yes, there has to be translation there I understand that and agree, but if you centralize the translating work to the OS, you simplify it for game developers. They can even have the capability of using the input device directly like the old ways, or to interface with the new standard. So here's a concept mock-up of what I'm saying:

Controller is plugged in >>>> Controller is either recog

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[grumbel]

Yep, thats not so far away from what I have in mind with my inputdrv app and for most part such a thing would be quite doable. There are however a few practical problems, one important one is that I don't think there is currently a clean way to reassign joystick ids, so if you plug in another joysticks or load a virtual driver for the remapping it will always be /dev/input/js2, while the game is using just js1, other then messing around with mv/ln/rm I don't know any way to actually get the device in the right place. Its not a unsolvable problem, but the workarounds are all rather ugly.

Another issue is the loading of the configurable driver must happen before the game itself, since each game needs its own configuration and because you can't change the configuration after the game is loaded. Their might be ways to accomplish this, but I haven' really looked into it. A little wrapper script done by the user would of course fix the problem, but again, that would be more a workaround then a solution.

Last problem of course is that you need to collect lots of data, you need to know what games make use of what buttons and such. Currently games do not announce those in any way, so one would have to collect them manually. On the joystick side its easier, since via USB/HID you can already get a good enough idea of what a joystick looks like, you would just need to cleanup for exotic cases.

The input issue aside there is of course other basic gaming stuff that is wrong, fullscreen switching for example is handled pretty differently in many applications, not only is the key different (F11, Alt-Enter, Ctrl-f, ...), but also the behavior of fullscreen itself is different. Wine for example allows you to freely move the fullscreen window around and switch workspaces, while many games grab your mouse and keyboard input completly and don't allow you to switch to a different workspace.

I just noticed that freedesktop.org actually has a mailing list for gaming related issues probably time to move things there.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Khyber]

Actually, no. One of my jobs was a Laptop Repair instructor - my job was to teach new hires, which ranged from 18 years-old asian high school graduates to 50+ years-old black women that couldn't program a VCR, how to diagnose and repair laptop hardware issues, and how to determine if it is even a hardware issue at all.

With the right knowledge about how to turn a technical term into a layman's term, you can teach anybody anything without confusion. I turned the training period around from their 6 weeks down to two weeks and still maintained equivalent repair records. There's still very likely that 50+ year old black woman working there, too, still can't program a VCR but can easily tell you if you fried some hardware or if your software is the issue.

And yes, she knows Linux is a kernel, not an OS.

How'd I explain it to her? The kernel is the seed from which all computer operations grow.

Didn't take her long to piece the rest together with that one sentence in her head.

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Yfrwlf]

OK, well you're a good teacher then, but we'll see if that knowledge becomes mainstream or not, maybe it will dunno, right now the terms "Linux" and "Ubuntu" are pretty big though...

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Khyber]

Only reason for that is "Marketing." Marketing almost always leaves educated things set aside and unmentioned in order to get it 'sold.'

Re:Why buy a PS3...

[Yfrwlf]

Cool, signed up. I don't know a whole lot about development, but certainly wouldn't mind helping out if it's something I could do. I would just like to see GNU/Linux get an upgrade if a more elegant solution can be adopted.

I think moving to a classification system is the best answer to avoid having to have the gamer completely define everything themselves, so that the game developer can simply say "when the controller layout is like type Z, assign this to this and that to that" but of course allow the gamer to change those assignments if they want to. Or better yet, the dev says "I need a thumbstick on the left of the controller to be assigned to this, and the dpad to my dpad here, and the primary buttons on the right side defined to this, with any leftovers left undefined". That way they wouldn't even have to define what to do for every classification situation, if you could make the communication system intelligent enough so it could figure out what to do in most cases automatically, since that is the goal, to make it automatic for both the developers and the gamers with options for adjustments later if needed.

What explosion?

[seebs]

Please name an emulator which works on the PS3 today and didn't in 2007.

"Explosion" implies that there are many such emulators, and that they all showed up recently. In fact, I don't know of any at all, and it's hardly an "explosion" for a Linux system to have access to a bunch of common Linux packages. What next? "Emulator explosion on the Eee" headlines because my specific Eee has access to more emulators than it did when I bought it?

