I'm all for criticizing the pharmaceutical companies, and their mishandling of the epidemic... but the major governments of the world were eager partners in spreading fear and mis-information. Now they're trying to deflect blame.
The hysterical press is the third entity that should share in the guilt.
I just can't read far enough into what all these execs say when they talk about the "long life" of their consoles that remain entertaining for 2.5 years at best.
I think I disagree. Why upgrade, if the only difference is going to be better graphics? That doesn't make games any better. The weakest console, graphically, won this gen by a landslide. The weakest console, graphically, won last gen by a landslide. It's the games, not the hardware, that make a console enjoyable... and the games get BETTER throughout a console's lifespan.
If a new console cycle started, we would be in for two years of really bad games before developers got back on an even keel. The games would become ANOTHER 400% more expensive to create, and probably shorter. Is there any game you want that can't be made on current hardware?
I would love to get another five years out of ALL the current consoles.
The "juice" can be 0 nicotine, by the way, and can be made at home using either propylene glycol, or good old vegetable glycerine.
Do they offer a variety of 'juices'? For instance, can you use it as a caffeine delivery system, instead of nicotine? Or maybe even some vitamins? Alcohol? I wonder if people have 'hacked' it to deliver illegal recreational drugs. Hmm.
Size might not be as much of a problem as weight, and this laser might not need the hundreds of pounds of vacuum-sealed glass, lead, and other supporting paraphernalia that old CRTs required. Probably not as fashionable as a flatscreen, but not as clunky as an old television. If it offered some of the benefits that LCDs don't, like truly flexible display resolutions, it might still be worthwhile.
Figure at nice but SDTV quality, with decent compression (and I think Silverlight uses pretty good compression), a two-hour movie takes around a gig. The Wii has 88mb of memory, so if the player is fairly light, they might be able to have about a 32mb buffer, which is only about 3-4 minutes.
If the quality is closer to youtube-level, instead of DVD-level, a two hour movie might be compressed down to a few hundred megs, and they could probably hold many times that amount. You're not going to be able to come close to buffering a whole movie, unless they let you save it on an external SD card.
If you download 5 games on your internal and played each once a day, you wrote to your flash precisely once for each game you downloaded. If you download them to SD instead and then "run" at the same rate, you're burning your flash 5+ times per day.
So, under the worst case scenario, you write a byte 5 times a day, on a flash drive that has a tolerance of 100,000+ writes? That reduces the expected lifetime to 20,000 days, or 54 years.. Not a problem. Flash drive read tolerances are high enough that writing a few times a day will not be a problem; they'll probably last longer than a hard drive under that kind of use. Write endurance of flash drives is high enough that it's only a problem for a normal user if they use it as a cache or ramdrive and it ends up with hundreds or thousands of writes a day.
I'm willing to bet the Netflix app is simply too big to fit inside the flash reliably.
Nah, I doubt that's a problem. The Opera web browser fits comfortably inside flash memory, and that includes flash; unless they're incompetent, a dedicated media player should be much smaller.
The problem with the Wii is probably just the limited ram to buffer the streaming video itself; it might be more dependent on a smooth and fast connection than the other two console. On the other hand, it's not streaming HD video, so that might not be as much of a problem. Either way, it's better to have the option than not have it.
My understanding is that there has been no disproof of general relativity, but that it is fundamentally irreconcilable with quantum physics (and string theory).
Since string theory is the current hot fad, people think that general relativity is going to blink first. I'm not so sure, myself. Although it very well may be an emergent phenomena... but most of our physical laws are, like thermodynamics. It doesn't make them any less true.
Why in the name of Justin Timberlake would I install an add-on to block another add-on I installed?
Because of the broken web paradigm. There's nothing wrong with Flash, innately; it's a useful tool. The problem is how all browsers interpret embedded applets and scripts, and autoexecute them. Because of that ridiculous design decision, made many years ago, flash (and javascript, dynamic html, etc.) have ended up being more irritation than useful. No executable code should load and run automatically... but because that's the way the internet evolved, we need an array of tools to add fine-toothed user control back in.
You're correct. If they evolve, they HAVE genetic material; it's a bit of a tautology. They just don't necessarily have the same genetic material as we do. (Although our genetic material isn't 100% defined by our nuclear DNA; we have other inherited material, such as mitochondrial DNA, that is also part of our genetic makeup. In the wider, touchy-feely, view we have such things as memes and culture that might be considered 'genetic'.)
FF had tabs long before most other browsers (except perhaps Konquerer)
I think that feature (and many others) were primarily copied from Opera.
