Ironic questions aside.. in 30 years, the only people still maintaining illusions about the truth behind the 2000 and 2004 elections will be the lingering remnants of the once significant horde who were easily swayed by an overweight radio personality.
I doubt one would really try to argue that. I can't say I saw anyone trying, at least. Superior technology? No. Superior movies? Yep. Not Blu-ray's fault. Sony's. For being cheap and assuming their platform would win without the need to maximize quality (by skipping MPEG2). Glad they had competition around to force the issue.
1) Most famously, the Wii remote has latency (a bit over 100 ms in the least-affected games). The buttons and directional pad are fine, but the aiming function is hopelessly lagged. There are examples of this on Youtube. "Changing the sensitivity" of course does nothing to correct this, but it's a popular placebo fix and almost a mantra among Wii aficionados. The result is severalfold. For example, in aiming games, you don't aim-shoot, you aim-wait-shoot, because the trigger button is essentially lag-free but the target cursor floats behind your hand motion, forcing a wait. Casual gamers are not likely to perceive this lag as a detriment, even though the experience is completely different from, say, the use of a desktop mouse and its corresponding pointer, or even a gun-based game at the arcade.
2) The design of the Wii remote is similar to that of the earliest handguns: basically a bar which must be held forward in order to aim. And, like those models which were ultimately abandoned, it has a major flaw. The default aiming position forces the wrist's pivot to one extreme, rather than in the middle of its range of motion, as a contemporary handgun would. This is a strain, and particularly so whenever the need arises to aim lower. The Wii remote compounds this flaw with the need to use the thumb to access buttons and controls on top of the device. For a dramatic illustration of this flaw, grab your Wii remote, point your arm straight ahead, point the remote straight ahead as though aiming at something parallel with the remote, and now access the d-pad with your thumb. Try this while aiming down. Visualize playing a game for several hours like this. Now visualize using a Wii remote which fit the hand like a hand gun and decide which would cause fewer problems for the wrist.
The new device outlined in this article may or may not fix the first problem - and make no mistake, it is a problem that should never have existed and could easily have been avoided - but its design is clearly too heavily inspired by the current Wii remote. Still, the day is young.
I probably don't have to tell you this, since you're clearly intelligent enough to grasp the impetus of this particular outrage, but the fact is that those responsible chose to plagiarize in an incontrovertibly political fashion. Politics. Maybe you might feel compelled to argue that this isn't the case - indeed, you have already. But I doubt a jury would buy it. That's an important difference, friend.
I don't know. Personally, I never found their point of view worth a whole paragraph of refutation. A few choice sentences of general derision will always suffice.
Poor Michio Kaku. He does tend to get requisitioned for much the same work. But unlike Tyson, he has vindicated himself in several ways: 1) His popular TV presence makes sense in the context of having achieved entire series by himself, 2) his professorship is legitimized since he continues to teach at university, and 3) he is not given to inarticulate or unprofessional dialog, in the manner of Tyson when instructed to describe, for example, the destructive properties of a top 10 catastrophe countdown.
Wrong, chief. Putting words in others' mouths is fruitless. Carl Sagan's presentation is a perfect example of how documentaries _should_ be presented, if aimed at a general audience. If you can't tell the difference between Cosmos and a typical Tyson dialog, then welcome to your own little world.
I used to add documentaries to my DVD collection quite regularly. But then I discovered that the once sacred world of the documentary is gradually being overtaken by the plague of the lowest common denominator. And this fellow, Tyson, seems to be the go-to guy for covering that bracket of the audience. His narration and explanations are always, ALWAYS simplistic - the sort of dialog anyone who watches the Science Channel could have provided if prompted. It never fails to make me feel dumb just watching it. And so now I make it a point to avoid this guy and any documentary he has any involvement with.
You're delusional if you think the Wii's sales have anything to do with its games. It's all about the exercise-implicative control scheme and the very pointedly stressed family atmosphere. As I said, friend: different markets. You want games? Only one of the three consoles mentioned in this news blurb can actually boast at least a full dozen legitimately great games.
Nintendo's manufacturing woes are of course a fabrication. The PS3 and 360 had the legitimate excuse, early after their respective releases, of being difficult to manufacture quickly enough. The Wii has no excuse, because the technology is not current-gen by any stretch. Now, tell me, what makes more sense if your gaming console only has up to five titles by the end of 2007 that _gamers_ are really going to care about? (This is important, as it is gamers who will be responsible for the million-sellers.) Choice A: Make as many Wiis as possible, saturating the market well before the holiday season, allowing the fad to wear off before holiday sales begin in earnest. Choice B: Artificially choke the supply, wait until the holiday boost is well underway, and then "magically" produce unlimited Wiis sometime in October or November, generating inconceivable sales from panicked parents who are still used to the Wii being impossible to find. Regardless of which you pick, which do you think Nintendo's marketing folks have advised?
