Once online distribution is big enough that the (greater) profits outweigh the smaller market, they can afford to tell Wal-Mart where to go, and compete on price. Until then, there's no way they're going to undercut their own biggest distributors.
Sucks for us, but the best thing you can do to bring about change is to buy online. Show them that we don't need the middlemen any longer.
So long as local distribution forms a significant part of the market, we won't see all the benefits of online distribution. But as soon as enough people can buy online to make a product a success, it's bye-bye Best Buy.
It's already happening in the music market. Prince sold "Crystal Ball" online in 1998, bypassing Warner, and made more money on it in the process. Indie bands do it all the time. It's happening with computer parts too - cheaper online.
Shareware (e.g. Doom) started the process for software, now Steam is taking it further. It is inevitable - but you can certainly expect some problems along the way.
Or are you suggesting Vista is forcing them to buy a new box and all-new software for everything they do? And to convert much of their data from their old software's format to that of whatever software might actually run on Vista? And to relearn an entirely new interface, new maintenance tricks etc? And to give up many games and other programs that aren't available on Vista at all? Coz that's what you'd have to do to switch to a Mac. You think the only difference between PCs and Macs is the interface?
Faced with such a choice, I think I'd just stick with the fully-functional system I already have. Luckily, there's no such issue anyway, as for 99% of Windows users, Vista doesn't require a new box to run at all.
Voice isn't that big a deal for me if I'm playing a bunch of strangers, but if I'm gaming with my friends, voice chat makes all the difference. Makes it much more like a LAN party.
Otherwise, I might as well be playing a bunch of strangers.
Many people don't realise this, but Xbox actually supports two forms of network play; Live, and System Link.
MS intended System Link (think LAN Party) to be local only, but by running the XLink Kai client on a local PC and tunneling the Xbox's LAN packets across the internet, you get exactly what you asked for: free, online multiplayer with your friends.
If you want it, you can have buddy lists, server arenas a la GameSpy, basic messaging and even voice comms on many games. It works on Xbox and Xbox 360. And best of all, it supports an even wider range of games than Xbox Live does.
Makes a great alternative to Live - and importantly (for me), it works well with XBMC.
The answer is the same as for wasting petrol/gasoline and any other natural resource. Just raise the prices.
Seriously. If there's a concern that electricity or some other resource is being over-used, then raise the cost to the end-user until a) the end-user starts caring enough to reduce his/her consumption, and/or b) the extra revenue is sufficient to cover all the costs of providing the resource - which includes environmental cleanup, accidents, developing more renewable alternatives and so on.
All too often these extra costs are ignored, which makes many people unhappy when they are eventually revealed. Of course, this requires the extra revenue actually be used for those costs, so since you can't trust a corporation to be responsible you'd have to gather it in the form of a tax or levy - and write sufficiently ironclad legislation to dissuade the government from making off with it either...
I've also had trouble getting the desktop to refresh when unlocking the computer after it's been locked for anything over a few hours. This only happens when Azureus has been running.
That's actually due to Windows file caching, not Azureus. When an app like Azureus constantly reads from and writes to a number of large files, Windows tries to cache as much of those files as possible - and, over time (hours), will start swapping out running apps, system processes etc in order to get more RAM for the file cache. Then when you come back to the system, pretty much any activity at all (even a screen redraw) requires all sorts of code to get swapped back in again. This is despite having the "tune for apps" switch enabled.
In earlier versions of NT4, the file cache was so aggressive it'd swap out the very process that was trying to access the file - e.g. when simply copying a 1 GB file with the system, it'd keep trying to swap out the filecopy code and the copy would slow down drastically midway through.
Mind you, the file caching can easily be avoided by passing a certain flag when opening the file, but perhaps Java doesn't support that - or perhaps it results in too many HDD accesses in normal use. Who knows.
Lucky me - we're nearly at the bottom of the population density list. I get over 71.5 football fields to live in:-)
That's enough for 858 computers, and I only have 3! Clearly I've been subsiding Singapore for far too long (only 0.03 football fields each for them, enough for a Mac Mini perhaps).
