I expect the UK iPhone will be as horribly overpriced as the US one - expensive (and blah) handset, expensive tariff and one specific vendor. I wonder how that will work out when you can get virtually any phone for free on most tariffs in the UK. You could save so much that you could probably buy an iPod Touch and still have a pile of money left over.
PSN doesn't require a credit card on every account. You can have a master account (the parent's account) that can add funds to sub accounts (the kids). So even if Home had micro transactions, there is no need for a kid to have a credit card to use it. Sub accounts can also be age restricted by the master account so that they can't play inappropriate content, whether it is games, movies or (I assume) Home zones. So it's really about parental responsibility.
It sounds like you've identified a far more broken model than Sony. It's not unreasonable to think that Sony could proactively enforce 18+ by requiring the person to hold a PSN account that has made at least 1 credit card transaction. They could even require a user to enter some nominal transaction such as 1c to enter a site for the first time. While it isn't impossible for some kid to have faked their parent's credit card details, I think Sony would have a reasonable defence if they they were sued because because of it.
After all, how is it any different from any other adult pay service on the web?
Areas requiring the user to be 18 will earn this game an AO rating. It will never happen.
I see plenty of AO content every time I browse the internet. Some sites, including game sites ask my age everytime I view a clip. If they can exist without a rating, why do you assume that some Sony service cannot. Especially when it proactively attempts to enforce age restrictions unlike most websites.
The "no compete" clauses were quite understandable really. Larry McVoy didn't want CVS or Subversion riding the coattails of his own source control system and thereby gaining some advantage. As for Linus getting "burned", he got 3 or 4 years of highly productive source code management from using a commercial tool. So he lost some meta data... Annoying but hardly a calamity, especially when kernel versions were archived, as is the kernel mailing lists and many of the patches.
The kernel was better off for using BK than not using it. Again, this is an example of Linus and his pragmatism. Much better to have something that works than something that doesn't. And far better than listening RMS moaning that the kernel doesn't use an open source tool when he isn't offering to write the tool or encourage others to do so either. It's actually funny to read the RMS post complaining about BK to the kernel list - he was basically told to put up or shut up. Quite right too.
So what about BitKeeper? Linus is a pragmatist. He isn't going to use some piece of shit tool just because its open source. And nor should he. It is not as if BitKeeper was being integrated into the kernel, it was there to manage and maintain patches. It was only when the tool's author yanked permission to use it freely (due to "hacking") that Linus dumped it for his own creation - git.
If he'd waited for an open source tool that met his requirements to appear on its own, the chances are he'd still be waiting.
I used to program it when it wasn't a POSIX compliant kernel but some weird ass vaguely Unix-like thing. The compiler was terrible, the tools were terrible, the OpenLook-like UI was terrible but it was still a lot more liberating than programming Windows or DOS. You could do some very whacky things since it didn't really matter too much if you were talking to a process or filesystem on your own machine or somewhere else on a token ring. The real time and multitasking performance was generally excellent. I remember wasting a good portion of work just trying to port Unix and DOS tools like MicroEMACS over to it to make the environment more tolerable. In some ways the switch to Posix probably killed some of the charm QNX used to have - it was like trying to build a kit car without all the pieces. Nowadays it's just another *nix clone, even if it still focuses on the realtime market.
Linus gets things done. RMS appears to be an politics person. This may explain why Linux is widely popular and GNU Hurd is moribund. Rather than moaning about Linus does or doesn't say, or rather pointless quibbling over "GNU/Linux" perhaps RMS should be whipping GNU Hurd into competitive shape.
If things weren't so horribly intrusive and capable of tracking a user's entire internet experience, for the sole purpose of selling you stuff, people wouldn't bitch.
It's worse than that. The likes of Google, Yahoo and no doubt others tie your browsing habits to cookies you CAN'T delete because they control access to personalized services on their site. I wish it was possible to say to ad blockers to not pass any Google cookies EXCEPT for top-level sites of my choosing. That way GMail doesn't break but I can stop Google snooping on sites I happen to be visiting.
