It would be great if true. I'd be happy for the consumer version to be identical to the educational one, except maybe for having function keys and a not so garish colour. The whole appeal of the educational one is it's an extremely rugged, power sipping laptop that can be thrown into a bag or case without the hassle of a normal laptop and literally used anywhere.
Then try Linux, and you'll never complain about the Windows driver situation again.
Then instead of complaining about drivers, you'll be complaining about the lack of them, and the lack of any kind of dist neutral ABI that OEMs can provide them with.
People who just want a cheap laptop for the coffee shop / train / bus or plane would kill to own one of these things. Preload it with Linux, Openoffice, Firefox and a few other things and these things will sell like hotcakes.
I really don't understand why they don't do it. Selling a consumer version would fund development of the educational version. It might also lessen demand for the educational ones. Bitfrost or not, you just know these things are going to be cropping up on eBay with frightening regularity.
I thought Nielsen ratings were done by installing boxes in selected homes, monitoring viewing times and then extrapolating an overall rating from programmes watched in those homes to apply to all views. Unless these Tivo enabled sci-fi nerds are in the programme, what damned difference does it make to the ratings whether people use Tivo or not?
Besides, can't Tivo gather viewing data, aggregate it and then tell the networks what shows people are watching? Can't Nielsen factor Tivo into their calculations? Shouldn't the Tivo actually mean more sci-fi, not less if the people who own such boxes are more likely to be recording sci-fi on it and therefore tipping Tivo's gathered data in their direction?
Anyway, perhaps the upshot of all this is that maybe Nielsen need to expand out into web browsing. Alexa is just a poor man's Nielsen with no control over who installs their spyware. Perhaps there is a need for an industry trusted source that installs browser monitors on a representative sample of the population to gathers stats in strictest of confidence.
As to SACDs I think the dominance of the horribly compressed mp3 format in today's market tells you all you need to know about how much consumers care about sound quality. What, after all, is the point in making beautifully high-quality audio if someone's listening to it on a 10W Akai minisystem or some cheapo portable music player?
The funny part is that the PS3 still supports SACD. There is still a chance for Sony to turn their lemon into lemonade if they start making more CDs as hybrid SACDs.
I remember shaking my head when someone told me they'd bought one. There was interest in the format, but it was hampered by horrific DRM and costing 10x as much as a cassette player. At the end of the day it was just too expensive, too restrictive and it had the misfortune to soon be competing with MP3 players. As memory got cheaper, MP3 players wiped the floor with MiniDisc. I think if Sony hadn't crippled it, it could still be a popular format, even for data storage.
The Amiga did have some excellent TV software but I wouldn't call that mainstream. The Amiga's productivity apps like word processors, spreadsheets, databases were pretty awful even at the end.
I remember trying to produce a CV on WordWorth using a Commodore MPS 1230 printer. It was an exercise in pain and suffering. Partly that was the due to the word processor, partly due to the shockingly bad font and printer support in AmigaOS, and partly due to the printer itself. Windows 3.1 may have sucked for all sorts of reasons, but it was amazing how much more productive it was to use for word processing than the Amiga thanks to good printer support and TrueType fonts.
I owned several STs and several Amigas. About the only things ST was better at were DTP and MIDI applications running via the ST's hires monochrome mode. In most other respects, the Amiga beat it to a bloody pulp. The Amiga got better for productivity apps but nothing that would threaten what was available on the Mac or the PC at the same time.
Probably anyone who thinks it's a terribly bad idea to change licences midstream through the life of a product. They should have done what Samba is doing and declare a clean break at a major version change. It would be less confusing and far more clearcut to say that gcc 4.2.x is GPL v2 and 4.4.x is GPL3.
The Wii is not intrinsically or even subjectively more fun than any other console. Ask someone playing Gears of War on the 360 if they're having fun and I expect the answer is hell yes. Ask me if I have fun playing Super Stadust HD and the answer is absolutely - it's a fabulous game. It's games that are fun, not the hardware they're running on. Nor is there some inverse relationship between fun and hardware power - the power of the 360 and PS3 allows those consoles to imagine games that the Wii will never experience such as the aforementioned Gears of War.
