I doubt that. While Microsoft and Sony busy themselves building set top convergence boxes (and trying to be everything and the kitchen sink), Nintendo could easily focus on the thing they've always been great at: making good, fun games, and a knockout console system. I don't think that set top boxes or online console gaming are really gonna fly anyway: still, not enough people have broadband... and I think the only people actually interested in set top boxes are those that think net-connected fridges and toasters are cool (which in my opinion is a ridiculous idea).
That, and they seem to be taking the indirect route to lashing out at those who share their precious pop music away from the grasp of the RIAA. Sure the MPAA managed to extend their long arm up to Norway and grap Jon Johansen... but China is another matter. So they go about the indirect route, getting the big ISP's to block the site, and, in effect, taking down the site for a good chunk of the world. The message seems to be... "music sharers...you can't hide from us."
You're probably right. There's still plenty of great games out there. There are just a *whole* lot more crappy ones, and wading through the junkyards of unoriginality can be a chore.
My guess is the only reason Apple would ever build an x86 (or other platform of your choice... Sun, MIPS, HP-PA, Alpha, etc...) is if their hardware sales went into the dumps and stayed there. This would be an unsurprising deja-vu if they were forced to do this... sounds a bit like NeXT, doesn't it? Apple has been pushing their software more and more (witness iDVD, iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, etc), so they could probably theoretically make a move to just software.
That said, I don't believe that Apple would do this unless they *absolutely* had to, if say, both Motorola and IBM either went out of business or stopped making PPC chips (neither of which is likely to happen anytime soon). I could also see them making their own PC's, using high-end components and their own enhancements to keep things value-added and under their control (still a mac, just with a different processor). But that wouldn't happen for a VERY long time. Apple is still in the stages of making a major OS shift - why would they want to make their users make an even greater change with a platform shift? Furthermore, Apple is deeply commited to the G4 chip; their core OS and all their apps are optimized for it. Not to mention the apps by the major 3rd party developers - Photoshop, anyone? Apple will always have a market with the professional graphics and audio communities, but expanding beyond that may be difficult, as they are deeply committed to their current platform choices, for the forseeable future.
I don't worry much about evil NSA spooks and republicans taking away all my freedoms. There's enough cypherpunks and polticial activists around to keep the rebellion going. What I worry about is the masses willingly giving away their freedom and privacy, in the name of a false sense of "security" and "safety," two things which are NEVER absolute.
There are a number of p2p systems out there that are gaining in popularity fast, however, I'll leave you to do your own research. 'Tis better to keep such things relatively unknown for as long as possible. In the filesharing world, popularity = death, it seems.
Do you really think we in the US are any "better?" If I was to walk around town, carrying large signs saying I supported the Taliban, do you think most people would think to themeselves, "oh, he's just excercising his democratic right to free speech," and not give me another thought? I seriously doubt that. I'd imagine I'd be arrested rather quickly, and probably branded as one who "supports terrorism." (a lovely catch-all term for anything and anyone we don't like or are afraid of in this day and age)
There is another problem, is that given the current trends of dwindling rights on the internet, soon you may not be able to excersise your freedoms in the manner in which you think you are entitled. Witness Microsft's DRM technology, and things of that sort. Regardless of what YOU think your fair use rights shoud be, if there is technology in place to restrict those rights, then you are out of luck. Think of this: we think of disagreeing with our government as a right. But what if, in the future, due to a 1984-like society and government, the ability no longer existed to do so, as a result of modified and restricted language?
The comparison may be extreme, but still, don't assume that the rights you consider to be universal will hold true forever...
That would be discounting the innumerable social, political, and cultural aspects of music, which is the entire point of music. Music as a reflection of culture, music as a medium for socio/political commentary... entire volumes could be written on just one aspect of the said uses for music.
But oh no, music is "cosmetic and pointless." Now this is very true for most pop music these days (which is probably not what you meant), but not music as a whole.
Granted, Aphex Twin isn't exactly pop music, so the point is moot anyway...
Anybody who has played through Hideo Kojima's masterpiece of a PS2 game, Metal Gear Solid 2, will see immediate parallels with this "everything is a network" thing. MGS2 makes the connection between the data on the internet and the "data" contained in our DNA, and postulates some ways to preserve both.