I have an A2, and I agree with all the GP's points. S/he didn't mention that the A2's EVF is significantly better than any other EVF by virtue of having 4x the resolution, so consider that when comparing OVFs to EVFs you've seen.
However, I agree with your points too. Optical viewfinders are undoubtedly faster and clearer, and I do sometimes wish for one when (attempting to) frame a flash shot in very low light.
Nevertheless, the gains can certainly be worth the tradeoffs, at least for some applications. The pan speed is good enough for most things (anything I use it for), the focus magnifier does offset the OVF's greater sharpness to some degree, and the live feedback & information while composing your shot is certainly better than the SLR approach of "take the shot, then review it to see if the settings were right". With a live histogram & WSYIWYG picture, you know it's going to be right before you ever press the button.
Maybe your usage doesn't benefit from these things, and you're clearly happy with your SLR, so that's fine. But don't make the mistake of thinking that an OVF is "so much better than any EVF could possibly be", because you'll soon be proved wrong. People said the same about film over digital, not long ago, and it's clear where the trend is today.
Right now, EVFs and OVFs both have advantages for different needs, and we can debate the merits of each, but when we have an EVF with instant response, at least a few megapixels, and the exact same dynamic range and color rendition as the camera's sensors - then the conversation will already be over.
Not at all. Media Center Extender is software you can buy for Xbox (and is included in Xbox 360) that just remotes the interface of your MCE PC. As you implied, it gives you only what your MCE PC can do. The built-in Xbox 360 version supports HDTV, unlike the Xbox version.
XBMC is free software for modded Xboxes that does not require a PC, and supports a much wider range of codecs & features than MCE + Media Center Extender does (though there's no support for HD or recording TV of course). There's a big difference.
I use XBMC daily; I'm quite familiar with what it does, and with what MCE + Media Center Extender does. Unless I misunderstood what your original point was?
High transfer rates are all very well, but I read somewhere (vague link not included) a bloke saw one of these last NAB, and said that they span really slowly.
I can't find anywhere what the spin rate is - but if it's slow, that's going to kill your average data access times. Forget HDD replacement. It'll be good for long-term storage or bulk data transfer, nothing more.
Yeah, much the same, except that it can install to your HDD & boots straight into it (no mucking about with discs), it's completely standalone (no need for an MCE PC), it plays DVDs natively, it plays all video, music, pictures etc from its own DVD & HDD drives, it plays DivX/XVid & every format known to man (not just MPEG, WMV and DVR-MS), it streams direct from your TiVo or Replay, it downloads IMDB info, net radio, movie & game trailers, acts as a gaming portal, it's fully skinnable...
But other than that, the exact same thing, as you say. Only not.
Time to poke your own head out of your dorm, maybe?
That would mean making a PowerPC-compatible version of Windows
What do you think the Xbox 360 is running right now?
If I want the MCE options I'll pay for them.
Indeed. I fully expect to see a USB2-connected tuner box (with matching styling) with a software disc (possibly installable) that allows local recording & playback. What better way to also sell larger add-on HDDs?
Doubt it'd record TV shows while you're playing games - but it would while you're watching TV of course. I can imagine it might be popular with college students or those with limited space.
Since the machine is pretty loud I put it in my home-entairtainment cabinet, which it shares with a receiver, DVD player, and an old VHS.
[snip] ...(including my 600W receiver)...
So, now that we have arrays of microlenses & software-based focusing, why do we need a conventional lens at all?
With some improvements to the manufacturing technology, we could have a revolutionary camera based on a large, flat plate of microlenses, scaled up to whatever the manufacturing allows, or even multiple plates tiled together, with the software allowing for the seams. And that's it - you could stick them to anything - phones, for example, or walls or whatever.
The linked paper shows how to use Fourier processing for (re)focusing the data on any point, but with a large enough plate you could also get enough parallax for a limited 3D result.
It'd also avoid the limited-aperture optics issues we're running into with sensor size vs lens size. You can scale them (or tile them) up, collect a lot more incident light & get a lot more resolution too, without having to shrink the sensor elements further or use a ginormous conventional lens. The bigger you make these things (or the more that are tiled together), the better & more flexible your result. There's more data to process, of course, but that's what Cell is for, isn't it?