Re:What explosion?

[CronoCloud]

The explosion isn't in the number of emulators, it's in the number of people running emulators via Linux on the PS3. We're seeing a lot of newbies to Linux coming over to the Yellow Dog Linux forums asking: "Is there a quick and easy guide to getting Linux and emulators installed and setup on the PS3?"

Re:What explosion?

[seebs]

Huh. I wonder what happened; we've been talking about them on PS3 sites for years.

The madness

[hee gozer]

All those fancy cell cores with their gigahertzes and gigaflops, the hdd with its gigabytes and then bluray, just to play a game of Hunt the Wumpus! Hunt in shiny HD ascii!

The reason is the same as it has always been

[zaffir]

The reason to put Linux on a PS3 is the same as it has been since release day: access to the wonderfully (sinfully?) complex Cell.

If the thought of 6 128-bit wide vector processors hanging off the back of a general purpose CPU gets you all hot and bothered, the Linux on the PS3 is a great place to start.

Re:The reason is the same as it has always been

[Erwos]

The parent here makes it sound like you should be able to just write a few lines of code and set a compile flag to have your program start using the SPEs on the Cell. That's completely untrue - you'd need to write some very specific, very custom code to use them, as they're basically just very fancy DSPs with regards to C coding.

As a point of reference, no one's ported x264 to use the Cell for encoding, and that's the sort of application that the Cell is supposed to be very good with. IIRC, part of the issue was that each SPE only has 256kb of cache on it, which is rather marginal for high resolution rendering (you can't fit a whole 1080p frame into the SPE).

Re:The reason is the same as it has always been

[MadClown69]

I'm developer and I understand its not as easy as dropping a couple of lines in and wam bam it handles multiple cores. But its possible and just like there are custom emulators for a ton of other systems there will be ones for the PS3. It just takes some time. I have confidence in our hacker brethren.

Re:The reason is the same as it has always been

[Erwos]

Forget "handles multiple cores". Just multi-threading the emulator is not nearly as difficult as you propose. The problem is that you've got to discretely manage those threads _plus_ those SPEs. Sorry, but it's a ton of work for a feature that's not really going to add a lot or help very many people.

FYI, most of those "custom emulators" are just ports of existing ones, like SNES9X. And most of them don't work as well as their PC brethren anyways.

Re:The reason is the same as it has always been

[tius]

Stop thinking where the memory is and start thinking in Streams.

Not to suggest that implementing something well on the cell is simple. Multiprocessor/Multicore, DSP, and managing memory transfers efficiently takes a bit of work and diligence. But then, when has this not been true?

Re:The reason is the same as it has always been

[zackhugh]

There are 8 SPUs on the Cell, but the PS3 dedicates one of them to hold the Game OS. Another one is blocked off because IBM was having yield problems.

So the poster is right. Despite the presence of 8 SPUs on a Cell, only 6 are available on the PS3.

And there's actually a book available on programming the Cell (particularly on the PS3). It's here.

Re:The reason is the same as it has always been

[CronoCloud]

part of the issue was that each SPE only has 256kb of cache on it, which is rather marginal for high resolution rendering (you can't fit a whole 1080p frame into the SPE).

From what I have read the SPE's are essentially extensions of ideas introduced in the PS2 EE's Vector Units. They're stream processors. You don't try to put an entire frame of video or whole dataset in there at once. You stream it on the fly and run it through whatever SPE program is running. In and out as fast as you can.

Re:The reason is the same as it has always been

[Erwos]

How is this contradicting what I just wrote? epsxe runs almost all PS1 games, not just lots of them. SNESGP2X can't run a lot of SNES games that SNES9X on the PC can. You've basically proven my own point for me. Congratulations.

Re:Yay.

[Tokerat]

Sony locked it down with a firmware update. My biggest complaint about Sony is they're not very friendly to homebrew game developers (not that any of the console makers are).

And seriously? "It'll look stupid compared to someone running MGS4?" Is that REALLY supposed to compare? You don't find it in the least bit awesome that you can get all your favorite old games (that you own already, obviously) on your HDTV with a wireless controller? Are you really saying that the PS3 would be better if it did less? What kind of geek are you?