I learnt programming in Modula-2. It was the most horrific experience of my life. Partly I suppose it was because I was new to programming, but partly because it was such a verbose language with case sensitive keywords and BEGIN and END around virtually everything and even assignments were express with a:= sign. It drove me nuts to have errors because of typos in all the verbiage. I found C much more liberating simply because it was more compact.
I think at the end of the day that it is a good idea to train beginners on something other than Java, C# or C. I wouldn't choose Pascal (or Modula-2), but maybe something like Python would be a good idea.
Define "allows". I could scrape listings from any site which shows listings with HTML, RSS or from any other HTTP based content. Which is a great many. Whether they like it or not.
And it's $100 cheaper then the 80GB version. Of course this is all an attempt to clear the 60GB model out of the warehouses, so they can push their cheaper to manufacture 80GB. Which should receive a price drop by about $100 or so sometime shortly after the 60GB model is entirely sold out. At least it should, it would be very stupid of Sony not too.
It's fairly obvious that once the 60Gb model goes out of stock, a bundle-less 80Gb model will step in to replace it at the same price or even lower.
The software assisted BC isn't bad either. Not as good as hardware BC but it still works very well.
Did you miss the second part? If HD DVD and Blu Ray beat each other to a bloody pulp it allows MS to announce their DLC infrastructure with great fanfare. The "confusion" of the HD format war will make DLC that much more attractive, even if MS were responsible for much of the confusion themselves. Naturally VC-1 will play a central part in this DLC infrastructure. And in the meantime they can buy industry support for VC-1 from Toshiba and studios in just the way they have been doing.
I doubt studios would touch the proprietary format with a 10ft bargepole if they hadn't been given monetary incentives to do so. It's probably an excellent codec, but so is H264.
I think you have to look at the way MS is selectively propping up HD DVD and buying studios to realise they don't give a stuff about either formats. They don't believe in HD DVD, they don't even care. It just suits their purposes to keep it alive so they can watch Blu Ray and HD DVD suffer fighting each other. I suppose the longer they prolong the war, the more time MS has to build out download standards which will focus favourably on VC-1.
Yes, but there's nothing to stop them writing a new one. The grabber can point to any url. I'm sure there are literally hundreds of TV listings sources to choose from.
Give the Chinese manufactures some time. We've already seen HDMI upscaling players as well as those that can play MPEG-4 ASP (otherwise known as DiVX, XVid etc.). Sooner or later some manufacturer will do the same for H264. And then some more and some more.
VC-1 is probably one reason Microsoft is propping up HD DVD. It doesn't give a damn about HD DVD, but keeping the format wars going mean more sales of its VC-1 codec, authoring tools and also opportunities for the MS XBL download service. I doubt that VC-1 will take off outside of professional authoring tools. After all, who the hell wants to rip to a proprietary format when H264 does such a good job and is widely supported by software and hardware?
As long as there are TV listings in the world, there is the means to rip them. One example is XMLTV. This rips listings from certain sites and produces an XML schedule file that you can feed into MythTV. I assume that once a free service disappears that you'll see scripts for XMLTV that do pretty much the same.
I doubt the pirates would give a crap either. It would probably suit them to use DVD-9 for burning. 9Gb is probably more than sufficient to get a very acceptable image quality even in HD.
No studios are going to support the format, and I doubt many rippers will either. I could see the potential of a DVD player that could play H264 HD content from a DVD. But yet another HD physical format? The field is already crowded.
Knowing how EA likes to screw up PS3 ports (see the Madden 360/PS3 fiasco), I wouldn't touch an EA PS3 port with a 50 foot pole. I tend to avoid EA at all costs anyway (they really butchered Command & Conquer 3 in my opinion). I'm guessing with 99% certainty that the PS3 version isn't going to be as good as the PC/360 version, since it isn't being done by Valve themselves.
