It seemed pretty much par for the course in college that a significant amount of people didn't own a TV.
College students probably have broadband. They can get movies on Netflix or iTunes, no spinny disc required.
Right, and you know what makes netflix great? The fact that you can get physical discs, like bluray or dvd. I know I would be fairly annoyed if I couldn't watch physical disc media when I was in college. I didn't do it often, but it certainly happened. There isn't a good reason to remove it from their new computers / laptops.
- And there's not much else in the pipeline. Yes, there's a Zelda remake coming, but I've bought that game once already and can't get too excited about buying it again. Beyond that... who knows?
Well here are the games I'm really excited about for it:
pinball hall of fame, because actually having good 3d while playing pinball of this quality is going to be great.
kid icarus uprising - looks similar in a lot of ways to sin and punishment for the wii, and there really aren't many games on any system like that.
paper mario 3d - not sure when it is actually going to be out but I love paper mario
professor layton / phoenix wright mashup game - both of these series are great and I expect this one will also be great for the 3ds.
Otherwise there are several features that aren't even out for it yet (browser, for instance), that will make it a much more useful system. These aren't coming out until May at some point, and most of the nintendo first party games aren't being released until the summer. If it is still doing bad after that I'll agree that things aren't doing well for the system.
I played with it for a while at a toystore -- couldn't see the 3D no matter how hard I looked at the headache inducing blurred image.
This is the first time I am incompatible with an electronic toy, I urgently need an upgrade.
Did you adjust the 3d slider at all and/or adjust how far it was from your face? Every time I've shown mine to someone, even someone that can't easily see 3d, they can find a place where it works for their eyes.
Hey, thankfully there are pros and cons for each device and people have a choice between the two major competing devices.
Some people like the openness of the underlying Android OS on the Nook Color and some people prefer the e-ink and Amazon ease-of-downloading on the Kindle.
To each their own. Glad you are enjoying yours and you find it the superior device. Me? I prefer old-school books and will continue to do so until they pry my entire library from my cold, dead hands.
Well there is a third, though admittedly everyone seems to ignore it in the press. There is the Sony prs e-ink reader still. You also seem to have ignored the e-ink version of the Nook.
1) The existing distribution system failed, and ceded electronic sales to 1 party: Apple.
Once all the other minor players are killed off Apple will eat the RIAA.
You seem to forget about the other big electronic music players like Amazon, Pandora, Last.FM, etc.
3. Will it allow Virtual Console and WiiWare purchases to be transferred?
That last one is a deal-breaker for me. If you can't copy your existing digital purchases off the Wii onto whatever the next-gen Nintendo console is, forget it.
This is one thing that Microsoft and Sony do right: all you need to do to use your digital purchases on a new console is log in.
With Nintendo, you simply can't use them on anything but the original hardware. And if the hardware fails (which has happened to me twice), your only recourse is to ship it back to Nintendo and have them fix it, or lose any downloaded games you may have purchased.
Well they are already doing this (or soon will be) for transfers from the dsi handheld to the 3ds so I'm sure they are going to be doing something similar for wii -> hd wii (or whatever they call it).
How many are actually studying computer science and how many are actually in hopped up vocational programs?
Don't forget option 3, which is the "IT" department in the business department, as opposed to "CS" which is in the math department.
Amusingly the report is about "CS" enrollment, which is all about analysis of algorithms, Knuth, and Scheme/LISP, but all the comments on/. so far are about "IT" jobs, which are all about SQL, TPS reports, and the "COBOL of the New Millennium aka Java"
The reason for this is that unless you are in a city or town that has a good CS undergrad program the private industry won't know how to tell the difference. So a lot of times if you get a good CS degree you'll still be doing "IT". This isn't entirely to blame on the managers, a lot of times it is the fault of HR that don't know how to tell the difference.
I think the inevitable end result of ad-supported e-Books is subtle (or not so subtle) product placements inserted into books. I can't wait until "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" becomes a product placement for Timex, and Tom Sawyer takes a refreshing sip of Coca-cola as he rafts down the Mississippi.
