"Let us not forget that they are spending, allegedly, 1 billion dollars to repair the defective Xbox line, instead of going the likley cheaper route of a class action suite."
Are you complaining that MS is spending money to actually fix people's Xboxes rather than forcing owners to sue them? I'm not sure that fits in well with the rest of your argument.
Some things the good old boys network can't prevent. I'm sure he's in for a cushy life now, even though they couldn't save him there'll be board memberships and "consulting" jobs flowing in for the rest of his life.
Telltale's been working on the engine they used for Sam and Max with two previous episodic games based on the Bone characters... I played them through last weekend and had a great time. Same kind of style, slightly different humor but still hilarious. http://www.telltalegames.com/bone
The first episode is kind of short, but download both and it's great value for money. There's nothing like seeing a full size cow coathanger itself on a tree branch at full gallop...
Sure, which is why I also mentioned 1024x768. Also, very few monitors I looked at were actually 1600x1200. Most of the 17-19inch monitors had a native res of 1280x1024, which doesn't really divide neatly into any standard screen res.
My point was even though there might be an easy division for some smaller screen resolutions, the monitor will really show how good the internal software is when things don't match exactly.
My bad, I originally found the tomshardware link from a forum post in the anandtech forums. This was where I originally did the research before I bought the monitor.
I recently bought a Sony SDM-S204/B 20.1" LCD and while pretty pricey, it looks amazing both playing games and on the desktop. I did quite a bit of research on these and it seems like the response time stats given by manufacturers are pretty meaningless - they vary widely in the specification measurements.
Basically, the ISO standard measures the time taken to move a pixel from totally black to totally white (actually to within a small percentage). This ISO standard for response times is not very good and needs to be replaced - mostly because this is not a typical scenario, pixels are much more likely to be moving from some percentage on to some percentage off, or vice versa. If you have a major colour change, the voltage differential is going to be much greater so the movement will be faster. Panels are being created that manipulate the standard measurements to only improve the black to white transitions, totally ignoring the common case scenario for benchmarking performance.
This anandtech article gives a pretty good (and brief) explanation on why these times are basically completely meaningless.
One other thing to be wary of is the interpolation methods some of the cheaper monitors use when not displaying in native resolutions. Try setting the desktop to 800x600 and even 640x480 in the store just to see how fuzzy things get. The sony has a native resolution of 1600x1200, but I don't often get to play games in that res - but running 3d and 2d games in 1024x768 and 800x600 even both still look fantastic. This wasn't the case with my previous (cheap) lcd, and it certainly wasn't the case with a lot of the monitors I checked out in the store.
It's extremely difficult to develop and maintain on any enterprise size system. One of the big problems management has with automation I've found is that once they've put the money into initally developing the automation, they think it will run completely automatically forever more.
From my personal experience at one of the world's largest software companies, automation maintenance for even a small suite (200-300 tests, 10 dedicated machines) is a full time job. That means one person's entire responsibility is making sure the machines are running, the tests aren't returning passes and fails for reasons other than they are actually running the tests, and making changes to the automation both when either the hardware or software changes. This person must know the automation suite as well as the tests attempting to be performed intimately, and must also be willing to spend his days being a lab jockey. It's usually pretty difficult to find these people.
My point here is that even after spending many dev or test hours developing automation, in no way is it suddenly complete. There is no magic bullet to replace a human tester, the only thing you can do is try and improve his productivity by giving him better tools.
From the reviews I've read, it really looks like they spent a serious amount of time building the cities to be almost photo realistic, but they failed to finish off populating them.
I guess their financial backers finally got sick of waiting and pushed out an unfinished product. Hopefully driver 4 can reuse the city models and textures - leaving a lot more time to add actual gameplay.
Hmm, interesting. After reading some of your other comments I think I might pick it up again for another look. I particularly like the fact that once someone or a group of people discover a tech, it's available for everyone. That's the kind of community spirit I was after when I originally tried atitd out - after getting kind of jaded with the "me first" attitude of basically every online game I've played I was looking for something different.
As far as the backlogged legal system, it sounds to me like this is a simple resource problem. With only a couple of devs I can understand how a delay like that can happen. Throw a couple of full time law implementers at the problem and I'm sure this could be sorted - surely it would cut down on the need for legions of support staff the larger mmo games have.
Totally, it felt like everquest's crafting system except that was the whole game. (arrgh, metal bits, no more!)
