The average woman is dramatically weaker than the average man.
We're not talking about extremes. You are just out of touch with reality, which judging by your ridiculously overwritten response, is because reality threatens you.
Go check out any source where men and women are graded on physycal fitness. The Army is a terrific example. They test hundreds of thousands of men and women each year on physical fitness. Though most soldiers are in pretty good shape, a huge swath of society is represented. Pregnant women, fat women, 40 year old women, and men of various capabilities are tested. The minimum standards set by the Army are easily attainable, and represent below average performance.
Look at the pushup standards that would indicate an average female soldier as opposed to an average male. In running and sit-ups, there isn't a huge difference in performance, but in push-ups, where testosterone is linked to performance, average women are far less than half as strong as average men.
to join the Army... just to get through the door, men have to do 14 push-ups. Women: 1 push-up.
This isn't anecdotal, this is pretty conclusive stuff. Women aren't anywhere near as strong as men, as a general rule.
There would be plenty of new teaching jobs in engineering if this came to be.
There is no downside to having a society with a bunch of engineers. They will create jobs. If we have to double the tuition for phiolsophy and english majors, to pay for this, it would be doubly good.
Remember, most of these new engineers were probably going to college anyway. This would just help direct people away from the majors that are relatively less helpful to society.
You use a lot of strong language, calling me a dick and frenetically shaking your fists at me.
But I do know what I'm talking about. I could wave my internet dick around and tell you what degrees I have and where I work, but that wouldn't prove anything. You are obviously unstable and angry (about the audio quality of various products! haha!) so be careful not to have a heart attack. Aspirin. A nice girl. These are the keys to low blood pressure.
Anyway, I can sense a long comment coming up. This is a technical and confusing subject, so I understand why you're so misguided. No need for all the hate. I didn't go into details about bitrate of TrueHD or MTS compression artifacts because my point is simple: bluray has more felxibility with its audio and choose uncompressed perfect sounding PCM because it has the room for it. HD DVD just isn't as big and lacks the flexibility.
I got my sound system at Wal Mart for 200 dollars. It accepts HDMI.
It even has an Ipod dock. My PS3 sounds a noticeably better than my XBOX with HD DVD over the six channels of sound in my den. I'm not pretending it is annoying to listen to HD DVD. It's good (but the XBOX isn't capable of sending TrueHD by a long shot... just like virtually all HD DVD players) My daughter pointed out the quality difference before I even had a chance to listen to it. If it weren't for movies, I would never even use my PS3, but that doesn't change the fact that it sounds a lot better. The little label on my audio system says "Philips HTS3544." My wife got it, but no worries, I'm right about the price (I get a headache at Walmart, so I can't go in). Sound systems that sound fine are not very expensive. Anyway, you were wrong about the sound system's existence.
My discussion of the limitation of HD DVD to two channels at maximum audio quality was obviously academic. Of course they run out of room and can't use the best quality audio in every (most) case, but my point was simply that Bluray has much better audio capacity. Whatever is left after the movie is going to favor the bluray's uncompressed audio.
You examples are awful. The test you refer to absolutely proved that people could tell the difference in audio quality. Sure, it's cool that an ipod sounds 'pretty good." HD DVD also sounds good. Bluray sounds better. You also seem to think Movie Theatres are some kind of paragon of quality. They aren't and most have accepted that. They have new movies on huge screens and they play it loud in a nice resonant room. They are low frame rate and the sound isn't so wonderful except that it's BIG. Hell, half the time it isn't even synced well. You are screaming at me for noting that bluray is higher in quality and can fit much more uncompressed audio, and your rebuttal is, "yeah, but TV sounds ok, so people can tolerate ok sound."
Your other claim, about lossless sound, is actually a great lump of marketting BS. First of all, it makes me laugh about your (incorrect) whining about no support when I talked about cheap HDMI. TrueHD needs an HDMI 1.3 cable, player, and sound system. Otherwise you are using DD or DTS. TrueHS is compressed audio. The idea that it is lossless is theoretically possible (at 15 mbits), but not actually real. The consensus is that reviewers can tell the difference between PCM and TrueHD. Sorry. It's not lossless in practice. Of course, all this is academic. No HD DVD player is sending TrueHD bitsreams. It's all DD or DTS, just like DVDs. Bluray is sending PCM (totally perfect and uncompressed audio). It takes more space than TrueHD (a hell of a lot more than the lightweight 5mbit truehd version you squeeze onto those HD DVD discs).
Bluray supports TrueHD, but there's no need for it and it's just not used much. PCM sounds better, actually works on real devices in the real world, and there is enough room for it unless the movie is really long.
HD DVD players are not going to be able to send 15 mbits of truehd anyway. What you're com
The gameboy isn't relevant. If you want to compare sales of audio players or game playing laptops, I'm sure Sony wins, and if you want to use sales of handhelds, of course Nintendo wins. It's silly to bring them up unless you have confirmation bias and just want to bolster a company, which is cute but not for me. Nintendo is in two markets, and has done better in one than the other lately. I think we can agree that Sony sells far more stuff than ten Nintendos. We're just talking about consoles right now.
yeah, your data is obsolete and certainly not verifiable. They are reported estimate, guesses, etc. They are marketing tools. You source doesn't even include Europe, which obviously favors Nintendo heavily. But they still clearly indicate that Sony is selling far more consoles than Nintendo. Did you even look at this stuff before linking? Sony makes two consoles that are selling right now. You have to add them together to find how many consoles Sony is selling. Your data claims that about 6.64 million playstation 2s and 5.5 million PS3s where shipped (sorry, your data sucks and cites only shipped) in the most recent month on that site's record, but the Wii sold less than 6 million.
