Along that line, the wavebird controller for the GC is very awesome. Gamecube shape/comfort, wireless that is responsive and didn't care which way you pointed the controller, easy set up for 4 controllers, and excellent battery life.
It wasn't the default controller that shipped in the box, but I can't remember the last time a corded controller was connected to my gamecube.
Not to mention that many of the traffic problems that drivers face are less about cars specifically and more about traffic and numbers. If everyone abandoned their cars and started riding bikes to work instead, there'd still be crashes and rubbernecking, congestion and backups, stop signs and road rage, and so on. Except that if you get stuck waiting in traffic, instead of being in a car, you're stuck on a bike with no heater/air conditioner, radio, or protection from the rain.
The worst thing about an artificial grass surface like that, leaves and such get trapped on it, but don't really break down. Same goes for dead bugs, animal droppings, etc. You're replacing one kind of maintenance with another.
You're right on that. Besides being one of the first console FPS that was comfortably playable, it was one of the first console games with a really well designed and integrated online play. That aspect was mostly old news to much of the PC gaming crowd, but it was definitely a big step for consoles.
Most of what I've read in terms of devs complaining about the limits of the system has been from big companies that are trying to release a game for all three systems. Not that I want them to ignore Nintendo, but with a few exceptions, I'm not too interested in buying ports for the Wii. I'd much rather the game and the gameplay be designed from the ground up with the Wiimote in mind.
Developers being able to easily port their games across all of the consoles is great for them, but not particularly interesting to me. I'd much rather that they pick a console and design to its strengths.
Actually, Wii sports is selling the console. Including it with the system (at least in the states) was a great movie by Nintendo. The controller alone isn't what sells people. It's what the controller can do for games. People aren't buying the controllers to look good in their living room, they're buying it because it makes games more fun. WiiSports could not exist without the Wiimote. It wouldn't be the same game at all.
Beyond that, the Wii is also selling some just on hype. That's typically with all new consoles. Hype is the only thing selling the PS3 right now. The 360 has a respectable library of games, but nothing earth shattering at the moment. It doesn't have too much hype left at this point.
All the stuff you said about HL/HL2 doesn't make any sense to me. Basically Valve was either sitting on their ass for a couple years, or they were distracted by other things, or maybe HL2 Ep2 is just a half-hearted attempt to make some more money. I don't understand how you're trying to apply it to the Wii. If the Wii dominates the console market this time around, could that slow the pace of graphical development? Maybe, but I doubt it. Sony and MS are both heavily invested in that race still, and let's not forget PC's. But even if it does, it's not stopping progress, it's just shifting its focus, away from graphics and pushing it into a new direction. If that new direction doesn't appeal to you, then buy a different console.
Sony creating their own version of the wiimote would not kill off the buzz for Nintendo. They might capture a few sales, but they'd also be promoting the Wii, and basically be announcing that the Wiimote is legit. They'd also look like entirely blatant copycats, they'd be unable to spin it any other way. And on top of all that, they'd be competing with a system that has the exact same controller but a solid headstart on games both at market and in development. And sorry, the gaming world is not going to get that excited about a new peripheral for the PS2. And giving away the things for the PS3 wouldn't matter, because that system still costs 600 bucks.
The other great step with controllers that we got with the GC was a wireless controller that really worked well. The wavebird controllers are just plain excellent. Good response time, good battery life, good range, doesn't matter what direction you point them in.
This wasn't necessarily a brilliant innovation as much as finally getting something right, but I certainly appreciated it.
I think the Wii has been tough for the gaming media. First off, the gaming media primarily consists of hardcore gamers, which is exactly the market that the PS3 and Xbox360 were designed to target, and not the primary market for Nintendo. The Wii didn't appeal to much of the existing gaming community, because Nintendo wasn't as interested in what those people wanted. It's probably a mixture of the gaming media not understanding what Nintendo's trying to do, and also them feeling a little slighted that Nintendo doesn't feel the need to pander to them as directly as Sony and MS do.
But even beyond that, the way advertising works these days is all about the visual. You promote a game through screenshots and videos and such. A magazine or a website can include screens and talk about them and the connections are right there in front of the reader and easy to make. Gameplay is much harder to describe with words, although over time gamers have built up a vocabulary that allows many of the concepts to be communicated reasonably well. But the way you interact with the Wii and the Wiimote is very different from what's come before, and I think a lot of the gaming media reviewers have been at a loss to describe it. It's really something that you have to try to understand. It's tough to articulate how it plays with the pre-existing gaming vocabulary, and the only place where you can reasonably compare it to the other systems or previous systems is via the output, because the Wii has not changed the output, only the input. Because of all of this, many are still clinging to the visual aspects as paramount.