I think EA are getting their act together. The recent NBA 2008 demo appeared to run at 60fps. I think the issue is that EA (& Ubisoft, Activision etc.) try to keep games abstract of the hardware so that it runs everywhere. The hardware specifics are implemented by in-house middleware that the games tap into for their functionality. The game's performance is going to be heavily dependent on the middleware's performance. I assume that the guys doing the middleware functionality have their own versions and release schedule. If NBA is any indication then EA have finally got their middleware sorted and future PS3 games will benefit from that.
I don't really like EA games myself (or sports games in general) but it is disappointing to see such a disparity between two technically comparable systems. It will be interesting to see what happens for FIFA 08 which is arguably more important than Madden.
I'm not sure, but the poster you were replying to might have been referring to the tiny memory in each SPU which is not main RAM.
Here's a very good overview of the Cell processor including describing the SPUs. The gist of the article is that SPUs have 256k of local cache-like memory but its contents can change on the fly as data is pushed in and out.
Sorry to burst your bubble but I'm quite happy to criticize any console including the PS3 or any game if it warrants it. As it happens Mr Newell has made numerous destructive comments about the PS3 including calling it a "total disaster" and criticizing the Cell for the high crime of not being the like the 360 CPU. I'm entirely justified in saying he's poisoning his own well with such odd remarks.
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OS X looked so much cleaner than XP, but I really don't see that there is much about OS X that rates it over Vista.
I expect the UK iPhone will be as horribly overpriced as the US one - expensive (and blah) handset, expensive tariff and one specific vendor. I wonder how that will work out when you can get virtually any phone for free on most tariffs in the UK. You could save so much that you could probably buy an iPod Touch and still have a pile of money left over.
PSN doesn't require a credit card on every account. You can have a master account (the parent's account) that can add funds to sub accounts (the kids). So even if Home had micro transactions, there is no need for a kid to have a credit card to use it. Sub accounts can also be age restricted by the master account so that they can't play inappropriate content, whether it is games, movies or (I assume) Home zones. So it's really about parental responsibility.
After all, how is it any different from any other adult pay service on the web?
I see plenty of AO content every time I browse the internet. Some sites, including game sites ask my age everytime I view a clip. If they can exist without a rating, why do you assume that some Sony service cannot. Especially when it proactively attempts to enforce age restrictions unlike most websites.
The kernel was better off for using BK than not using it. Again, this is an example of Linus and his pragmatism. Much better to have something that works than something that doesn't. And far better than listening RMS moaning that the kernel doesn't use an open source tool when he isn't offering to write the tool or encourage others to do so either. It's actually funny to read the RMS post complaining about BK to the kernel list - he was basically told to put up or shut up. Quite right too.
So what about BitKeeper? Linus is a pragmatist. He isn't going to use some piece of shit tool just because its open source. And nor should he. It is not as if BitKeeper was being integrated into the kernel, it was there to manage and maintain patches. It was only when the tool's author yanked permission to use it freely (due to "hacking") that Linus dumped it for his own creation - git.
If he'd waited for an open source tool that met his requirements to appear on its own, the chances are he'd still be waiting.
I used to program it when it wasn't a POSIX compliant kernel but some weird ass vaguely Unix-like thing. The compiler was terrible, the tools were terrible, the OpenLook-like UI was terrible but it was still a lot more liberating than programming Windows or DOS. You could do some very whacky things since it didn't really matter too much if you were talking to a process or filesystem on your own machine or somewhere else on a token ring. The real time and multitasking performance was generally excellent. I remember wasting a good portion of work just trying to port Unix and DOS tools like MicroEMACS over to it to make the environment more tolerable. In some ways the switch to Posix probably killed some of the charm QNX used to have - it was like trying to build a kit car without all the pieces. Nowadays it's just another *nix clone, even if it still focuses on the realtime market.
Linus gets things done. RMS appears to be an politics person. This may explain why Linux is widely popular and GNU Hurd is moribund. Rather than moaning about Linus does or doesn't say, or rather pointless quibbling over "GNU/Linux" perhaps RMS should be whipping GNU Hurd into competitive shape.