Year of Linux on PS3?

[TheCybernator]

Emulation Explosion On the PS3 Via Linux

So is 2009 the Year of Linux on PS3?

Re:Wow, Guess That Makes The 360 A Massive Failure

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Yeah, on the ps3 you have a hard time playing games for other consoles on it, on the 360, you have a rough time playing it's own games...

PS3 as RMVB player...

[lumwaiph]

Had a PS3 recently, hooked it up with ubuntu, ppc-codecs to play RMVB. Output straight to your HD LCD. Rendering is quite slow on 1080p. Faster at lower resolution.

Re:linux on ps3 haha

[Arker]

Why would I want to play 9 year old+ games on a new entertainment system?

Someone who's noticed that most games these days suck perhaps?

Re:Yay.

[Anonymous Coward]

Much more friendly than the accursed Microsoft though, still no progress (real) towards Linux on there, makes me wish I bought a PS3 :-/

Re:Wow, Guess That Makes The 360 A Massive Failure

[Computershack]

Even being 200 more expensive the PS3 is absolutely destroying the 360 in both Japan and Europe.

It's certainly not doing in the UK.

Re:Yay.

[Giometrix]

Much more friendly than the accursed Microsoft though, still no progress (real) towards Linux on there, makes me wish I bought a PS3 :-/

Microsoft has the XNA API for homebrew games.... and they let you sell games on their network. I'd say that's pretty friendly.

Don't get too excited

[themildassassin]

It strikes me that people who try to hype up the PS3's emulation under linux have never tried it.

I have, ignoring the large amount of tweaking to get a distro working properly with the PS3 hardware/HDTV (I've tried yellow dog and ubuntu), the emulation just isn't very good.

At least with an NES emulator you'll be able to run a game at full speed. However, good luck getting it fit to the screen properly or get it working with PS3 gamepad (again more tweaking). Other systems, SNES, GENESIS, don't have an emulator that is going to run at full speed on the PS3.

Other software suffers from the same problems, lack of selection and slow performance. Maybe this will change in the future, but right now linux on the cell isn't that great for desktop style apps. Yet I see it hyped up all the time, but people who either haven't bothered to try it, or are fine with a lot of tweaking for a extremely sluggish emulation/desktop experience. Just because you can do it, doesn't always mean that it is worth doing.

Re:Don't get too excited

[CronoCloud]

I've not done a lot of emulation on my PS3, but I can report as follows:

NES is fine, I used mednafen
SNES is also fine, almost but not quite as good as NES emulation, I used SNES9-GTK.
Diablo under Win95 via QEMU seemed to run a little bit faster than it should.
Diablo under Win98 via QEMU seems to hitch every now and then for a split second. Still smoother than the PS1 version on a PS1 or PS2 (the PS1 version's animation is much much smoother on the PS3 in GameOS, perhaps due to the PS3 autoconverting the funky 240p PS1 diablo outputs to 480i Running PS1 Diablo on the PS3 makes it look more like the PC version) But that may have been because I was running a couple other memory intensive apps outside of QEMU at the time. Win98 gives one the ability to run more more games than 95 does.
Zuma Deluxe under Win98 via Qemu did not run full speed.
Fallout 1 under DOSBOX runs, but very slowly, it's just barely playable, and sound doesn't work right.
Dungeon Hack under DOSBOX runs full speed and sound works great.

Re:Don't get too excited

[anvilmas]

I have never used Linux. I threw it on the PS3 why? Just because. I got mame and knights on the round, internet working on it. YDL and bluetooth (ta bilbo) were ok to get working but mame didn't work too well. I have always used windows because well Empire Total War just feck a game onto it and that's it. Not a troll just honest,

Re:Don't get too excited

[slimjim8094]

I use a Wii. Almost point-and-click after the "Twilight Hack" (no hardware required!) and "Homebrew Browser"

I have NES, SNES, GameBoy/Advance, and N64 (though I think I need another gamepad for that).

All full-speed. It's really quite pleasant. Even duck hunt (with the pointer) works!