Well it is already being done. The site wowio offers some of its books for free with ads placed in the books. They also have comic books with the same formula. I'm sure it will expand a bit and it often can work well if it is the first in a series. Baen has done similar, though no ads in theirs. In that case the Author chose for particular books to be free and Baen was fine with it. I'm sure that publishers will come up with other interesting ideas to get more people reading.
It's a legitimate idea. Video games will go the way of the DVD as well and be streamed over the internet. Business models will need to adapt.
Maybe, but there will always be a portion of the population that will only buy physical copies of stuff from physical stores. I know it isn't rational at times but I've seen it happen. This is why there will still need to be stores like gamestop, so that these players can get their games.
The days of broadcast TV served at the expense of commercial breaks are over. I strongly dislike commercials and will avoid listening to/watching them, sometimes at extreme costs.
In October last year I got rid of the cable TV, kept the cable internet feed, and bought myself a Roku player. I rarely watch commercials anymore. I choose what I want to watch, and I can even stream stuff I've digitized and stored on disk on other machines on my network. And I'm paying far less, by orders of magnitude, for the couple subscriptions that I watch on the Roku as compared to cable TV.
How can broadcast/cable TV compete with this?
Where TV can compete is with live showing of programs. I've found that if you are interested in watching sports the best option is through actual TV / cable. You get much better picture and if you hate commercials just start watching it 30 min to an hour after start and just skip through the commercials with a dvr. Almost all other types of TV shows / programs are just about as good without paying for TV. Another aspect that has happened is twitter commentary on live shows when the shows are going on. This also gives a good reason to watch live shows or first shown shows. These are good ways to get people back to watching actual TV rather than after the fact recorded TV. I'm not someone who watches any of the above, but I can see the appeal of it.
Borderlands was flawed (lame level scaling, inactive NPCs, weak story, etc) but it was fun as hell. I'd love to see a Borderlands 2 fixing those flaws but keeping the cool design and graphics, the quirky humor, the bazillion guns, and so on.
Like any game, it's not for everyone. But, Borderlands was awesome and you suck for not thinking so.:p;)
What I really wish was more backstory for the main 4 characters. It even seemed like that would happen leading up to the game first coming out but it turns out there is nothing there.
P.S. Austin, TX isn't in the south. It is San Francisco colonizing you.
Hey at least Atlanta (GaTech primarily I'm guessing) is showing up well for Chemistry. Actually it would be neat to see something similar for other engineering and science fields. I'm real curious about computer science / math papers.
Man, I left AT&T for T-Mobile. I hate, repeat hate AT&T. This is bad!
I agree. What I fear is both the signal choices that will be made and the phone plan cost changes. I prefer T-Mobile because of the lower plan costs, along with good signal. I am sure that my plan will become extinct very soon with no alternative. With the signal, I'm curious when the T-Mobile 3g/4g signal types will stop being supported. It is annoying because I have a phone I really don't want to replace and it would be quite annoying if the 3g/4g just stopped working on it.
Anyone have experience with something like this especially if it was AT&T buying their cell phone company?
"Right, but it has passed the 5 year mark and this is why attention is going back to the pc."
Actually, I think attention is going towards mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad. IIRC, there have been 39 million Xbox 360's sold as of January 2010.
There are over 100 million iOS devices. Games like Infinity Blade and Rage are just the beginning.
I do agree that mobile devices are going to get much more attention. Though it seems more likely that will strip people away from the psp/ds rather than the pc/xbox/ps3/wii.
I'd say the ~200 million market is safe, and will be the "platform" at least until 2015, when the Wii 2, Playstation 4, and Xbox 1080 arrive on the scene and blow PC graphics out of the water (or at least consoles are on par with PC).
It's a cycle and it's been happening for 30+ years now. PCs have always been more advanced, but then a new console arrives every ~5 years and comes close to what a PC can do. The console remains dominant.