It's worse than that. The likes of Google, Yahoo and no doubt others tie your browsing habits to cookies you CAN'T delete because they control access to personalized services on their site. I wish it was possible to say to ad blockers to not pass any Google cookies EXCEPT for top-level sites of my choosing. That way GMail doesn't break but I can stop Google snooping on sites I happen to be visiting.
I think at the end of the day that it is a good idea to train beginners on something other than Java, C# or C. I wouldn't choose Pascal (or Modula-2), but maybe something like Python would be a good idea.
I think it will be next to impossible for ANYONE except Microsoft to implement OOXML. Which is just the way they like it.
Define "allows". I could scrape listings from any site which shows listings with HTML, RSS or from any other HTTP based content. Which is a great many. Whether they like it or not.
It's fairly obvious that once the 60Gb model goes out of stock, a bundle-less 80Gb model will step in to replace it at the same price or even lower.
The software assisted BC isn't bad either. Not as good as hardware BC but it still works very well.
I doubt studios would touch the proprietary format with a 10ft bargepole if they hadn't been given monetary incentives to do so. It's probably an excellent codec, but so is H264.
I think you have to look at the way MS is selectively propping up HD DVD and buying studios to realise they don't give a stuff about either formats. They don't believe in HD DVD, they don't even care. It just suits their purposes to keep it alive so they can watch Blu Ray and HD DVD suffer fighting each other. I suppose the longer they prolong the war, the more time MS has to build out download standards which will focus favourably on VC-1.
Yes, but there's nothing to stop them writing a new one. The grabber can point to any url. I'm sure there are literally hundreds of TV listings sources to choose from.
Give the Chinese manufactures some time. We've already seen HDMI upscaling players as well as those that can play MPEG-4 ASP (otherwise known as DiVX, XVid etc.). Sooner or later some manufacturer will do the same for H264. And then some more and some more.
VC-1 is probably one reason Microsoft is propping up HD DVD. It doesn't give a damn about HD DVD, but keeping the format wars going mean more sales of its VC-1 codec, authoring tools and also opportunities for the MS XBL download service. I doubt that VC-1 will take off outside of professional authoring tools. After all, who the hell wants to rip to a proprietary format when H264 does such a good job and is widely supported by software and hardware?
As long as there are TV listings in the world, there is the means to rip them. One example is XMLTV. This rips listings from certain sites and produces an XML schedule file that you can feed into MythTV. I assume that once a free service disappears that you'll see scripts for XMLTV that do pretty much the same.
I doubt the pirates would give a crap either. It would probably suit them to use DVD-9 for burning. 9Gb is probably more than sufficient to get a very acceptable image quality even in HD.
No studios are going to support the format, and I doubt many rippers will either. I could see the potential of a DVD player that could play H264 HD content from a DVD. But yet another HD physical format? The field is already crowded.
I think EA are getting their act together. The recent NBA 2008 demo appeared to run at 60fps. I think the issue is that EA (& Ubisoft, Activision etc.) try to keep games abstract of the hardware so that it runs everywhere. The hardware specifics are implemented by in-house middleware that the games tap into for their functionality. The game's performance is going to be heavily dependent on the middleware's performance. I assume that the guys doing the middleware functionality have their own versions and release schedule. If NBA is any indication then EA have finally got their middleware sorted and future PS3 games will benefit from that.
I don't really like EA games myself (or sports games in general) but it is disappointing to see such a disparity between two technically comparable systems. It will be interesting to see what happens for FIFA 08 which is arguably more important than Madden.
The submitter has helpfully provided the links to these sites so Slashdotters can finish the job.
Here's a very good overview of the Cell processor including describing the SPUs. The gist of the article is that SPUs have 256k of local cache-like memory but its contents can change on the fly as data is pushed in and out.
Sorry to burst your bubble but I'm quite happy to criticize any console including the PS3 or any game if it warrants it. As it happens Mr Newell has made numerous destructive comments about the PS3 including calling it a "total disaster" and criticizing the Cell for the high crime of not being the like the 360 CPU. I'm entirely justified in saying he's poisoning his own well with such odd remarks.