The dual-core G4's could become something of an iBook line "Look, kids - faster iBooks, low power consumption", while the 970's could still be used in a new Powerbook line. "Need to warm up your lap? You can still do that with the 970 Aluminum 15"!"
Apple would be wise to use both IBM and Motorola - that way if one causes a problem, Apple can turn to the other and say "So - what's your offer?"
India it would appear is working incredibly hard to drag itself out of its near third world state - it has one of the most prestigious technical universities in the world (the Indian Institute of Technology, who's graduates include Vinod Khosla, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc.).
It has programmers that may not be paid as much as their US counterparts, but for this very reason are being courted heavily.
So, you're the President of India. You're trying to make your country more money. Which will you do: churn your countries workers into Microsoft developers, or work with Open Source?
Microsoft Advantages:
Major desktop monopoly.
Large funds to finance new infrastructure, education, etc.
Major business ties, especially in the United States.
Open Source Advantages:
Free (as in Beer) - your students/average citizen can get ahold of it.
Free (as in Speech) - if your companies should ever start to compete with Windows in a major way (thereby making India more money from paid developers/consultants), you don't have to worry about some unknown factor messing them up *cough*DR-DOS*cough*.)
Open Source is making huge inroads into the server market. If you support Microsoft, you support Microsoft's growth, which *might* mean more money for India, but *certainly* means more money to Microsoft than India would get. Supporting Open Source and being the best at it guaruntees more money to India in the long haul.
Piracy - my understanding is that piracy is pretty much a problem in nearly every Asian/Middle Eastern country, including India. If you support Open Source now (which is pretty much pirate proof), you can actually cut down on piracy in the long term. (You can't steal what is free - which means you have money to spend on something else.) If India should develop major anti-piracy laws in the future, having much of your software being Open Source cuts down on all the nasty legal issues.
Decrease business overhead. Open Source software typically runs on cheaper components, so Indian businesses that use that can save money on hardware (and software, natch) with Open Source, which means more money to give to programmers/company bottom line. More money in the business sector means more money in citizens hands, and "trickle down" theory says "Hello!".
Broader variety of hardware support. If an Indian company were to come out with its own computer chip technology/plants to compete with Intel, Open Source would allow that company to have a quick access to applications (granted, there would be the issue of compilation/etc, but at least there would be a common base to start with).
I'm sure it wasn't easy for this gentleman to have to explain these ideas to Mr. Gates. I'm not saying that Mr. Gates is a bad person in general - but having a potential 1 billion market right in front of you and told that the competitor has the inside track (especially after all the charitable donations to that country) probably didn't help his appetite very much.
The interesting thing is how this will trickle out. Why did Unix make it big in the business world? Well, students trained on it, and when they entered the Work WorldTM, they said "Hey - I can make a Unix server and solve problem XYZ." This is something that Microsoft has bet on as they help finance education - churning out the folks who "know thier stuff".
If more companies are turning to Linux for their development/help desk needs, odds are, a student with an Open Source education will propose using Open Source tools to solve the problem.
It's very, very interesting. There are cracks appearing in the walls, and I'm wondering how much longer the flood will be held back.
Ah, well - at least Apple isn't going out of business this month. (And they're getting pretty good about supporting Open Source too. Hmmmmm....)
Most of the buzz on the PS3 indicates that it will be arriving in 2005. So why come out with a "Super PS2" in 2004 that will do all sorts of cool things (though, I'm certainly hoping "transferring memory data from standard PS2 memory card to memory stick/hard drive is one of them - I hate buying those things)?
I'm just weird enough that I'd want to wait the extra year and see if there's a PS3 and a "Super PS3" for 2005 - if you want to play games for $300, get a PS3, if you want to play games, record DVD's, have Tivo like abilities, etc, etc, etc, get the Super PS3.
This was the plot of David Brin's "Earth" - in the future, we create micro-black holes that will "dissolve" on their own unless we keep them going with our "gravity" technology. With a supply of protons being turned into total energy (like an anti-matter reaction, but you don't have all the messiness of storing a lot of anti-matter), you have a fairly harmless energy source that doesn't use oil.
