Microsoft don't have the specs to the CPU and GPU? Well that's amazing considering that Microsoft designed and specified the original XBox and produced the SDK developers used to make games, and the firmware it all runs on. I think Microsoft have an inkling of how their old system worked.
It would be more accurate to say that emulating hardware, even known hardware in software is *hard*. Emulating the instruction sets and APIs is probably the easy part. The hard part is realising all the horrible race conditions, latencies, deadlocks and other funkiness that comes when your emulation. On top of that many games probably abuse the APIs, CPU and GPU in ways that are hard to model let alone emulate.
So what Microsoft probably does is target a popular game implementing a particular feature set, gets it working and then discovers a bunch of other games start working too. For example, GTA was written against Renderware. So when Microsoft manages to get GTA:SA working, they might discover other Renderware titles suddenly start working. Thus you see all sorts of weirdass titles appearing in the BC list.
Sony had a slight easier job with BC. In the first instance it used hardware BC so it was virtually 100% compatible except for some edge cases. Even when they went software BC, they still kept the GS hardware, so the PS3 only had to emulate the CPU and they still managed ~90% BC. Now they've chopped BC entirely I don't know what they'll do. Personally I think the BC will creep back. They'll do what MS did and eventually emulate all of the hardware and take the hit on what titles they support. Perhaps BC will only be enabled on certain downloadable titles (the way the PSP emulates PS1 games), or a "PS2 emulator" will be sold on PSN at a premium. I don't think BC is dead on the PS3 since it's too lucrative to ignore.
The Wii has less problems since it's a Gamecube 2.0 and the hardware is quite similar to its predecessor.
That used to be the case. These days Apple seem to be coasting on a reputation which they no longer hold. Virtually every single Apple device seems to be accompanied by major and sometimes serious faults - yellowing cases, expanding batteries, fire hazard cables, scratchable screens, faulty earjacks.
Even the software isn't up to snuff any more. I use iTunes on Vista and the thing still doesn't work properly after having something like 10 updates since Vista appeared. It still shows black screens, still chokes on MP4 video and still crashes randomly. Piece of crap that it is.
That still doesn't explain it. To me it's akin to people who spoiler kits, paint jobs and purple lights on beaten up rust buckets in the mistaken belief it looks cool. Who the hell are they kidding?
Not that the analogy holds completely since I don't believe the OS X UI to be any better than Vista these days.
There is nothing wrong with either XP's or Vista's look and feel. Why the hell would you want to make it look like OS X? It seems that if you absolutely love the look of OS X that the best way of obtaining it is to buy a Mac.
About the only thing you learn from him is that a little knowledge is dangerous.
If a moderately experienced user can't figure things out, what hope does a novice have? I have yet to see any Linux distribution that I would consider even remotely comparable to Vista or OS X. Ubuntu is definitely one of the friendliest, but there are still far too many pitfalls for new users, especially when it comes to configuring hardware.
I can't comment on whether it violates the GPL, but it does include the GPL text in the manual and there is a support DVD in the box. If they didn't include the source on the CD, then they could have and probably should in future.
BTW the Asus Eee PC is a great little machine although like most Linux dists the UI is a little rough around the edges.
Negroponte doesn't have to personally manage consumer sales or production. Spin off a new company to handle the consumer side and plough the profits back into the charitable side. Everyone wins. The educational laptop is cheaper because people buying the consumer version are effectively subsidizing it.
What are you going to do about the kid-sized keyboard? That's the one that appears to be the sticking point. You could buy a small USB keyboard, but that's kind of defeating the purpose of a laptop...
The Asus Eee PC has a kid sized keyboard too. It doesn't render the thing unusable by any means. The whole point of these laptops is that they are teeny tiny, sturdy, cheap, and are suitable for all sorts of casual use. It has a browser, email, Skype, OpenOffice, some games, is expandable (since it's and it has a keyboard, microphone, speakers, LAN, VGA out, Wi-fi, mouse pad, SD slots and USB ports. It is a very practical little computer.
I would never contemplate *ever* taking a large laptop away on holiday but that is precisely why I bought the Eee PC. It's small and cheap enough that I can sling it into my carry case without it being a burden. I'll use it to make calls and browse. I can even use it on a plane, or in a coffee shop. And if it gets stolen or breaks... well that sucks, but not as much as it would suck if someone stole a laptop costing 3-4x as much.