I guess I could point out that dollar for dollar, Sony is winning by double even without the PS2. If I sell a BMW 760i, and you sell twenty hamburgers, I have higher volume sales.
So your citation of data you don't even understand is obnoxious and pathetic. It indeed only proved me wrong in that the Wii isn't dominating as much as I claimed, but I think your data sucks and the wii is dominating and in much higher demand than the competiton.
Anyway, you can pull statistics that say whatever you want. I can pull some too, but your numbers are so close to my claim that I'm happy to stand with those numbers.
NES+SNES = PS1. NES+SNES is millions shy of PS2.
That's only slightly different from what I said, right? Obviously my point wouldn't be any less true with the revision. Figuring that the N64 and Gamecube sold about 50 million combined, Sony has sold far more consoles than Nintendo has in its entire history, in less than half the time. I hate to keep defending Sony like this, since I'm not really that interested in discussing them.
I guess I will just explain my point one more time... more carefully so the knuckleheads can follow.
With each generation of console, Nintendo sold fewer and fewer. They only sold about 20 million gamecubes, for example. This round, Nintendo has risen from the ashes of mediocre to absolutely dominate. (but but but, I said that Sony is grossing more, selling more, whatever... Doesn't matter. The Wii is a huge improvement and Nintendo can't meet demand because they have a great product).
According to you, NES and SNES together are (according to your errant numbers) about ten million shy of PS1+PS2. In other words, the memories of a dominating Nintendo followed by a less dominating Sony are simply fictive. Nintendo's goal of reaching more players with the Wii is an ambitious one. That follows the Playstation, which reached new gamers too. But I wasn't trying to bolster Sony or diminish Nintendo.
Nintendo is a great example of a company becoming mediocre in one market and getting fed up with it and returning with something excellent... to explain why I think Sega will make great games in the future. I should be attacked for making retardedly obvious comments, perhaps.
Further, in the parent, I did not say that Nintendo was in financial trouble. Read entire comments before freaking out and replying. They were sucking only in comparison to what they once were and what their potential was (And they know that). Note where I say Nintendo was making money and how that isn't my point. I'm not trying to troll by saying Nintendo is some crappy company. Like I said, I like Nintendo. Everyone who likes games probably likes Nintendo. Can anyone claim to never have enjoyed any nintendo brand game? But the
Well no kidding they both use the same video codec! Hence, as soon as you mute your TV, there is no difference. Was it so hard to understand that I was specifically referring to what you were talking about? What did you think I meant? Not to be too adversarial, but you don't need to call bullshit without at least looking into the matter. I realize the quality parity FUD has been very strong, and I understand why you'd think I'm wrong, but HD users and Bluray users aren't enemies.
The sound quality of a bluray disc is actually extremely high when compared to the HD DVD. They absolutely are not constrained to the same audio quality. VC-1 is a video codec.
HD DVD is just a medium... that happens to be too small for both the video and the dozen gigabytes of audio data included on bluray.
The HD DVD has barely enough space for 24-bit/192 kHz for two channels. That's the maximum audio standard for that format. You can't do better than stereo if you want the kind of audio quality that matches the 1080p display . The Bluray can support that audio quality for six channels. That's a big ole difference.
Not to be too harsh on HD DVD... but this is the simple truth. IF you wanted to backup your harddrive, the HD DVD is more cost effective today. But Sony swung the 1080p dick around for a reason. Sure, most folks won't have the equipment to see that video quality, but these huge files are going to crowd everything else off the disc, and the HD camp pushed out too much video to the exclusion of more balance in quality.
And that brings me to the most important point. Any 200 dollar audio system can easily show the difference between the formats. This isn't pushing technology to its limits like 1080p 60hz. This is Walmart level.
I am pretty sure that there was a major scandal about XBOX games being damaged by the system. You responded to video proof that bluray titles in a playstation 3 are nearly impossible to destroy by scratch.
You can say that the XBOX has a better library, and you can point out how much better it's online services are, but to claim that Playstation games get refused because they are usually nonservicable is simply untrue.
Tell me the name of the store and the city you are in, so I can find out what the problem is. I don't work for Sony, but I do work for a major supplier of both HD DVD and Bluray discs, so I want to know more about this.
The people trying to censor things are teh 535 members of the United States Congress. What they think is obscene, is obscene. From a business perspective, it's as simply as that.
As to your other comments: I don't think sex or violence are bad at all. I love GTA. I'm not pushing my morality on anyone (however, you seem to be pushing yours on others). It's funny how something as naturally and wholly violent as a human, one of the most effective and vicious predators in the world, would run around trying to pretend that play violence is immoral. Cats play kill, and so do we. It's healthy. Anyway, I simply am not offended by any sex or other expression either. But I don't get to decide what gets censored. The government does. That's the way it works. Read Socrates's "Crito," to understand why.
The facts are simple. Rockstar made it harder for game makers to put controversial material out there. And they aren't crying for philosophical or artistic reasons. If they had just been open and honest, we would have less of a headache.
the open minigames in God of War weren't hidden and lied about.
I'm not pretending to push my own opinion on obscenity on the world. It's out there whether you or I like it. It's real, as real as color or any other abstract concept. If you put something truly obscene out there in a way that people see it on accident, if society can stop you, it will. You will deal with legal consequences. A judge will rule that you were obscene. You can tell that judge that he is full of shit, but he isn't. Society gets to decide what is legal and not legal, and one of the those legal concepts is obscenity.
you simply do not get it.
But you know I'm right, even if you don't like what I say. You obviously obey society's demands on you, or you have serious problems every single day. If everyone died out, would obscenity still exist? no, since we have to make that up as we go. But it's real now.
Bluray wins in movie quality as soon as you unmute your TV, so who cares about scratch resistance?