It is an interesting idea. The biggest trick is how to a) make a black hole that small, and b) how to keep it from vanishing via Hawking's theory. But check out Earth - I thought it was one of this more interesting books.
Just as a thought, he may be talking specifically about the Xbox itself.
If you look at the Xbox, it's main hits have been:
a) Halo b) Sports games c) Racing games
Contrast this with the Playstation 2, which also has plenty of sports games (even though they don't look as good as on the Xbox), but also has a wealth of other games, especially in the RPG arena.
Most of the geek girls I know love RPG's. A good many of them also like good action games (Devil May Cry, etc), of which on the Xbox a "good" action game (except for Halo, Splinter Cell, and a haldful of others) is scarce.
If the Xbox wants to draw in more women, it has to do more than "sports and guns". It needs games that are also a story, other puzzle kinds of games that are fun and interesting.
Oh, and please don't think I'm saying that "women only like RPG's, Dance Dance Revolution, and the like". But their advertising for the Xbox (Dead or Alive Volleyball, anyone?) has certainly been male oriented. ("Wow! Look at the crap you can blow up in this game!")
But at least with Apple you can burn it to CD, and then either listen to it from there, or recode it at 320 Bits (so you theoritically don't lose any quality).
So even if Apple should totally bite the dust, there's still an option.
Or, you could actually buy the CD/music DVD itself if you ever get that freaky. The main thing I use the Apple store for is that 1 song on an entire CD I want - if I want the entire CD, I'll probably just go out and buy it so I have a "hard copy".
I'm not sure that even "locking it down" will help in the long run.
Remember the bit about Turbo Tax and how "locking down" their application caused people to simply move on.
If I have a choice between spending $150 - $200 for an operating system, or working with Linux, you can bet my wallet I'll probably go with Linux (especially if I've got 100+ computers in my place of business, and economic times are tough).
So it might help the situation a bit for those who "need" windows - until the first time they find a program that doesn't "require" windows, like moving to OpenOffice, etc.
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining...
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
For me, the key word is "pay for spam".
One of the reasons why sending advertisements over the Fax is now illegal (without prior authorization, etc, etc, etc) is because it costs *me* money to recieve *your* ad.
In the case of bulk snail mail, 100% of the costs (if you don't include me physically picking up the mail, looking at it, and tearing the latest "Want a 0% interest credit card that jumps to 30% later?" envelope as cost) is payed by the sender.
In the case of a fax, *I* pay the paper, toner, etc. So even at $0.01 per ad, if it wasn't stopped I could wind up paying hundreds/thousands a year for the honor of recieving ads.
In the case of spam email, I believe that the same conditions apply. While I might not pay directly $0.01 per "spam email sent", I am paying by having my web space taken up (for those with ISP's that limit their mail boxes to 5 - 10 MB). And if my business relies on emails, *your* spam interferes with my ability to do work, thereby costing me money.
Add in that most spammers forge their address, hijack (or at least use without permission "open relays" (who should be closed anyway, yes, I'm looking at you, China, Korea, and any other country who's causing this problem)) other people's mail servers (thereby costing the mail server money they did not want to spend on bandwidth, storage, processor, etc).
I should hope that the Senate should make a very simple anti-spam plan:
If you send an unwanted email as an advertisement, you must have a method of truly getting someone off of the list.
If you sell the email addresses of your clients, you should be required to state to whom they have been sold so you can opt out *before* you get spam mail.
There should be a "national opt-out" spam list that all spam senders must check before sending a message.
Violating these agreements, or sending another message after the user has "opted out" is punishable by a $1000 fine per email sent.
If you're going to suck the bandwidth off my old server, don't forget the Fear Effect 2 walkthrough.
I was torn about Fear Effect in general. There were parts of the game I liked, such as such of the puzzles, and the plot was certainly more mature than you'd find in other M rated games.