Personally I would have preferred to get a consumer modifiable version of OLPC with the same spec, but such a thing doesn't exist. I've been raving about the OLPC and the potential for this for over a year. I really don't understand why OLPC doesn't spin off a commercial version since it would be a money tree to subsidize their charity aims. I was even considering their Give One Get One promotion, but it gets you an OLPC with Sugar and the promotion isn't even available outside the US. Oh well, it's their loss.
Apparently you're missing the point of the project...
The "point" of the project is to give cheap laptops to children in the 3rd world. I don't see why selling consumer versions of laptops conflicts with that. If anything it means you can give more laptops to the 3rd world simply because people buying the consumer version are subsidizing the educational version.
The OLPC is an amazing project and will spearhead a whole slew of cheap laptops. I am just disappointed that OLPC themselves didnt see the potential in selling a consumer version of their device. I bought an Asus Eee PC largely because there is no consumer OLPC. I love the form factor and everything else about the OLPC but why restrict it to 3rd world countries when the appeal is universal? They really should sell a consumer version - bump the storage capacity, flash it with Fedora and maybe ship it in a black / white version but please sell the damned thing. The Asus Eee PC demonstrates the enormous demand for these devices. The OLPC project is denying themselves a pile of sales and profit by not releasing a consumer version.
I think there is merit and worth in providing a listings guide that also acts as a PVR. People do appreciate an app that allows them to subscribe to channels, and to set their disk usage. I don't understand the anal obsession with DRM. Remove the DRM and most of the reasons for using WMP, IE or Windows simply disappear. It doesn't stop the BBC watermarking content to track usage and abusage. It certainly should be be some weird ass OGG format - while I like OGG, the fact is that H264 is the standard going forward and thats what should be supported.
It's one thing to clean up the old footage, possibly redoing some of the lamer effects. It's quite another to pull shit like having Greedo shoot first, or the risible CGI Jabba, or the overkill Mos Eisley CGI.
That's where it became clear Lucas had lost the plot. Episode I just compounded it with a bad story, lame characters, wooden acting and terrible CGI.
I really don't understand what the hell possessed them to lash together Windows Media Player, IE, ActiveX and some proprietary P2P downloader. It doesn't even work on Windows properly. Just using a different version of Windows, IE or WMP from the ones requires will break the software.
They could have produced something akin to Azureus 3 - a channel listings and downloader application written in Java that more or less ran anywhere. They could wrap a native control for video playback on Windows and let other systems launch with default system player for the content. Let users decide how long they want to keep content and which player / device to use to watch it on. If the BBC were paranoid about the massive market for bootleg episodes of Eastenders, they could even watermark the content to the user who exported it and prosecute them as appropriate. It means users can do what they like with data for their own personal use and the BBC is not burdened with DRM issues or supporting issues with all the versions of WMP, IE & Windows in existence.
Even assuming the crypto is perfect, the police would still be able to infer a lot from who is calling who. A terrorist communicating with another terrorist, shows they know each other, where they are in the world, what their calling routines are (frequency, time, who they call next), the length of conversation and so on. They might even be able to infer who is doing the most talking from the amount of traffic in each direction. All without knowing the actual conversation text.
And that assumes the crypto is perfect and the police / intelligence services are incapable of decrypting it, playing man in the middle, or failing that installing a trojan, or planting a bug, or listening through a wall or whatever.
It sounds like BS. Even perfect crypto gives them more information that they had to begin with. It sounds like they want to have their cake and eat it too.
Extra features and configurability aren't always a good thing at all. The KDE control center is atrocious with far too many panels, tabs, dialogs arranged illogically with common settings mixed in amongst obscure settings.
It seems KDE devs may have realised this since KDE 4 appears to have something more comparable to the OS X prefs (and GNOME's).
GNOME. It's simpler, has less to break and works just fine for adults and children. If you absolutely must have every single knob, dial, button and setting in your face or reachable from a menu then KDE is a better choice.
