See, I can understand the "power users" having big problems with Vista because it's a Microsoft product and, by definition, that means that it won't be "right" until at least next year. For the more casual users, though, the ones who (like me) play some games, surf the web, watch some video files and that's about it, the thing works fine. That said, if I hadn't bought this notebook I wouldn't have gotten involved with Vista at all at this point. Heck, I stuck with Windows 98 until XP had been out for over a year and only upgraded because my 98 installation crapped out on me and I couldn't find the disc to reinstall (I'm such a casual user I wouldn't even consider worrying about backups).
The bottom line is that it's far too early to tell the impact Vista has had, or is going to have, on PC gaming and PC gamers. The folks screaming about it, IMHO, are just the same folks who need to scream every time Microsoft does anything. That's not to say it doesn't have [serious] flaws, but in terms of gaming it seems to be much ado about nothing until games start coming out that require Vista with no exceptions...
I'm fine with the idea of people migrating to OSX if they've got a hankering for Mac, but it's a friggin' joke when it comes to gaming. Heck, the most recent iMac refresh just made it worse for gaming than the last, and a person would be looking at well over two grand for the cheapest Mac Pro + good video card.
None of this is proper statistics of course but as far as this sort of thing goes that's a pretty shocking number. I want to believe gamers are being smart but the realistic side of me though says the most likely reason is simply that Vista has a lot of problems for gamers right now and they are just waiting till driver issues resolve.
And I think that you're probably wrong. What I think is that gamers haven't had a reason to upgrade to Vista from XP yet. See, a gamer might buy a DX10 graphic card as an upgrade just because it's time to upgrade, while a change in OS is an expense that can be put off much longer. In a year or so when DX10-capable games are the standard and when developers reduce (they're not going to stop thanks to the many people who take 3 or more years to upgrade) support for XP/DX9 gamers will start moving - it also won't hurt that Vista will have been updated quite a bit between now then.
I'm not a cutting-edge gamer at all, but WoW, Half-Life 2, Civilization 4, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines and Sam & Max (I finally broke down and adopted Steam) have all worked without issue for me in Vista (which came in my notebook). While I'm sure that there are games with Vista problems, I suspect that they're the exception and that slow adoption of Vista is a symptom of satisfaction with XP and the desire to put off the expense.
So, you get to make up numbers but I have to have real facts?
Here's why I made my comment: If the attach rate of discs sold per player is calculated including the free discs and both sides are giving away free discs, then the BD attach rate could be even lower compared to that of HD-DVD since the latter already appears to lead in that area.
I'll avoid making up any numbers because a) hypotheticals are bullshit and b) apart from reports made to stockholders (which are scrutinized by the SEC and can lead to trouble if lies are found) I figure most of the numbers we see are made up anyway.
I had a really long post all written and ready to go, but I decided there was no point. Here's the short version:
A) I AGREED WITH YOU ON THE MAIN POINT. This "issue" is not a big deal.
B) If your post hadn't read like a defensive Sony shill, I wouldn't have called it such.
C) Praising Sony for their Linux "support" is like praising Microsoft for adding MP3 "functionality" to the Xbox with their "Music Maker" software - crappy, limited implementations deserve scorn, not praise.
D) Pretending that Sony is all about raising the state of the art is disingenuous at best. If they were all about progress then they wouldn't have walked out on the talks with Toshiba and we'd have a unified HD disc format right now. They did, and we don't.
That's some pretty serious schilling there. Sony hasn't been "cool" about anything homebrew on the PSP (the device under discussion), doing everything they can to disable it with each firmware update.
I could have agreed with you that this isn't a big PSP problem, except maybe in the sense that a developer might make a game without WiFi capability because they decide the increased CPU speed is more important. However, attempting to portray Sony as a poor, hapless, open-source-friendly victim of evil anti-Sony Internet meanies is more than a little ridiculous. For the most part, the folks at Sony earn the wrath of their detractors by making stupid, short-sighted, sometimes downright evil, corporate decisions (I'll skip the laundry list since it's quite well known 'round here).
Oh yeah, and making paragraphs is really easy in HTML. You might want to look into that...
I know you're trolling, but for the edification of those who might not know, a good stethoscope can cost over $100 and a cheap one will be between $50-100. Also, anyone who thinks that the idea of replacing the stethoscope [entirely] with this machine is anything but hyperbole needs to check their exaggeration sensors.