On the other hand, I think the whole "look, we're hot lesbian girls (maybe!) who have guns! Whoo!" was a little overdone. Did we really need Raine being sexually assaulted by a mechanical robot bug?
Fear Effect 3 looked to go further with the idea, but if they have the puzzle stuff down, it might be enjoyable.
Does this mean that the RIAA might be exaggerating other things? I mean, I know that every CD-ROM sale is used to pirate music, and that nobody uses them to back up documents/data/desktops/send information that's too big for a floppy or email.
Or that people are downloading 1,000,000 songs a week illegally over their T3 Internet connections and getting the full version of the albums after connecting for 60 hours a week and not going to job/school.
I mean, if you can't trust the RIAA, then who can you trust?
I agree with 99% of your post but I do have one small dicker point.
Since Apple is basing its DRM solution on AAC, which is an open standard, there's no reason in the world why other MP3 makers can't include it in their firmware, or even offer a patch. If companies can offer MP3/WVM/OGG support, then there's nothing that is stopping them from offering AAC.
It will probably come later in the year in anticipation of when Apple rolls out their service for Windows users. Assuming that Pressplay/Roxio will not be able to offer MP3's of their selectioin (which would give members of the RIAA brain hemorages), they'll probably stick with some open standard of DRM, which right now either means they go WVM, or go AAC. AAC will probably have more support, and unless they want to make their own proprietary standard (which will probably cause people like myself to go "splt!" at them), they'll have to support what Apple has introduced.
If nothing else, Apple made a right move using AAC as an open standard. Now they don't have to care if you buy an iPod or not if you use their service. Oh, sure, they'd prefer that you did, but as long as they get their $0.33 cut per song, they'll be just as happy if you by a Jukebox.
So far, I've never subscribed to any MMRPG, mainly because of children in the house that take away from time (so hard to play online when you have to hit the "pause" button), and also because at $10 a month, I'd have to really pick one and only play that.
With this, I think I could stomach paying the $20 a month (perhaps less at a "yearly subscription rate" and hook up to whatever I want. So if I want some Planetside shooting action, great. If I want to RPG a bit, I can stop playing Planetside for a week/month and come back to it later, and not worry about my user being deleted or something.
Sony's got a smart idea here. I hope they hook up more systems under the model, perhaps extend the offer to other third party companies, so you can pick and choose from a list. I wouldn't mind paying $20 a month, and clicking 3 or 4 games total from a list I'm going to use if it included 3rd party stuff like Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies, etc.
Of course, this does sound like someone else's Live service once it hits the third party stuff, but the difference would have to be "choice". I don't have to use Sony's all-you-can-eat plan if I don't want to, unlike Microsoft where their games are "Live or Nothing" all too often for online play. (Well, unless I want to tweak Mr. Router a bit.)
Damn! Well, if that's the case, maybe I'll wait to buy that Powerbook w/Superdrive I've been eyeing (since my wife always steals my laptop to play Super Collaspe and other Gamehouse games).
Hm.... It always come to this, isn't it?
int damn! = 1;
function buyNoworWait() {
if (computer==good) {
if (futureprices == damn!) {
wait(6_months);
}
butnowOrWait(); }
According to some rumor sites, Apple may already have ordered several thousand of these chips for new machines to debute in middle of June.
I'm not buying into it 100% myself, but as I don't plan on buying a new Powermac until next year (and turning my current one into either a Yellow Dog or OS X Server), I'm in no big rush.
My expectations is that the Powerbook/iBook line won't be updated until next year, when IBM can get the power requirements down for the 970 or its successor.
I've worked in the financial world for a bit, and I'm always surprised by how bad most counterfit bills look.
95% of the time, counterfeit bills are accepted by people who don't seem to notice that while the bill corners say $20, George Washington is in the center. Or that they're printed on normal grade paper.
I'm sure the government is making the change to the $20 for "big time" counterfeiters, but it seems like most of the time it can be prevented on the retail level by people just using their heads.