3 text formats, one of which is proprietary and the other two being basic and text only is not very impressive at all. This device costs $400 for pete's sake. It should be all singing and dancing for that price, not some dumb terminal.
Where do you get the idea that it is "almost entirely proprietary"? If you look at the technical details section, it says it supports "TXT, Audible (formats 2, 3 and 4), MP3, natively; HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, MOBI, PRC through conversion".
What part of "through conversion" is hard to understand?
If you look at why the iPod succeeded it was because it was an attractive MP3 player with some great software that let you rip and burn music. Oh and the software let you buy tracks conveniently and cheaply. It succeeded because it played the content already out there even if Apple made it easy to sell you more in a proprietary format.
Now look at Kindle. Aside from being ugly as sin, the device is almost entirely proprietary. Where the hell is the support for the common document formats? At $400 this device should have full and complete support for text, html, prc, lit, rtf and pdf. At least. Some crappy converter service or software simply doesn't cut it. Sony's Walkman devices also had converters for MP3 to ATRAC3. Look how disastrous that proved.
I really don't understand what the hell is going through Amazon's head. The device is ugly, proprietary and expensive. I don't even see e-paper as a compelling reason since Sony's Reader is significantly cheaper. And Sony seem to have gained a clue in the intervening years and are now far more standards compliant then they used to be. The Reader device supports more standards and even plays MP3s and AAC.
Amazon seem to have created the worst of all worlds. Either they should keep the device proprietary but slash the price. Or they need to open the thing up to common book formats and make it useful. It definitely needs a redesign in either event.
Linux is still not suitable for most users - it's usable but there are still too many rough edges. A simple example is a bug that bit me today was when I ran my new Asus Eee PC for the first time - the thing does not like wifi WPA PSK passphrases that contain space characters. Consequently it dumped out a corrupted config file and didn't connect. It took me a while to figure this out from a Linux dist which simpler than most others.
Expecting people to switch en masse is not reasonable until the UI is completely idiot proof and requires no advanced diagnostic. Even Ubuntu is not there yet.
A better strategy is to promote open source software running on Windows. Firefox, Thunderbird, Gimp, Open Office etc. all run on Windows. Introduce users to these great apps and allow them to use them at their own pace. They can even run the open source apps side by side with the MS equivalents if they like. Since most open source apps run on Windows and Linux, it means the underlying OS is of less relevance.
Later when Linux for the desktop is more mature they can be tempted to move. It may even be that Dell / Compaq etc. off cheap machines with Linux on them. If the apps are the same then the pain in moving is so much less.
Most closed devices (e.g. consoles that have online stores), or phones, or pay-per-view boxes would be quite within their rights to send a device identifier with the request. In the case of a phone, that would be the IMEI.
The moral here, is perhaps not to buy songs from Apple in the first place if it bothers you. Amazon.com sells music in MP3 format and you can use it any way and in any device you please.
Kiss must be one of the most profitable touring bands in existence and that's where the majority of the money lies. Assuming Gene is all about the music, why not do what Prince or other artists are doing and use his back catalogue to promote his tours?
I can see how record studio artists might shit a brick at the prospect of giving away music etc. but definitely not live bands.
and reintroduce the cost free software backward compatibility.
If it were cost free they wouldn't have dropped it. I guess in order to drop the price by $200 that was one of the things they had to remove to cut costs.
The PS3 can also do streaming including watching movies, TV, music, pictures etc. from any capable DNLA server which includes media center, but also Nero MediaHome, TVersity, Azureus, eMule and a pile of others. It doesn't even have to be Windows driving the server.
The PS3 implementation isn't perfect and sucks on codec support but it does work. It will work superbly once Sony add Mpeg-4 Part 2 & 10 native support instead of requiring transcoding to MPEG-2.
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It would be more accurate to say that emulating hardware, even known hardware in software is *hard*. Emulating the instruction sets and APIs is probably the easy part. The hard part is realising all the horrible race conditions, latencies, deadlocks and other funkiness that comes when your emulation. On top of that many games probably abuse the APIs, CPU and GPU in ways that are hard to model let alone emulate.
So what Microsoft probably does is target a popular game implementing a particular feature set, gets it working and then discovers a bunch of other games start working too. For example, GTA was written against Renderware. So when Microsoft manages to get GTA:SA working, they might discover other Renderware titles suddenly start working. Thus you see all sorts of weirdass titles appearing in the BC list.