The people who are shopping for a gaming system for "themselves and their kids" are quite precisely the market the Wii is aiming at with its library of painless GC ports and glorified flash games. I own all three of the systems, but only one of them is owned because of its game library. I can afford to make unbiased calls. My statement is spot-on. Talk of manifestly inconsequential market overlap is hair-splitting. Not even if the Xbox 360 Premium cost exactly $250 would mommies suddenly be interested in it. They want an exercise machine for Timmy, and they don't care one WHIT that the graphics look six years out of date. And neither does Timmy.
Honda Accord outsells Chevrolet Corvette. Gasp? These are completely different markets. Mommies & their young children, one market. Teens and young adults, one market. The difference in power is also conspicuous, since one of these systems is actually a Gamecube in disguise.
But hey. It makes a good news blurb.
So, for $150, I guess we can be assured that the hardware does essentially nothing besides play videos. No PIP, no exotic menus.. heck, probably no TrueHD or DTS-HD, for that matter. And, probably more to the point.. no movies.
If people are not caring for this new format now, they'll really stop caring when the third gen HD-DVD players drive the second gen prices to the same point as this new contender.
So we're talking about defining the boundary between reprehensibility and hostility, then? Personally, I would hesitate to suggest that it is valid for any country to profit in a worldwide economy using technology they have acquired and utilized without permission. But perhaps you would be fine even with the recent revelations of Pentagon hacking. Perhaps that also is "valid". To others, it's an act of war. Ymmv.
The trouble with technological breakthroughs is that they mostly benefit countries which place zero emphasis on such development but 100% emphasis on the pirating and subsequent marketing of such technology.
Not sure why this persists as being such a big deal. The US is perpetually under the spotlight but the statistics are fond of ignoring just how much land (per population) needs to be covered in order to accomplish broadband penetration. Korea, for example, being a country the size of a small US state but with a highly disparate population, has no excuse for failing to be 99%+ broadband; if anything, their 10% presence of non-broadband solutions is conspicuous.
Smart guy. By asking for money and casually dismissing US success in the same breath, he'll be garnering a lot of support from folks who were put off by losing another space race to the Americans. The diss was calculated.
Editing above: If Bluray ends up being the "winner" of the format war - something which won't be the case until you can get a standard player for sub-$300 and a 24Hz player for sub-$400, in my opinion - HD-DVD will still have served the purpose of forcing the adoption of AVC / VC1.
MPEG2 can still look good when the source is hyper-idealized, such as in the case of Crank which was not shot on film, but this is simply not the happy case 99.9% of the time.
Now somebody point me to the cheapest possible 24Hz-capable Bluray player, complete with price.
(Speaking of media servers, is there one which can actually achieve 100% consistently flat framerates over HDMI? Hint: Windows cannot.)
If Bluray ends up being the "winner" of the format war - something which won't be the case until you can get a standard player for
MPEG2 can still look good when the source is hyper-idealized, such as in the case of Crank which was not shot on film, but this is simply not the happy case 99.9% of the time.
Now somebody point me to the cheapest possible 24Hz-capable Bluray player, complete with price.
(Speaking of media servers, is there one which can actually achieve 100% consistently flat framerates over HDMI? Hint: Windows cannot.)
A response to some of your points:
1: The reason Nintendo went with inferior hardware isn't because they really wanted to - it's because they aren't Sony or Microsoft. Nintendo has to make a profit on everything, including hardware.
2: "Unless your tv is HD ready you won't see much improvement anyway." This is what Nintendo is really hoping. Their spokesperson has poo-pooed HD as being inconsequential. Unfortunately for the integrity of this stance, HD is the current big trend, and has already invaded fully one-third of all households in the country. Then you have to consider the other aspect: There's really almost nothing these consumers can do with their new HDTV that pushes those high resolutions. But gaming consoles are a conspicuous exception. Except, of course, in the case of the Wii. And consider: It must survive at least four years of this inadequacy.
3: The Wii is not directly competing with the 360 or the PS3. Those consoles are aimed at gamers. The Wii is aimed at parents who think they can get their kids to exercise. It's sports car vs. sedan. Both are cars, both target different people, both sell differently. Maybe by the next generation of gaming consoles, this logic will be obvious to more people. I choose to point it out now.
Slashdot Mirror
Ironic questions aside.. in 30 years, the only people still maintaining illusions about the truth behind the 2000 and 2004 elections will be the lingering remnants of the once significant horde who were easily swayed by an overweight radio personality.