While I do think Firefox is bloating, and really think they've made some questionable decisions (such as force-feeding the terrible Awesomebar), I can't think of anything wrong with this move. The extension model needs revision, and only elitist bastards would be upset that they're making it simpler and more accessible.
But statistics is one of those fields that benefits everybody; it's a bit like probability, logic, or (further afield) history. Lack of a fundamental understanding of statistic can lead you astray in a near-infinite number of ways.
I have sat in business meetings hundreds of times where I've seen decisions made on completely meaningless and irrelevant data, because the people involved don't understand statistics. The same holds true in your personal life; decisions with purchasing products, investing money...
Now, I'll bet that most slashdot readers have the minimum amount of knowledge of statistic to avoid the most egregious errors; but more knowledge is certainly helpful. It will help you in a myriad of ways.
the extra WB streaming content will be old crap that you won't even see on a Target DVD shelf for $5.
Those and foreign films are the real value of netflix. Who uses Netflix to watch recent blockbusters? The great thing about Netflix is being able to track down stuff you won't see at the local megamarket.
All the systems have some crappy shovel ware on them (The Wii simply has more because of its larger user base) The PS2 had more shovel ware then the GC and Xbox the PS1 had more then the N64 and the Dreamcast and no on and so forth.
Not JUST the larger user base, but the massively cheaper development. Last gen, the PS2 had far more marketshare, but wasn't particularly less expensive to develop a game for than the Gamecube or XBox. This gen, the consoles in 2nd and 3rd place also cost several times as much to make a game for. It's like a perfect storm that attracts really crappy games to the Wii. (And I love the Wii, but you have to ignore a LOT of bad games to get to the good ones.)
Point and click adventures really attract the casual gamer since they do not need to have lightning fast reflexes and may not enjoy shooting or killing everything in sight (me on the other hand I enjoy both so I guess I am mediocre core lol)
The genre I really feel the Wii is missing out on is real time sims... something like Starcraft or Command and Conquer. Those are all about control, and the Wii could do them far better than the PS2 or 360. Nobody's making one, though.
In the history of consoles very few add ons have ever had decent support. People won't buy it unless there are a ton of great games that require it and that wont happen until a ton of people buy it and the games sell a ton. Chicken and the egg problem.
Best of luck to MS but I feel Natal will be a commercial failure, I could be wrong but the odds are against it.
I get the impression that Natal will be offered both as an add-on, but also built-in to a new model of 360. That might help adaption. However, I don't think it will nearly as impactful as the Wiimote was. The Wiimote+nunchuck was at least useful for general purpose gaming; it's an ok controller even if no motion sensing is used at all. Natal, though, seems like it will be wonderful for a very limited range of applications, and useless for most others. You need at least a few buttons to trigger actions.
Many of us are as skeptical of these results as we are of the other results. Let more research be done, and see if we get consistently repeatable results.
There are a lot of Wii motion-based games that work well. The (numerous) ones that DO suck, would probably have been just AS terrible with a controller, because they were cheap cash-in titles.
I agree that motion sensing won't kill controllers; but it will become an essential feature. Would you like to go back to using your computer with no mouse?
It's not so much Microsoft copying Nintendo, as it is Microsoft reacting to Nintendo. I think it's pretty obvious that if the Wii hadn't been released and massively successful, nobody would even have heard about Natal.
That's in opposition to Sony, who blatantly IS copying the Wii with their own new Wiimote clone.
Why is this modded troll? That's pretty much the reason why all those virtual currency providers do it: to hide the fact that you are spending real money.
There's at least two OTHER major reasons they do it:
1) To avoid microtransaction fees. If they simply charged your credit card each time you made a $2 transaction, the minimum fees would eat up much of their profit. By having you by points in bulk, in multiples of $10 or #$20, a much smaller percentage goes to the credit card companies.
2) To have an international standard. By using points, they can price games and services the same in every nation the service exists in. If they used existing currency, they would need to price every download appropriately to each nation, and then enforce access/download restrictions.
Second, and more importantly, Can your $50 Walfart special transfer movies to your psp so you can watch it on the plane, Or do you have to take the disk with you and risk scratching it?
I vigorously dispute the "more importantly" clause.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm all for criticizing the pharmaceutical companies, and their mishandling of the epidemic... but the major governments of the world were eager partners in spreading fear and mis-information. Now they're trying to deflect blame.
The hysterical press is the third entity that should share in the guilt.
I just can't read far enough into what all these execs say when they talk about the "long life" of their consoles that remain entertaining for 2.5 years at best.