This format war isn't about whether bluray is better than HD-DVD, this is about how much money Microsoft has. bluray has the supposedly better DRM and accordingly has most studios, so I would assume it's got the advantage. At this point, I would assume that you will see more dual format players, but you will also see far more bluray movies.
Thanks to Sony throwing away its game system brand for the lion's share of the HD player market, a studio would be crazy to release only on HD-DVD. But this gives Microsoft more time. Time for the XBOX to still be a valid competitor, time for Sony to suffer financially, time to spit out a next generation in two years. That's worth 150 mil to MS. A stupid download for GTA 4 was worth 50 mil, and this is a much bigger problem for Sony.
Such a long comment. But you're wrong, pal. AT&T is that popular. You're just being obnoxious to deny it. They dominate the industry.
You are twisting your thinking around radically. Why? It's ridiculous.
Apple didn't just give the iphone to AT&T and say "Hey! do whatever you think is best here!" Not at all. They spent weeks or months contracting out every detail. Apple knew this would happen. It's absurd to assert they don't have some responsibility for the actions of AT&T that affect the iphone. If Apple didn't act this way, they would be in utter breach as fiduciary. Why assert that this action was only AT&T's doing?
I don't care that Apple did this, but obviously Apple sees the blackberry as a competitor and used its power to cripple its functions. Of course they would do this. It's important to be the largest providers best product in this category. You will never see an Aston Martin sold next to a BMW M6. Aston Martin will refuse to sell inventory to a dealer that does this. Normal everyday common sense business.
You keep throwing the word "Illegal" around. What the hell law are you talking about? Say Apple demanded that no other device be as well supported. That's totally ok. If Apple says that AT&T can either cripple the Blackberry or not have the iphone, that's not illegal in any way. You're just making stuff up. And if it were illegal, that's not proof that Apple didn't do it, as companies break laws and settle cases all the time. You seem to be attaching some kind of virtue trait to Apple. Why?
You gonna fisk me again? Why not actually say things that are true this time. Apple is a great company because they aren't retarded. Not dealing with the blackberry or carefully contracting the major aspects of its relationship with AT&T would be retarded. And insofar as it is clearly foreseeable and a fiduciary breach, illegal (since you seem to think that's an argument).
Actually, yeah you could stumble on hot coffee and be surprised by it. I could by the game for my kid, go to work, and come home and see that he used his gameshark.
Perhaps I have a bigger problem with my kid using his dualshock sticks to thrust into his crackhead ho instead of doing a GIS for "boobies"
I personally don't have a problem with this, but my point is that some parents had no problem with GTA without hot coffee, but then found out their kids could easily access shit that the parent was offended by.
Instead of calling people ignorant, realize that there is no absolute free speech right. We either regulate ourselves or we let congress do it. Rockstar indeed went too far, and that's when Congress started yapping about censorship again.
There is such a thing as obscenity. You can pretend it's all artificial, but it's real. This isn't a philosophy class, this is society. In society there are clear standards for what is tasteful. And that's a very good thing, because without society, people are sick little fucks. Animals rape, animals make color preferences, animals have no taste. That's because they are too dumb for a society. And people generally know that some things go too far. If you want to buy AO rated stuff that goes further than society will allow for open access to kids, that's great! Buy a PC instead of a Gamecube.
But we must MUST MUST rate our games responsibly such that kids only get offensive stuff if the parent got it for them with full awareness about the offensive stuff.
The real problem for Rockstar is that the market is limited by console makers. No one has the right to demand I not be offended either, and frankly that's what Rockstar is demanding. Until AO games are respected as art as movies can be, nothing is going to change. Rockstar isn't going to make people respect games as art, they are actually doing the opposite.
I'm for total freedom of expression, with the only caveat that retailers be given some way of understanding what content he is selling.
It doesn't matter that it had the Mature rating. That wasn't for Hot Coffee. IF I want to give that to my kids, that's my own fucking business. But if I give that to my kids and then find there are other mature themes I didn't approve of, I'll be pissed.
I don't care that GTA was bad in other ways (or good, if you prefer). I care that Rockstar hid content and lied about it.
This was fuel for the fire. People want to censor material, and we have to fight them by being utterly open about what we put into our games.
Hot Coffee ambushed some parents who didn't mind the violence and themes of GTA SA and gave the game to their kids. It's not ok to lie about what is in the game to obtain a better rating. Yeah, I realize you can fuck hookers and kill them for your money back in GTA, but it's not my place to decide what's better or worse in a game.
No parent who gave their kid the Playboy game was surprised by the sex, but if there was a hidden rape or murder mode in Playboy, some parent would be ticked to see their kids find it.
He didn't seem to mind that kids wrestle around after watching WWF. He was pointing out that violence is part of our culture.
I personally think the distinction is that "you" the player are causing the violence and sex in the game, which is less menacing to some than just watching it. It doesn't matter to me, I think AO content should be available so long as it is clearly marked and sold only to adults. It's not ESRB's fault that AO content goes nowhere.
The sex in GTA: SA without hot coffee was pretty similar to the way most Bond movies handled the topic.
Rockstar can kiss my ass. They were utterly irresponsible by leaving that in a game that already gets people mad. We're in a democratic society, and if we don't behave, people will enact laws to force behaivior.
The ESRB was meant to prevent that from happening. Perhaps there needs to be some recognition of what artistic expression is allowed, but if it's homosexual sex, or any other kind of elicit sex (I don't really care which), then that stuff is for adults. IF your artform is really violent or sexual, perhaps there is nothing wrong with it being sold only to adults. If mommy thinks this is ok stuff for Junior to experience (And often it will be), then she can buy for him.