Star Wars VII: The Further Adventures of Star Wars
Luke: Hey, everybody! New Republic Senate: Luke!
(Luke walks up to the bar. Leia is standing behind it.)
Leia: Hey, Luke. How was work today? (He pours him a cup of coffee and pulls 2 cinnamon buns from her hair.)
Luke: Same old. Showed up, got tempted by the Dark Side, and my Dad kept going on about how when he was my age, he was already married with two unknown children out there.
Leia: (Rolls her eyes to the laugh track.) I think he just wants to become a grandfather before the Glowing Blue Light fades away.
(The bar door opens. The audience cheers as Han Solo walks into the room.)
Han: Heyyyy! (He hits the jukebox with a fist, making a holo-projector of dancing aliens appear.) Has anybody seen my blaster? (He pulls out a walkie-talkie from his side pocket.) I woke up in the Millenium Falcon with this strapped to my side.
Leia: I did that - you never call me when you're suppose to. I swear, you and that Wookie are having some weird love affair behind my back.
Han: How did you know? I mean, that's just silly, even though his fur is as soft as silk, and.... (He clears his throat.) Anyway, I brought you a present.
Leia: Another gold bikini?
Han: No... (He opens the door. There stands the former Queen/Senator/Love Puppy to Darth Vader - Amidala!)
Leia/Luke: Mom? We thought you were dead!
Amidala: No, your father had me frozen in carbonite, hoping to come back to me someday when the Emporer was dead.
Han: You could say she was naked and petrified.
(Laugh track and the audience goes "ahhhh" as Luke/Leia/Amidala/Han hug.)
Big titles: In Episode VIII, watch as C3PO remembers that he was made by Anakin, and could have saved everybody a lot of time by telling Uncle Owen and Luke Skywalker where he came from!
My old games Win98 based machine is now an 800 MHZ paperweight according to most "minimum games requirements" these days - while my newer Powermac has been working fine. (Heck, my Powerbook runs Jedi Knight II great.)
So since there are plenty of Tom Clancey games ported to the Mac (Ghost Recon, etc), there's no reason why Splinter Cell shouldn't be either.
Dumb question, as I don't see it answered in the Betanews, and someone who uses a Nomad might be able to answer.
The batteries - AA, or rechargable? I once had a Jukebox that was suppose to be able to charge via a separate AC adapter, but it would be nice if it could charge via USB 2.0. Just because I like less cords.
No, I'm not being a smart-ass. If they can put in WMV (which I wouldn't use, being an OS X/Linux guy, so I have no point), they should put in Ogg and AAC, since AAC is based on the MPEG-4 codec.
Then I could actually sit at my desk and try to decide - iPod, or Zen. If for no other reason than I like competition.
Re:SAIC is Employee-Owned - Employee-Ownership Roc
on
Inside SAIC
·
· Score: 1
I start working for SAIC next Monday - I am actually pretty stoked to see what's up inside the company.
Not to seem obtuse, but can't Aiwa come out with a firmware update that supports AAC? Most of the MP3 players I've seen have been able to issue firmware updates to support WMV, Org, and other formats - heck, my old Creative Labs Jukebox could be updated.
I'd think that most companies that sell MP3 players today would consider such an update.
As someone who switch to Macs last year, I read about the announcement a little after it happened, downloaded iTunes4 and gave it a test run.
I don't know about the connection errors others were reporting, as I didn't have any. I already own an iPod, so the AAC/MP3 issue isn't one for me as it is for some others making posts here. I also had no problem setting up my account - I had an account when I bought my first Mac a year ago, and just used that.
The biggest thing I noticed when I started it up was the ability to finally buy the 1 song off of a track I wanted. Bob Dylan is OK, but I just wanted "Growing in the Wind". That's it. A buck later, and I had it. Another 2 or 3 minutes later, it was on.
From there, I wound up spending $20 on the service. No problems, except that it didn't have everything I wanted (I'm still trying to get Queen's Bohemien Rhapsody). But I spend more in 2 days than I've spent on music in 1 year.