PS- I should note that I only discussed the ATi 2600 chipset which is in the 2.4-GHz iMac models. The "cheapest" iMac has the ATi 2400 and that is likely even less capable in terms of gaming (apart from its DirectX 10 compatibility) than the x1600 of the previous iMac generation.
Even right now, this minute, the 2600 series (in single-card configuration, which of course is the only option in the iMac line) is severely underpowered for modern gaming. For the most part, it's a DirectX 10-compatible refresh of the x1600 series. It'll play great in World of Warcraft, for example, but it'll choke on new games without precipitous drops in detail and resolution.
I could see buying an iMac if you're an occasional gamer or a single-game player (and that game is a couple years old - the 2600 does very badly even in HL2: Episode 1 for example) and you're mostly getting the iMac for all the other "stuff" (iLife, iDVD, OSX, etc.). If, however, you're planning on buying and playing newer games, you'd be much better served with a cheaper Windows PC where you "get what you pay for" instead of being locked into a single configuration.
Finally, I'll recommend that folks check out "Why You'll Love an iMac" where they manage to mention almost everything except gaming. Apple has clearly decided - or "refreshed" their previous decision - that gaming isn't at all important on the iMac, and both the hardware and the marketing reflect that.
I think the issue is that this is a case where the "bad guys" can be hoist on their own petard. Personally, I don't care that much how it ends up since I figure Valve and Id will try to do the right thing (and that's more than one can expect from most corporations). Still, I understand the desire of some to rub their noses in it. Not only do folks think it would be poetic justice, but it can be fun, too.
Don't kid yourself that WoW isn't a grind...it's usually much more efficient to grab a quest, go out and 'grind' the items, and then stay at that spot and continue to grind for the rest of the session.
I'm now entering my third month of play, and I haven't felt like that at all. I'm now level 56 and have had no trouble finding zones in which I can get multiple quests with relatively close "turn-in spots," making a bucket of XP in the process. While I'm not going to level every couple hours (nor should you since someone who plays every day would quickly lap companions who take a day or three off per week, not to mention making it so that you have less "meaningful" things to do per level), a level every 6-8 hours played is pretty standard for me, and the vast majority of my XP comes from quests (or dungeons which, to me, are even more fun).
As far as I can tell, the only way WoW becomes a grind is if the player chooses to make it so. The huge number of quests combined with the large amount of experience provided by them (most commonly the equivalent of 15-20 even-level kills plus, of course, the occasional "phat lewt") means that a player can always be participating in a "story" and not just be clearing areas of assorted beasts and demons.
Say it twice. People seem to be assuming that this means all demos will become $2.50 when the truth is that OXM is trying to stay in business by offering their exclusive demos over XBL for a fee. My take is this: OXM (along with virtually every other videogame magazine) deserves to be out of business. They give their readers less than they can get for free over the Interwebs and all that keeps them in business are publishers who let them have first crack at demos. Said game publishers would be much better off charging a buck a pop for demos directly (via XBL) before the release of a game, making it free from, say, two weeks before release onward. There's just no good reason for OXM to be in the loop at all.
Okay, now, unless you source yourself I have to call you out on common sense alone. Development costs CANNOT be dropping because it takes more people more hours to produce a "generation-suitable" game compared to 5, 10 and 20 years ago. Even throwing out the effects of inflation, in absolute terms a game made today has to cost more to create than, say, an NES game.
What has come down is the cost of the actual physical production of games thanks to the move from cartridges to discs, but even that isn't still dropping and instead has mostly stabilized (apart from the PS3 where Blu-ray discs are more expensive than DVDs to manufacture, and that of course doesn't support your argument either).
You decided to paint the Gamecube and Wii as somehow having inferior games (while the Gamecube had fewer games there were many that were excellent and didn't have Mario, Link or Samus in them), and I called you on it. Man up and admit that you were being a tool.
It's long past time to call Sony's tactics for exactly what they are, from the PS3's beginning to right now: "Bait and switch." First, they released the $500 20GB version in such small quantities that people couldn't find them, then they discontinued them completely. Now, they've managed to convince people that selling a 60GB console at $500 constitutes a "price cut" (kids, if a console is $500/600 at launch and is $500/600 today, there's been no price cut), only to admit that they've discontinued that model, too - with every reason to believe, by the way, that the new 80GB model is costing them significantly less to manufacture than the 60GB model! The PS3's marketing from day one has been a scam, attempting to make consumers pay more for the PS3 than they expected. Bait. And. Switch.
He's certainly the person to ask since he simply has to work for Sony. I quote:
That's a rather worn our argument. Sure Nintendo may have better compatibility from system to system, but they don't necessarily have games everyone would want to play.