Right, but it has passed the 5 year mark and this is why attention is going back to the pc. I would agree with you if the wii 2 / ps4 / xbox 3 were coming out this year or next.
I know you are attempting humour. But there is a large market base who will not buy apple products out of sheer irrationality.
My brother would be one of these. He would happly pay more for a non-Apple device.
The irrational hatred for Apple devices is incredible to watch.
I think part of the reason for this is that these people like being able to easily choose the particular applications and hardware that they use in the computer world. Being forced to use particular applications and/or hardware rubs some people the wrong way. I always feel that it is at least a left brain / right brain kind of thinking. This is part of why there will always be apple fans and anti-apple fans.
Well, this is a happy coincidence. I was going to throw out an "is this series any good?" question to the/. hordes, but, let's be honest, that would probably tell me nothing. But from other of your posts, I think you can give me a good opinion on that.
I'm not generally a fan of fantasy (notable exceptions: Nevèrÿon, selected Michael Moorcock, Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (although that was a _long_ time ago)), but I've liked Martin's SF short stories. Is this series worth the time investment?
It very much is. If you want you could wait for the tv show on HBO to air (April I believe) to see if you like it. The politics, story, characters, and setting are all very good and well worth reading.
Please, that's idiotic propaganda. MOBI is sufficiently open that Calibre has no trouble converting to it, and the Kindle will happily read unprotected MOBIs (hell, Calibre even understand how to load them on the Kindle for you... it appears as a simple USB mass storage device, after all). Meanwhile, the Kindle is cheaper, and has the best eInk display on the market right now. Even for the discerning geek who wants to avoid DRM, it's the best choice out there for a dedicated reading device, hands down.
All this may be true, but until it has good support for libraries there will be people who avoid it.
There aren't any non-DRM versions available for every book.
Virtually nothing on the best seller lists will be available without DRM.
So what you are really saying is you restrict your reading to those books which are released without DRM, which are often out-of-copyright works (old) or from a few authors that insist on being DRM free.
There are quite a lot of writers in some genres (fantasy/sci-fi for example) that usually have drm free books. You are correct that the more popular genres usually have less options for buying drm free books.
That said, they do save paper. I own a kindle, but I am still trying to figure out how much money I want to give amazon. I am petitioning my favorite authors to directly publish, hopefully cheaper..
My advice is get a nook or sony e-ink reader since you can use them with the digital libraries and can use more open formats for books.
The Nook, Kibo, and (I think) Sony readers all use ePub, but the books still have DRM. As you yourself point out, just because it's an open standard (or a de facto one, like MP3) doesn't mean you're automatically free of DRM.
This is only really for the major e-book stores that are the default stores for the devices. There are currently several third party stores that sell e-books in multi-format (including without drm). Whenever I buy e-books for my device (sony eink) I shop around and try to get it in the non-drm format if available. I think part of the problem is that most people don't know of these third party stores so don't know that there is competition for buying e-books. I do hope that some sort of universal book format prevails, along with a good way to sell and/or trade said bought digital books. Until then the e-book market is a bit broken.
What I have found to be very annoying and detrimental to pc sales of games is also the lack of demos for the pc. This is much more about games that are cross platform. I am much more likely to buy it if I can demo it, but it is often the case that you just can't when it is also being released on the PS3 or XBOX. Though I guess in some cases the reverse can happen. I tried batman arkham asylum and the controls (with a game pad with dual analog sticks) were horrible. Pushing up ended up in you going down, down going up. Making it a non-playable game. These kind of things are why I don't by ported pc games without trying them first...
they mean streaming-wise as netflix's new model is going to be streaming content...
Careful with statements like that. I may like the streaming ability of Netflix, but I certainly wouldn't do it without the ability to get the discs via mail. I like the better quality (especially with blu-ray) and the wider selection. I do think that if onlive joined up with gamefly there would be something really good going on.
Slashdot Mirror
Although, keep an eye on skynet cause it can take over these cars you know....