Is is perfect? No, but you don't need an iPod - you can burn the music to a regular audio CD if you like, and either rerip this to MP3 (with a loss of quality), or just play the CD in a regular player.
But so far, it's 95% of what I've wanted with online music sales. Hopefully they'll get more music on there, maybe even some game/anime music (as that stuff is *way* more expensive than it needs to be), and more players out there will start support AAC. I'm not worried about the latter - since its part of the MPEG-4 standard, that should only be a matter of time and a firmware upgrade later.
Slashdot Mirror
This makes a lot of sense, actually.
The dual-core G4's could become something of an iBook line "Look, kids - faster iBooks, low power consumption", while the 970's could still be used in a new Powerbook line. "Need to warm up your lap? You can still do that with the 970 Aluminum 15"!"
Apple would be wise to use both IBM and Motorola - that way if one causes a problem, Apple can turn to the other and say "So - what's your offer?"
It has programmers that may not be paid as much as their US counterparts, but for this very reason are being courted heavily.
So, you're the President of India. You're trying to make your country more money. Which will you do: churn your countries workers into Microsoft developers, or work with Open Source?
Microsoft Advantages:
Open Source Advantages:
I'm sure it wasn't easy for this gentleman to have to explain these ideas to Mr. Gates. I'm not saying that Mr. Gates is a bad person in general - but having a potential 1 billion market right in front of you and told that the competitor has the inside track (especially after all the charitable donations to that country) probably didn't help his appetite very much.
The interesting thing is how this will trickle out. Why did Unix make it big in the business world? Well, students trained on it, and when they entered the Work WorldTM, they said "Hey - I can make a Unix server and solve problem XYZ." This is something that Microsoft has bet on as they help finance education - churning out the folks who "know thier stuff".
If more companies are turning to Linux for their development/help desk needs, odds are, a student with an Open Source education will propose using Open Source tools to solve the problem.
It's very, very interesting. There are cracks appearing in the walls, and I'm wondering how much longer the flood will be held back.
Ah, well - at least Apple isn't going out of business this month. (And they're getting pretty good about supporting Open Source too. Hmmmmm....)
Here's what I'm curious about:
Most of the buzz on the PS3 indicates that it will be arriving in 2005. So why come out with a "Super PS2" in 2004 that will do all sorts of cool things (though, I'm certainly hoping "transferring memory data from standard PS2 memory card to memory stick/hard drive is one of them - I hate buying those things)?
I'm just weird enough that I'd want to wait the extra year and see if there's a PS3 and a "Super PS3" for 2005 - if you want to play games for $300, get a PS3, if you want to play games, record DVD's, have Tivo like abilities, etc, etc, etc, get the Super PS3.
This was the plot of David Brin's "Earth" - in the future, we create micro-black holes that will "dissolve" on their own unless we keep them going with our "gravity" technology. With a supply of protons being turned into total energy (like an anti-matter reaction, but you don't have all the messiness of storing a lot of anti-matter), you have a fairly harmless energy source that doesn't use oil.
It is an interesting idea. The biggest trick is how to a) make a black hole that small, and b) how to keep it from vanishing via Hawking's theory. But check out Earth - I thought it was one of this more interesting books.
Just as a thought, he may be talking specifically about the Xbox itself.
If you look at the Xbox, it's main hits have been:
a) Halo
b) Sports games
c) Racing games
Contrast this with the Playstation 2, which also has plenty of sports games (even though they don't look as good as on the Xbox), but also has a wealth of other games, especially in the RPG arena.
Most of the geek girls I know love RPG's. A good many of them also like good action games (Devil May Cry, etc), of which on the Xbox a "good" action game (except for Halo, Splinter Cell, and a haldful of others) is scarce.
If the Xbox wants to draw in more women, it has to do more than "sports and guns". It needs games that are also a story, other puzzle kinds of games that are fun and interesting.
