There are obviously innumerable variables when trying to figure out potential costs and speeds in particular areas, so I can't comment on your service specifically. That being said, out here in Portland, OR, Qwest has recently been upgrading service to DSL customers, providing significant speed increases for zero additional cost. Even the independent ISPs who provide the actual service over the DSL lines have kept their prices the same through this change.
The truth is that DSL providers, at least in areas which also have cable broadband availability, can't really afford to increase their prices. I know that if my providers (Qwest and DSL-Only) increased their prices more than $5, it would be a better deal to switch to cable - especially since I'm not in one of the areas where they've taken off the speed cap.
As the poster above noted, it sounds more like a hardware problem than your ISP trying to hose you. The only way to truly prevent the use of Bit Torrent would be to basically block all but a select few ports since BT is very configurable.
If the above is correct, depending on what BT software you use (I use Azureus) you may be able to limit the number of connections (mine has separate values for global and per-torrent). If it does, try setting the maximum number of connections in the BT client very low (like 10 for a single torrent). If it works, then ramp up until you have a problem. My client is set to max 80 connections per torrent and I have no problem but I'm on DSL with actual service provided by a smallish outfit which is a horse of an entirely different color.
Come on, now. The minimum he's going to pay for 80 bad, heavily used games is around US$400. If they were Xbox games, that minimum probably doubles to at least US$800. Of course, the MOST realistic numbers for 80 Xbox games go well over US$1,000. As for "demos out of PC game magazines," well then he'd be cheating his customers as well as involving them in illegal conduct since PC demos aren't going to work on an Xbox.
The ONLY way he gets away with including 80 games and not seriously violating the law is if they're 80 public domain or shareware games, perhaps running under Linux - a scenario I consider unlikely since he was already involved in illegal conduct in his jurisdiction just by selling modded consoles. Folks willing to commit one crime like that aren't usually too fussy about committing similar crimes...
I think Nintendo is looking at their decision to support progressive scan games with the GameCube with some regret. Only 2% of GC owners bothered to buy the necessary cables.
Well, it always helps if you SELL the cables to do so. You can only buy the damned component cables through Nintendo's website (and a very few other online venues). It was six months before I realized why I never saw the cables (despite checking for them on every gaming shopping trip), and at that point places like Gamestop and EB couldn't even ORDER the damned things. They took the capability out of later Gamecube models because supposedly there was a lack of interest, but by that time it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As for regretting the inclusion of the capability, I simply can't believe that it cost that much extra to include 480p functionality. Assuming the internals (video subsystem, CPU) can handle HD resolutions, there certainly wouldn't be a big cost to include HD output on the Revolution, either.
I understand that households with HD are still the minority. I can even make room for the possibility that it will continue to be so for the next several years (though I personally think that as prices go down, within the next three years everyone who can afford an HD set will have at least one). Still, if Nintendo does not at least include HD as an option in the Revolution, I think they're hobbling themselves unnecessarily.
Thank you. I get exhausted reading reviews, and just general opinions, of console games which include their fps measurement. If a game is fun and doesn't demonstrate significant slowdown (like running into an area and then suddenly getting choppy visuals), the frame rate never enters my mind. When I first played Unreal Tournament years ago, I was having a great time going through all the bot matches and when I - just for the pure hell of it - turned on the fps indicator, my fun level didn't go down when I realized I was averaging about 23 fps.
For me, the reason I'm excited about the next set of console systems is that I have two fancy TVs in the house which are HD-compatible (not to mention the many computer monitors that would require a simple adaptor). While there is something to be said about gameplay over graphics, it's pretty exciting to think about the level of detail I'm going to get going up to 720p/1080i after so very many years with NTSC. The games still have to be good (I'm not going to buy a console just to show a tech demo), but it's going to be a pretty damn huge change for the console experience.
Perhaps "Zonk and his boy Timmy" will use their "unlimited mod points" to mod you down because you're a troll? I mean, damn. Slashdot posts an article discussing the rising value of the casual gaming market and you respond by using the word "shit" multiple times in an argumentative post that is not even replying to anything...apart perhaps from the voices in your head. That's pretty much the definition of a troll.:)
Your creation from "inspiration" is just another form of consumption. The idea that it's so important that people have the ability to utilize the creations of others that those original creators should lose their rights is far more stifling.