I do not believe either that the lack of buttons Wii remote makes it any easier to use. It might look less intimidating, but some games still need more actions than there are buttons. Then you're expected to remember a bunch of gestures instead which leads to the exact same issues - worse in fact since gestures suck. The only time the remote is going to be easy per se is if the game itself is simple. That is more a factor of game design than anything else. I have a game for my PSP which uses just three buttons and nothing else. I have a game for the PS3 which uses just one button and tilt controls. I have another game for the PS3 that nothing but tilt controls. The point being that its the games that dictate how many controls are required, not the controller.
Linux needs a stable ABI like I need a hole in my head. Wouldn't you agree?
No I wouldn't. That piece and other comments from Linus are talking about the kernel developer's problems supporting an ABI. But there is nothing to stop distributions and vendors from supporting an ABI and hiding any changes in implementations. Indeed, it is absolutely in their interests to support an ABI, since it makes it far, far easier to support Linux than it has been until now.
About the only way you can get a driver at the moment is to hope that there is one in the kernel you're using already, or that the vendor (e.g. NVidia) as gone to the expense and effort of supporting the gazillion different kernels and dists out there. The barrier is simply too high for many vendors to bother. The barrier is impossible to many end users wouldn't have a clue (and shouldn't be expected to) to fetch a new kernel, or to patch and rebuild an existing one.
There would be nothing to stop dists from specifying an ABI, possibly as part of the Linux Standard Base, and supporting it in their respective dists without any hassle for kernel developers. After all, projects such as ALSA and the crypto components were independently maintained for years without the kernel folks being involved.
Linux needs a stable ABI for drivers. Insisting that vendors release drivers for every dist, or that they open source their code is unrealistic. Open source is obviously desirable but it's still not much to end users who wouldn't have a clue how to build it.
It would be great if dists would support an ABI and produce some dist neutral packaging system that allowed drivers to be installed / uninstalled easily by mere mortals no matter what dist they had.
I don't think Microsoft really cares about HD-DVD. Otherwise it would have appeared in the XBox 360 Elite.
Sure they released an HD-DVD add-on but I suspect they did it more to piss on Sony's parade than any particular commitment to the format. I bet Toshiba shouldered most of the cost too. Their VC-1 codec is in both the HD-DVD and Blu Ray specs so what do they care either way, just as long as people choose their codec? It sucks if you bought their add-on though. It wouldn't surprise me if MS ultimately jumped ship and went with Blu-Ray if for no other reason than to close another perceived advantage of the PS3.
I think some of your other points are valid but some are FUD. The 360 has terrible quality problems but Halo 3 is going to sell many, many copies, and many systems. Personally I don't know why people care about the game since first person shooters are coming out of the 360's and the PS3's ears but it's an undeniable fact that Halo will sell.
I think Microsoft's misfortune is that not only do they have to swallow the costs of launching a console, but they've been beset by a series of hardware faults - overheating PSUs, scratched discs and red rings of death. On top of that, they haven't captured the market the way they wanted. Now they've got the Wii and PS3 breathing down their neck too. I think they'll be extremely lucky if they're still first this time next year. Not that I think the PS3 will be either, but I think the 360 really needs to turn things around or even the PS3 will overtake it.
You could rationalise that the best way for Epic to develop an engine is to write a few games that showcase it. And besides, it's more money to plough back into development. Having said that, if 3rd parties were paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars to Epic, what were they getting for their money? For that kind of cash I would expect to have an Epic developer or two supporting and working with me full time to make it work.
On the flip side, it does seem weird that SK could even get themselves in this situation. If the engine sucked as much as they claim, why develop against an unstable engine for so long? Couldn't they have started development on UE2.5 and then moved over once it was further along? I find it incredible that they are only complaining about it now, or that performance problems even matter so early in the development life cycle. I wonder if this suit is prompted more by the money hats demanding to know where their game is than by anything else - the workman blaming his tools and so on.
Will someone please think about the children!! It would be just horrible, evil and wrong for children to naughty words! Why, it might psychologically damage them for life! The horror!