Another good inspiration for this kind of philosophical techno-babble is The Diamond Age by, of course, Neil Stephenson. I think he hits it on the nose by essentially saying that in the future, the entire net will be fully peer to peer. These days, bandwdith concerns and searchability seem to be the main factors holding back p2p, but in the future, I think it's safe to say the bandwidth problem will be solved.
The organic qualities of Stephenson's futuristic Internet fascinate me. I don't want to spoil anything for those who haven't read the book, but suffice to say that Stephenson looks at what may happen when people are integrated into the network as well (through the primary plot device of the book, nanomachines).
Uhh, isn't Power4 that massive 4-CPU's-on-one-die server processor? The one that costs many thousands of dollars per processor? I'm sure that entry level power mac g5's selling for $6000 would go over real well.
Not.
Maybe Apple will use a derivative of the Power4 tech for their G5's, but probably not a direct copy.
Indeed. Is it not the US that is the rogue state, given the disrespect we have shown for several nuclear weapons treaties? George W and his cronies seem to have the opinion that only the US should be aggresive in foreign policy, and have nuclear weapons. This is where all those "God Bless America" bumper stickers lead to, a United States uses an ambiguous mandate from heaven to bully everybody else around.
heard this one over the grapevine known the internet: the axis of stupidity; Ariel Sharon, Tony Blair, and George Dubya.
Please explain how the Jaguar is/was anything resembling a well designed console. I certainly remember the Jaguar ads, trumpeting the system as the first 64-bit system, and to "Do The Math." If I recall, the Jaguar contained 4 16-bit processors. As everybody knows from the illfated Saturn, multiprocessor console systems don't really work. Unsurprisingly, it didn't sell, at all, and the games were terrible (all 5 of them).
Linux PPC is aimed at people who already have Macs, and want to do something interesting with them. An ancient power mac could easily become a decent file server or router, something it could never do running classic Mac OS. Keep in mind you need a Mac less than 2 years old to run OS X well. Or maybe you are just fed it up with Apple's OS, but like the hardware.
Indeed. IRC is likely the last, or perhaps the first, truly personal connector of people on the net. (AOL chat rooms don't come even close, and email personability has been largely destroyed by spam and Outlook worms.) I suppose there is AIM, but that serves a different purpose, that is, a private chat between two people who already know each other. in IRC, however, there do exist channels (special interest ones, mind you), where just about anybody familiar and interested in the channel's general raison d'etre is pretty much welcome. I won't post the name/server, lest swarms of script k1ddiots descend upon it; I'm sure you understand.;-)
Does the Gameboy Advance have a more powerful graphics card than most computers? No.
There was a Macintosh PS2 emu hoax going around a few months ago. Just a hoax, of course.
The really obvious thing that raises bells in my head is how much CPU/graphics power would be needed to emulate any next gen system. You need an okay system (PII, Voodoo 2) to emulate an N64/PSX with decent frames. There aren't aren't any Dreamcast emulators that can even run full games, and that thing's been out for years. Barring some new emulation technology that has been discovered, it is absolutely preposterous to think that this would NOT be a hoax.
A good analogy would be this: the PSX has a 33 mhz processor in it. Somehow, I really doubt that old 386, one of similar power to the ancient PSX, lying in the basement would be a good platform to run PSX roms on. The Xbox is of equivalent power to modern PC's. Traditionally, one must have far greater power than the original console to emulate its games with decent speed.
The pictures of the games they show are most likely screengrabs from a real Xbox. Where they taken from the emulator (assuming it is real at all, which it isn't) I would expect to see extreme visual artifacts, probably no textures, and maybe a fps counter reading ".1 fps."
Do older versions do such things, i.e. 1.7b? I didn't upgrade, cuz 1.8 has a bunch of useless shit (mp3 player that doesn't work), and gives you WAY less options to toy with.
Sony is getting ready to release a combination ethernet/adapter 40 gig hard drive upgrade for your PS2. It's already available in Japan, as the linux kit. IIRC, the Linux kit comes with a keyboard and mouse.
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AFAIK, no. There is a good bit of other good techno music on the soundtrack though.
I doubt that. While Microsoft and Sony busy themselves building set top convergence boxes (and trying to be everything and the kitchen sink), Nintendo could easily focus on the thing they've always been great at: making good, fun games, and a knockout console system. I don't think that set top boxes or online console gaming are really gonna fly anyway: still, not enough people have broadband... and I think the only people actually interested in set top boxes are those that think net-connected fridges and toasters are cool (which in my opinion is a ridiculous idea).