One thing that is really cool is the legal system, the devs have spent a considerable amount of time on this and I really think it shows in the community they've developed.
Some of the larger mmorpg's should look long and hard at the way these guys support and maintain an almost "self regulating" group of gamers.
Mine has been fantastic, I love it. The mouse is super cool and works great with windows media center. Batteries in the keyboard aren't rechargable, but they tend to last a month or so (4 x AA).
If you do get a HDTV, spring for the component video output for your gamecube. I didn't really notice the difference on the PS2 from the composite, but zelda looks spectacular.
Also, make sure you get a model that has decent stretch modes to convert to widescreen - I have a model that just stretches the last 10% of the edges so it doesn't make people look fat, and I watch absolutely everything in full screen (no letterboxing!). This is especially important because of the lack of widescreen pictures out there...
I can see this being the next killer app for somebody - I'd like to think an enterprising startup - but unfortunately, the only people with the resources to do this 'properly', ie. make money off the idea, are the record companies or some of their lackeys (whichever company pays the millions of dollars for the music rights) or the existing media outlets which already have access to the music, the news, the traffic, and the advertisers.
The problem with this is as soon as you have existing media moving into a new media format, you bring with it all the baggage of the old methods of doing things. Sure, it might be customisable, but exactly how much?
Don't kid yourself, if this takes off you'll still end up listening to the new Britney single four or five times a day, even with the 'Annoying Manufactured Pop' checkbox turned off.
It's interesting to note that Amazon's brand value has managed to rise - in spite of haemorraging money left right and center ever since its inception..
I'd have to say that Amazon's entire value is in the brand - there's just too many companies that follow the same business model for it to be considered unique anymore. It shows just how much a couple of billion dollars in adverts and specials can buy.
This has some pretty cool implications for virtual reality: if scientists can figure out how to hook into the vision nerves, and this looks like a great start, we could soon "plug in" matrix style (although hopefully without the agonising pain) to external visual inputs.
The implant itself, while the benificiaries seem to be from only one kind of eye problem for the time being, seems to be an indicator of a coming rush of "bionic" implants that will change the way humans live, or at least wealthy humans. I seem to remember reading many science fiction books that project this future...
I for one am looking forward to reading slashdot by subvocalising (Andrew Wiggan style) a command to the implanted screen in my eye, and seeing it as a "full screen" 3d panoramic view, where the full screen is just that... an all encompassing virtual view.
I don't think this can be regulated with any kind of world body - you'd just end up with the UN of commerce, which would more than likely end up as completely ineffectual.
There are no ready solutions to this problem. This is why I said:
This is a major part of the problem. The US is just one country - and while the laws may be fairly strict there, there's always going to be somewhere else a company can set up shop without having to worry about this.
I'm not sure if I'm the one kidding myself - big business will always have money, and there's nothing politicians like more than money - it's their livelyhood. They won't get re-elected without a large campaign fund, and no matter what anyone says, the easiest way to get lots of money is to make a few 'concessions' to business - they'll make it worth the governments' while.
My point is that the government is not always the people anymore - look at the DMCA for example. This was a law put in place by corporations for corporations, and look at the consequences now. Perhaps you should look a little past the rosy democratic society you think you live in, and check out the real world.
These large companies will in the very near future be as powerful, if not eventually totally replacing, individual governments, because they have one ability governments don't have: the legal right (ie. no war necessary) to expand worldwide.
With the current problems of the SDRAM/RDRAM saga looming, I'm not sure if another compatibility issue is needed. This sounds like it sits on the motherboard, although the article doesn't quite specify this, producing yet another problem into the notoriously unreliable motherboard market.
At least for home PCs, I'm not seeing this as a real bonus, or a tech that we'll see for quite a while. The market should concentrate on getting a reliable, supported (and preferably non-licensed) RAM tech out and in full production. The more variants of ram being produced, the lower the supply of each one, and therefore higher costs for all.
Slashdot Mirror
"Let us not forget that they are spending, allegedly, 1 billion dollars to repair the defective Xbox line, instead of going the likley cheaper route of a class action suite."
Are you complaining that MS is spending money to actually fix people's Xboxes rather than forcing owners to sue them? I'm not sure that fits in well with the rest of your argument.
try nintendo.com, they have remotes and nunchucks in stock, plus a flat $5 shipping which is nice.