At least they can get their dose of forensic porn in CSI / Law & Order etc. US TV has the weirdest of standards - swearing & nudity bad, violence good.
You accuse me of a lack of technical expertise and then follow by showing your own ignorance. Unsigned apps work on the PS3 - you can install any PPC Linux via a special bootstrap, and once loaded you can build and run your own unsigned code. And you can get Cell access - in fact Yellowdog Linux even comes with a Cell SDK to do it.
As for you being a member of the PSP homebrew community, you should know better than anyone that 99% of people who use firmware mods are doing it to pirate games. Don't deny it. If your community wanted to put itself in a better standing with Sony you could start by totally disassociating yourself with piracy (which includes condoning piracy mods such as iso loaders), form a special interest group, and request to work with Sony on a Linux for PSP. But don't for a second expect Sony to stop fixing their firmware or making it harder to crack. It's quite obvious why they're doing it and it has nothing to do with homebrew.
Sony doesn't hate homebrew. It hates pirates who use "homebrew" as their stock excuse to hack the firmware and install iso loaders and so on. You only have to look at any torrent site to see why Sony has a vested interest in patching the firmware to prevent exploits - because no games company will support the PSP if piracy is rampant. Genuine PSP homebrewers (all 3 of them) probably don't play into it at all.
If they hated homebrew they wouldn't have bent over backwards to support it in the PS2 and PS3 to provide support for it. After all, no other console manufacturer even bothers. Sure, it might have had fringe benefits for Sony (e.g. the whole "PS2 is a computer" thing), but they didn't have to do it. In fact the PS3 is an amazingly versatile machine in part because you can run Linux on it.
Perhaps the original plan was for the PSP to be an IR remote or something but I haven't heard of anything which uses the IR port. It seems a given that they got rid of something that wasn't used. It's too bad they didn't stick in bluetooth or similar, since it might have been better for ad hoc play in some circumstances, as well as sharing pictures / music etc.
The new PSP is 20% thinner, it's 30% lighter, the UMD hatch has been redesigned, it has a TV-out, it has more built-in memory for caching, it has a faster UMD, the battery life has been extended. The front-on form factor might look the same but plenty has changed.
This February article supports the notion that Blu Ray discs cost slightly more to replicate. The problem for HD DVD is it's not that much more, and if Blu Ray sales are 2x HD-DVD then the quantity alone might chop any advantage for HD DVD. The Blu Ray might also work out cheaper if it can get away with a single layer but the HD-DVD is forced to use dual layer.
The only way that Toshiba can overcome the tyranny of Sony/Minolta and their competing Blue-Ray format
The tyranny??? Toshiba is no better or worse than Sony. The Japanese electronics industry is so incestuous that these two can be fighting about one thing (the HD format) and cooperating on another (making Cell processors). People who think Toshiba are some sort of rebel alliance are simply out of their tree. It's a lousy format war FFS. If you want to side with HD-DVD fine, but do so for the merits of the system, not out of some misguided hatred of one mega-corporation over another.
This is why Toshiba's having trouble getting other hardware manufacturers on board, with them selling at such a loss. Sure HD-DVD is supposed to be cheaper than blu-ray for disc pressing, but the players have pretty much the same specs, it can't be that much cheaper for Toshiba to build them.
Exactly HD-DVD & Blu-Ray share the same blue laser diode, similar hardware specs, and a similar software stack. If HD-DVD players are selling for less than Blu-Ray it is because Toshiba is heavily subsidizing them to push more sales. The Blu-Ray camp seems less inclined to drop prices, probably because they're winning so why lose money on sales?
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It would be great if true. I'd be happy for the consumer version to be identical to the educational one, except maybe for having function keys and a not so garish colour. The whole appeal of the educational one is it's an extremely rugged, power sipping laptop that can be thrown into a bag or case without the hassle of a normal laptop and literally used anywhere.
Then instead of complaining about drivers, you'll be complaining about the lack of them, and the lack of any kind of dist neutral ABI that OEMs can provide them with.