Supposedly Napster did just that.... but unfortunately Napster has pretty much gone the way of the dodo.
That, and they seem to be taking the indirect route to lashing out at those who share their precious pop music away from the grasp of the RIAA. Sure the MPAA managed to extend their long arm up to Norway and grap Jon Johansen... but China is another matter. So they go about the indirect route, getting the big ISP's to block the site, and, in effect, taking down the site for a good chunk of the world. The message seems to be... "music sharers...you can't hide from us."
You're probably right. There's still plenty of great games out there. There are just a *whole* lot more crappy ones, and wading through the junkyards of unoriginality can be a chore.
Only for the better. It's been said that if man understood LSD, then he would understand consciousness (or something to that effect).
My guess is the only reason Apple would ever build an x86 (or other platform of your choice... Sun, MIPS, HP-PA, Alpha, etc...) is if their hardware sales went into the dumps and stayed there. This would be an unsurprising deja-vu if they were forced to do this... sounds a bit like NeXT, doesn't it? Apple has been pushing their software more and more (witness iDVD, iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, etc), so they could probably theoretically make a move to just software.
That said, I don't believe that Apple would do this unless they *absolutely* had to, if say, both Motorola and IBM either went out of business or stopped making PPC chips (neither of which is likely to happen anytime soon). I could also see them making their own PC's, using high-end components and their own enhancements to keep things value-added and under their control (still a mac, just with a different processor). But that wouldn't happen for a VERY long time. Apple is still in the stages of making a major OS shift - why would they want to make their users make an even greater change with a platform shift? Furthermore, Apple is deeply commited to the G4 chip; their core OS and all their apps are optimized for it. Not to mention the apps by the major 3rd party developers - Photoshop, anyone? Apple will always have a market with the professional graphics and audio communities, but expanding beyond that may be difficult, as they are deeply committed to their current platform choices, for the forseeable future.
I don't worry much about evil NSA spooks and republicans taking away all my freedoms. There's enough cypherpunks and polticial activists around to keep the rebellion going. What I worry about is the masses willingly giving away their freedom and privacy, in the name of a false sense of "security" and "safety," two things which are NEVER absolute.
There are a number of p2p systems out there that are gaining in popularity fast, however, I'll leave you to do your own research. 'Tis better to keep such things relatively unknown for as long as possible. In the filesharing world, popularity = death, it seems.
Do you really think we in the US are any "better?" If I was to walk around town, carrying large signs saying I supported the Taliban, do you think most people would think to themeselves, "oh, he's just excercising his democratic right to free speech," and not give me another thought? I seriously doubt that. I'd imagine I'd be arrested rather quickly, and probably branded as one who "supports terrorism." (a lovely catch-all term for anything and anyone we don't like or are afraid of in this day and age)
There is another problem, is that given the current trends of dwindling rights on the internet, soon you may not be able to excersise your freedoms in the manner in which you think you are entitled. Witness Microsft's DRM technology, and things of that sort. Regardless of what YOU think your fair use rights shoud be, if there is technology in place to restrict those rights, then you are out of luck. Think of this: we think of disagreeing with our government as a right. But what if, in the future, due to a 1984-like society and government, the ability no longer existed to do so, as a result of modified and restricted language?
The comparison may be extreme, but still, don't assume that the rights you consider to be universal will hold true forever...
Doesn't this describe music in its entirety?
That would be discounting the innumerable social, political, and cultural aspects of music, which is the entire point of music. Music as a reflection of culture, music as a medium for socio/political commentary... entire volumes could be written on just one aspect of the said uses for music.
But oh no, music is "cosmetic and pointless." Now this is very true for most pop music these days (which is probably not what you meant), but not music as a whole.
Granted, Aphex Twin isn't exactly pop music, so the point is moot anyway...
Anybody who has played through Hideo Kojima's masterpiece of a PS2 game, Metal Gear Solid 2, will see immediate parallels with this "everything is a network" thing. MGS2 makes the connection between the data on the internet and the "data" contained in our DNA, and postulates some ways to preserve both.
Another good inspiration for this kind of philosophical techno-babble is The Diamond Age by, of course, Neil Stephenson. I think he hits it on the nose by essentially saying that in the future, the entire net will be fully peer to peer. These days, bandwdith concerns and searchability seem to be the main factors holding back p2p, but in the future, I think it's safe to say the bandwidth problem will be solved.