Oh, and please don't think I'm saying that "women only like RPG's, Dance Dance Revolution, and the like". But their advertising for the Xbox (Dead or Alive Volleyball, anyone?) has certainly been male oriented. ("Wow! Look at the crap you can blow up in this game!")
But at least with Apple you can burn it to CD, and then either listen to it from there, or recode it at 320 Bits (so you theoritically don't lose any quality).
So even if Apple should totally bite the dust, there's still an option.
Or, you could actually buy the CD/music DVD itself if you ever get that freaky. The main thing I use the Apple store for is that 1 song on an entire CD I want - if I want the entire CD, I'll probably just go out and buy it so I have a "hard copy".
The $7500 to fill up a 30 GB iPod assumes that you don't own a single CD that you already care about, or an MP3 collection of your own.
Just a small nitpick that drives me nuts whenever the figures are mentioned.
I'm not sure that even "locking it down" will help in the long run.
Remember the bit about Turbo Tax and how "locking down" their application caused people to simply move on.
If I have a choice between spending $150 - $200 for an operating system, or working with Linux, you can bet my wallet I'll probably go with Linux (especially if I've got 100+ computers in my place of business, and economic times are tough).
So it might help the situation a bit for those who "need" windows - until the first time they find a program that doesn't "require" windows, like moving to OpenOffice, etc.
For me, the key word is "pay for spam".
One of the reasons why sending advertisements over the Fax is now illegal (without prior authorization, etc, etc, etc) is because it costs *me* money to recieve *your* ad.
In the case of bulk snail mail, 100% of the costs (if you don't include me physically picking up the mail, looking at it, and tearing the latest "Want a 0% interest credit card that jumps to 30% later?" envelope as cost) is payed by the sender.
In the case of a fax, *I* pay the paper, toner, etc. So even at $0.01 per ad, if it wasn't stopped I could wind up paying hundreds/thousands a year for the honor of recieving ads.
In the case of spam email, I believe that the same conditions apply. While I might not pay directly $0.01 per "spam email sent", I am paying by having my web space taken up (for those with ISP's that limit their mail boxes to 5 - 10 MB). And if my business relies on emails, *your* spam interferes with my ability to do work, thereby costing me money.
Add in that most spammers forge their address, hijack (or at least use without permission "open relays" (who should be closed anyway, yes, I'm looking at you, China, Korea, and any other country who's causing this problem)) other people's mail servers (thereby costing the mail server money they did not want to spend on bandwidth, storage, processor, etc).
I should hope that the Senate should make a very simple anti-spam plan:
If you send an unwanted email as an advertisement, you must have a method of truly getting someone off of the list.
If you sell the email addresses of your clients, you should be required to state to whom they have been sold so you can opt out *before* you get spam mail.
There should be a "national opt-out" spam list that all spam senders must check before sending a message.
Violating these agreements, or sending another message after the user has "opted out" is punishable by a $1000 fine per email sent.
If you're going to suck the bandwidth off my old server, don't forget the Fear Effect 2 walkthrough.
I was torn about Fear Effect in general. There were parts of the game I liked, such as such of the puzzles, and the plot was certainly more mature than you'd find in other M rated games.
On the other hand, I think the whole "look, we're hot lesbian girls (maybe!) who have guns! Whoo!" was a little overdone. Did we really need Raine being sexually assaulted by a mechanical robot bug?
Fear Effect 3 looked to go further with the idea, but if they have the puzzle stuff down, it might be enjoyable.
Does this mean that the RIAA might be exaggerating other things? I mean, I know that every CD-ROM sale is used to pirate music, and that nobody uses them to back up documents/data/desktops/send information that's too big for a floppy or email.
Or that people are downloading 1,000,000 songs a week illegally over their T3 Internet connections and getting the full version of the albums after connecting for 60 hours a week and not going to job/school.
I mean, if you can't trust the RIAA, then who can you trust?
I agree with 99% of your post but I do have one small dicker point.