One of the serious screw ups Rockstar made was releasing a game that circumvented the claim its rating bore. It had a sex simulator hidden in it. And of course, Rockstar lied through their teeth about it. That means that parents who didn't mind their teenager playing GTA for the violence and themes weren't also aware of the explicit sex. MY opinion or your opinion on which is worse is not relevant. What's relevant is that parents weren't aware of the content as Rockstar lied about it. This wasn't some low budget download, this was a huge brand! You take that level of control and security away, and it becomes much easier to rally censors. Made the industry look like a bunch of retard clowns. Rockstar owes the entire industry a huge apology, because now we have to pay to lobby harder than before to keep our freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech will never be absolute. Laws will get in the way, and we've got to show we can act responsibly and produce artistic and interesting stuff without lying about the content.
We need to convince console makers to license AO content, and then we need to use that rating appropriately. The way to do that is to make your homosexual relationship game (or whatever else you are interested in) for the GOD DAMN PC. If it's really good, people will respect it, and things will change. I think games are an artform and I want to see more controversial material done in a thoughtful manner. I want more expression, but now we have Hot Coffee hanging over our heads.
Rockstar has zero credibility in this debate. Zero. I love GTA: SA, but they need to grow the hell up. Jack Thompson and various other assholes want nothing more than for dumbasses in this industry to get explicit content in the hands of kids.
So yeah, Hot Coffee is a good reason to ignore anything Rockstar wants to say about this.
The greatest weakness for wikipedia the the prejudive people have against it?
Are you kidding? the greatest weakness is that some of its contents aren't true. Period. It's a fun thing to read and a terrible thing to rely on. It would be trivial to have several ip addresses and logins. The reason you aren't hearing anyone complain about that is that you can't catch people doing it. IF something on wikipedia bothers someone with enough time on their hands, that fact will be covered up, and very little can be done to prevent it.
That's why reputation matters. You can rely on sources and professors and experts and universities because they are attaching their reputation to the information. It's harder, slower, and infinitely more reliable. There is no technological solution to wikipedia. You can't have people with no reputation to lose produce something that is reliable on controversial issues.
The FCC will sell this to the highest bidder period. There is nothing to gain by not selling it. They will rerun the auction and you can buy it for ten bucks if that's the high bid.
Nintendo was doing a lot better than "barely holding on". That was lame hyperbole on my part.
Not to rain on Nintendo at all, I love Nintendo, but your comment that they have returned to the top is simply wrong, I'm afraid. Nintendo is a game maker, ans Sony is just an electronics company, so it's easy to have nostalgia and think Nintendo is the true leader over the course of consoles. But Sony is (which makes their current console a shocking failure). The wii is supposed to sell to people who don't play video games, but that's what the playstations actually did.
You can't understate what the Playstation 1 and 2 did in the industry. You can add all the SNES and NES systems sold together and come millions short of the Playstation, and tens of millions short of the Playstation 2. Sony has obvious dropped the ball with the PS3, but they are still the king as long as the Playstation 2 dominates. Part of Sony's problem is that, for most people, there is no reason to replace a PS2. No Gameboy brand has approached 100 million either. The game industry that we have today exists on the back of the playstation, even many of the wii third party games are PS2 ports. That's not to diminish the wii as the dominating winner of the new three, but Sony is still selling more consoles than Nintendo.
And think about this, all those Playstations could have been Nintendos. Nintendo rejected the playstation idea, and left Sony and NEC with investment spending they had to try to recover.
Nintendo was dominating with NES, didn't innovate much with SNES and barely held the lead (even lost it for a while), and completely failed with their next two consoles, only to finally have no reason at all to make another standard console and then found some success. You can say that Nintendo made money anyway, but as am atter of potential, Nintendo truly has risen from the ashes. The wii could eclipse the Playstation 2, and certainly proves that Nintendo was far below its potential for the past ten years.
My overall point was that Sega could easily think their way to better games. Look at the string of great Mario games. They are usually very interesting, and that takes creativity more than technology. Sega has intangible assets in copyrights and it's only a matter of time before they get desperate enough to invest one of them in a truly innovative designer.
So yeah, the gameboy proves that Nintendo wasn't dead. But Nintendo had to get its ass kicked before it got into gear. I think it's much easier to come back in this industry than in others. I think it's only a matter of time before Sega figures out how to do that.
The cool thing about this business is that it's not hard at all to rise from the ashes. Sega has fallen painfully, but that's what it takes sometimes to get some kid in there with some good ideas and a soul to make some new content. They have the brands, all they need are the ideas.
Look at Nintendo. Barely holding on five years ago. If Nintendo had succeeded witht he Gamecube and N64, there would be no Wii. You take risks when you have nothing to lose. EA will never release that awesome ground breaking game - the most they can hope for is frames per second on the 2 point conversion. Is EA going to take manpower off of Nascar 2009 to make the next Katamari? It's profits per quarter might suffer!
But Sega... Sega has nothing to lose and might just take a low budget risk that adds something to the industry. It's only a matter of time.
I may sound like an idiot hippie, but I'm right. The losers become the winners in this industry.
It's like Olivia. She had no body, but she gave me all she had. What she was, actually. And if you ask Seth Able to sing, your bank account might double. Those with less produce more. The zen is the dao is the buddha buddie (holy shit, I'm drunk).
Slashdot Mirror
fine. Put ten of them in the laptop.
And use that electronic paper stuff.
jesus christ, look at this inflated diction.
The average woman is dramatically weaker than the average man.
We're not talking about extremes. You are just out of touch with reality, which judging by your ridiculously overwritten response, is because reality threatens you.
Go check out any source where men and women are graded on physycal fitness. The Army is a terrific example. They test hundreds of thousands of men and women each year on physical fitness. Though most soldiers are in pretty good shape, a huge swath of society is represented. Pregnant women, fat women, 40 year old women, and men of various capabilities are tested. The minimum standards set by the Army are easily attainable, and represent below average performance.