Maybe 50 years is too long but 15 years is too short. The fact that you can't find something in the public domain to inspire you, or that you can't create anything without directly hijacking the work of others, might be an indication of a failing on your part instead of a failure in the copyright system.
A-bloody-men. I'm convinced that the people who gripe so much about copyright law are those who would never create something themselves worth stealing.
The current US copyright term is indeed far too long. But the idea that it should be cut back to 10 years is just ridiculous. While large movie studios and other corporations might have no trouble making a profit in that length of time, what about "the little guys"?
Hypothetical: An author writes and publishes five books over 20 years. The first four books go unnoticed but the fifth book, for whatever reason, makes money and becomes popular. Should the author's books published more than 10 years ago (now being discovered because of the author's recent success) then be copied and distributed with nothing going back to the author? Should the aforementioned big movie studios be able to take the author's early works and make profitable films of them with, again, no money making it back to the author?
30- to 50-year copyrights ARE reasonable. While they certainly benefit megacorporations, they offer the exact same protection and profit potential to individuals. Of course, people who don't create anything but posts on the Internet have a tendency to forget that...
Choosing evil over good in a videogame like this always bothers me for some reason. For example, Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic obviously had the option to go to the dark side, and I played through it once like that. Halfway through, I was disgusted enough with my character that I wanted to quit - it took me three days to play through the game on the side of good, and two months to bring myself to finishing the game evil. I recently bought Jade Empire and played through it "open hand" (good), started playing "closed fist" (evil) and haven't touched it again since. I can't even kill a bloody Sim...
What makes it odd is that I have no problem playing a game like Dungeon Keeper or GTA and being VERY evil.
I'm rambling, but it does make me wonder if perhaps a game that gives the choice between being good and evil (with unique rewards for either) would be worse for small children than something like GTA. Of course, it's possible that I'm just over-sensitive.:)
Have you priced HDTVs recently? While it's true that full-resolution HDTVs cost a bit (starting in around the $800 range for widescreen 720p LCDs), televisions capable of accepting HDTV signals are available for far less than $1,000.
All you have to do is take a quick trip to the websites of Best Buy, Circuit City, etc., and you'll see that there are MANY options for more affordable HD-compatible TVs. Just a quick bounce around and I found three 27" 4:3 models at $350-450, as well as a 26" 16:9 model at about $480. If things keep going the same direction, those types of sets will probably bottom out at about $250 within the next two years, at least three to four years before another generation of game consoles could hit the market.
Obviously, you'll pay more for bigger screens and higher resolutions but that's obvious. Low-end HDTVs, though, are already "affordable" (right around the same price as the price projection for PS3) and they'll only become more so.
No, actually I think you're the one misunderstanding, or justifying. He talked about "uptime" and that pretty clearly implied that Windows isn't capable of remaining stable for long periods of time without a reboot.
On your point of not wanting to switch between OSs, that's a very reasonable argument to make. If I did use Linux I'd be pretty resentful of having to dual-boot myself. But, that resentment would be about cost (paying for Windows just for gaming) and not about the TINY amount of time it would take to move from Linux to Windows when I wanted to boot a game. At that point, I'd be far more irritated by the ridiculous amount of time (for me, longer in all cases than it takes the OS to reboot) it takes most games to go from double-click to play.
Katamari had little or nothing to do with it - certainly, it didn't suddenly make Will Wright bolt upright and decide "Hey, it would be great if I did something different!" And, the fact is, most of the games listed were in development long before KD came out.
What is making developers interested in being innovative is that they've already made some nice piles of cash and have revenue streams which permit them to experiment. I see this as a natural outgrowth of large success combined with continued competition. EA, for example, can afford to indulge Will Wright and others in flights of fancy because they make tons of money on their sequels/rehashes (perspective!); and, they have a financial incentive to do so because there continue to be other successful software developers and publishers out there (Rockstar alone is a good reason for EA to stay on their toes).