Since Apple is basing its DRM solution on AAC, which is an open standard, there's no reason in the world why other MP3 makers can't include it in their firmware, or even offer a patch. If companies can offer MP3/WVM/OGG support, then there's nothing that is stopping them from offering AAC.
It will probably come later in the year in anticipation of when Apple rolls out their service for Windows users. Assuming that Pressplay/Roxio will not be able to offer MP3's of their selectioin (which would give members of the RIAA brain hemorages), they'll probably stick with some open standard of DRM, which right now either means they go WVM, or go AAC. AAC will probably have more support, and unless they want to make their own proprietary standard (which will probably cause people like myself to go "splt!" at them), they'll have to support what Apple has introduced.
If nothing else, Apple made a right move using AAC as an open standard. Now they don't have to care if you buy an iPod or not if you use their service. Oh, sure, they'd prefer that you did, but as long as they get their $0.33 cut per song, they'll be just as happy if you by a Jukebox.
So far, I've never subscribed to any MMRPG, mainly because of children in the house that take away from time (so hard to play online when you have to hit the "pause" button), and also because at $10 a month, I'd have to really pick one and only play that.
With this, I think I could stomach paying the $20 a month (perhaps less at a "yearly subscription rate" and hook up to whatever I want. So if I want some Planetside shooting action, great. If I want to RPG a bit, I can stop playing Planetside for a week/month and come back to it later, and not worry about my user being deleted or something.
Sony's got a smart idea here. I hope they hook up more systems under the model, perhaps extend the offer to other third party companies, so you can pick and choose from a list. I wouldn't mind paying $20 a month, and clicking 3 or 4 games total from a list I'm going to use if it included 3rd party stuff like Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies, etc.
Of course, this does sound like someone else's Live service once it hits the third party stuff, but the difference would have to be "choice". I don't have to use Sony's all-you-can-eat plan if I don't want to, unlike Microsoft where their games are "Live or Nothing" all too often for online play. (Well, unless I want to tweak Mr. Router a bit.)
Damn! Well, if that's the case, maybe I'll wait to buy that Powerbook w/Superdrive I've been eyeing (since my wife always steals my laptop to play Super Collaspe and other Gamehouse games).
Hm.... It always come to this, isn't it?
int damn! = 1;
function buyNoworWait() {
if (computer==good) {
if (futureprices == damn!) {
wait(6_months);
}
butnowOrWait();
}
According to some rumor sites, Apple may already have ordered several thousand of these chips for new machines to debute in middle of June.
I'm not buying into it 100% myself, but as I don't plan on buying a new Powermac until next year (and turning my current one into either a Yellow Dog or OS X Server), I'm in no big rush.
My expectations is that the Powerbook/iBook line won't be updated until next year, when IBM can get the power requirements down for the 970 or its successor.
I could have used this last week when I was trying to transfer 15 G of music from my Powermac to my Powerbook. Over an Airport link.
I finally broke down and plugged in a hub and did it over Ethernet - but if I had used my Firewire cable, it would have finished in 30 seconds.
I've worked in the financial world for a bit, and I'm always surprised by how bad most counterfit bills look.
95% of the time, counterfeit bills are accepted by people who don't seem to notice that while the bill corners say $20, George Washington is in the center. Or that they're printed on normal grade paper.
I'm sure the government is making the change to the $20 for "big time" counterfeiters, but it seems like most of the time it can be prevented on the retail level by people just using their heads.
Star Wars VII: The Further Adventures of Star Wars
Luke: Hey, everybody!
New Republic Senate: Luke!
(Luke walks up to the bar. Leia is standing behind it.)
Leia: Hey, Luke. How was work today? (He pours him a cup of coffee and pulls 2 cinnamon buns from her hair.)
Luke: Same old. Showed up, got tempted by the Dark Side, and my Dad kept going on about how when he was my age, he was already married with two unknown children out there.
Leia: (Rolls her eyes to the laugh track.) I think he just wants to become a grandfather before the Glowing Blue Light fades away.