Emulation is mostly what I use my Wii for.

Re:Wow, Guess That Makes The 360 A Massive Failure

[supernova_hq]

Does that 28.9M include replacements for the dead ones? ;)

Re:Yay.

[supernova_hq]

It isn't necessary to get task A to work on product B just because we can.

You see that, that little statement right there, THAT is why you need to hand in your geek card. And I mean NOW!

Re:Wow, Guess That Makes The 360 A Massive Failure

[Nursie]

Its true that it doesn't have the market share of the Xbox, yet. However for most of last year it was happily outselling the MS offering here in the UK.

I love this "PS3 is a total flop" meme. It's really funny and so obviously fanboi driven.

The PS3 has sold around 60% (last I saw) of the number of units the Xbox has. It has some genuinely interesting recent developments (flower, Noby Noby boy, though I don't really get it) a decent catalog and much nicer hardware than the 360 (power, memory slots, standard USB for controllers,, BluRay, doesn't sound like an aircraft taking off) and a lot of other cool stuff. Not a flop, sorry.

I have all three, I use the Xbox and PS3 about equally and barely ever the Wii. Wii just doesn't have the sorts of games I like, somehow. And I like everything from GTA to Katamari...

Re:Yay.

[tepples]

You don't find it in the least bit awesome that you can get all your favorite old games (that you own already, obviously) on your HDTV with a wireless controller?

If you already have an HDTV, you can already do this with a PC and a Bluetooth game controller. If you already have the HDTV, what makes the PLAYSTATION 3 better than a PC running Windows or Ubuntu for running emulators?

RSX access was possible? Prove it.

[BcNexus]

Please point out the firmware versions that allowed RSX access, and how. I've been searching regularly for years and have never found such a claim, much less proof.

Re:RSX access was possible? Prove it.

[SenseiLeNoir]

Not such that there was a firmware that allowed RSX, but an older firmware had a flaw which allowed you to break into RSX access.

Re:RSX access was possible? Prove it.

[BcNexus]

Touche. Allow is the wrong word. Could you perhaps point out the name of the exploit and which firmware revisions were vulnerable?

Re:Recursion

[xch13fx]

waste of time. ps3 was made for running 360 games. you need to make a 360 emulator for linux for ps3.

PC's downfall

[tepples]

Even "cheap" PC GPU's can blow away the PS3 in terms of FLOPS

One thing the PS3 can do that cheap PC GPUs can't is output video to an SDTV without a $50 adapter.

and they cost a fraction of what a PS3 does.

I don't understand. Both a PC and a PS3 cost roughly $400. Besides, you usually need a separate PC, a separate monitor, and a separate copy of the game for each player, which doesn't always work that well when you have friends or relatives over.

Re:Yay.

[slackbheep]

More fiddling to get it working, duh.

PS3 for scientific applications

[SgtChaireBourne]

I think you are confusing actual research with ...

Then sit back down and shut up while you think about it. While you're sitting there, ostensibly thinking, here is some material to consider:

• Real-time cone-beam CT image reconstruction using a mercury's dual cell-based system (DCBS) and a Sony's Playstation 3 (PS3) cluster
• Playstation 3 Consoles Tackle Black Hole Vibrations
• PS3 boosts protein research plan
• Building Supercomputer Using Playstation 3
• PlayStation Cell Speeds Docking Programs
• Researchers Use PlayStation Cluster to Forge a Web Skeleton Key
• Playstation cluster creates cheap supercomputer
• and so on..

Garbage products like xbox have gone down in flames (pun intended) and MS has to make smoke (no pun intended) and noise to distract from the situation. Same crowd is going on attack against OpenOffice.org and other key products. The universal office format, OpenDocument Format, is getting specialized attackers. Repeat lies often enough that people believe them seems to be an ongoing theme from MS.

Whether 1-, 8-. 16, or 32-node clusters, PS3s are useful in computationally intensive tasks. I'd like to see an add-on for Blender or other 3D software that allows adding a PS3 as a single node cluster. If it's there and you're working with a desktop, why not also use the processors of the otherwise idle gaming machine

who cares?