Look at the pushup standards that would indicate an average female soldier as opposed to an average male. In running and sit-ups, there isn't a huge difference in performance, but in push-ups, where testosterone is linked to performance, average women are far less than half as strong as average men.
to join the Army... just to get through the door, men have to do 14 push-ups. Women: 1 push-up.
This isn't anecdotal, this is pretty conclusive stuff. Women aren't anywhere near as strong as men, as a general rule.
HAHAHA
There would be plenty of new teaching jobs in engineering if this came to be.
There is no downside to having a society with a bunch of engineers. They will create jobs. If we have to double the tuition for phiolsophy and english majors, to pay for this, it would be doubly good.
Remember, most of these new engineers were probably going to college anyway. This would just help direct people away from the majors that are relatively less helpful to society.
This is ridiculous.
I could just give me enemy a bunch of hard liquor or rotten beef.
I could give them chinese cat food.
You use a lot of strong language, calling me a dick and frenetically shaking your fists at me.
But I do know what I'm talking about. I could wave my internet dick around and tell you what degrees I have and where I work, but that wouldn't prove anything. You are obviously unstable and angry (about the audio quality of various products! haha!) so be careful not to have a heart attack. Aspirin. A nice girl. These are the keys to low blood pressure.
Anyway, I can sense a long comment coming up. This is a technical and confusing subject, so I understand why you're so misguided. No need for all the hate. I didn't go into details about bitrate of TrueHD or MTS compression artifacts because my point is simple: bluray has more felxibility with its audio and choose uncompressed perfect sounding PCM because it has the room for it. HD DVD just isn't as big and lacks the flexibility.
I got my sound system at Wal Mart for 200 dollars. It accepts HDMI.
It even has an Ipod dock. My PS3 sounds a noticeably better than my XBOX with HD DVD over the six channels of sound in my den. I'm not pretending it is annoying to listen to HD DVD. It's good (but the XBOX isn't capable of sending TrueHD by a long shot... just like virtually all HD DVD players) My daughter pointed out the quality difference before I even had a chance to listen to it. If it weren't for movies, I would never even use my PS3, but that doesn't change the fact that it sounds a lot better. The little label on my audio system says "Philips HTS3544." My wife got it, but no worries, I'm right about the price (I get a headache at Walmart, so I can't go in). Sound systems that sound fine are not very expensive. Anyway, you were wrong about the sound system's existence.
My discussion of the limitation of HD DVD to two channels at maximum audio quality was obviously academic. Of course they run out of room and can't use the best quality audio in every (most) case, but my point was simply that Bluray has much better audio capacity. Whatever is left after the movie is going to favor the bluray's uncompressed audio.
You examples are awful. The test you refer to absolutely proved that people could tell the difference in audio quality. Sure, it's cool that an ipod sounds 'pretty good." HD DVD also sounds good. Bluray sounds better. You also seem to think Movie Theatres are some kind of paragon of quality. They aren't and most have accepted that. They have new movies on huge screens and they play it loud in a nice resonant room. They are low frame rate and the sound isn't so wonderful except that it's BIG. Hell, half the time it isn't even synced well. You are screaming at me for noting that bluray is higher in quality and can fit much more uncompressed audio, and your rebuttal is, "yeah, but TV sounds ok, so people can tolerate ok sound."
Your other claim, about lossless sound, is actually a great lump of marketting BS. First of all, it makes me laugh about your (incorrect) whining about no support when I talked about cheap HDMI. TrueHD needs an HDMI 1.3 cable, player, and sound system. Otherwise you are using DD or DTS. TrueHS is compressed audio. The idea that it is lossless is theoretically possible (at 15 mbits), but not actually real. The consensus is that reviewers can tell the difference between PCM and TrueHD. Sorry. It's not lossless in practice. Of course, all this is academic. No HD DVD player is sending TrueHD bitsreams. It's all DD or DTS, just like DVDs. Bluray is sending PCM (totally perfect and uncompressed audio). It takes more space than TrueHD (a hell of a lot more than the lightweight 5mbit truehd version you squeeze onto those HD DVD discs).
Bluray supports TrueHD, but there's no need for it and it's just not used much. PCM sounds better, actually works on real devices in the real world, and there is enough room for it unless the movie is really long.
HD DVD players are not going to be able to send 15 mbits of truehd anyway. What you're com
The gameboy isn't relevant. If you want to compare sales of audio players or game playing laptops, I'm sure Sony wins, and if you want to use sales of handhelds, of course Nintendo wins. It's silly to bring them up unless you have confirmation bias and just want to bolster a company, which is cute but not for me. Nintendo is in two markets, and has done better in one than the other lately. I think we can agree that Sony sells far more stuff than ten Nintendos. We're just talking about consoles right now.
yeah, your data is obsolete and certainly not verifiable. They are reported estimate, guesses, etc. They are marketing tools. You source doesn't even include Europe, which obviously favors Nintendo heavily. But they still clearly indicate that Sony is selling far more consoles than Nintendo. Did you even look at this stuff before linking? Sony makes two consoles that are selling right now. You have to add them together to find how many consoles Sony is selling. Your data claims that about 6.64 million playstation 2s and 5.5 million PS3s where shipped (sorry, your data sucks and cites only shipped) in the most recent month on that site's record, but the Wii sold less than 6 million.
I guess I could point out that dollar for dollar, Sony is winning by double even without the PS2. If I sell a BMW 760i, and you sell twenty hamburgers, I have higher volume sales.