Over time, this should change. As games continue to be released, a more useful vocabulary will build up to describe the ways you interact with them, as well as having a bigger catalog of old games to compare the new stuff to. And as the system moves further beyond the "controller experimentation games" stage and into more refined control and gameplay models, the hardcore gamers will become more comfortable with the Wii. It's already started to happen.
If you wish to make the processing power of the Wii your main concern, then yes, you might be able to make an argument that the Wii is only 1.5 gamecubes. Unfortunately, you'd be entirely missing the point of the Wii.
If you consider a new control scheme to be more interesting, then the 360 is more like Xbox 1.1. The PS3 has some motion detection added in, so we'll call that a PS2 2.0, but they couldn't manage to get the rumble back in, so we should probably dock them something for that. Let's just say it's a 2.0 that shipped before it was really ready. Nintendo, on the other hand, has shipped an entirely new product line.
And the best part for Nintendo is that this isn't just some BS excuse that they're making up for not being able to keep up in the technology race, it's a very deliberate strategy that they've implemented in both their handheld and living room consoles, and sales have proved it to be extremely successful. Good for them.
That reminds me of another thing that I really appreciate from someone in a position like a sys-admin is often in, in terms of enforcing rules. Basically, you should try to develop a skill at explaining the rules, at a level of complexity appropriate to the person you're dealing with. While "Because those are the company rules and you work for the company!" might be true, it's not a particularly polite or compelling reason. Just taking the time to logically explain at some basic level to a person why a particular rule exists is often enough to make them accept it. The key is to not be a jerk about, don't tell them that it's too complex for them to understand, just find a way to explain it that the person can feel comfortable with.
And as a bonus, that person that you taught the explanation to might explain it to one of their coworkers who's having the same issue somewhere down the line, thereby saving you the trouble of doing it again.
Planning far enough ahead of time can be a wise decision for a movie studio. A good example is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They had a just plain practical reason, they were telling a huge story, and it's hard to get audiences to sit in a seat for 6+ hours straight. But the way it worked, since they knew it would be three films, they shot all three movies basically in one big chunk. A big benefit for the studio this way was that the actors, many of whom saw a big jump in their celebrity status after the first film was released, couldn't demand a bigger salary for the sequels. That was especially important in a story like LotR, where there were so many significant characters, and as such so many actors that would've had to be negotiated with.
I don't know how the story of this new terminator series might go, but if they can find some actors that they like, and sign them up for a series of movies right off the bat, then it leaves the studio in a much better position than having to negotiate later if the first movie is a success.
No kidding. A little common courtesy and politeness goes a long way. If someone is polite and friendly with me when I help them, I'll put forth an extra effort, and I will remember their attitude when they ask for help again in the future. And it also works both ways. If I take a relaxed, polite, and understanding attitude towards someone who's helping me, I generally get better results. And even beyond that, I just find that being nice is much more pleasant for myself than being angry or impatient.
Chances are that even if you like your job, from time to time you get tired, or stressed out, or just generally annoyed. You don't always know exactly what you're doing, things take longer than you expected, sometimes the tasks just pile up faster than you can take care of them. Why someone would expect that anyone else's job is any easier or more fun is beyond me.
All that being said, some people are just plain dicks, and all the politeness in the world won't change them. I don't know how to make it easier to deal with that, other than to take some solace in the fact that people like that usually are unhappy.
Did the correct process require you to be under the car in order to install the part? Perhaps going through the motions in your mind became easier when you were physically oriented in the same position that you'd be using to accomplish the task?
I spend a good amount of time taking old floor plan drawings to buildings and verifying dimensions and such. As soon as I enter the building, my first action is usually to orient the plans correctly to the actual building, and plot the path I'm going to take. Even though I might just be in one small room and unable to see any of the rest of the building, orienting the plan properly makes thinking my way through it work much better. Some of my coworkers don't seem to find that step nearly as necessary as I do.
I think there are very few people who would not find a 6.5 foot high ceiling to be uncomfortable.