I doubt one would really try to argue that. I can't say I saw anyone trying, at least. Superior technology? No. Superior movies? Yep. Not Blu-ray's fault. Sony's. For being cheap and assuming their platform would win without the need to maximize quality (by skipping MPEG2). Glad they had competition around to force the issue.
The Wii remote fails in two fundamental aspects:
1) Most famously, the Wii remote has latency (a bit over 100 ms in the least-affected games). The buttons and directional pad are fine, but the aiming function is hopelessly lagged. There are examples of this on Youtube. "Changing the sensitivity" of course does nothing to correct this, but it's a popular placebo fix and almost a mantra among Wii aficionados. The result is severalfold. For example, in aiming games, you don't aim-shoot, you aim-wait-shoot, because the trigger button is essentially lag-free but the target cursor floats behind your hand motion, forcing a wait. Casual gamers are not likely to perceive this lag as a detriment, even though the experience is completely different from, say, the use of a desktop mouse and its corresponding pointer, or even a gun-based game at the arcade.
2) The design of the Wii remote is similar to that of the earliest handguns: basically a bar which must be held forward in order to aim. And, like those models which were ultimately abandoned, it has a major flaw. The default aiming position forces the wrist's pivot to one extreme, rather than in the middle of its range of motion, as a contemporary handgun would. This is a strain, and particularly so whenever the need arises to aim lower. The Wii remote compounds this flaw with the need to use the thumb to access buttons and controls on top of the device. For a dramatic illustration of this flaw, grab your Wii remote, point your arm straight ahead, point the remote straight ahead as though aiming at something parallel with the remote, and now access the d-pad with your thumb. Try this while aiming down. Visualize playing a game for several hours like this. Now visualize using a Wii remote which fit the hand like a hand gun and decide which would cause fewer problems for the wrist.
The new device outlined in this article may or may not fix the first problem - and make no mistake, it is a problem that should never have existed and could easily have been avoided - but its design is clearly too heavily inspired by the current Wii remote. Still, the day is young.
I'm going to give you what you so desperately want: 30 seconds of someone else's time. However, that's not even enough time to finish more than one se
I probably don't have to tell you this, since you're clearly intelligent enough to grasp the impetus of this particular outrage, but the fact is that those responsible chose to plagiarize in an incontrovertibly political fashion. Politics. Maybe you might feel compelled to argue that this isn't the case - indeed, you have already. But I doubt a jury would buy it. That's an important difference, friend.
I don't know. Personally, I never found their point of view worth a whole paragraph of refutation. A few choice sentences of general derision will always suffice.
And now it just needs to be "perfected" into Christianity, I suppose.
I'll probably go broke from the number of times they'll force me to watch Golden Compass, just to make them unhappy.
Poor Michio Kaku. He does tend to get requisitioned for much the same work. But unlike Tyson, he has vindicated himself in several ways: 1) His popular TV presence makes sense in the context of having achieved entire series by himself, 2) his professorship is legitimized since he continues to teach at university, and 3) he is not given to inarticulate or unprofessional dialog, in the manner of Tyson when instructed to describe, for example, the destructive properties of a top 10 catastrophe countdown.
Wrong, chief. Putting words in others' mouths is fruitless. Carl Sagan's presentation is a perfect example of how documentaries _should_ be presented, if aimed at a general audience. If you can't tell the difference between Cosmos and a typical Tyson dialog, then welcome to your own little world.
I used to add documentaries to my DVD collection quite regularly. But then I discovered that the once sacred world of the documentary is gradually being overtaken by the plague of the lowest common denominator. And this fellow, Tyson, seems to be the go-to guy for covering that bracket of the audience. His narration and explanations are always, ALWAYS simplistic - the sort of dialog anyone who watches the Science Channel could have provided if prompted. It never fails to make me feel dumb just watching it. And so now I make it a point to avoid this guy and any documentary he has any involvement with.
Subject says it all. Reports of activity conspicuously related to global warming deserve something more than an Einstein head.
You're delusional if you think the Wii's sales have anything to do with its games. It's all about the exercise-implicative control scheme and the very pointedly stressed family atmosphere. As I said, friend: different markets. You want games? Only one of the three consoles mentioned in this news blurb can actually boast at least a full dozen legitimately great games.
Nintendo's manufacturing woes are of course a fabrication. The PS3 and 360 had the legitimate excuse, early after their respective releases, of being difficult to manufacture quickly enough. The Wii has no excuse, because the technology is not current-gen by any stretch. Now, tell me, what makes more sense if your gaming console only has up to five titles by the end of 2007 that _gamers_ are really going to care about? (This is important, as it is gamers who will be responsible for the million-sellers.) Choice A: Make as many Wiis as possible, saturating the market well before the holiday season, allowing the fad to wear off before holiday sales begin in earnest. Choice B: Artificially choke the supply, wait until the holiday boost is well underway, and then "magically" produce unlimited Wiis sometime in October or November, generating inconceivable sales from panicked parents who are still used to the Wii being impossible to find. Regardless of which you pick, which do you think Nintendo's marketing folks have advised?