I think I disagree. Why upgrade, if the only difference is going to be better graphics? That doesn't make games any better. The weakest console, graphically, won this gen by a landslide. The weakest console, graphically, won last gen by a landslide. It's the games, not the hardware, that make a console enjoyable... and the games get BETTER throughout a console's lifespan.
If a new console cycle started, we would be in for two years of really bad games before developers got back on an even keel. The games would become ANOTHER 400% more expensive to create, and probably shorter. Is there any game you want that can't be made on current hardware?
I would love to get another five years out of ALL the current consoles.
I think it is very unimaginative to think this post was offtopic.
You're missing out on the Final Fantasy with the best battle system.
The "juice" can be 0 nicotine, by the way, and can be made at home using either propylene glycol, or good old vegetable glycerine.
Do they offer a variety of 'juices'? For instance, can you use it as a caffeine delivery system, instead of nicotine? Or maybe even some vitamins? Alcohol? I wonder if people have 'hacked' it to deliver illegal recreational drugs. Hmm.
Size might not be as much of a problem as weight, and this laser might not need the hundreds of pounds of vacuum-sealed glass, lead, and other supporting paraphernalia that old CRTs required. Probably not as fashionable as a flatscreen, but not as clunky as an old television. If it offered some of the benefits that LCDs don't, like truly flexible display resolutions, it might still be worthwhile.
Figure at nice but SDTV quality, with decent compression (and I think Silverlight uses pretty good compression), a two-hour movie takes around a gig. The Wii has 88mb of memory, so if the player is fairly light, they might be able to have about a 32mb buffer, which is only about 3-4 minutes.
If the quality is closer to youtube-level, instead of DVD-level, a two hour movie might be compressed down to a few hundred megs, and they could probably hold many times that amount. You're not going to be able to come close to buffering a whole movie, unless they let you save it on an external SD card.
If you download 5 games on your internal and played each once a day, you wrote to your flash precisely once for each game you downloaded. If you download them to SD instead and then "run" at the same rate, you're burning your flash 5+ times per day.
So, under the worst case scenario, you write a byte 5 times a day, on a flash drive that has a tolerance of 100,000+ writes? That reduces the expected lifetime to 20,000 days, or 54 years.. Not a problem. Flash drive read tolerances are high enough that writing a few times a day will not be a problem; they'll probably last longer than a hard drive under that kind of use. Write endurance of flash drives is high enough that it's only a problem for a normal user if they use it as a cache or ramdrive and it ends up with hundreds or thousands of writes a day.
I'm willing to bet the Netflix app is simply too big to fit inside the flash reliably.
Nah, I doubt that's a problem. The Opera web browser fits comfortably inside flash memory, and that includes flash; unless they're incompetent, a dedicated media player should be much smaller.
The problem with the Wii is probably just the limited ram to buffer the streaming video itself; it might be more dependent on a smooth and fast connection than the other two console. On the other hand, it's not streaming HD video, so that might not be as much of a problem. Either way, it's better to have the option than not have it.
Yep, you've just about recreated in short form a typical debate about the Awesomebar. You forgot to stamp your foot/slam your fist, though.
My understanding is that there has been no disproof of general relativity, but that it is fundamentally irreconcilable with quantum physics (and string theory).
Since string theory is the current hot fad, people think that general relativity is going to blink first. I'm not so sure, myself. Although it very well may be an emergent phenomena... but most of our physical laws are, like thermodynamics. It doesn't make them any less true.
Why in the name of Justin Timberlake would I install an add-on to block another add-on I installed?
Because of the broken web paradigm. There's nothing wrong with Flash, innately; it's a useful tool. The problem is how all browsers interpret embedded applets and scripts, and autoexecute them. Because of that ridiculous design decision, made many years ago, flash (and javascript, dynamic html, etc.) have ended up being more irritation than useful. No executable code should load and run automatically... but because that's the way the internet evolved, we need an array of tools to add fine-toothed user control back in.
You're correct. If they evolve, they HAVE genetic material; it's a bit of a tautology. They just don't necessarily have the same genetic material as we do. (Although our genetic material isn't 100% defined by our nuclear DNA; we have other inherited material, such as mitochondrial DNA, that is also part of our genetic makeup. In the wider, touchy-feely, view we have such things as memes and culture that might be considered 'genetic'.)
OMG programming is HARD! We need to reduce features and make it simpler so any moron can do it!!!
Pretty much true. You seem to have actually spit out a true statement in an attempt to make a sarcastic rant.