Some things the good old boys network can't prevent. I'm sure he's in for a cushy life now, even though they couldn't save him there'll be board memberships and "consulting" jobs flowing in for the rest of his life.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_rules_foot ball_slang: coathanger - dangerous high tackle
:) The sound effects might need to be tweaked a bit though...
But hey, your definition works too
Telltale's been working on the engine they used for Sam and Max with two previous episodic games based on the Bone characters... I played them through last weekend and had a great time. Same kind of style, slightly different humor but still hilarious. http://www.telltalegames.com/bone
The first episode is kind of short, but download both and it's great value for money. There's nothing like seeing a full size cow coathanger itself on a tree branch at full gallop...
WinFS isn't shipping. Ever. The project has been completely cancelled, you may see some minor tech bubble up to SQL Server but that's it.
Sure, which is why I also mentioned 1024x768. Also, very few monitors I looked at were actually 1600x1200. Most of the 17-19inch monitors had a native res of 1280x1024, which doesn't really divide neatly into any standard screen res.
My point was even though there might be an easy division for some smaller screen resolutions, the monitor will really show how good the internal software is when things don't match exactly.
My bad, I originally found the tomshardware link from a forum post in the anandtech forums. This was where I originally did the research before I bought the monitor.
Nope, my old LCD only had a max res of 1024x768, and 800x600 looked terrible.
I recently bought a Sony SDM-S204/B 20.1" LCD and while pretty pricey, it looks amazing both playing games and on the desktop. I did quite a bit of research on these and it seems like the response time stats given by manufacturers are pretty meaningless - they vary widely in the specification measurements.
Basically, the ISO standard measures the time taken to move a pixel from totally black to totally white (actually to within a small percentage). This ISO standard for response times is not very good and needs to be replaced - mostly because this is not a typical scenario, pixels are much more likely to be moving from some percentage on to some percentage off, or vice versa. If you have a major colour change, the voltage differential is going to be much greater so the movement will be faster. Panels are being created that manipulate the standard measurements to only improve the black to white transitions, totally ignoring the common case scenario for benchmarking performance. This anandtech article gives a pretty good (and brief) explanation on why these times are basically completely meaningless.
One other thing to be wary of is the interpolation methods some of the cheaper monitors use when not displaying in native resolutions. Try setting the desktop to 800x600 and even 640x480 in the store just to see how fuzzy things get. The sony has a native resolution of 1600x1200, but I don't often get to play games in that res - but running 3d and 2d games in 1024x768 and 800x600 even both still look fantastic. This wasn't the case with my previous (cheap) lcd, and it certainly wasn't the case with a lot of the monitors I checked out in the store.
It's extremely difficult to develop and maintain on any enterprise size system. One of the big problems management has with automation I've found is that once they've put the money into initally developing the automation, they think it will run completely automatically forever more.
From my personal experience at one of the world's largest software companies, automation maintenance for even a small suite (200-300 tests, 10 dedicated machines) is a full time job. That means one person's entire responsibility is making sure the machines are running, the tests aren't returning passes and fails for reasons other than they are actually running the tests, and making changes to the automation both when either the hardware or software changes. This person must know the automation suite as well as the tests attempting to be performed intimately, and must also be willing to spend his days being a lab jockey. It's usually pretty difficult to find these people.
My point here is that even after spending many dev or test hours developing automation, in no way is it suddenly complete. There is no magic bullet to replace a human tester, the only thing you can do is try and improve his productivity by giving him better tools.
-tsf
From the reviews I've read, it really looks like they spent a serious amount of time building the cities to be almost photo realistic, but they failed to finish off populating them.
I guess their financial backers finally got sick of waiting and pushed out an unfinished product. Hopefully driver 4 can reuse the city models and textures - leaving a lot more time to add actual gameplay.
Hmm, interesting. After reading some of your other comments I think I might pick it up again for another look. I particularly like the fact that once someone or a group of people discover a tech, it's available for everyone. That's the kind of community spirit I was after when I originally tried atitd out - after getting kind of jaded with the "me first" attitude of basically every online game I've played I was looking for something different.
As far as the backlogged legal system, it sounds to me like this is a simple resource problem. With only a couple of devs I can understand how a delay like that can happen. Throw a couple of full time law implementers at the problem and I'm sure this could be sorted - surely it would cut down on the need for legions of support staff the larger mmo games have.