[gregarine]

Who wants to play Quake 2 when you can play Killzone 2?

DNAS Error -103

[tepples]

Free online play (no subscription BS)

Until Sony shuts a game's matchmaking servers down, and attempts to connect fail with "DNAS Error -103: This software title is no longer in service." I've bought two games for Sony consoles with online capabilities (Frequency and Dance Dance Revolution Supernova), and both of them failed this way the the first time I tried them. It's thought that paid matchmaking servers of Xbox Live Gold will last longer because Microsoft has a bigger economic incentive not to shut them down.

Re:DNAS Error -103

[CronoCloud]

Yes, but those are both older PS2 games that you recently bought, as you have said before. You want Sony to maintain servers for a game from 2002 (Frequency) that never did have a lot of online players? Try playing one of the more popular online games, like SOCOM, or the two MMORPGs. Heck even the PS2 version of Marvel Ultimate Alliance has it's online servers still up.

Re:DNAS Error -103

[Tatsh]

Yeah, I am so pissed Amplitude went down. Who wants to start a server implementation project?

Depends on the scaler

[tepples]

You think that is great? Get a big screen TV and play Super Mario Bros. 3 on big world.

Oh God, the pixels, the pixels are coming to get me!!!!

It depends on which emulator you're using. If you're using the official Virtual Console emulator, it'll look blocky because vcNES uses nearest-neighbor resampling. But if you're using an emulator that supports Scale2x, hq2x, or some other smart resampling method for line art, you can get NES games to look better than TG16 in some cases and Super NES games to look nearly PS1-quality.

Re:Depends on the scaler

[FunkyELF]

I like to go on one extreme or the other, but most of the time I like using no sampling at all. I want my pixels to look as square as can be on my 60" HDTV. Looks so retro and awesome.

Re:Recursion

[xch13fx]

rojo sombrero has been working nicely for me

Re:Can someone answer a few questions for me?

[Tongsy]

1. So, has anyone here tried using something like VLC or Mplayer to play h.264 and Xvid? Is playback smooth? Does it use Xv?

When I tried it 10 months ago, it wasn't smooth at all. Xvid was good, though.

Does the hypervisor restrict access to usb? Ie, will other devices such as an external hard drive and a tuner card work?

No, it doesn't. External USB drives should work fine, as should your tuner card if you have the driver

what?

[BPPG]

*obligatory eye-roll*

Air Force Buys 300 PlayStation 3 for Research

[jemc]

Just thought I'd add to this discussion:
http://gizmodo.com/363985/air-force-buys-300-playstation-3-for-research
This came out about a year or so ago.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=air+force+research+laboratory+ps3&aq=0&oq=
They did this because the comparative price was a bargain.
http://militarytimes.com/forums/showthread.php?p=88652
http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2008/03/airforce_playstation_031308/

I have to get back to work now.

GENERATION 25

[hviniciusg]

GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper......

get on the train, lets see how many generations we can increase.

Re:Yay.

[Lockblade]

Much more friendly than the accursed Microsoft though, still no progress (real) towards Linux on there, makes me wish I bought a PS3 :-/

Microsoft has the XNA API for homebrew games.... and they let you sell games on their network. I'd say that's pretty friendly.

Until you realize that you have to shell out $100/year to even test the game on your XBOX. I'm not saying that the PS3 is any better in terms of cost to actually ship a game via disk or direct download, but at least you can "develop" on the PS3 for free.

Re:Can someone answer a few questions for me?

[Doc Ruby]

There are several projects, like spu-medialib and mesa3d, which accelerate PS3 graphics/video on the Cell's SPEs. spu-medialib is actually a general framework for acceleration, while mesa3d offloads OpenGL onto the SPEs as a GPU.

There's a narrative tutorial for installing the spu-medialib mplayer driver, with links to files, that plays video on the SPEs quite well, including 1080p HD videos.

The USB works fine, so an external HD should work fine. I don't know whether there are PPC (the Cell's application core) drivers for a USB tuner card, but you should try it. If it doesn't work, make it work with some programming. That's what Linux is all about :).