So your citation of data you don't even understand is obnoxious and pathetic. It indeed only proved me wrong in that the Wii isn't dominating as much as I claimed, but I think your data sucks and the wii is dominating and in much higher demand than the competiton.
Anyway, you can pull statistics that say whatever you want. I can pull some too, but your numbers are so close to my claim that I'm happy to stand with those numbers.
NES+SNES = PS1. NES+SNES is millions shy of PS2.
That's only slightly different from what I said, right? Obviously my point wouldn't be any less true with the revision. Figuring that the N64 and Gamecube sold about 50 million combined, Sony has sold far more consoles than Nintendo has in its entire history, in less than half the time. I hate to keep defending Sony like this, since I'm not really that interested in discussing them.
I guess I will just explain my point one more time... more carefully so the knuckleheads can follow.
With each generation of console, Nintendo sold fewer and fewer. They only sold about 20 million gamecubes, for example. This round, Nintendo has risen from the ashes of mediocre to absolutely dominate. (but but but, I said that Sony is grossing more, selling more, whatever... Doesn't matter. The Wii is a huge improvement and Nintendo can't meet demand because they have a great product).
According to you, NES and SNES together are (according to your errant numbers) about ten million shy of PS1+PS2. In other words, the memories of a dominating Nintendo followed by a less dominating Sony are simply fictive. Nintendo's goal of reaching more players with the Wii is an ambitious one. That follows the Playstation, which reached new gamers too. But I wasn't trying to bolster Sony or diminish Nintendo.
Nintendo is a great example of a company becoming mediocre in one market and getting fed up with it and returning with something excellent... to explain why I think Sega will make great games in the future. I should be attacked for making retardedly obvious comments, perhaps.
Further, in the parent, I did not say that Nintendo was in financial trouble. Read entire comments before freaking out and replying. They were sucking only in comparison to what they once were and what their potential was (And they know that). Note where I say Nintendo was making money and how that isn't my point. I'm not trying to troll by saying Nintendo is some crappy company. Like I said, I like Nintendo. Everyone who likes games probably likes Nintendo. Can anyone claim to never have enjoyed any nintendo brand game? But the
Well no kidding they both use the same video codec! Hence, as soon as you mute your TV, there is no difference. Was it so hard to understand that I was specifically referring to what you were talking about? What did you think I meant? Not to be too adversarial, but you don't need to call bullshit without at least looking into the matter. I realize the quality parity FUD has been very strong, and I understand why you'd think I'm wrong, but HD users and Bluray users aren't enemies.
The sound quality of a bluray disc is actually extremely high when compared to the HD DVD. They absolutely are not constrained to the same audio quality. VC-1 is a video codec.
HD DVD is just a medium... that happens to be too small for both the video and the dozen gigabytes of audio data included on bluray.
The HD DVD has barely enough space for 24-bit/192 kHz for two channels. That's the maximum audio standard for that format. You can't do better than stereo if you want the kind of audio quality that matches the 1080p display . The Bluray can support that audio quality for six channels. That's a big ole difference.
Not to be too harsh on HD DVD... but this is the simple truth. IF you wanted to backup your harddrive, the HD DVD is more cost effective today. But Sony swung the 1080p dick around for a reason. Sure, most folks won't have the equipment to see that video quality, but these huge files are going to crowd everything else off the disc, and the HD camp pushed out too much video to the exclusion of more balance in quality.
And that brings me to the most important point. Any 200 dollar audio system can easily show the difference between the formats. This isn't pushing technology to its limits like 1080p 60hz. This is Walmart level.
You must be making this up.
I am pretty sure that there was a major scandal about XBOX games being damaged by the system. You responded to video proof that bluray titles in a playstation 3 are nearly impossible to destroy by scratch.
You can say that the XBOX has a better library, and you can point out how much better it's online services are, but to claim that Playstation games get refused because they are usually nonservicable is simply untrue.
Tell me the name of the store and the city you are in, so I can find out what the problem is. I don't work for Sony, but I do work for a major supplier of both HD DVD and Bluray discs, so I want to know more about this.
The people trying to censor things are teh 535 members of the United States Congress. What they think is obscene, is obscene. From a business perspective, it's as simply as that.
As to your other comments: I don't think sex or violence are bad at all. I love GTA. I'm not pushing my morality on anyone (however, you seem to be pushing yours on others). It's funny how something as naturally and wholly violent as a human, one of the most effective and vicious predators in the world, would run around trying to pretend that play violence is immoral. Cats play kill, and so do we. It's healthy. Anyway, I simply am not offended by any sex or other expression either. But I don't get to decide what gets censored. The government does. That's the way it works. Read Socrates's "Crito," to understand why.
The facts are simple. Rockstar made it harder for game makers to put controversial material out there. And they aren't crying for philosophical or artistic reasons. If they had just been open and honest, we would have less of a headache.
the open minigames in God of War weren't hidden and lied about.
I'm not pretending to push my own opinion on obscenity on the world. It's out there whether you or I like it. It's real, as real as color or any other abstract concept. If you put something truly obscene out there in a way that people see it on accident, if society can stop you, it will. You will deal with legal consequences. A judge will rule that you were obscene. You can tell that judge that he is full of shit, but he isn't. Society gets to decide what is legal and not legal, and one of the those legal concepts is obscenity.
you simply do not get it.
But you know I'm right, even if you don't like what I say. You obviously obey society's demands on you, or you have serious problems every single day. If everyone died out, would obscenity still exist? no, since we have to make that up as we go. But it's real now.
bluray has substantial scratch resistance. Insofar as this is an issue, blu-ray wins hands down. CNET did a test a while back to that effect.
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No test is really needed when only one platform requires this universal protection. I doubt this is a huge deal, but bluray discs are extremely durable. http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/572
Bluray wins in movie quality as soon as you unmute your TV, so who cares about scratch resistance?
