Windows is becoming as hellishly difficult to develop for as Linux. There are just so many versions, with so many different security settings, and so many features that are present or not present that it is rapidly becoming a QA nightmare. I thought it bad enough on XP + Server 2003. Vista and Server 2003 are going to make some QA tester's heads pop.
What's with the massive anti-HD sentiment regarding porn? What happened when you guys see a woman in real life? Do you go "EWWWWWWW! She's so hi-def! I can see her pores!" Christ, if detail really turns you off that much why not just confine yourself to viewing hentai?
That depends if all the women you see in real life are caked in makeup, have boob jobs (complete with scars) and razor rash.
Out of interest why do you consider Blu-Ray "less open"? From everything known of both formats, they run a virtually identical software stack including crypto. The most significant difference is the way that bits are stored on a disk, but other than that they're ugly sisters whose only saving grace is the amount of capacity they offer.
I'm surprised the porn industry really cares about either format. Seems like they would make lots more money by going straight to digital downloads. Besides this story manages to cite two different and mutually exclusive reasons that they would choose HD-DVD - 1) they were denied the ability to use Sony's production facilities 2) it was too expensive for them. So which was it?
At least IBM has big pants with deep pockets. I mean, how long has this farce been going on?...And what, pray tell, will IBM see (in terms of monetary relief) when it's over?
Just guessing, but I expect IBM doesn't want to be raped over a barrel by some cowboy outfit that has some tenuous claim on IBM's business. I'm sure they could have paid up, or bought them out, and perhaps with hindsight they may even have done it. But at this point they just want to see SCO die in a fire and send out a message to any other SCO wannabe.
My guess: the era of pre-loading software and packing computers with shit as an "added bonus" is over.
I wonder if that will stop MS trying to shove Windows Live in your face when you first start Vista. They certainly did it in the beta release, and it would be hard to see how they could justify that if they seek to ban other AV / Firewall products from being installed by Dell or whoever. It's like what they did when they bundled MSN with Windows 95.
But who says the PS3s have been sitting on the shelf for weeks? For all you know they arrive one day and they were gone the next. Or the supply was enough to last a week before the next shipment. All these stories are as idiotic as my beans anecdote. I could take a picture of the beans. Lots of people could take pictures of beans. We could swap anecdotes. We might even have some guy in the store who knows they only sold a few that day. It doesn't mean they're not selling.
All these stories thus far have been spun out of wishful thinking. The Wii probably is selling a lot more than the PS3, but it doesn't mean that because the Wii is in short supply now that the same won't affect it either when supply catches up with demand. Fact is it probably will and you'll see piles of them too. Again, it doesn't mean they're not selling - just that stores are getting enough to meet demand.
Alright then, "I walked into my local Apple Store and they had piles of [insert-latest-fad-item-here] therefore they can't be selling". Except of course they are, just that the store is getting a regular supply of them. I don't see any difference between that and a PS3. What's surprising is that people think the PS3 should be in short supply forever, that Sony should have perpetual production issues which they cannot resolve.
It is certainly no longer a supply issue as PS3s are sitting on shelves all over Japan.
And my local supermarket has tins of beans sitting on shelves. After all, they can't be selling because they had a whole pile of them when last I looked.
Not saying he's lying this time but he has made claims in the past that have bent the truth or have been outright lies (e.g. claiming Intel Macs were 2-4x faster than PPC macs). Claiming to have a better battery life on their device (driving a huge screen no less) than any existing phone from Nokia, Siemens, Alcatel, Sony Ericsson, Samsung etc. seems to be pretty unbelievable. In a bad way.
Although I agree these laptops could be useful (I currently use a $500 laptop for browsing, e-mail and chatting primarily), I do wonder whether the UI (both hardware and software) and storage limitations are sufficient for western adults.
I think Sugar (the UI) would be hateful, but it is just Linux running underneath so I expect you could shove a cut down dist onto the thing and it work pretty much like a regular laptop. In terms of usefulness, I think that if it were bundled with Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice (or even Abiword / Gnumeric), Skype + a few games and multimedia things that it would satisfy what most people want to do when they're out and about.