Innovation in videogames has never been dead. It does sometimes seem to take long naps because a) modern videogames are expensive and b) good, innovative videogames take a while to produce.
And what does that have to do with anything against Windows? Despite the claims of some, Windows products (certainly 2000/XP) don't just spontaneously become unstable - something has to happen. Even if a particular game causes system instability serious enough to require a reboot (I should note that I haven't played one of those recently), all that would mean is running a reboot after running the game, leaving the computer still up afterwards for serving files and being available to start using immediately without waiting.
What I'm really curious about is the previous statement that "25 movies" would be available on UMD for the European release. It seems like an odd statement because there are 113 UMD movies listed on Amazon right now. Why wouldn't the same 113 titles be ready for europe? Is the market not there ? Odd...
Probably because 85(!) of the titles listed at your link are "Not Yet Released" which, of course, means that there's a thrilling 28 UMD movie titles available for the PSP in the US right now.
It sounds like you're doing some contorting here, particularly in terms of defining "setting." While Terminator is indeed occupied with a robot chasing people around and killing, or trying to kill, them (like Jason in a Friday the 13th flick), it is still a sci-fi movie. Think about how much it loses if it drops the time-travel element and Sarah Conner isn't destined to give birth to the future leader of the human resistance. This movie is particularly damaging to your point in that the movie is "set" in "the present" (at least it was in 1984).
Now, if you view movies as simply a collection of scenes then, sure, Alien could be set on earth and the Alien could be a vampire or just a very big guy with a knife. However, taken as a whole, Terminator doesn't work without time travel (firmly entrenching it in science fiction) and Alien doesn't work without a manned spaceship visiting another planet. Science fiction is very much its own genre of movie, just as much as action, comedy or horror. That one can make a science fiction movie with action, comedy or horror in it doesn't detract from that in the least.
Don't get me wrong - it isn't my wish and I won't be cheering, either. I'm not in the gaming industry, so higher prices don't do anything for me.
It's also worth pointing out that lower GBA game prices are subsidized partly by the volume which they sell and by the fact that companies are able to make a LOT of money selling older games. I wouldn't be surprised if the profit on Nintendo's Mario games alone make it so that they can drop prices several dollars across the board and still make scads o'cash.
If Sony can somehow get the price of the PSP down to a somewhat more reasonable price (in terms of competition - I actually think the $300 price tag IS reasonable for its capabilities, if not for its current game selection), they could get the install base they need to lower prices as well. Time, as they say, will tell...
In other words, both you and the fellow below are just playing devil's advocate. Well, glad that's out of the way. I'd hate to think that reasonably intelligent people actually thought that UMD movies were TRULY a good idea as anything but an intellectual exercise.
When you are out on the road on business, on a trail hiking, or anywhere that is not home, you want your load to be as light as possible. It is simple not convenient to anyone to be carrying around tens of lbs of "luxury" weight.
Welcome to Exaggerationville. In terms of weight, a portable DVD player with battery is going to be about two pounds. The DVDs themselves will weigh the same, if not less, than UMDs given that the latter have their caddies as well (this is assuming one uses a sleeve-type system to carry DVDs instead of toting the cases). At BEST, the PSP has an advantage in terms of bulk - weight isn't an issue once one has decided to go the portable movie route.
No, the same couldn't have been said about DVDs at their [in]ception since DVD was an open format with many manufacturers on board.
No, it's not like saying Nintendo shouldn't have released the Game Boy because of the Super Nintendo because GB had significantly different games from the SNES and vice versa, and there was no handheld SNES system. As far as I can tell, the only exclusive UMD movie coming in the forseeable future is Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children.
Finally, you're wrong in at least a couple areas about portable DVD players. First off, good ones (ones available for $200) aren't significantly bigger than a CD player (which has been considered "conveniently" portable for a long time) plus the thickness of an LCD. I won't deny that the PSP is smaller but I would still submit that the size advantage is insignificant when either can be EASILY popped into a carry-on. You're also wrong about portable DVD players not playing music. Many, if not most, of the models I've looked at can play both audio CDs (all) and MP3 CDs (most), and making MP3 CDs costs pennies while playing a similar amount of music in a PSP will require a LARGE expenditure for memory cards.