However, I am rather baffled about just how amazing this is supposed to be. Playing HL2 on my Dell widescreen monitor theoretically gives a better resolution that HD, so what's all the fuss about, that you can do that on a normal TV?
Good SXGA screen = 20"
Good HDTV screen = 42"-60", or 100" with a projector
Also:
Good PC surround sound = 5 x 2" cube speakers + 8" woofer
Good home theatre sound = 5 x full-range speakers + 15" woofer
Add to that: greater ease of use, easy multiplayer with your friends (without necessarily requiring more machines) and a nice comfy couch, and you can see what a console setup can offer over a gaming PC.
Not one. They don't even support 720p, let alone 1080i. Unless you consider 480p to be a HiDef format.
Look here. And here. There are only five 1080i games released for the Xbox, and all of them are simplistic.
What you're seeing is simply 480p upscaled. A little better than NTSC, agreed, but a far cry from "true high-definition". The extra detail you're seeing is likely just the larger screen making it easier on your eyes.
As opposed to unilateral action without forethought; an entire country trashed, seven-figure death tolls, and a $200B mess to clean up. And for what? A cause that was demonstrably false.
Slashdot Mirror
Once online distribution is big enough that the (greater) profits outweigh the smaller market, they can afford to tell Wal-Mart where to go, and compete on price. Until then, there's no way they're going to undercut their own biggest distributors.
Sucks for us, but the best thing you can do to bring about change is to buy online. Show them that we don't need the middlemen any longer.
So long as local distribution forms a significant part of the market, we won't see all the benefits of online distribution. But as soon as enough people can buy online to make a product a success, it's bye-bye Best Buy.
It's already happening in the music market. Prince sold "Crystal Ball" online in 1998, bypassing Warner, and made more money on it in the process. Indie bands do it all the time. It's happening with computer parts too - cheaper online.
Shareware (e.g. Doom) started the process for software, now Steam is taking it further. It is inevitable - but you can certainly expect some problems along the way.
Faced with such a choice, I think I'd just stick with the fully-functional system I already have. Luckily, there's no such issue anyway, as for 99% of Windows users, Vista doesn't require a new box to run at all.
It's a completely free alternative to Live, has many of the same features (friends list, voice comms etc) and supports a wider range of games.
Oh wait...
Otherwise, I might as well be playing a bunch of strangers.
Dammit, now even pigeons have better toys than I do. I really gotta try harder to keep up.
MS intended System Link (think LAN Party) to be local only, but by running the XLink Kai client on a local PC and tunneling the Xbox's LAN packets across the internet, you get exactly what you asked for: free, online multiplayer with your friends.
If you want it, you can have buddy lists, server arenas a la GameSpy, basic messaging and even voice comms on many games. It works on Xbox and Xbox 360. And best of all, it supports an even wider range of games than Xbox Live does.
Makes a great alternative to Live - and importantly (for me), it works well with XBMC.
All too often these extra costs are ignored, which makes many people unhappy when they are eventually revealed. Of course, this requires the extra revenue actually be used for those costs, so since you can't trust a corporation to be responsible you'd have to gather it in the form of a tax or levy - and write sufficiently ironclad legislation to dissuade the government from making off with it either...
That's actually due to Windows file caching, not Azureus. When an app like Azureus constantly reads from and writes to a number of large files, Windows tries to cache as much of those files as possible - and, over time (hours), will start swapping out running apps, system processes etc in order to get more RAM for the file cache. Then when you come back to the system, pretty much any activity at all (even a screen redraw) requires all sorts of code to get swapped back in again. This is despite having the "tune for apps" switch enabled.
In earlier versions of NT4, the file cache was so aggressive it'd swap out the very process that was trying to access the file - e.g. when simply copying a 1 GB file with the system, it'd keep trying to swap out the filecopy code and the copy would slow down drastically midway through.
Mind you, the file caching can easily be avoided by passing a certain flag when opening the file, but perhaps Java doesn't support that - or perhaps it results in too many HDD accesses in normal use. Who knows.
Actually, my copy of Azureus is using 2.2 MB right now, while seeding four files.
Of course, the JRE process that it requires is using 55 MB, but that's another story...