The people who are shopping for a gaming system for "themselves and their kids" are quite precisely the market the Wii is aiming at with its library of painless GC ports and glorified flash games. I own all three of the systems, but only one of them is owned because of its game library. I can afford to make unbiased calls. My statement is spot-on. Talk of manifestly inconsequential market overlap is hair-splitting. Not even if the Xbox 360 Premium cost exactly $250 would mommies suddenly be interested in it. They want an exercise machine for Timmy, and they don't care one WHIT that the graphics look six years out of date. And neither does Timmy.
Honda Accord outsells Chevrolet Corvette. Gasp? These are completely different markets. Mommies & their young children, one market. Teens and young adults, one market. The difference in power is also conspicuous, since one of these systems is actually a Gamecube in disguise. But hey. It makes a good news blurb.
So, for $150, I guess we can be assured that the hardware does essentially nothing besides play videos. No PIP, no exotic menus.. heck, probably no TrueHD or DTS-HD, for that matter. And, probably more to the point.. no movies.
If people are not caring for this new format now, they'll really stop caring when the third gen HD-DVD players drive the second gen prices to the same point as this new contender.
Go, Mel Gibson.
So we're talking about defining the boundary between reprehensibility and hostility, then? Personally, I would hesitate to suggest that it is valid for any country to profit in a worldwide economy using technology they have acquired and utilized without permission. But perhaps you would be fine even with the recent revelations of Pentagon hacking. Perhaps that also is "valid". To others, it's an act of war. Ymmv.
The trouble with technological breakthroughs is that they mostly benefit countries which place zero emphasis on such development but 100% emphasis on the pirating and subsequent marketing of such technology.
Not sure why this persists as being such a big deal. The US is perpetually under the spotlight but the statistics are fond of ignoring just how much land (per population) needs to be covered in order to accomplish broadband penetration. Korea, for example, being a country the size of a small US state but with a highly disparate population, has no excuse for failing to be 99%+ broadband; if anything, their 10% presence of non-broadband solutions is conspicuous.
Smart guy. By asking for money and casually dismissing US success in the same breath, he'll be garnering a lot of support from folks who were put off by losing another space race to the Americans. The diss was calculated.
That'll probably change once it has a go on Countdown, since, quite in spite of the desires of Billo et al, a plethora of folks watch that show.
Editing above: If Bluray ends up being the "winner" of the format war - something which won't be the case until you can get a standard player for sub-$300 and a 24Hz player for sub-$400, in my opinion - HD-DVD will still have served the purpose of forcing the adoption of AVC / VC1.
MPEG2 can still look good when the source is hyper-idealized, such as in the case of Crank which was not shot on film, but this is simply not the happy case 99.9% of the time.
Now somebody point me to the cheapest possible 24Hz-capable Bluray player, complete with price.
(Speaking of media servers, is there one which can actually achieve 100% consistently flat framerates over HDMI? Hint: Windows cannot.)
If Bluray ends up being the "winner" of the format war - something which won't be the case until you can get a standard player for
MPEG2 can still look good when the source is hyper-idealized, such as in the case of Crank which was not shot on film, but this is simply not the happy case 99.9% of the time.
Now somebody point me to the cheapest possible 24Hz-capable Bluray player, complete with price.
(Speaking of media servers, is there one which can actually achieve 100% consistently flat framerates over HDMI? Hint: Windows cannot.)
A response to some of your points: 1: The reason Nintendo went with inferior hardware isn't because they really wanted to - it's because they aren't Sony or Microsoft. Nintendo has to make a profit on everything, including hardware. 2: "Unless your tv is HD ready you won't see much improvement anyway." This is what Nintendo is really hoping. Their spokesperson has poo-pooed HD as being inconsequential. Unfortunately for the integrity of this stance, HD is the current big trend, and has already invaded fully one-third of all households in the country. Then you have to consider the other aspect: There's really almost nothing these consumers can do with their new HDTV that pushes those high resolutions. But gaming consoles are a conspicuous exception. Except, of course, in the case of the Wii. And consider: It must survive at least four years of this inadequacy. 3: The Wii is not directly competing with the 360 or the PS3. Those consoles are aimed at gamers. The Wii is aimed at parents who think they can get their kids to exercise. It's sports car vs. sedan. Both are cars, both target different people, both sell differently. Maybe by the next generation of gaming consoles, this logic will be obvious to more people. I choose to point it out now.