FF had tabs long before most other browsers (except perhaps Konquerer)
I think that feature (and many others) were primarily copied from Opera.
While I do think Firefox is bloating, and really think they've made some questionable decisions (such as force-feeding the terrible Awesomebar), I can't think of anything wrong with this move. The extension model needs revision, and only elitist bastards would be upset that they're making it simpler and more accessible.
But statistics is one of those fields that benefits everybody; it's a bit like probability, logic, or (further afield) history. Lack of a fundamental understanding of statistic can lead you astray in a near-infinite number of ways.
I have sat in business meetings hundreds of times where I've seen decisions made on completely meaningless and irrelevant data, because the people involved don't understand statistics. The same holds true in your personal life; decisions with purchasing products, investing money...
Now, I'll bet that most slashdot readers have the minimum amount of knowledge of statistic to avoid the most egregious errors; but more knowledge is certainly helpful. It will help you in a myriad of ways.
So you don't care about kids that might drink shampoo, or the effects if they get some in their eye?
the extra WB streaming content will be old crap that you won't even see on a Target DVD shelf for $5.
Those and foreign films are the real value of netflix. Who uses Netflix to watch recent blockbusters? The great thing about Netflix is being able to track down stuff you won't see at the local megamarket.
All the systems have some crappy shovel ware on them (The Wii simply has more because of its larger user base) The PS2 had more shovel ware then the GC and Xbox the PS1 had more then the N64 and the Dreamcast and no on and so forth.
Not JUST the larger user base, but the massively cheaper development. Last gen, the PS2 had far more marketshare, but wasn't particularly less expensive to develop a game for than the Gamecube or XBox. This gen, the consoles in 2nd and 3rd place also cost several times as much to make a game for. It's like a perfect storm that attracts really crappy games to the Wii. (And I love the Wii, but you have to ignore a LOT of bad games to get to the good ones.)
Point and click adventures really attract the casual gamer since they do not need to have lightning fast reflexes and may not enjoy shooting or killing everything in sight (me on the other hand I enjoy both so I guess I am mediocre core lol)
The genre I really feel the Wii is missing out on is real time sims... something like Starcraft or Command and Conquer. Those are all about control, and the Wii could do them far better than the PS2 or 360. Nobody's making one, though.
In the history of consoles very few add ons have ever had decent support. People won't buy it unless there are a ton of great games that require it and that wont happen until a ton of people buy it and the games sell a ton. Chicken and the egg problem. Best of luck to MS but I feel Natal will be a commercial failure, I could be wrong but the odds are against it.
I get the impression that Natal will be offered both as an add-on, but also built-in to a new model of 360. That might help adaption. However, I don't think it will nearly as impactful as the Wiimote was. The Wiimote+nunchuck was at least useful for general purpose gaming; it's an ok controller even if no motion sensing is used at all. Natal, though, seems like it will be wonderful for a very limited range of applications, and useless for most others. You need at least a few buttons to trigger actions.
Many of us are as skeptical of these results as we are of the other results. Let more research be done, and see if we get consistently repeatable results.
There are a lot of Wii motion-based games that work well. The (numerous) ones that DO suck, would probably have been just AS terrible with a controller, because they were cheap cash-in titles.
I agree that motion sensing won't kill controllers; but it will become an essential feature. Would you like to go back to using your computer with no mouse?
It's not so much Microsoft copying Nintendo, as it is Microsoft reacting to Nintendo. I think it's pretty obvious that if the Wii hadn't been released and massively successful, nobody would even have heard about Natal.
That's in opposition to Sony, who blatantly IS copying the Wii with their own new Wiimote clone.
Why is this modded troll? That's pretty much the reason why all those virtual currency providers do it: to hide the fact that you are spending real money.
There's at least two OTHER major reasons they do it:
1) To avoid microtransaction fees. If they simply charged your credit card each time you made a $2 transaction, the minimum fees would eat up much of their profit. By having you by points in bulk, in multiples of $10 or #$20, a much smaller percentage goes to the credit card companies.
2) To have an international standard. By using points, they can price games and services the same in every nation the service exists in. If they used existing currency, they would need to price every download appropriately to each nation, and then enforce access/download restrictions.
That's a strong point in favor of DVDs, and a strong incentive for me to put off getting a BluRay player for a couple more years.
Second, and more importantly, Can your $50 Walfart special transfer movies to your psp so you can watch it on the plane, Or do you have to take the disk with you and risk scratching it?
I vigorously dispute the "more importantly" clause.