What makes the complaints even more deliciously irritating is that they're not really complaining that the term is inaccurate. They, apparently, just don't like the way the acronym sounds/reads. That, to me, is the reason to get over it - the term is being used properly. It would be like getting angry because a person says "pop" instead of "soft drink."
Is your implication that you believe jerks like John Edwards and Sylvia Browne actually believe they have special powers? If so, then you're just being duped on a different level. Nobody could be as wrong as often as those two (just using them as examples) without figuring out that they are just slinging BS - even if at some point in the distant past they actually believed in their powers (which I also don't buy). No, I think it's clear that they know full well they're running scams on people, just like the bitch who wrote "The Secret" (which, of course, is just repackaged Norman Vincent Peale-type pablum). It's truly disheartening at times how rich and famous people can get by regurgitating garbage on the masses.
You're still half wrong. You're welcome to check the text of the DMCA/OCILLA and suss that out yourself (I have read it myself), but I'll summarize it briefly: All that's required is identification of the copyrighted work in question and a signed (either digitally or on hard copy) statement of a "good faith belief" that the specified usage is unauthorized. The only mention of the "Register of Copyrights" in the applicable section of the DMCA is in reference to maintenance of a directory of "designated agents" for ISPs who will receive and process the DMCA takedown notices.
The half where you're right is that it's true that registration is a requirement before filing suit, but the DMCA takedown notice doesn't require it.
COPYRIGHT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE REGISTERED UNDER UNITED STATES LAW IN ORDER TO OBTAIN PROTECTION. EVERYONE NEEDS TO GET THAT CONCEPT STRAIGHT.
Now that I'm done yelling, I'll just note that forcing copyright owners to register their copyrights in order to protect them would just be a shift of DMCA oppression - besides, I actually think the system implemented by the DMCA for this type of situation is pretty good if people would just read the law and be aware of their rights. Finally, starting a new court in order to stop people like Uri Geller from being assholes is a terrible idea (and likely to be ineffective) and I don't want to pay for it, thank you very much.
Not by taking something down immediately upon receipt of a DMCA notice. They're required by law to do that - in other words, the assumption of "guilt" is made by the law, not the ISP (the user does have recourse against a DMCA notice under the law). If they start taking sides, then they endanger their status as a "safe harbor" and that will hurt both their business and their customers.
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See, I can understand the "power users" having big problems with Vista because it's a Microsoft product and, by definition, that means that it won't be "right" until at least next year. For the more casual users, though, the ones who (like me) play some games, surf the web, watch some video files and that's about it, the thing works fine. That said, if I hadn't bought this notebook I wouldn't have gotten involved with Vista at all at this point. Heck, I stuck with Windows 98 until XP had been out for over a year and only upgraded because my 98 installation crapped out on me and I couldn't find the disc to reinstall (I'm such a casual user I wouldn't even consider worrying about backups).
The bottom line is that it's far too early to tell the impact Vista has had, or is going to have, on PC gaming and PC gamers. The folks screaming about it, IMHO, are just the same folks who need to scream every time Microsoft does anything. That's not to say it doesn't have [serious] flaws, but in terms of gaming it seems to be much ado about nothing until games start coming out that require Vista with no exceptions...
I'd love to mod you "+1 - Pwned Parent"
I'm fine with the idea of people migrating to OSX if they've got a hankering for Mac, but it's a friggin' joke when it comes to gaming. Heck, the most recent iMac refresh just made it worse for gaming than the last, and a person would be looking at well over two grand for the cheapest Mac Pro + good video card.
And I think that you're probably wrong. What I think is that gamers haven't had a reason to upgrade to Vista from XP yet. See, a gamer might buy a DX10 graphic card as an upgrade just because it's time to upgrade, while a change in OS is an expense that can be put off much longer. In a year or so when DX10-capable games are the standard and when developers reduce (they're not going to stop thanks to the many people who take 3 or more years to upgrade) support for XP/DX9 gamers will start moving - it also won't hurt that Vista will have been updated quite a bit between now then.
I'm not a cutting-edge gamer at all, but WoW, Half-Life 2, Civilization 4, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines and Sam & Max (I finally broke down and adopted Steam) have all worked without issue for me in Vista (which came in my notebook). While I'm sure that there are games with Vista problems, I suspect that they're the exception and that slow adoption of Vista is a symptom of satisfaction with XP and the desire to put off the expense.
So, you get to make up numbers but I have to have real facts?