Taking things a step beyond portable DVD players, many people "on the road" have laptop computers. Wouldn't it be even more of a space savings just to skip both the PSP and portable DVD player and play DVDs on that?
Actually, I think it's more surprising that games for HOME consoles haven't gotten a price increase in the past many years. The profit margins on videogames are going to reach a breaking point sooner rather than later considering how the costs of development keep going up and up. Charging $50 per game for portable games doesn't seem unreasonable in today's context, and I think folks need to brace themselves for $60 being the standard opening price for home console games in the very near-future.
1. Anyone who is spending "weeks at a time" on the road is probably doing so carrying a lot of stuff for the ride. A portable DVD player and some discs (and access to innumerable rental outlets) wouldn't be a huge burden.
2. I can't believe that spending an extra $150-200 on a PSP, and an extra $5-10 per UMD, is worth the difference in size if you want movies on the go - especially considering, again, the easy availability of DVDs.
3. The number of movies available for UMD is so small that anyone choosing a PSP for that purpose would have to possess VERY narrow tastes and a desire to watch the same things over and over and over again.
4. The chances of Sony really pushing UMD as any kind of true DVD alternative, and, of course, the chances of the movie industry at large adopting UMD as a common format, seem slim and none to me. Sony is going to be pushing hard for people to adopt Blu-Ray next year (with other companies doing the same, or pushing HD-DVD) and it sure would be foolish to try to convince people to adopt two new formats...especially when one (UMD) is demonstrably inferior to even OLDER technology.
UMD movies are a bad idea for consumers AND content distributors. They are going to go nowhere fast.
I would think using The Sims Online as an example would be a bad idea because it raises this question: Was the unusually high number of women involved in the development of The Sims Online a contributing factor to it becoming a large "bust"?
The one game I'm holding out hope for is D&D Online, it doesn[']t look to revolutionize MMO's but instead it fixes all the little problems that plague them all. That's a good start.
Wait, wait. I remember that game. Didn't it already come out? I think it was called "Asheron's Age of Warcraft"?
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The truth is that DSL providers, at least in areas which also have cable broadband availability, can't really afford to increase their prices. I know that if my providers (Qwest and DSL-Only) increased their prices more than $5, it would be a better deal to switch to cable - especially since I'm not in one of the areas where they've taken off the speed cap.
If the above is correct, depending on what BT software you use (I use Azureus) you may be able to limit the number of connections (mine has separate values for global and per-torrent). If it does, try setting the maximum number of connections in the BT client very low (like 10 for a single torrent). If it works, then ramp up until you have a problem. My client is set to max 80 connections per torrent and I have no problem but I'm on DSL with actual service provided by a smallish outfit which is a horse of an entirely different color.
Good luck!
Negatory. The current projection on Gears of War is early 2006.
The ONLY way he gets away with including 80 games and not seriously violating the law is if they're 80 public domain or shareware games, perhaps running under Linux - a scenario I consider unlikely since he was already involved in illegal conduct in his jurisdiction just by selling modded consoles. Folks willing to commit one crime like that aren't usually too fussy about committing similar crimes...
Well, it always helps if you SELL the cables to do so. You can only buy the damned component cables through Nintendo's website (and a very few other online venues). It was six months before I realized why I never saw the cables (despite checking for them on every gaming shopping trip), and at that point places like Gamestop and EB couldn't even ORDER the damned things. They took the capability out of later Gamecube models because supposedly there was a lack of interest, but by that time it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As for regretting the inclusion of the capability, I simply can't believe that it cost that much extra to include 480p functionality. Assuming the internals (video subsystem, CPU) can handle HD resolutions, there certainly wouldn't be a big cost to include HD output on the Revolution, either.
I understand that households with HD are still the minority. I can even make room for the possibility that it will continue to be so for the next several years (though I personally think that as prices go down, within the next three years everyone who can afford an HD set will have at least one). Still, if Nintendo does not at least include HD as an option in the Revolution, I think they're hobbling themselves unnecessarily.