I really don't understand why they don't do it. Selling a consumer version would fund development of the educational version. It might also lessen demand for the educational ones. Bitfrost or not, you just know these things are going to be cropping up on eBay with frightening regularity.
Besides, can't Tivo gather viewing data, aggregate it and then tell the networks what shows people are watching? Can't Nielsen factor Tivo into their calculations? Shouldn't the Tivo actually mean more sci-fi, not less if the people who own such boxes are more likely to be recording sci-fi on it and therefore tipping Tivo's gathered data in their direction?
Anyway, perhaps the upshot of all this is that maybe Nielsen need to expand out into web browsing. Alexa is just a poor man's Nielsen with no control over who installs their spyware. Perhaps there is a need for an industry trusted source that installs browser monitors on a representative sample of the population to gathers stats in strictest of confidence.
The funny part is that the PS3 still supports SACD. There is still a chance for Sony to turn their lemon into lemonade if they start making more CDs as hybrid SACDs.
I remember shaking my head when someone told me they'd bought one. There was interest in the format, but it was hampered by horrific DRM and costing 10x as much as a cassette player. At the end of the day it was just too expensive, too restrictive and it had the misfortune to soon be competing with MP3 players. As memory got cheaper, MP3 players wiped the floor with MiniDisc. I think if Sony hadn't crippled it, it could still be a popular format, even for data storage.
I remember trying to produce a CV on WordWorth using a Commodore MPS 1230 printer. It was an exercise in pain and suffering. Partly that was the due to the word processor, partly due to the shockingly bad font and printer support in AmigaOS, and partly due to the printer itself. Windows 3.1 may have sucked for all sorts of reasons, but it was amazing how much more productive it was to use for word processing than the Amiga thanks to good printer support and TrueType fonts.
I owned several STs and several Amigas. About the only things ST was better at were DTP and MIDI applications running via the ST's hires monochrome mode. In most other respects, the Amiga beat it to a bloody pulp. The Amiga got better for productivity apps but nothing that would threaten what was available on the Mac or the PC at the same time.
Probably anyone who thinks it's a terribly bad idea to change licences midstream through the life of a product. They should have done what Samba is doing and declare a clean break at a major version change. It would be less confusing and far more clearcut to say that gcc 4.2.x is GPL v2 and 4.4.x is GPL3.
I do not believe either that the lack of buttons Wii remote makes it any easier to use. It might look less intimidating, but some games still need more actions than there are buttons. Then you're expected to remember a bunch of gestures instead which leads to the exact same issues - worse in fact since gestures suck. The only time the remote is going to be easy per se is if the game itself is simple. That is more a factor of game design than anything else. I have a game for my PSP which uses just three buttons and nothing else. I have a game for the PS3 which uses just one button and tilt controls. I have another game for the PS3 that nothing but tilt controls. The point being that its the games that dictate how many controls are required, not the controller.
No I wouldn't. That piece and other comments from Linus are talking about the kernel developer's problems supporting an ABI. But there is nothing to stop distributions and vendors from supporting an ABI and hiding any changes in implementations. Indeed, it is absolutely in their interests to support an ABI, since it makes it far, far easier to support Linux than it has been until now.
About the only way you can get a driver at the moment is to hope that there is one in the kernel you're using already, or that the vendor (e.g. NVidia) as gone to the expense and effort of supporting the gazillion different kernels and dists out there. The barrier is simply too high for many vendors to bother. The barrier is impossible to many end users wouldn't have a clue (and shouldn't be expected to) to fetch a new kernel, or to patch and rebuild an existing one.
There would be nothing to stop dists from specifying an ABI, possibly as part of the Linux Standard Base, and supporting it in their respective dists without any hassle for kernel developers. After all, projects such as ALSA and the crypto components were independently maintained for years without the kernel folks being involved.
It would be great if dists would support an ABI and produce some dist neutral packaging system that allowed drivers to be installed / uninstalled easily by mere mortals no matter what dist they had.
I don't think Microsoft really cares about HD-DVD. Otherwise it would have appeared in the XBox 360 Elite.