Here's why I made my comment: If the attach rate of discs sold per player is calculated including the free discs and both sides are giving away free discs, then the BD attach rate could be even lower compared to that of HD-DVD since the latter already appears to lead in that area.
I'll avoid making up any numbers because a) hypotheticals are bullshit and b) apart from reports made to stockholders (which are scrutinized by the SEC and can lead to trouble if lies are found) I figure most of the numbers we see are made up anyway.
If those are included as sales then Blu-ray is doing even worse since Sony & Company have been doing the same thing.
I had a really long post all written and ready to go, but I decided there was no point. Here's the short version:
A) I AGREED WITH YOU ON THE MAIN POINT. This "issue" is not a big deal.
B) If your post hadn't read like a defensive Sony shill, I wouldn't have called it such.
C) Praising Sony for their Linux "support" is like praising Microsoft for adding MP3 "functionality" to the Xbox with their "Music Maker" software - crappy, limited implementations deserve scorn, not praise.
D) Pretending that Sony is all about raising the state of the art is disingenuous at best. If they were all about progress then they wouldn't have walked out on the talks with Toshiba and we'd have a unified HD disc format right now. They did, and we don't.
That's some pretty serious schilling there. Sony hasn't been "cool" about anything homebrew on the PSP (the device under discussion), doing everything they can to disable it with each firmware update.
I could have agreed with you that this isn't a big PSP problem, except maybe in the sense that a developer might make a game without WiFi capability because they decide the increased CPU speed is more important. However, attempting to portray Sony as a poor, hapless, open-source-friendly victim of evil anti-Sony Internet meanies is more than a little ridiculous. For the most part, the folks at Sony earn the wrath of their detractors by making stupid, short-sighted, sometimes downright evil, corporate decisions (I'll skip the laundry list since it's quite well known 'round here).
Oh yeah, and making paragraphs is really easy in HTML. You might want to look into that...
I know you're trolling, but for the edification of those who might not know, a good stethoscope can cost over $100 and a cheap one will be between $50-100. Also, anyone who thinks that the idea of replacing the stethoscope [entirely] with this machine is anything but hyperbole needs to check their exaggeration sensors.
PS- I should note that I only discussed the ATi 2600 chipset which is in the 2.4-GHz iMac models. The "cheapest" iMac has the ATi 2400 and that is likely even less capable in terms of gaming (apart from its DirectX 10 compatibility) than the x1600 of the previous iMac generation.
Even right now, this minute, the 2600 series (in single-card configuration, which of course is the only option in the iMac line) is severely underpowered for modern gaming. For the most part, it's a DirectX 10-compatible refresh of the x1600 series. It'll play great in World of Warcraft, for example, but it'll choke on new games without precipitous drops in detail and resolution.
I could see buying an iMac if you're an occasional gamer or a single-game player (and that game is a couple years old - the 2600 does very badly even in HL2: Episode 1 for example) and you're mostly getting the iMac for all the other "stuff" (iLife, iDVD, OSX, etc.). If, however, you're planning on buying and playing newer games, you'd be much better served with a cheaper Windows PC where you "get what you pay for" instead of being locked into a single configuration.
Finally, I'll recommend that folks check out "Why You'll Love an iMac" where they manage to mention almost everything except gaming. Apple has clearly decided - or "refreshed" their previous decision - that gaming isn't at all important on the iMac, and both the hardware and the marketing reflect that.
I think the issue is that this is a case where the "bad guys" can be hoist on their own petard. Personally, I don't care that much how it ends up since I figure Valve and Id will try to do the right thing (and that's more than one can expect from most corporations). Still, I understand the desire of some to rub their noses in it. Not only do folks think it would be poetic justice, but it can be fun, too.
I'm now entering my third month of play, and I haven't felt like that at all. I'm now level 56 and have had no trouble finding zones in which I can get multiple quests with relatively close "turn-in spots," making a bucket of XP in the process. While I'm not going to level every couple hours (nor should you since someone who plays every day would quickly lap companions who take a day or three off per week, not to mention making it so that you have less "meaningful" things to do per level), a level every 6-8 hours played is pretty standard for me, and the vast majority of my XP comes from quests (or dungeons which, to me, are even more fun).
As far as I can tell, the only way WoW becomes a grind is if the player chooses to make it so. The huge number of quests combined with the large amount of experience provided by them (most commonly the equivalent of 15-20 even-level kills plus, of course, the occasional "phat lewt") means that a player can always be participating in a "story" and not just be clearing areas of assorted beasts and demons.