Totally, it felt like everquest's crafting system except that was the whole game. (arrgh, metal bits, no more!)
One thing that is really cool is the legal system, the devs have spent a considerable amount of time on this and I really think it shows in the community they've developed.
Some of the larger mmorpg's should look long and hard at the way these guys support and maintain an almost "self regulating" group of gamers.
Mine has been fantastic, I love it. The mouse is super cool and works great with windows media center. Batteries in the keyboard aren't rechargable, but they tend to last a month or so (4 x AA).
If you do get a HDTV, spring for the component video output for your gamecube. I didn't really notice the difference on the PS2 from the composite, but zelda looks spectacular.
Also, make sure you get a model that has decent stretch modes to convert to widescreen - I have a model that just stretches the last 10% of the edges so it doesn't make people look fat, and I watch absolutely everything in full screen (no letterboxing!). This is especially important because of the lack of widescreen pictures out there...
Matsushita has confirmed a DVD version of the gamecube will be released shortly after Nintendo's version.
This article was released yesterday on cube.ign.com.
I'll be waiting for this one for sure!
tsf.
I can see this being the next killer app for somebody - I'd like to think an enterprising startup - but unfortunately, the only people with the resources to do this 'properly', ie. make money off the idea, are the record companies or some of their lackeys (whichever company pays the millions of dollars for the music rights) or the existing media outlets which already have access to the music, the news, the traffic, and the advertisers.
The problem with this is as soon as you have existing media moving into a new media format, you bring with it all the baggage of the old methods of doing things. Sure, it might be customisable, but exactly how much?
Don't kid yourself, if this takes off you'll still end up listening to the new Britney single four or five times a day, even with the 'Annoying Manufactured Pop' checkbox turned off.
tsf.
It's interesting to note that Amazon's brand value has managed to rise - in spite of haemorraging money left right and center ever since its inception..
I'd have to say that Amazon's entire value is in the brand - there's just too many companies that follow the same business model for it to be considered unique anymore. It shows just how much a couple of billion dollars in adverts and specials can buy.
tsf.
This has some pretty cool implications for virtual reality: if scientists can figure out how to hook into the vision nerves, and this looks like a great start, we could soon "plug in" matrix style (although hopefully without the agonising pain) to external visual inputs.
The implant itself, while the benificiaries seem to be from only one kind of eye problem for the time being, seems to be an indicator of a coming rush of "bionic" implants that will change the way humans live, or at least wealthy humans. I seem to remember reading many science fiction books that project this future...
I for one am looking forward to reading slashdot by subvocalising (Andrew Wiggan style) a command to the implanted screen in my eye, and seeing it as a "full screen" 3d panoramic view, where the full screen is just that... an all encompassing virtual view.
tsf.
I don't think this can be regulated with any kind of world body - you'd just end up with the UN of commerce, which would more than likely end up as completely ineffectual.
There are no ready solutions to this problem. This is why I said:
This scares me.
It still does.
tsf.
At least here in the States...
This is a major part of the problem. The US is just one country - and while the laws may be fairly strict there, there's always going to be somewhere else a company can set up shop without having to worry about this.
There's only so much one government can do.
tsf.
I'm not sure if I'm the one kidding myself - big business will always have money, and there's nothing politicians like more than money - it's their livelyhood. They won't get re-elected without a large campaign fund, and no matter what anyone says, the easiest way to get lots of money is to make a few 'concessions' to business - they'll make it worth the governments' while.
My point is that the government is not always the people anymore - look at the DMCA for example. This was a law put in place by corporations for corporations, and look at the consequences now. Perhaps you should look a little past the rosy democratic society you think you live in, and check out the real world.
tsf.
These large companies will in the very near future be as powerful, if not eventually totally replacing, individual governments, because they have one ability governments don't have: the legal right (ie. no war necessary) to expand worldwide.
This scares me.
tsf.
With the current problems of the SDRAM/RDRAM saga looming, I'm not sure if another compatibility issue is needed. This sounds like it sits on the motherboard, although the article doesn't quite specify this, producing yet another problem into the notoriously unreliable motherboard market.
At least for home PCs, I'm not seeing this as a real bonus, or a tech that we'll see for quite a while. The market should concentrate on getting a reliable, supported (and preferably non-licensed) RAM tech out and in full production. The more variants of ram being produced, the lower the supply of each one, and therefore higher costs for all.
tsf.