I'm also curious as to what industry you work in, where people would not be able to jump off their desk and reach that ceiling. The average desk height is around 30" which leaves four feet to a 6.5 foot high ceiling.
Just because someone has a giant house doesn't necessarily mean that it's better designed. The "McMansion" system of home building results in high-square footage numbers, but not always higher quality spaces. Adding a third story of 8' high rooms will likely add a lot more to the sale value of a house compared to the construction cost than raising all of the ceiling heights a few feet.
Just as an aside, Sony is talking about the PS3 having a lifetime of 10 years, and even if we assume that the PS4 will be out a few years before that; how useful of a "vision" of the PS4 and/or the PS5 could a guy really have? More photorealistic graphics and a greater draw distance? Real destructable terrain? NPC's controlled with AI that doesn't suck? Those a pretty generic things, and are more about the general march of technology than any creative vision.
Beyond that, I fail to see what vision really went into the PS3? Shoving a new disc format into it to try and become the defacto format for movies? I guess you could make an argument that the Cell processor is sort of a shift. But beyond that, I don't see what the driving principles were for the PS3 beyond shove a bunch of expensive stuff into a box, hype it up, and hope that people buy it. You don't need someone special to provide that sort of visionary leadership.
The thing is, you're both right, and so was Ballmer. In fact, the only thing wrong here is the headline of the/. article. Ballmer is right that Apple won't see the utter dominance in phones that they've gotten with the iPod. But he and you are also correct in that Apple will sell these things as fast as they can make them for a good while, and they'll make bucketloads of cash off of it.
I guess it's the fault of Microsoft (and maybe IBM before that), that so many people have a hard time calling a company/product successful unless they utterly dominate all of their competitors and basically own the market. In reality, most industries have many competitors, many of which make consistent profit and should certainly be considered successful.
Anyone looking for Apple to own the cellphone market a few years down the line is going to be very disappointed. No matter how big a splash they make, it's an absolutely huge industry, and the iPhone can only grow so fast. Apple will likely be a significant player, and much like in the computer industry, they'll probably hold some influence well beyond what their market share would indicate. And that'll be good for Apple, hopefully good for the mobile phone industry, and good for people who want iPhones.
Some people enjoy the challenge and the work involved in maintaining and/or improving things that they own, whether that's a car or a computer. This guy could've thrown his webcam away and then gotten another, but instead he installed an OS where he could freely see and tinker with all the guts, and make the hardware he had already spent money on work.
Apparently he really enjoyed the project, because he went and did basically the same thing a few hundred times more. Good for him.
I too think that the "living room media center" idea isn't as imminent as many people have been claiming. For something like this to be really useful, it's going to have to combine everything under a nice, straight-forward interface. That's a pretty tall order, not just designing an interface that can handle that much different stuff, but getting all of the pieces to play together nicely. My stereo, my (3) game consoles, my TV, etc are all provided by different companies. It would have to work with all of them. I seriously doubt that Sony will cooperate if MS wants to have their media center interact with a Playstation. My cable company is trying to sell me on their digital cable box/DVR, I'm sure they're real interested in helping MS or HP provide an alternative.
There's too many different companies in the living room right now. None of them wants to compromise or give up any control to their competitors, so they're not going to work together and standardize all of this stuff. I just don't see it ever working.
That's not entirely fair. Just because someone works in the private sector does not make them above criticism. Especially for someone in a postition like Valenti was in, where even though he wasn't a public official, he had plenty of influence over the actions that many public officials took.
Where a man gets his paycheck is not the only characteristic that we should consider. In fact, it's a fairly minor one at best.
Laws are not what dictates rights. That's supposed to be one of the fundamentals of the governmental system in this country. Laws that codify rights are merely stating what already existed. While in practice, it doesn't always work out easily, that doesn't mean that if a law takes away a right then you never deserved that right in the first place. It means that law is unjust, and steps need to be taken to try to repeal it. The fact that there are paths to challenge unfair laws does not mean that the people who supported those laws are free from any blame.
The single most frustrating thing about Valenti and his ilk, beyond people involved in things like environmental groups and such, the RIAA/MPAA/etc. are trying to limit people's rights in order to protect a profit scheme. More than that, a profit scheme built on a scarcity that no longer exists. They're trying to hold back technology in order to keep making easy money. It's hard for me to support or respect that. While I'll acknowledge that not every anti-pollution lobbyist has the purest of motives, I can understand and appreciate the idea of protecting the environment, even if I don't agree on all the details. But I'm having a real hard time respecting someone who's crusade was so clearly motivated by protecting the profits of a bunch of old, uncreative business people.