I guess Sky.Net (MS + Skype) might be interested in this. May be a bit though since they haven't become one company yet. ;)
It seemed pretty much par for the course in college that a significant amount of people didn't own a TV.
College students probably have broadband. They can get movies on Netflix or iTunes, no spinny disc required.
Right, and you know what makes netflix great? The fact that you can get physical discs, like bluray or dvd. I know I would be fairly annoyed if I couldn't watch physical disc media when I was in college. I didn't do it often, but it certainly happened. There isn't a good reason to remove it from their new computers / laptops.
- And there's not much else in the pipeline. Yes, there's a Zelda remake coming, but I've bought that game once already and can't get too excited about buying it again. Beyond that... who knows?
Well here are the games I'm really excited about for it:
pinball hall of fame, because actually having good 3d while playing pinball of this quality is going to be great.
kid icarus uprising - looks similar in a lot of ways to sin and punishment for the wii, and there really aren't many games on any system like that.
paper mario 3d - not sure when it is actually going to be out but I love paper mario
professor layton / phoenix wright mashup game - both of these series are great and I expect this one will also be great for the 3ds.
Otherwise there are several features that aren't even out for it yet (browser, for instance), that will make it a much more useful system. These aren't coming out until May at some point, and most of the nintendo first party games aren't being released until the summer. If it is still doing bad after that I'll agree that things aren't doing well for the system.
I played with it for a while at a toystore -- couldn't see the 3D no matter how hard I looked at the headache inducing blurred image.
This is the first time I am incompatible with an electronic toy, I urgently need an upgrade.
Did you adjust the 3d slider at all and/or adjust how far it was from your face? Every time I've shown mine to someone, even someone that can't easily see 3d, they can find a place where it works for their eyes.
Hey, thankfully there are pros and cons for each device and people have a choice between the two major competing devices.
Some people like the openness of the underlying Android OS on the Nook Color and some people prefer the e-ink and Amazon ease-of-downloading on the Kindle.
To each their own. Glad you are enjoying yours and you find it the superior device. Me? I prefer old-school books and will continue to do so until they pry my entire library from my cold, dead hands.
Well there is a third, though admittedly everyone seems to ignore it in the press. There is the Sony prs e-ink reader still. You also seem to have ignored the e-ink version of the Nook.
1) The existing distribution system failed, and ceded electronic sales to 1 party: Apple. Once all the other minor players are killed off Apple will eat the RIAA.
You seem to forget about the other big electronic music players like Amazon, Pandora, Last.FM, etc.
3. Will it allow Virtual Console and WiiWare purchases to be transferred?
That last one is a deal-breaker for me. If you can't copy your existing digital purchases off the Wii onto whatever the next-gen Nintendo console is, forget it.
This is one thing that Microsoft and Sony do right: all you need to do to use your digital purchases on a new console is log in.
With Nintendo, you simply can't use them on anything but the original hardware. And if the hardware fails (which has happened to me twice), your only recourse is to ship it back to Nintendo and have them fix it, or lose any downloaded games you may have purchased.
Well they are already doing this (or soon will be) for transfers from the dsi handheld to the 3ds so I'm sure they are going to be doing something similar for wii -> hd wii (or whatever they call it).
How many are actually studying computer science and how many are actually in hopped up vocational programs?
Don't forget option 3, which is the "IT" department in the business department, as opposed to "CS" which is in the math department.
Amusingly the report is about "CS" enrollment, which is all about analysis of algorithms, Knuth, and Scheme/LISP, but all the comments on /. so far are about "IT" jobs, which are all about SQL, TPS reports, and the "COBOL of the New Millennium aka Java"
The reason for this is that unless you are in a city or town that has a good CS undergrad program the private industry won't know how to tell the difference. So a lot of times if you get a good CS degree you'll still be doing "IT". This isn't entirely to blame on the managers, a lot of times it is the fault of HR that don't know how to tell the difference.