For me, the reason I'm excited about the next set of console systems is that I have two fancy TVs in the house which are HD-compatible (not to mention the many computer monitors that would require a simple adaptor). While there is something to be said about gameplay over graphics, it's pretty exciting to think about the level of detail I'm going to get going up to 720p/1080i after so very many years with NTSC. The games still have to be good (I'm not going to buy a console just to show a tech demo), but it's going to be a pretty damn huge change for the console experience.
Perhaps "Zonk and his boy Timmy" will use their "unlimited mod points" to mod you down because you're a troll? I mean, damn. Slashdot posts an article discussing the rising value of the casual gaming market and you respond by using the word "shit" multiple times in an argumentative post that is not even replying to anything...apart perhaps from the voices in your head. That's pretty much the definition of a troll. :)
Maybe 50 years is too long but 15 years is too short. The fact that you can't find something in the public domain to inspire you, or that you can't create anything without directly hijacking the work of others, might be an indication of a failing on your part instead of a failure in the copyright system.
The current US copyright term is indeed far too long. But the idea that it should be cut back to 10 years is just ridiculous. While large movie studios and other corporations might have no trouble making a profit in that length of time, what about "the little guys"?
Hypothetical: An author writes and publishes five books over 20 years. The first four books go unnoticed but the fifth book, for whatever reason, makes money and becomes popular. Should the author's books published more than 10 years ago (now being discovered because of the author's recent success) then be copied and distributed with nothing going back to the author? Should the aforementioned big movie studios be able to take the author's early works and make profitable films of them with, again, no money making it back to the author?
30- to 50-year copyrights ARE reasonable. While they certainly benefit megacorporations, they offer the exact same protection and profit potential to individuals. Of course, people who don't create anything but posts on the Internet have a tendency to forget that...
What makes it odd is that I have no problem playing a game like Dungeon Keeper or GTA and being VERY evil.
I'm rambling, but it does make me wonder if perhaps a game that gives the choice between being good and evil (with unique rewards for either) would be worse for small children than something like GTA. Of course, it's possible that I'm just over-sensitive. :)
All you have to do is take a quick trip to the websites of Best Buy, Circuit City, etc., and you'll see that there are MANY options for more affordable HD-compatible TVs. Just a quick bounce around and I found three 27" 4:3 models at $350-450, as well as a 26" 16:9 model at about $480. If things keep going the same direction, those types of sets will probably bottom out at about $250 within the next two years, at least three to four years before another generation of game consoles could hit the market.
Obviously, you'll pay more for bigger screens and higher resolutions but that's obvious. Low-end HDTVs, though, are already "affordable" (right around the same price as the price projection for PS3) and they'll only become more so.
On your point of not wanting to switch between OSs, that's a very reasonable argument to make. If I did use Linux I'd be pretty resentful of having to dual-boot myself. But, that resentment would be about cost (paying for Windows just for gaming) and not about the TINY amount of time it would take to move from Linux to Windows when I wanted to boot a game. At that point, I'd be far more irritated by the ridiculous amount of time (for me, longer in all cases than it takes the OS to reboot) it takes most games to go from double-click to play.
What is making developers interested in being innovative is that they've already made some nice piles of cash and have revenue streams which permit them to experiment. I see this as a natural outgrowth of large success combined with continued competition. EA, for example, can afford to indulge Will Wright and others in flights of fancy because they make tons of money on their sequels/rehashes (perspective!); and, they have a financial incentive to do so because there continue to be other successful software developers and publishers out there (Rockstar alone is a good reason for EA to stay on their toes).
Innovation in videogames has never been dead. It does sometimes seem to take long naps because a) modern videogames are expensive and b) good, innovative videogames take a while to produce.
So what you're saying is that we should avoid this "Benchmarks" game?
And what does that have to do with anything against Windows? Despite the claims of some, Windows products (certainly 2000/XP) don't just spontaneously become unstable - something has to happen. Even if a particular game causes system instability serious enough to require a reboot (I should note that I haven't played one of those recently), all that would mean is running a reboot after running the game, leaving the computer still up afterwards for serving files and being available to start using immediately without waiting.
Probably because 85(!) of the titles listed at your link are "Not Yet Released" which, of course, means that there's a thrilling 28 UMD movie titles available for the PSP in the US right now.