Being a participant in a democracy does not require me to be indifferent to the actions and words of others. There are plenty of bad people out there, and to call them on it does not make you a bad person as well. It certainly does not indicate the mindset of a murderer or a dictator.
To steal a train of thought from your username, Apple is creaming the competition with the iPod, but they didn't steal a hundred million sales from other companies. They stole maybe a few million from creative et. all, and then sold truckloads of the things to people who didn't own a digital music player before. Creative might be selling ten times as many mp3 players today as they were in 2001, but Apple would still be "creaming" them.
Honestly, I think so much of what you're talking about is a result of marketing. To develop the Wii, Nintendo had to ignore a lot of what was generally considered to be a marketable next-gen console. The whole concept behind the Wii can sort of be explained, but it doesn't really click until you try it. That goes pretty strongly against the grain of existing game advertising and media, which is generally based on screenshots, and often a lot of buzzwords about renderings and physics.
Regular marketing won't work for the Wii. There are still plenty of people out there who write it off based on its graphics. Screenshots won't move consoles. As the article noted, the two smartest moves that they made in promoting the Wii was including Wii Sports with the console, and experimenting first with the DS. The success of the DS gave the Wii some credibility right from the beginning, and Wii Sports offers a totally new and very entertaining experience right out of the box.
I'm glad that Nintendo is having success result from the risks that they took. They took to heart the realization that there are bunch of people out there for who the best gaming solution was something other than just cramming as much hardware as is possible into a plastic box.
I'd agree. The progress we've seen has been motivated primarily by people trying to make money. More specifically, competition for the giant sums of money being spent on faster computers. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
On the level of individual engineers, I doubt there are many of them out there kept up at night worrying about how their progress relates to the general progress curve over the past couple decades. Simply put, we've all got better things to worry about.
Moore's Law is more a description of a "symptom" of the progress, not a cause.
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Along that line, the wavebird controller for the GC is very awesome. Gamecube shape/comfort, wireless that is responsive and didn't care which way you pointed the controller, easy set up for 4 controllers, and excellent battery life.
It wasn't the default controller that shipped in the box, but I can't remember the last time a corded controller was connected to my gamecube.
If the storage medium is anything other than a small, transparent, and slightly iridescent cube; then I'm not interested. Discs are so 90's.
Not to mention that many of the traffic problems that drivers face are less about cars specifically and more about traffic and numbers. If everyone abandoned their cars and started riding bikes to work instead, there'd still be crashes and rubbernecking, congestion and backups, stop signs and road rage, and so on. Except that if you get stuck waiting in traffic, instead of being in a car, you're stuck on a bike with no heater/air conditioner, radio, or protection from the rain.
The worst thing about an artificial grass surface like that, leaves and such get trapped on it, but don't really break down. Same goes for dead bugs, animal droppings, etc. You're replacing one kind of maintenance with another.
You're right on that. Besides being one of the first console FPS that was comfortably playable, it was one of the first console games with a really well designed and integrated online play. That aspect was mostly old news to much of the PC gaming crowd, but it was definitely a big step for consoles.
Most of what I've read in terms of devs complaining about the limits of the system has been from big companies that are trying to release a game for all three systems. Not that I want them to ignore Nintendo, but with a few exceptions, I'm not too interested in buying ports for the Wii. I'd much rather the game and the gameplay be designed from the ground up with the Wiimote in mind.
Developers being able to easily port their games across all of the consoles is great for them, but not particularly interesting to me. I'd much rather that they pick a console and design to its strengths.
Actually, Wii sports is selling the console. Including it with the system (at least in the states) was a great movie by Nintendo. The controller alone isn't what sells people. It's what the controller can do for games. People aren't buying the controllers to look good in their living room, they're buying it because it makes games more fun. WiiSports could not exist without the Wiimote. It wouldn't be the same game at all.
Beyond that, the Wii is also selling some just on hype. That's typically with all new consoles. Hype is the only thing selling the PS3 right now. The 360 has a respectable library of games, but nothing earth shattering at the moment. It doesn't have too much hype left at this point.