Update the JRE to the linked version, no more CPU problems.
that they're not going to make a server-side, AJAX-based Google Browser? I was so waiting for that...
That's enough for 858 computers, and I only have 3! Clearly I've been subsiding Singapore for far too long (only 0.03 football fields each for them, enough for a Mac Mini perhaps).
However, I agree with your points too. Optical viewfinders are undoubtedly faster and clearer, and I do sometimes wish for one when (attempting to) frame a flash shot in very low light.
Nevertheless, the gains can certainly be worth the tradeoffs, at least for some applications. The pan speed is good enough for most things (anything I use it for), the focus magnifier does offset the OVF's greater sharpness to some degree, and the live feedback & information while composing your shot is certainly better than the SLR approach of "take the shot, then review it to see if the settings were right". With a live histogram & WSYIWYG picture, you know it's going to be right before you ever press the button.
Maybe your usage doesn't benefit from these things, and you're clearly happy with your SLR, so that's fine. But don't make the mistake of thinking that an OVF is "so much better than any EVF could possibly be", because you'll soon be proved wrong. People said the same about film over digital, not long ago, and it's clear where the trend is today.
Right now, EVFs and OVFs both have advantages for different needs, and we can debate the merits of each, but when we have an EVF with instant response, at least a few megapixels, and the exact same dynamic range and color rendition as the camera's sensors - then the conversation will already be over.
XBMC is free software for modded Xboxes that does not require a PC, and supports a much wider range of codecs & features than MCE + Media Center Extender does (though there's no support for HD or recording TV of course). There's a big difference.
I use XBMC daily; I'm quite familiar with what it does, and with what MCE + Media Center Extender does. Unless I misunderstood what your original point was?
I can't find anywhere what the spin rate is - but if it's slow, that's going to kill your average data access times. Forget HDD replacement. It'll be good for long-term storage or bulk data transfer, nothing more.
But other than that, the exact same thing, as you say. Only not.
Time to poke your own head out of your dorm, maybe?
What do you think the Xbox 360 is running right now?
If I want the MCE options I'll pay for them.
Indeed. I fully expect to see a USB2-connected tuner box (with matching styling) with a software disc (possibly installable) that allows local recording & playback. What better way to also sell larger add-on HDDs?
Doubt it'd record TV shows while you're playing games - but it would while you're watching TV of course. I can imagine it might be popular with college students or those with limited space.
Yep. It's 1e6 times the cost per megabyte. Astounding stuff.
[snip]
I think we've found the problem :-)
With some improvements to the manufacturing technology, we could have a revolutionary camera based on a large, flat plate of microlenses, scaled up to whatever the manufacturing allows, or even multiple plates tiled together, with the software allowing for the seams. And that's it - you could stick them to anything - phones, for example, or walls or whatever.
The linked paper shows how to use Fourier processing for (re)focusing the data on any point, but with a large enough plate you could also get enough parallax for a limited 3D result.
It'd also avoid the limited-aperture optics issues we're running into with sensor size vs lens size. You can scale them (or tile them) up, collect a lot more incident light & get a lot more resolution too, without having to shrink the sensor elements further or use a ginormous conventional lens. The bigger you make these things (or the more that are tiled together), the better & more flexible your result. There's more data to process, of course, but that's what Cell is for, isn't it?
Good SXGA screen = 20"
Good HDTV screen = 42"-60", or 100" with a projector
Also:
Good PC surround sound = 5 x 2" cube speakers + 8" woofer
Good home theatre sound = 5 x full-range speakers + 15" woofer
Add to that: greater ease of use, easy multiplayer with your friends (without necessarily requiring more machines) and a nice comfy couch, and you can see what a console setup can offer over a gaming PC.
Look here. And here. There are only five 1080i games released for the Xbox, and all of them are simplistic.
What you're seeing is simply 480p upscaled. A little better than NTSC, agreed, but a far cry from "true high-definition". The extra detail you're seeing is likely just the larger screen making it easier on your eyes.
As opposed to unilateral action without forethought; an entire country trashed, seven-figure death tolls, and a $200B mess to clean up. And for what? A cause that was demonstrably false.
The beauracracy was right.