This format war isn't about whether bluray is better than HD-DVD, this is about how much money Microsoft has. bluray has the supposedly better DRM and accordingly has most studios, so I would assume it's got the advantage. At this point, I would assume that you will see more dual format players, but you will also see far more bluray movies.
Thanks to Sony throwing away its game system brand for the lion's share of the HD player market, a studio would be crazy to release only on HD-DVD. But this gives Microsoft more time. Time for the XBOX to still be a valid competitor, time for Sony to suffer financially, time to spit out a next generation in two years. That's worth 150 mil to MS. A stupid download for GTA 4 was worth 50 mil, and this is a much bigger problem for Sony.
Such a long comment. But you're wrong, pal. AT&T is that popular. You're just being obnoxious to deny it. They dominate the industry.
You are twisting your thinking around radically. Why? It's ridiculous.
Apple didn't just give the iphone to AT&T and say "Hey! do whatever you think is best here!" Not at all. They spent weeks or months contracting out every detail. Apple knew this would happen. It's absurd to assert they don't have some responsibility for the actions of AT&T that affect the iphone. If Apple didn't act this way, they would be in utter breach as fiduciary. Why assert that this action was only AT&T's doing?
I don't care that Apple did this, but obviously Apple sees the blackberry as a competitor and used its power to cripple its functions. Of course they would do this. It's important to be the largest providers best product in this category. You will never see an Aston Martin sold next to a BMW M6. Aston Martin will refuse to sell inventory to a dealer that does this. Normal everyday common sense business.
You keep throwing the word "Illegal" around. What the hell law are you talking about? Say Apple demanded that no other device be as well supported. That's totally ok. If Apple says that AT&T can either cripple the Blackberry or not have the iphone, that's not illegal in any way. You're just making stuff up. And if it were illegal, that's not proof that Apple didn't do it, as companies break laws and settle cases all the time. You seem to be attaching some kind of virtue trait to Apple. Why?
You gonna fisk me again? Why not actually say things that are true this time. Apple is a great company because they aren't retarded. Not dealing with the blackberry or carefully contracting the major aspects of its relationship with AT&T would be retarded. And insofar as it is clearly foreseeable and a fiduciary breach, illegal (since you seem to think that's an argument).
Actually, yeah you could stumble on hot coffee and be surprised by it. I could by the game for my kid, go to work, and come home and see that he used his gameshark.
Perhaps I have a bigger problem with my kid using his dualshock sticks to thrust into his crackhead ho instead of doing a GIS for "boobies"
I personally don't have a problem with this, but my point is that some parents had no problem with GTA without hot coffee, but then found out their kids could easily access shit that the parent was offended by.
bullshit.
Instead of calling people ignorant, realize that there is no absolute free speech right. We either regulate ourselves or we let congress do it. Rockstar indeed went too far, and that's when Congress started yapping about censorship again.
There is such a thing as obscenity. You can pretend it's all artificial, but it's real. This isn't a philosophy class, this is society. In society there are clear standards for what is tasteful. And that's a very good thing, because without society, people are sick little fucks. Animals rape, animals make color preferences, animals have no taste. That's because they are too dumb for a society. And people generally know that some things go too far. If you want to buy AO rated stuff that goes further than society will allow for open access to kids, that's great! Buy a PC instead of a Gamecube.
But we must MUST MUST rate our games responsibly such that kids only get offensive stuff if the parent got it for them with full awareness about the offensive stuff.
The real problem for Rockstar is that the market is limited by console makers. No one has the right to demand I not be offended either, and frankly that's what Rockstar is demanding. Until AO games are respected as art as movies can be, nothing is going to change. Rockstar isn't going to make people respect games as art, they are actually doing the opposite.
I'm for total freedom of expression, with the only caveat that retailers be given some way of understanding what content he is selling.
because that's when congress steps in.
You completely missed the point.
It doesn't matter that it had the Mature rating. That wasn't for Hot Coffee. IF I want to give that to my kids, that's my own fucking business. But if I give that to my kids and then find there are other mature themes I didn't approve of, I'll be pissed.
I don't care that GTA was bad in other ways (or good, if you prefer). I care that Rockstar hid content and lied about it.
This was fuel for the fire. People want to censor material, and we have to fight them by being utterly open about what we put into our games.
I think you're wrong.
Hot Coffee ambushed some parents who didn't mind the violence and themes of GTA SA and gave the game to their kids. It's not ok to lie about what is in the game to obtain a better rating. Yeah, I realize you can fuck hookers and kill them for your money back in GTA, but it's not my place to decide what's better or worse in a game.
No parent who gave their kid the Playboy game was surprised by the sex, but if there was a hidden rape or murder mode in Playboy, some parent would be ticked to see their kids find it.
He didn't seem to mind that kids wrestle around after watching WWF. He was pointing out that violence is part of our culture.
I personally think the distinction is that "you" the player are causing the violence and sex in the game, which is less menacing to some than just watching it. It doesn't matter to me, I think AO content should be available so long as it is clearly marked and sold only to adults. It's not ESRB's fault that AO content goes nowhere.
The sex in GTA: SA without hot coffee was pretty similar to the way most Bond movies handled the topic.
What's the problem with releasing something for PC? If it's truly good and respected, then later ask Sony or whoever to license the port.
Rockstar can kiss my ass. They were utterly irresponsible by leaving that in a game that already gets people mad. We're in a democratic society, and if we don't behave, people will enact laws to force behaivior.
The ESRB was meant to prevent that from happening. Perhaps there needs to be some recognition of what artistic expression is allowed, but if it's homosexual sex, or any other kind of elicit sex (I don't really care which), then that stuff is for adults. IF your artform is really violent or sexual, perhaps there is nothing wrong with it being sold only to adults. If mommy thinks this is ok stuff for Junior to experience (And often it will be), then she can buy for him.