All the stuff you said about HL/HL2 doesn't make any sense to me. Basically Valve was either sitting on their ass for a couple years, or they were distracted by other things, or maybe HL2 Ep2 is just a half-hearted attempt to make some more money. I don't understand how you're trying to apply it to the Wii. If the Wii dominates the console market this time around, could that slow the pace of graphical development? Maybe, but I doubt it. Sony and MS are both heavily invested in that race still, and let's not forget PC's. But even if it does, it's not stopping progress, it's just shifting its focus, away from graphics and pushing it into a new direction. If that new direction doesn't appeal to you, then buy a different console.
Sony creating their own version of the wiimote would not kill off the buzz for Nintendo. They might capture a few sales, but they'd also be promoting the Wii, and basically be announcing that the Wiimote is legit. They'd also look like entirely blatant copycats, they'd be unable to spin it any other way. And on top of all that, they'd be competing with a system that has the exact same controller but a solid headstart on games both at market and in development. And sorry, the gaming world is not going to get that excited about a new peripheral for the PS2. And giving away the things for the PS3 wouldn't matter, because that system still costs 600 bucks.
The other great step with controllers that we got with the GC was a wireless controller that really worked well. The wavebird controllers are just plain excellent. Good response time, good battery life, good range, doesn't matter what direction you point them in.
This wasn't necessarily a brilliant innovation as much as finally getting something right, but I certainly appreciated it.
I think the Wii has been tough for the gaming media. First off, the gaming media primarily consists of hardcore gamers, which is exactly the market that the PS3 and Xbox360 were designed to target, and not the primary market for Nintendo. The Wii didn't appeal to much of the existing gaming community, because Nintendo wasn't as interested in what those people wanted. It's probably a mixture of the gaming media not understanding what Nintendo's trying to do, and also them feeling a little slighted that Nintendo doesn't feel the need to pander to them as directly as Sony and MS do.
But even beyond that, the way advertising works these days is all about the visual. You promote a game through screenshots and videos and such. A magazine or a website can include screens and talk about them and the connections are right there in front of the reader and easy to make. Gameplay is much harder to describe with words, although over time gamers have built up a vocabulary that allows many of the concepts to be communicated reasonably well. But the way you interact with the Wii and the Wiimote is very different from what's come before, and I think a lot of the gaming media reviewers have been at a loss to describe it. It's really something that you have to try to understand. It's tough to articulate how it plays with the pre-existing gaming vocabulary, and the only place where you can reasonably compare it to the other systems or previous systems is via the output, because the Wii has not changed the output, only the input. Because of all of this, many are still clinging to the visual aspects as paramount.
Over time, this should change. As games continue to be released, a more useful vocabulary will build up to describe the ways you interact with them, as well as having a bigger catalog of old games to compare the new stuff to. And as the system moves further beyond the "controller experimentation games" stage and into more refined control and gameplay models, the hardcore gamers will become more comfortable with the Wii. It's already started to happen.
If you wish to make the processing power of the Wii your main concern, then yes, you might be able to make an argument that the Wii is only 1.5 gamecubes. Unfortunately, you'd be entirely missing the point of the Wii.
If you consider a new control scheme to be more interesting, then the 360 is more like Xbox 1.1. The PS3 has some motion detection added in, so we'll call that a PS2 2.0, but they couldn't manage to get the rumble back in, so we should probably dock them something for that. Let's just say it's a 2.0 that shipped before it was really ready. Nintendo, on the other hand, has shipped an entirely new product line.
And the best part for Nintendo is that this isn't just some BS excuse that they're making up for not being able to keep up in the technology race, it's a very deliberate strategy that they've implemented in both their handheld and living room consoles, and sales have proved it to be extremely successful. Good for them.
That reminds me of another thing that I really appreciate from someone in a position like a sys-admin is often in, in terms of enforcing rules. Basically, you should try to develop a skill at explaining the rules, at a level of complexity appropriate to the person you're dealing with. While "Because those are the company rules and you work for the company!" might be true, it's not a particularly polite or compelling reason. Just taking the time to logically explain at some basic level to a person why a particular rule exists is often enough to make them accept it. The key is to not be a jerk about, don't tell them that it's too complex for them to understand, just find a way to explain it that the person can feel comfortable with.
And as a bonus, that person that you taught the explanation to might explain it to one of their coworkers who's having the same issue somewhere down the line, thereby saving you the trouble of doing it again.