I think the inevitable end result of ad-supported e-Books is subtle (or not so subtle) product placements inserted into books. I can't wait until "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" becomes a product placement for Timex, and Tom Sawyer takes a refreshing sip of Coca-cola as he rafts down the Mississippi.
Well it is already being done. The site wowio offers some of its books for free with ads placed in the books. They also have comic books with the same formula. I'm sure it will expand a bit and it often can work well if it is the first in a series. Baen has done similar, though no ads in theirs. In that case the Author chose for particular books to be free and Baen was fine with it. I'm sure that publishers will come up with other interesting ideas to get more people reading.
It's a legitimate idea. Video games will go the way of the DVD as well and be streamed over the internet. Business models will need to adapt.
Maybe, but there will always be a portion of the population that will only buy physical copies of stuff from physical stores. I know it isn't rational at times but I've seen it happen. This is why there will still need to be stores like gamestop, so that these players can get their games.
The days of broadcast TV served at the expense of commercial breaks are over. I strongly dislike commercials and will avoid listening to/watching them, sometimes at extreme costs.
In October last year I got rid of the cable TV, kept the cable internet feed, and bought myself a Roku player. I rarely watch commercials anymore. I choose what I want to watch, and I can even stream stuff I've digitized and stored on disk on other machines on my network. And I'm paying far less, by orders of magnitude, for the couple subscriptions that I watch on the Roku as compared to cable TV.
How can broadcast/cable TV compete with this?
Where TV can compete is with live showing of programs. I've found that if you are interested in watching sports the best option is through actual TV / cable. You get much better picture and if you hate commercials just start watching it 30 min to an hour after start and just skip through the commercials with a dvr. Almost all other types of TV shows / programs are just about as good without paying for TV. Another aspect that has happened is twitter commentary on live shows when the shows are going on. This also gives a good reason to watch live shows or first shown shows. These are good ways to get people back to watching actual TV rather than after the fact recorded TV. I'm not someone who watches any of the above, but I can see the appeal of it.
Yay for achievements!
Borderlands was flawed (lame level scaling, inactive NPCs, weak story, etc) but it was fun as hell. I'd love to see a Borderlands 2 fixing those flaws but keeping the cool design and graphics, the quirky humor, the bazillion guns, and so on.
Like any game, it's not for everyone. But, Borderlands was awesome and you suck for not thinking so. :p ;)
What I really wish was more backstory for the main 4 characters. It even seemed like that would happen leading up to the game first coming out but it turns out there is nothing there.
Sorry Southern US, maybe next year.
P.S. Austin, TX isn't in the south. It is San Francisco colonizing you.
Hey at least Atlanta (GaTech primarily I'm guessing) is showing up well for Chemistry. Actually it would be neat to see something similar for other engineering and science fields. I'm real curious about computer science / math papers.
Man, I left AT&T for T-Mobile. I hate, repeat hate AT&T. This is bad!
I agree. What I fear is both the signal choices that will be made and the phone plan cost changes. I prefer T-Mobile because of the lower plan costs, along with good signal. I am sure that my plan will become extinct very soon with no alternative. With the signal, I'm curious when the T-Mobile 3g/4g signal types will stop being supported. It is annoying because I have a phone I really don't want to replace and it would be quite annoying if the 3g/4g just stopped working on it.
Anyone have experience with something like this especially if it was AT&T buying their cell phone company?
"Right, but it has passed the 5 year mark and this is why attention is going back to the pc."
Actually, I think attention is going towards mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad. IIRC, there have been 39 million Xbox 360's sold as of January 2010.
There are over 100 million iOS devices. Games like Infinity Blade and Rage are just the beginning.
I do agree that mobile devices are going to get much more attention. Though it seems more likely that will strip people away from the psp/ds rather than the pc/xbox/ps3/wii.
I'd say the ~200 million market is safe, and will be the "platform" at least until 2015, when the Wii 2, Playstation 4, and Xbox 1080 arrive on the scene and blow PC graphics out of the water (or at least consoles are on par with PC).