The organic qualities of Stephenson's futuristic Internet fascinate me. I don't want to spoil anything for those who haven't read the book, but suffice to say that Stephenson looks at what may happen when people are integrated into the network as well (through the primary plot device of the book, nanomachines).
Maybe, but a lot of Max Payne was gritty (albiet well done) realism. All the game textures are from photo sources, all the guns are real, etc...
Uhh, isn't Power4 that massive 4-CPU's-on-one-die server processor? The one that costs many thousands of dollars per processor? I'm sure that entry level power mac g5's selling for $6000 would go over real well.
Not.
Maybe Apple will use a derivative of the Power4 tech for their G5's, but probably not a direct copy.
If you look at it, what they're actually claiming a patent on is collecting people's scores and putting them on the WWW.
Well, that's kinda been done too, with Unreal Tournament's ngWorldStats system, and other's I'd imagine.
Indeed. Is it not the US that is the rogue state, given the disrespect we have shown for several nuclear weapons treaties? George W and his cronies seem to have the opinion that only the US should be aggresive in foreign policy, and have nuclear weapons. This is where all those "God Bless America" bumper stickers lead to, a United States uses an ambiguous mandate from heaven to bully everybody else around.
heard this one over the grapevine known the internet: the axis of stupidity; Ariel Sharon, Tony Blair, and George Dubya.
Well, the rant isn't really about the dot coms, but more about human nature and the concept of respect on the internet.
Macs thankfully use Command instead of that evil Control key - much less hand contortions that way.
Please explain how the Jaguar is/was anything resembling a well designed console. I certainly remember the Jaguar ads, trumpeting the system as the first 64-bit system, and to "Do The Math." If I recall, the Jaguar contained 4 16-bit processors. As everybody knows from the illfated Saturn, multiprocessor console systems don't really work. Unsurprisingly, it didn't sell, at all, and the games were terrible (all 5 of them).
Linux PPC is aimed at people who already have Macs, and want to do something interesting with them. An ancient power mac could easily become a decent file server or router, something it could never do running classic Mac OS. Keep in mind you need a Mac less than 2 years old to run OS X well. Or maybe you are just fed it up with Apple's OS, but like the hardware.
Indeed. IRC is likely the last, or perhaps the first, truly personal connector of people on the net. (AOL chat rooms don't come even close, and email personability has been largely destroyed by spam and Outlook worms.) I suppose there is AIM, but that serves a different purpose, that is, a private chat between two people who already know each other. in IRC, however, there do exist channels (special interest ones, mind you), where just about anybody familiar and interested in the channel's general raison d'etre is pretty much welcome. I won't post the name/server, lest swarms of script k1ddiots descend upon it; I'm sure you understand. ;-)
Nah, I know the guy. He's quite serious about this.
As a resident of Charlottesville, good luck, Waldo.
Does the Gameboy Advance have a more powerful graphics card than most computers? No.
There was a Macintosh PS2 emu hoax going around a few months ago. Just a hoax, of course.
The really obvious thing that raises bells in my head is how much CPU/graphics power would be needed to emulate any next gen system. You need an okay system (PII, Voodoo 2) to emulate an N64/PSX with decent frames. There aren't aren't any Dreamcast emulators that can even run full games, and that thing's been out for years. Barring some new emulation technology that has been discovered, it is absolutely preposterous to think that this would NOT be a hoax.
A good analogy would be this: the PSX has a 33 mhz processor in it. Somehow, I really doubt that old 386, one of similar power to the ancient PSX, lying in the basement would be a good platform to run PSX roms on. The Xbox is of equivalent power to modern PC's. Traditionally, one must have far greater power than the original console to emulate its games with decent speed.
The pictures of the games they show are most likely screengrabs from a real Xbox. Where they taken from the emulator (assuming it is real at all, which it isn't) I would expect to see extreme visual artifacts, probably no textures, and maybe a fps counter reading ".1 fps."
Do older versions do such things, i.e. 1.7b? I didn't upgrade, cuz 1.8 has a bunch of useless shit (mp3 player that doesn't work), and gives you WAY less options to toy with.
Sony is getting ready to release a combination ethernet/adapter 40 gig hard drive upgrade for your PS2. It's already available in Japan, as the linux kit. IIRC, the Linux kit comes with a keyboard and mouse.