One of the serious screw ups Rockstar made was releasing a game that circumvented the claim its rating bore. It had a sex simulator hidden in it. And of course, Rockstar lied through their teeth about it. That means that parents who didn't mind their teenager playing GTA for the violence and themes weren't also aware of the explicit sex. MY opinion or your opinion on which is worse is not relevant. What's relevant is that parents weren't aware of the content as Rockstar lied about it. This wasn't some low budget download, this was a huge brand! You take that level of control and security away, and it becomes much easier to rally censors. Made the industry look like a bunch of retard clowns. Rockstar owes the entire industry a huge apology, because now we have to pay to lobby harder than before to keep our freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech will never be absolute. Laws will get in the way, and we've got to show we can act responsibly and produce artistic and interesting stuff without lying about the content.
We need to convince console makers to license AO content, and then we need to use that rating appropriately. The way to do that is to make your homosexual relationship game (or whatever else you are interested in) for the GOD DAMN PC. If it's really good, people will respect it, and things will change. I think games are an artform and I want to see more controversial material done in a thoughtful manner. I want more expression, but now we have Hot Coffee hanging over our heads.
Rockstar has zero credibility in this debate. Zero. I love GTA: SA, but they need to grow the hell up. Jack Thompson and various other assholes want nothing more than for dumbasses in this industry to get explicit content in the hands of kids.
So yeah, Hot Coffee is a good reason to ignore anything Rockstar wants to say about this.
The greatest weakness for wikipedia the the prejudive people have against it?
Are you kidding? the greatest weakness is that some of its contents aren't true. Period. It's a fun thing to read and a terrible thing to rely on. It would be trivial to have several ip addresses and logins. The reason you aren't hearing anyone complain about that is that you can't catch people doing it. IF something on wikipedia bothers someone with enough time on their hands, that fact will be covered up, and very little can be done to prevent it.
That's why reputation matters. You can rely on sources and professors and experts and universities because they are attaching their reputation to the information. It's harder, slower, and infinitely more reliable. There is no technological solution to wikipedia. You can't have people with no reputation to lose produce something that is reliable on controversial issues.
No. No need to compare this with ebay.
The FCC will sell this to the highest bidder period. There is nothing to gain by not selling it. They will rerun the auction and you can buy it for ten bucks if that's the high bid.
But I think it's going to sell at above 4.6.
oh yeah, the gameboy.
good point, good point.
Nintendo was doing a lot better than "barely holding on". That was lame hyperbole on my part.
Not to rain on Nintendo at all, I love Nintendo, but your comment that they have returned to the top is simply wrong, I'm afraid. Nintendo is a game maker, ans Sony is just an electronics company, so it's easy to have nostalgia and think Nintendo is the true leader over the course of consoles. But Sony is (which makes their current console a shocking failure). The wii is supposed to sell to people who don't play video games, but that's what the playstations actually did.
You can't understate what the Playstation 1 and 2 did in the industry. You can add all the SNES and NES systems sold together and come millions short of the Playstation, and tens of millions short of the Playstation 2. Sony has obvious dropped the ball with the PS3, but they are still the king as long as the Playstation 2 dominates. Part of Sony's problem is that, for most people, there is no reason to replace a PS2. No Gameboy brand has approached 100 million either. The game industry that we have today exists on the back of the playstation, even many of the wii third party games are PS2 ports. That's not to diminish the wii as the dominating winner of the new three, but Sony is still selling more consoles than Nintendo.
And think about this, all those Playstations could have been Nintendos. Nintendo rejected the playstation idea, and left Sony and NEC with investment spending they had to try to recover.
Nintendo was dominating with NES, didn't innovate much with SNES and barely held the lead (even lost it for a while), and completely failed with their next two consoles, only to finally have no reason at all to make another standard console and then found some success. You can say that Nintendo made money anyway, but as am atter of potential, Nintendo truly has risen from the ashes. The wii could eclipse the Playstation 2, and certainly proves that Nintendo was far below its potential for the past ten years.
My overall point was that Sega could easily think their way to better games. Look at the string of great Mario games. They are usually very interesting, and that takes creativity more than technology. Sega has intangible assets in copyrights and it's only a matter of time before they get desperate enough to invest one of them in a truly innovative designer.
So yeah, the gameboy proves that Nintendo wasn't dead. But Nintendo had to get its ass kicked before it got into gear. I think it's much easier to come back in this industry than in others. I think it's only a matter of time before Sega figures out how to do that.
Don't get too down, pal.
The cool thing about this business is that it's not hard at all to rise from the ashes. Sega has fallen painfully, but that's what it takes sometimes to get some kid in there with some good ideas and a soul to make some new content. They have the brands, all they need are the ideas.
Look at Nintendo. Barely holding on five years ago. If Nintendo had succeeded witht he Gamecube and N64, there would be no Wii. You take risks when you have nothing to lose. EA will never release that awesome ground breaking game - the most they can hope for is frames per second on the 2 point conversion. Is EA going to take manpower off of Nascar 2009 to make the next Katamari? It's profits per quarter might suffer!
But Sega... Sega has nothing to lose and might just take a low budget risk that adds something to the industry. It's only a matter of time.
I may sound like an idiot hippie, but I'm right. The losers become the winners in this industry.
It's like Olivia. She had no body, but she gave me all she had. What she was, actually. And if you ask Seth Able to sing, your bank account might double. Those with less produce more. The zen is the dao is the buddha buddie (holy shit, I'm drunk).
This actually is News for Nerds, unfortunately.
Stuff that matters.
(cue that "The more you know" jungle)