I would categorize it as "malachievement."
Say it twice. People seem to be assuming that this means all demos will become $2.50 when the truth is that OXM is trying to stay in business by offering their exclusive demos over XBL for a fee. My take is this: OXM (along with virtually every other videogame magazine) deserves to be out of business. They give their readers less than they can get for free over the Interwebs and all that keeps them in business are publishers who let them have first crack at demos. Said game publishers would be much better off charging a buck a pop for demos directly (via XBL) before the release of a game, making it free from, say, two weeks before release onward. There's just no good reason for OXM to be in the loop at all.
Okay, now, unless you source yourself I have to call you out on common sense alone. Development costs CANNOT be dropping because it takes more people more hours to produce a "generation-suitable" game compared to 5, 10 and 20 years ago. Even throwing out the effects of inflation, in absolute terms a game made today has to cost more to create than, say, an NES game.
What has come down is the cost of the actual physical production of games thanks to the move from cartridges to discs, but even that isn't still dropping and instead has mostly stabilized (apart from the PS3 where Blu-ray discs are more expensive than DVDs to manufacture, and that of course doesn't support your argument either).
PS- Take that "Normally, I wouldn't feed the trolls" line and jam it in your 759,782nd bunghole.
You decided to paint the Gamecube and Wii as somehow having inferior games (while the Gamecube had fewer games there were many that were excellent and didn't have Mario, Link or Samus in them), and I called you on it. Man up and admit that you were being a tool.
It's long past time to call Sony's tactics for exactly what they are, from the PS3's beginning to right now: "Bait and switch." First, they released the $500 20GB version in such small quantities that people couldn't find them, then they discontinued them completely. Now, they've managed to convince people that selling a 60GB console at $500 constitutes a "price cut" (kids, if a console is $500/600 at launch and is $500/600 today, there's been no price cut), only to admit that they've discontinued that model, too - with every reason to believe, by the way, that the new 80GB model is costing them significantly less to manufacture than the 60GB model! The PS3's marketing from day one has been a scam, attempting to make consumers pay more for the PS3 than they expected. Bait. And. Switch.
That's some serious "shillery."
What makes the complaints even more deliciously irritating is that they're not really complaining that the term is inaccurate. They, apparently, just don't like the way the acronym sounds/reads. That, to me, is the reason to get over it - the term is being used properly. It would be like getting angry because a person says "pop" instead of "soft drink."
You also have to be the same size as the character on screen. Sales of huge-screen TVs will go through the roof!
Is your implication that you believe jerks like John Edwards and Sylvia Browne actually believe they have special powers? If so, then you're just being duped on a different level. Nobody could be as wrong as often as those two (just using them as examples) without figuring out that they are just slinging BS - even if at some point in the distant past they actually believed in their powers (which I also don't buy). No, I think it's clear that they know full well they're running scams on people, just like the bitch who wrote "The Secret" (which, of course, is just repackaged Norman Vincent Peale-type pablum). It's truly disheartening at times how rich and famous people can get by regurgitating garbage on the masses.
You're still half wrong. You're welcome to check the text of the DMCA/OCILLA and suss that out yourself (I have read it myself), but I'll summarize it briefly: All that's required is identification of the copyrighted work in question and a signed (either digitally or on hard copy) statement of a "good faith belief" that the specified usage is unauthorized. The only mention of the "Register of Copyrights" in the applicable section of the DMCA is in reference to maintenance of a directory of "designated agents" for ISPs who will receive and process the DMCA takedown notices.
The half where you're right is that it's true that registration is a requirement before filing suit, but the DMCA takedown notice doesn't require it.
COPYRIGHT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE REGISTERED UNDER UNITED STATES LAW IN ORDER TO OBTAIN PROTECTION. EVERYONE NEEDS TO GET THAT CONCEPT STRAIGHT.
Now that I'm done yelling, I'll just note that forcing copyright owners to register their copyrights in order to protect them would just be a shift of DMCA oppression - besides, I actually think the system implemented by the DMCA for this type of situation is pretty good if people would just read the law and be aware of their rights. Finally, starting a new court in order to stop people like Uri Geller from being assholes is a terrible idea (and likely to be ineffective) and I don't want to pay for it, thank you very much.
Not by taking something down immediately upon receipt of a DMCA notice. They're required by law to do that - in other words, the assumption of "guilt" is made by the law, not the ISP (the user does have recourse against a DMCA notice under the law). If they start taking sides, then they endanger their status as a "safe harbor" and that will hurt both their business and their customers.