Sony had a slight easier job with BC. In the first instance it used hardware BC so it was virtually 100% compatible except for some edge cases. Even when they went software BC, they still kept the GS hardware, so the PS3 only had to emulate the CPU and they still managed ~90% BC. Now they've chopped BC entirely I don't know what they'll do. Personally I think the BC will creep back. They'll do what MS did and eventually emulate all of the hardware and take the hit on what titles they support. Perhaps BC will only be enabled on certain downloadable titles (the way the PSP emulates PS1 games), or a "PS2 emulator" will be sold on PSN at a premium. I don't think BC is dead on the PS3 since it's too lucrative to ignore.
The Wii has less problems since it's a Gamecube 2.0 and the hardware is quite similar to its predecessor.
Even the software isn't up to snuff any more. I use iTunes on Vista and the thing still doesn't work properly after having something like 10 updates since Vista appeared. It still shows black screens, still chokes on MP4 video and still crashes randomly. Piece of crap that it is.
Not that the analogy holds completely since I don't believe the OS X UI to be any better than Vista these days.
There is nothing wrong with either XP's or Vista's look and feel. Why the hell would you want to make it look like OS X? It seems that if you absolutely love the look of OS X that the best way of obtaining it is to buy a Mac.
If a moderately experienced user can't figure things out, what hope does a novice have? I have yet to see any Linux distribution that I would consider even remotely comparable to Vista or OS X. Ubuntu is definitely one of the friendliest, but there are still far too many pitfalls for new users, especially when it comes to configuring hardware.
BTW the Asus Eee PC is a great little machine although like most Linux dists the UI is a little rough around the edges.
Ouch, I mangled that first para. Ignore the "(since it's " bit.
Negroponte doesn't have to personally manage consumer sales or production. Spin off a new company to handle the consumer side and plough the profits back into the charitable side. Everyone wins. The educational laptop is cheaper because people buying the consumer version are effectively subsidizing it.
The Asus Eee PC has a kid sized keyboard too. It doesn't render the thing unusable by any means. The whole point of these laptops is that they are teeny tiny, sturdy, cheap, and are suitable for all sorts of casual use. It has a browser, email, Skype, OpenOffice, some games, is expandable (since it's and it has a keyboard, microphone, speakers, LAN, VGA out, Wi-fi, mouse pad, SD slots and USB ports. It is a very practical little computer.
I would never contemplate *ever* taking a large laptop away on holiday but that is precisely why I bought the Eee PC. It's small and cheap enough that I can sling it into my carry case without it being a burden. I'll use it to make calls and browse. I can even use it on a plane, or in a coffee shop. And if it gets stolen or breaks... well that sucks, but not as much as it would suck if someone stole a laptop costing 3-4x as much.
Personally I would have preferred to get a consumer modifiable version of OLPC with the same spec, but such a thing doesn't exist. I've been raving about the OLPC and the potential for this for over a year. I really don't understand why OLPC doesn't spin off a commercial version since it would be a money tree to subsidize their charity aims. I was even considering their Give One Get One promotion, but it gets you an OLPC with Sugar and the promotion isn't even available outside the US. Oh well, it's their loss.
The "point" of the project is to give cheap laptops to children in the 3rd world. I don't see why selling consumer versions of laptops conflicts with that. If anything it means you can give more laptops to the 3rd world simply because people buying the consumer version are subsidizing the educational version.
The OLPC is an amazing project and will spearhead a whole slew of cheap laptops. I am just disappointed that OLPC themselves didnt see the potential in selling a consumer version of their device. I bought an Asus Eee PC largely because there is no consumer OLPC. I love the form factor and everything else about the OLPC but why restrict it to 3rd world countries when the appeal is universal? They really should sell a consumer version - bump the storage capacity, flash it with Fedora and maybe ship it in a black / white version but please sell the damned thing. The Asus Eee PC demonstrates the enormous demand for these devices. The OLPC project is denying themselves a pile of sales and profit by not releasing a consumer version.