Sure they released an HD-DVD add-on but I suspect they did it more to piss on Sony's parade than any particular commitment to the format. I bet Toshiba shouldered most of the cost too. Their VC-1 codec is in both the HD-DVD and Blu Ray specs so what do they care either way, just as long as people choose their codec? It sucks if you bought their add-on though. It wouldn't surprise me if MS ultimately jumped ship and went with Blu-Ray if for no other reason than to close another perceived advantage of the PS3.
I think some of your other points are valid but some are FUD. The 360 has terrible quality problems but Halo 3 is going to sell many, many copies, and many systems. Personally I don't know why people care about the game since first person shooters are coming out of the 360's and the PS3's ears but it's an undeniable fact that Halo will sell.
I think Microsoft's misfortune is that not only do they have to swallow the costs of launching a console, but they've been beset by a series of hardware faults - overheating PSUs, scratched discs and red rings of death. On top of that, they haven't captured the market the way they wanted. Now they've got the Wii and PS3 breathing down their neck too. I think they'll be extremely lucky if they're still first this time next year. Not that I think the PS3 will be either, but I think the 360 really needs to turn things around or even the PS3 will overtake it.
On the flip side, it does seem weird that SK could even get themselves in this situation. If the engine sucked as much as they claim, why develop against an unstable engine for so long? Couldn't they have started development on UE2.5 and then moved over once it was further along? I find it incredible that they are only complaining about it now, or that performance problems even matter so early in the development life cycle. I wonder if this suit is prompted more by the money hats demanding to know where their game is than by anything else - the workman blaming his tools and so on.
At least they can get their dose of forensic porn in CSI / Law & Order etc. US TV has the weirdest of standards - swearing & nudity bad, violence good.
He would have been better off picking a weaker target such Islam. You don't want to mess with those Mac zealots.
As for you being a member of the PSP homebrew community, you should know better than anyone that 99% of people who use firmware mods are doing it to pirate games. Don't deny it. If your community wanted to put itself in a better standing with Sony you could start by totally disassociating yourself with piracy (which includes condoning piracy mods such as iso loaders), form a special interest group, and request to work with Sony on a Linux for PSP. But don't for a second expect Sony to stop fixing their firmware or making it harder to crack. It's quite obvious why they're doing it and it has nothing to do with homebrew.
If they hated homebrew they wouldn't have bent over backwards to support it in the PS2 and PS3 to provide support for it. After all, no other console manufacturer even bothers. Sure, it might have had fringe benefits for Sony (e.g. the whole "PS2 is a computer" thing), but they didn't have to do it. In fact the PS3 is an amazingly versatile machine in part because you can run Linux on it.
Perhaps the original plan was for the PSP to be an IR remote or something but I haven't heard of anything which uses the IR port. It seems a given that they got rid of something that wasn't used. It's too bad they didn't stick in bluetooth or similar, since it might have been better for ad hoc play in some circumstances, as well as sharing pictures / music etc.
As for games, it has plenty of excellent titles.
Stick with your DS if you like it, but get your facts straight.
This February article supports the notion that Blu Ray discs cost slightly more to replicate. The problem for HD DVD is it's not that much more, and if Blu Ray sales are 2x HD-DVD then the quantity alone might chop any advantage for HD DVD. The Blu Ray might also work out cheaper if it can get away with a single layer but the HD-DVD is forced to use dual layer.
The software assisted BC is not as good as hardware (obviously) but support is still very good.
The tyranny??? Toshiba is no better or worse than Sony. The Japanese electronics industry is so incestuous that these two can be fighting about one thing (the HD format) and cooperating on another (making Cell processors). People who think Toshiba are some sort of rebel alliance are simply out of their tree. It's a lousy format war FFS. If you want to side with HD-DVD fine, but do so for the merits of the system, not out of some misguided hatred of one mega-corporation over another.
Exactly HD-DVD & Blu-Ray share the same blue laser diode, similar hardware specs, and a similar software stack. If HD-DVD players are selling for less than Blu-Ray it is because Toshiba is heavily subsidizing them to push more sales. The Blu-Ray camp seems less inclined to drop prices, probably because they're winning so why lose money on sales?