Now, if you view movies as simply a collection of scenes then, sure, Alien could be set on earth and the Alien could be a vampire or just a very big guy with a knife. However, taken as a whole, Terminator doesn't work without time travel (firmly entrenching it in science fiction) and Alien doesn't work without a manned spaceship visiting another planet. Science fiction is very much its own genre of movie, just as much as action, comedy or horror. That one can make a science fiction movie with action, comedy or horror in it doesn't detract from that in the least.
It's also worth pointing out that lower GBA game prices are subsidized partly by the volume which they sell and by the fact that companies are able to make a LOT of money selling older games. I wouldn't be surprised if the profit on Nintendo's Mario games alone make it so that they can drop prices several dollars across the board and still make scads o'cash.
If Sony can somehow get the price of the PSP down to a somewhat more reasonable price (in terms of competition - I actually think the $300 price tag IS reasonable for its capabilities, if not for its current game selection), they could get the install base they need to lower prices as well. Time, as they say, will tell...
In other words, both you and the fellow below are just playing devil's advocate. Well, glad that's out of the way. I'd hate to think that reasonably intelligent people actually thought that UMD movies were TRULY a good idea as anything but an intellectual exercise.
Welcome to Exaggerationville. In terms of weight, a portable DVD player with battery is going to be about two pounds. The DVDs themselves will weigh the same, if not less, than UMDs given that the latter have their caddies as well (this is assuming one uses a sleeve-type system to carry DVDs instead of toting the cases). At BEST, the PSP has an advantage in terms of bulk - weight isn't an issue once one has decided to go the portable movie route.
No, it's not like saying Nintendo shouldn't have released the Game Boy because of the Super Nintendo because GB had significantly different games from the SNES and vice versa, and there was no handheld SNES system. As far as I can tell, the only exclusive UMD movie coming in the forseeable future is Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children.
Finally, you're wrong in at least a couple areas about portable DVD players. First off, good ones (ones available for $200) aren't significantly bigger than a CD player (which has been considered "conveniently" portable for a long time) plus the thickness of an LCD. I won't deny that the PSP is smaller but I would still submit that the size advantage is insignificant when either can be EASILY popped into a carry-on. You're also wrong about portable DVD players not playing music. Many, if not most, of the models I've looked at can play both audio CDs (all) and MP3 CDs (most), and making MP3 CDs costs pennies while playing a similar amount of music in a PSP will require a LARGE expenditure for memory cards.
Taking things a step beyond portable DVD players, many people "on the road" have laptop computers. Wouldn't it be even more of a space savings just to skip both the PSP and portable DVD player and play DVDs on that?
Actually, I think it's more surprising that games for HOME consoles haven't gotten a price increase in the past many years. The profit margins on videogames are going to reach a breaking point sooner rather than later considering how the costs of development keep going up and up. Charging $50 per game for portable games doesn't seem unreasonable in today's context, and I think folks need to brace themselves for $60 being the standard opening price for home console games in the very near-future.
2. I can't believe that spending an extra $150-200 on a PSP, and an extra $5-10 per UMD, is worth the difference in size if you want movies on the go - especially considering, again, the easy availability of DVDs.
3. The number of movies available for UMD is so small that anyone choosing a PSP for that purpose would have to possess VERY narrow tastes and a desire to watch the same things over and over and over again.
4. The chances of Sony really pushing UMD as any kind of true DVD alternative, and, of course, the chances of the movie industry at large adopting UMD as a common format, seem slim and none to me. Sony is going to be pushing hard for people to adopt Blu-Ray next year (with other companies doing the same, or pushing HD-DVD) and it sure would be foolish to try to convince people to adopt two new formats...especially when one (UMD) is demonstrably inferior to even OLDER technology.
UMD movies are a bad idea for consumers AND content distributors. They are going to go nowhere fast.
I would think using The Sims Online as an example would be a bad idea because it raises this question: Was the unusually high number of women involved in the development of The Sims Online a contributing factor to it becoming a large "bust"?
Wait, wait. I remember that game. Didn't it already come out? I think it was called "Asheron's Age of Warcraft"?