Re:Wow, Guess That Makes The 360 A Massive Failure

[socsoc]

hey, i like my 360 sounding like a boeing when i boot it.

So for $400 I can have the performance of a $50 pc

[grapeape]

I know its nice to run linux on stuff just because it can but seriously for the average user that isnt just trying to poke around at the cell processor, they would be better off getting a cheap hand me down pc.

Great! Now where is my PS2 emulator?

[chopper749]

As soon as I can play my PS2 games on a PS3, I might look into buying one.

Re:linux on ps3 haha

[Sj0]

I disagree.

We're in an age where some incredible games are being released. The indie scene is more alive than it's been since the days of Doom. When I bought my first indie game, Pontifex, back in 2000, it was a strange thing. Today, for the first time in history, you can actually buy an indie game right from your xbox. I bought Braid and N+ this weekend and it took about 20 seconds. The commercial scene has some incredible players, like Valve Software, who keep on churning out unique titles like Left 4 Dead and Portal.

Sure there are brownfest WWII shooters, but that's always been the case. Download a rompack for the SNES and NES, and see how many games are actually any good. You'll be shocked at the massive amount of crap you have to sift through to find the diamonds.

Re:Yay.

[electrosoccertux]

What is this "homebrew game developer" you talk about? They are welcome to develop anything they want on the PC. Saying you want it on a console on TV is a copout. You just want to be able to pirate.

Re:Yay.

[kaizokuace]

also why would MS wanna run linux on their box!? Sony doesnt make a PC OS that competes against linux.

Re:Wow, Guess That Makes The 360 A Massive Failure

[Nick Ives]

I don't see why the parent is modded funny; I haven't really seen this discussed. By MSs own admission all the launch consoles are at risk of failure, hence the $1bn writeoff. In the first year there were tails of a 30% failure rate and MS was doing massive damage control and not really admitting anything.

Given that so many 360s have failed, how many are really out in the wild?

Re:Yay.

[Nick Ives]

No, you can't. The graphics hardware is locked down, remember? That $100 gets you full hardware access.

I wish the PS3 were doing better but it's clearly the case that MS is building a better platform. $100/yr is nothing even if you're just treating it as a hobby.

Re:Can someone answer a few questions for me?

[CronoCloud]

Any video of 720p or less should play fine. some few have reported smooth video at 1080i/1080p for certain formats, but I take those with a grain of salt. No Xv.

USB doesn't seem restricted, though the Blu-Ray drive is. For example you can't watch DVD's under Linux on the internal drive but you can on external drives. I have an external drive hooked up to my PS3, it's FAT32 so it works with both GameOS and Linux.

Re:Yay.

[Nick Ives]

I'm also not your regular geek like the Slashdot crowd are. I have found the geek lifestyle to be very empty and unfulfilling.

I don't recall hearing about anyone doing a study as to what constitutes the normal /.er. What's your Slash Quotient? How many standard deviations out is that? If you find this so empty and unfulfilling, what are you even doing posting here?

Searching and soldering skill varies

[tepples]

A memory card adapter can easily be made from an Xbox controller pigtail and a USB extension cable

Google how to make an xbox memory card adapter found this, but a lot of people can't be bothered to learn to solder.

However, there are forums where you can find someone to help you (or do it for you for a fee) all over the country.

I tried xbox soft-mod service indiana on Google but didn't see anything relevant. What keywords should I have tried instead?

All the answers are out there, an intelligent person could spend two or three minutes and get them all.

One problem is that some of the resources about soft-modding are outdated (e.g. Version 1.6 Warning). Some people who are otherwise intelligent don't have the specific knowledge about how to tell if a given tutorial is up-to-date or out-of-date. For instance, the first result from Google xbox soft-mod is from May 16, 2004. What kind of query would one use to ask "Has anything about Xbox soft-modding changed since May 2004"? Or would that be more of a "sign up on a forum" thing?