I think there is merit and worth in providing a listings guide that also acts as a PVR. People do appreciate an app that allows them to subscribe to channels, and to set their disk usage. I don't understand the anal obsession with DRM. Remove the DRM and most of the reasons for using WMP, IE or Windows simply disappear. It doesn't stop the BBC watermarking content to track usage and abusage. It certainly should be be some weird ass OGG format - while I like OGG, the fact is that H264 is the standard going forward and thats what should be supported.
That's where it became clear Lucas had lost the plot. Episode I just compounded it with a bad story, lame characters, wooden acting and terrible CGI.
I really don't understand what the hell possessed them to lash together Windows Media Player, IE, ActiveX and some proprietary P2P downloader. It doesn't even work on Windows properly. Just using a different version of Windows, IE or WMP from the ones requires will break the software.
They could have produced something akin to Azureus 3 - a channel listings and downloader application written in Java that more or less ran anywhere. They could wrap a native control for video playback on Windows and let other systems launch with default system player for the content. Let users decide how long they want to keep content and which player / device to use to watch it on. If the BBC were paranoid about the massive market for bootleg episodes of Eastenders, they could even watermark the content to the user who exported it and prosecute them as appropriate. It means users can do what they like with data for their own personal use and the BBC is not burdened with DRM issues or supporting issues with all the versions of WMP, IE & Windows in existence.
And that assumes the crypto is perfect and the police / intelligence services are incapable of decrypting it, playing man in the middle, or failing that installing a trojan, or planting a bug, or listening through a wall or whatever.
It sounds like BS. Even perfect crypto gives them more information that they had to begin with. It sounds like they want to have their cake and eat it too.
It seems KDE devs may have realised this since KDE 4 appears to have something more comparable to the OS X prefs (and GNOME's).
GNOME. It's simpler, has less to break and works just fine for adults and children. If you absolutely must have every single knob, dial, button and setting in your face or reachable from a menu then KDE is a better choice.
3 text formats, one of which is proprietary and the other two being basic and text only is not very impressive at all. This device costs $400 for pete's sake. It should be all singing and dancing for that price, not some dumb terminal.
What part of "through conversion" is hard to understand?
Now look at Kindle. Aside from being ugly as sin, the device is almost entirely proprietary. Where the hell is the support for the common document formats? At $400 this device should have full and complete support for text, html, prc, lit, rtf and pdf. At least. Some crappy converter service or software simply doesn't cut it. Sony's Walkman devices also had converters for MP3 to ATRAC3. Look how disastrous that proved.
I really don't understand what the hell is going through Amazon's head. The device is ugly, proprietary and expensive. I don't even see e-paper as a compelling reason since Sony's Reader is significantly cheaper. And Sony seem to have gained a clue in the intervening years and are now far more standards compliant then they used to be. The Reader device supports more standards and even plays MP3s and AAC.
Amazon seem to have created the worst of all worlds. Either they should keep the device proprietary but slash the price. Or they need to open the thing up to common book formats and make it useful. It definitely needs a redesign in either event.
Expecting people to switch en masse is not reasonable until the UI is completely idiot proof and requires no advanced diagnostic. Even Ubuntu is not there yet.
A better strategy is to promote open source software running on Windows. Firefox, Thunderbird, Gimp, Open Office etc. all run on Windows. Introduce users to these great apps and allow them to use them at their own pace. They can even run the open source apps side by side with the MS equivalents if they like. Since most open source apps run on Windows and Linux, it means the underlying OS is of less relevance.
Later when Linux for the desktop is more mature they can be tempted to move. It may even be that Dell / Compaq etc. off cheap machines with Linux on them. If the apps are the same then the pain in moving is so much less.
The moral here, is perhaps not to buy songs from Apple in the first place if it bothers you. Amazon.com sells music in MP3 format and you can use it any way and in any device you please.
I can see how record studio artists might shit a brick at the prospect of giving away music etc. but definitely not live bands.
If it were cost free they wouldn't have dropped it. I guess in order to drop the price by $200 that was one of the things they had to remove to cut costs.
The PS3 implementation isn't perfect and sucks on codec support but it does work. It will work superbly once Sony add Mpeg-4 Part 2 & 10 native support instead of requiring transcoding to MPEG-2.