Planning far enough ahead of time can be a wise decision for a movie studio. A good example is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They had a just plain practical reason, they were telling a huge story, and it's hard to get audiences to sit in a seat for 6+ hours straight. But the way it worked, since they knew it would be three films, they shot all three movies basically in one big chunk. A big benefit for the studio this way was that the actors, many of whom saw a big jump in their celebrity status after the first film was released, couldn't demand a bigger salary for the sequels. That was especially important in a story like LotR, where there were so many significant characters, and as such so many actors that would've had to be negotiated with.
I don't know how the story of this new terminator series might go, but if they can find some actors that they like, and sign them up for a series of movies right off the bat, then it leaves the studio in a much better position than having to negotiate later if the first movie is a success.
No kidding. A little common courtesy and politeness goes a long way. If someone is polite and friendly with me when I help them, I'll put forth an extra effort, and I will remember their attitude when they ask for help again in the future. And it also works both ways. If I take a relaxed, polite, and understanding attitude towards someone who's helping me, I generally get better results. And even beyond that, I just find that being nice is much more pleasant for myself than being angry or impatient.
Chances are that even if you like your job, from time to time you get tired, or stressed out, or just generally annoyed. You don't always know exactly what you're doing, things take longer than you expected, sometimes the tasks just pile up faster than you can take care of them. Why someone would expect that anyone else's job is any easier or more fun is beyond me.
All that being said, some people are just plain dicks, and all the politeness in the world won't change them. I don't know how to make it easier to deal with that, other than to take some solace in the fact that people like that usually are unhappy.
Did the correct process require you to be under the car in order to install the part? Perhaps going through the motions in your mind became easier when you were physically oriented in the same position that you'd be using to accomplish the task?
I spend a good amount of time taking old floor plan drawings to buildings and verifying dimensions and such. As soon as I enter the building, my first action is usually to orient the plans correctly to the actual building, and plot the path I'm going to take. Even though I might just be in one small room and unable to see any of the rest of the building, orienting the plan properly makes thinking my way through it work much better. Some of my coworkers don't seem to find that step nearly as necessary as I do.
I think there are very few people who would not find a 6.5 foot high ceiling to be uncomfortable.
I'm also curious as to what industry you work in, where people would not be able to jump off their desk and reach that ceiling. The average desk height is around 30" which leaves four feet to a 6.5 foot high ceiling.
Just because someone has a giant house doesn't necessarily mean that it's better designed. The "McMansion" system of home building results in high-square footage numbers, but not always higher quality spaces. Adding a third story of 8' high rooms will likely add a lot more to the sale value of a house compared to the construction cost than raising all of the ceiling heights a few feet.
Just as an aside, Sony is talking about the PS3 having a lifetime of 10 years, and even if we assume that the PS4 will be out a few years before that; how useful of a "vision" of the PS4 and/or the PS5 could a guy really have? More photorealistic graphics and a greater draw distance? Real destructable terrain? NPC's controlled with AI that doesn't suck? Those a pretty generic things, and are more about the general march of technology than any creative vision.
Beyond that, I fail to see what vision really went into the PS3? Shoving a new disc format into it to try and become the defacto format for movies? I guess you could make an argument that the Cell processor is sort of a shift. But beyond that, I don't see what the driving principles were for the PS3 beyond shove a bunch of expensive stuff into a box, hype it up, and hope that people buy it. You don't need someone special to provide that sort of visionary leadership.
The thing is, you're both right, and so was Ballmer. In fact, the only thing wrong here is the headline of the /. article. Ballmer is right that Apple won't see the utter dominance in phones that they've gotten with the iPod. But he and you are also correct in that Apple will sell these things as fast as they can make them for a good while, and they'll make bucketloads of cash off of it.
I guess it's the fault of Microsoft (and maybe IBM before that), that so many people have a hard time calling a company/product successful unless they utterly dominate all of their competitors and basically own the market. In reality, most industries have many competitors, many of which make consistent profit and should certainly be considered successful.
Anyone looking for Apple to own the cellphone market a few years down the line is going to be very disappointed. No matter how big a splash they make, it's an absolutely huge industry, and the iPhone can only grow so fast. Apple will likely be a significant player, and much like in the computer industry, they'll probably hold some influence well beyond what their market share would indicate. And that'll be good for Apple, hopefully good for the mobile phone industry, and good for people who want iPhones.