Re:Searching and soldering skill varies

[drinkypoo]

It's true that it's not necessarily trivial. That is one good thing about the Wii, which I've mentioned (somewhere, anyway) previously, or maybe after my comment to which you replied. To be fair, with a current Wii and a recent Twilight Princess, you do have to be very precise about the order in which you carry out the steps in the Twilight hack, and the readme does not make it clear precisely how it is done, so it's not necessarily a hop and a skip for everyone. I had to try it two or three times, perhaps because I am very silly. I didn't hurt anything, but then, I'm not a good measure anyway; I did a softmod on my 1.1 xbox with a conductive pen. Regardless, poke around some Xbox resources and sooner or later you'll find xboxscene.com which is definitely the most important resource today.

Re:Recursion

[xch13fx]

si. que no tiene sentido?

Re:Yay.

[Hrothgar The Great]

Forget emulators, we should be working towards full utilisation of hardware and not pine for nostalgic.

Who's "we"? Are you a developer?

PS3 - worthy or not worthy?

[datasegment]

For the record I'd like to state the following: Sony are selling the PS3 at a price comparable to a fully compliant Blu-Ray player (the new de facto HD standard) with the ability to automatically update itself with new firmware when available / necessary to continue supporting updated standards. They also threw in a fully network aware media player that can connect to numerous digital sources (online and in the home) to provide full video, audio and pictoral entertainment without the need for third-party software and/or hardware. Then they throw in the ability to install a world-wide standard freely distributed operating system which gives you access ot a whole host of free software, including emulators of various retro consoles and arcade machines. Oh yeah, they used standard USB connections to facilitate usage, and allow connection of a mouse and keyboard. But wait, you say - didn't they add something else? Oh yeah, a fully up to date new generation gaming machine that can play HD gaming content with 7.1 surround sound, while still allowing you to play your old PS1 content without needing yet another box hanging around making your living room untidy. And of course, they fail to sting you with monthly subscriptions just in order to play online games you already bought... Bad, Bad Sony... Quit bitching people. You're buying a media center with a free console added for fun (and the kids). ffs. [my views are not those of the company which employs me and they are not to be held responsible for any comments herein]

This was cool 5 years ago

[not already in use]

This was cool 5 years ago when I did it on my softmodded XBox, which it should be noted actually has access to the video card and thus has performance on par with the PS3 (if not better), even with a measly 64mb ram.

Re:Yay.

[geminidomino]

Been trying this forever. I can always get just almost there... :P

Maybe I should update Knoppmyth again. Hopefully it's gotten easier.

Re:So for $400 I can have the performance of a $50

[Khyber]

Your $50 PC isn't pumping 2 TFLOPS.

Re:Great! Now where is my PS2 emulator?

[Khyber]

Buy the 80GB model, which does allow you to play PS2 games, natively as they added the hardware.

Re:Yay.

[shutdown -p now]

While some might consider MS's XNA system to be benevolent charity, considering that they charge %30 of profits and there are licensing complications that make it difficult to sell XNA games anywhere but through Live, my guess is that it is not so much a 'friendly' maneuver as it is simply another revenue stream for MS. You do the work and share the profit with MS for the privilege of selling your game on their network. I suppose we should feel honored.

When both sides get a fair cut (where "fair" is defined by "something I'm happy with"), isn't that just a good business deal all in all? There's no need to feel "honored" - just consider it as another revenue stream for yourself (as well as MS), and use it to your advantage.

I wonder how much Valve takes for Steam redistribution...

Apple IIe + Oregon Trail

[i love colleen]

You forgot the best reason ever to install linux and run emulators: playing Oregon Trail on an Apple ][e emulator! Hint: it's and EXCELLENT drinking game.

Re:Apple IIe + Oregon Trail

[pecosdave]

Of course you could always just play it in your browser.
    (though I can't test it, possibly your PS3's browser to)

Re:Great! Now where is my PS2 emulator?

[anvilmas]

You wouldn't have the same emotion

Re:Great! Now where is my PS2 emulator?

[Khyber]

The actual 80GB PS3 weighs 2kg more because there's actua PS2 hardware inside. It was not software emulation, otherwise every console would have had it installed. It was a purely hardware cost.

Just FYI I've taken my 80GB apart and physically compared it with my friend's 60GB model. There is more hardware in the 80GB model, plus you can see the old Emotion Engine processor sitting right above the main SPU array.