It's a cycle and it's been happening for 30+ years now. PCs have always been more advanced, but then a new console arrives every ~5 years and comes close to what a PC can do. The console remains dominant.
Right, but it has passed the 5 year mark and this is why attention is going back to the pc. I would agree with you if the wii 2 / ps4 / xbox 3 were coming out this year or next.
I know you are attempting humour. But there is a large market base who will not buy apple products out of sheer irrationality.
My brother would be one of these. He would happly pay more for a non-Apple device.
The irrational hatred for Apple devices is incredible to watch.
I think part of the reason for this is that these people like being able to easily choose the particular applications and hardware that they use in the computer world. Being forced to use particular applications and/or hardware rubs some people the wrong way. I always feel that it is at least a left brain / right brain kind of thinking. This is part of why there will always be apple fans and anti-apple fans.
Well, this is a happy coincidence. I was going to throw out an "is this series any good?" question to the /. hordes, but, let's be honest, that would probably tell me nothing. But from other of your posts, I think you can give me a good opinion on that.
I'm not generally a fan of fantasy (notable exceptions: Nevèrÿon, selected Michael Moorcock, Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (although that was a _long_ time ago)), but I've liked Martin's SF short stories. Is this series worth the time investment?
It very much is. If you want you could wait for the tv show on HBO to air (April I believe) to see if you like it. The politics, story, characters, and setting are all very good and well worth reading.
Please, that's idiotic propaganda. MOBI is sufficiently open that Calibre has no trouble converting to it, and the Kindle will happily read unprotected MOBIs (hell, Calibre even understand how to load them on the Kindle for you... it appears as a simple USB mass storage device, after all). Meanwhile, the Kindle is cheaper, and has the best eInk display on the market right now. Even for the discerning geek who wants to avoid DRM, it's the best choice out there for a dedicated reading device, hands down.
All this may be true, but until it has good support for libraries there will be people who avoid it.
There aren't any non-DRM versions available for every book.
Virtually nothing on the best seller lists will be available without DRM.
So what you are really saying is you restrict your reading to those books which are released without DRM, which are often out-of-copyright works (old) or from a few authors that insist on being DRM free.
There are quite a lot of writers in some genres (fantasy/sci-fi for example) that usually have drm free books. You are correct that the more popular genres usually have less options for buying drm free books.
That said, they do save paper. I own a kindle, but I am still trying to figure out how much money I want to give amazon. I am petitioning my favorite authors to directly publish, hopefully cheaper..
My advice is get a nook or sony e-ink reader since you can use them with the digital libraries and can use more open formats for books.
The Nook, Kibo, and (I think) Sony readers all use ePub, but the books still have DRM. As you yourself point out, just because it's an open standard (or a de facto one, like MP3) doesn't mean you're automatically free of DRM.
This is only really for the major e-book stores that are the default stores for the devices. There are currently several third party stores that sell e-books in multi-format (including without drm). Whenever I buy e-books for my device (sony eink) I shop around and try to get it in the non-drm format if available. I think part of the problem is that most people don't know of these third party stores so don't know that there is competition for buying e-books. I do hope that some sort of universal book format prevails, along with a good way to sell and/or trade said bought digital books. Until then the e-book market is a bit broken.
What I have found to be very annoying and detrimental to pc sales of games is also the lack of demos for the pc. This is much more about games that are cross platform. I am much more likely to buy it if I can demo it, but it is often the case that you just can't when it is also being released on the PS3 or XBOX. Though I guess in some cases the reverse can happen. I tried batman arkham asylum and the controls (with a game pad with dual analog sticks) were horrible. Pushing up ended up in you going down, down going up. Making it a non-playable game. These kind of things are why I don't by ported pc games without trying them first...
they mean streaming-wise as netflix's new model is going to be streaming content...
Careful with statements like that. I may like the streaming ability of Netflix, but I certainly wouldn't do it without the ability to get the discs via mail. I like the better quality (especially with blu-ray) and the wider selection. I do think that if onlive joined up with gamefly there would be something really good going on.