Some people enjoy the challenge and the work involved in maintaining and/or improving things that they own, whether that's a car or a computer. This guy could've thrown his webcam away and then gotten another, but instead he installed an OS where he could freely see and tinker with all the guts, and make the hardware he had already spent money on work.
Apparently he really enjoyed the project, because he went and did basically the same thing a few hundred times more. Good for him.
I too think that the "living room media center" idea isn't as imminent as many people have been claiming. For something like this to be really useful, it's going to have to combine everything under a nice, straight-forward interface. That's a pretty tall order, not just designing an interface that can handle that much different stuff, but getting all of the pieces to play together nicely. My stereo, my (3) game consoles, my TV, etc are all provided by different companies. It would have to work with all of them. I seriously doubt that Sony will cooperate if MS wants to have their media center interact with a Playstation. My cable company is trying to sell me on their digital cable box/DVR, I'm sure they're real interested in helping MS or HP provide an alternative.
There's too many different companies in the living room right now. None of them wants to compromise or give up any control to their competitors, so they're not going to work together and standardize all of this stuff. I just don't see it ever working.
That's not entirely fair. Just because someone works in the private sector does not make them above criticism. Especially for someone in a postition like Valenti was in, where even though he wasn't a public official, he had plenty of influence over the actions that many public officials took.
Where a man gets his paycheck is not the only characteristic that we should consider. In fact, it's a fairly minor one at best.
Laws are not what dictates rights. That's supposed to be one of the fundamentals of the governmental system in this country. Laws that codify rights are merely stating what already existed. While in practice, it doesn't always work out easily, that doesn't mean that if a law takes away a right then you never deserved that right in the first place. It means that law is unjust, and steps need to be taken to try to repeal it. The fact that there are paths to challenge unfair laws does not mean that the people who supported those laws are free from any blame.
The single most frustrating thing about Valenti and his ilk, beyond people involved in things like environmental groups and such, the RIAA/MPAA/etc. are trying to limit people's rights in order to protect a profit scheme. More than that, a profit scheme built on a scarcity that no longer exists. They're trying to hold back technology in order to keep making easy money. It's hard for me to support or respect that. While I'll acknowledge that not every anti-pollution lobbyist has the purest of motives, I can understand and appreciate the idea of protecting the environment, even if I don't agree on all the details. But I'm having a real hard time respecting someone who's crusade was so clearly motivated by protecting the profits of a bunch of old, uncreative business people.
Being a participant in a democracy does not require me to be indifferent to the actions and words of others. There are plenty of bad people out there, and to call them on it does not make you a bad person as well. It certainly does not indicate the mindset of a murderer or a dictator.
To steal a train of thought from your username, Apple is creaming the competition with the iPod, but they didn't steal a hundred million sales from other companies. They stole maybe a few million from creative et. all, and then sold truckloads of the things to people who didn't own a digital music player before. Creative might be selling ten times as many mp3 players today as they were in 2001, but Apple would still be "creaming" them.
Honestly, I think so much of what you're talking about is a result of marketing. To develop the Wii, Nintendo had to ignore a lot of what was generally considered to be a marketable next-gen console. The whole concept behind the Wii can sort of be explained, but it doesn't really click until you try it. That goes pretty strongly against the grain of existing game advertising and media, which is generally based on screenshots, and often a lot of buzzwords about renderings and physics.
Regular marketing won't work for the Wii. There are still plenty of people out there who write it off based on its graphics. Screenshots won't move consoles. As the article noted, the two smartest moves that they made in promoting the Wii was including Wii Sports with the console, and experimenting first with the DS. The success of the DS gave the Wii some credibility right from the beginning, and Wii Sports offers a totally new and very entertaining experience right out of the box.
I'm glad that Nintendo is having success result from the risks that they took. They took to heart the realization that there are bunch of people out there for who the best gaming solution was something other than just cramming as much hardware as is possible into a plastic box.
If you can get double, then go for it. And when more games that interest you get released, go buy another one.
I'd agree. The progress we've seen has been motivated primarily by people trying to make money. More specifically, competition for the giant sums of money being spent on faster computers. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
On the level of individual engineers, I doubt there are many of them out there kept up at night worrying about how their progress relates to the general progress curve over the past couple decades. Simply put, we've all got better things to worry about.
Moore's Law is more a description of a "symptom" of the progress, not a cause.