(The bar door opens. The audience cheers as Han Solo walks into the room.)
Han: Heyyyy! (He hits the jukebox with a fist, making a holo-projector of dancing aliens appear.) Has anybody seen my blaster? (He pulls out a walkie-talkie from his side pocket.) I woke up in the Millenium Falcon with this strapped to my side.
Leia: I did that - you never call me when you're suppose to. I swear, you and that Wookie are having some weird love affair behind my back.
Han: How did you know? I mean, that's just silly, even though his fur is as soft as silk, and.... (He clears his throat.) Anyway, I brought you a present.
Leia: Another gold bikini?
Han: No... (He opens the door. There stands the former Queen/Senator/Love Puppy to Darth Vader - Amidala!)
Leia/Luke: Mom? We thought you were dead!
Amidala: No, your father had me frozen in carbonite, hoping to come back to me someday when the Emporer was dead.
Han: You could say she was naked and petrified.
(Laugh track and the audience goes "ahhhh" as Luke/Leia/Amidala/Han hug.)
Big titles: In Episode VIII, watch as C3PO remembers that he was made by Anakin, and could have saved everybody a lot of time by telling Uncle Owen and Luke Skywalker where he came from!
Now, imagine this animated. Scary, huh?
My old games Win98 based machine is now an 800 MHZ paperweight according to most "minimum games requirements" these days - while my newer Powermac has been working fine. (Heck, my Powerbook runs Jedi Knight II great.)
So since there are plenty of Tom Clancey games ported to the Mac (Ghost Recon, etc), there's no reason why Splinter Cell shouldn't be either.
Dumb question, as I don't see it answered in the Betanews, and someone who uses a Nomad might be able to answer.
The batteries - AA, or rechargable? I once had a Jukebox that was suppose to be able to charge via a separate AC adapter, but it would be nice if it could charge via USB 2.0. Just because I like less cords.
No, I'm not being a smart-ass. If they can put in WMV (which I wouldn't use, being an OS X/Linux guy, so I have no point), they should put in Ogg and AAC, since AAC is based on the MPEG-4 codec.
Then I could actually sit at my desk and try to decide - iPod, or Zen. If for no other reason than I like competition.
I start working for SAIC next Monday - I am actually pretty stoked to see what's up inside the company.
I can tell you checking my recent history statement that's not true - I have 4 purchases for $1.98 from Tuesday.
Not to seem obtuse, but can't Aiwa come out with a firmware update that supports AAC? Most of the MP3 players I've seen have been able to issue firmware updates to support WMV, Org, and other formats - heck, my old Creative Labs Jukebox could be updated.
I'd think that most companies that sell MP3 players today would consider such an update.
As someone who switch to Macs last year, I read about the announcement a little after it happened, downloaded iTunes4 and gave it a test run.
I don't know about the connection errors others were reporting, as I didn't have any. I already own an iPod, so the AAC/MP3 issue isn't one for me as it is for some others making posts here. I also had no problem setting up my account - I had an account when I bought my first Mac a year ago, and just used that.
The biggest thing I noticed when I started it up was the ability to finally buy the 1 song off of a track I wanted. Bob Dylan is OK, but I just wanted "Growing in the Wind". That's it. A buck later, and I had it. Another 2 or 3 minutes later, it was on.
From there, I wound up spending $20 on the service. No problems, except that it didn't have everything I wanted (I'm still trying to get Queen's Bohemien Rhapsody). But I spend more in 2 days than I've spent on music in 1 year.
Is is perfect? No, but you don't need an iPod - you can burn the music to a regular audio CD if you like, and either rerip this to MP3 (with a loss of quality), or just play the CD in a regular player.
But so far, it's 95% of what I've wanted with online music sales. Hopefully they'll get more music on there, maybe even some game/anime music (as that stuff is *way* more expensive than it needs to be), and more players out there will start support AAC. I'm not worried about the latter - since its part of the MPEG-4 standard, that should only be a matter of time and a firmware upgrade later.