The software side can probably be changed (given it's linux based, I expect major improvements will happen if the OLPC becomes popular in the west). Perhaps a different color (black or white instead of green?) would make it more appealing. But storage would be a serious issue unless it allowed secure and fast access to home systems from anywhere.
I wouldn't mind the colour at all but black would look nice. As for storage I believe the thing supports standard USB key devices so there should be no issue there.
Personally I just think of the times that I go away on a holiday (to the beach, weekend or city break) and salivate over these things. At the moment I take a PocketPC loaded with Skype but it absolutely sucks for web browsing because the screen & input are so tiny. I could take one of these instead and use it on the plane over, or in the hotel room and the small size means its easy to carry with me without being scared of breaking it. It would knock the spots off a PocketPC in this role.
Just as important - what's the battery life like. If they expect you to plug this thing every day into a dock, then it stinks as a phone. Besides, I don't even see anything about it to justify the enormous price except for storage. Most of what it offers has been available for years in various forms (e.g. O2's XDA phone range).
Exactly. If you crack open the Mesa (OpenGL) source, you can see that it plugs into various backends. The PS3 graphics driver is framebuffer only which implies you'd be stuck with a software backend. However there are 6 SPUs sitting there doing nothing... It must be possible to feed them with vector transformations, shading etc and have performance somewhat comparable to an IGP. Not stellar but enough to enjoy some games and desktop eye candy.
Especially on a PS3. While the PS3 makes a cool Linux machine, I expect that while you are waiting for Gentoo to compile on it that you may as well start a family, raise them up, and watch them have kids. Then finally if you're lucky, the build will have completed before your time on this earth is up.
Anyway, the PS3 is absolutely the last machine you should ever, ever need Gentoo on. Every single PS3 is exactly the same. There is no need to "optimise" a build for a PS3 simply because the build should be optimal anyway, assuming you pick a dist which targets the PS3 exclusively. It's not like x86 where you have a gazillion different processors and devices that you might get some measurable gain by tweaking a build switch or two.
It's too bad the PS3 didn't accept an HDMI input. The thing would make a very cool pvr. It might still be possible with a USB dongle and MythTV running on it, but not as elegant.
Interesting. If that were the conditions, I'd say yes to it. I wouldn't want sugar UI - just Fedora & GNOME / xfce or similar, but other than that I can live with it the way it is, even down to the lime green finish.
I'd pay $300 for a rugged laptop that runs 6 hours, can be stuffed into a small bag, has wifi, browser and other functionality. I'm sure a lot of other people would too - who knows perhaps it would be great way to subsidize the educational version.
The 1 million in this headline was to the US only. Japan got 400,000. So still short of 2 million but not by as much. Certainly the fact that Sony managed to ship / sell 1.4 million by end of December demonstrates they're on top of the production issues - they sold 400,000 at launch or thereabouts which means they've managed to produce, ship and sell 1 million units by year end. Which suggests they're not having issues with blue laser diodes any more.
Putting aside "fun" for a second, the problem is that the Wii is the odd man out. The PS3 and 360 are very, very similar in terms of performance and features making it easy to develop to develop for both in parallel (e.g. any EA game). Or to make a game timed exclusive and then port (e.g. Virtua Fighter 5). Or to do a game for one console and the sequel for the other (e.g. Ridge Racer). That means development costs are less to support the PS3 than you might think since probably 90% of the game is identical to the 360 version and vice versa. The same is not true for the Wii - you either have to port up from the PS2 / XBox / Gamecube (e.g. Splinter Cell : Double Agent, Call of Duty 3) or spend a lot more money developing content exclusively for that one platform (Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam) since you sure as hell won't be able to port down very often. So the crunch will come when the first option disappears. At that point you have two very powerful, similar highend systems, and one very underpowered low end system with limited potential for ports. Which do you think will suffer the most?
Obviously lots of cross-platform games are a load of old crap. But there are some excellent games in there too which may be denied to the Wii and even the crap (e.g any EA sports title) is still bought by somebody.
Now concerning "fun", I wonder why anybody thinks Nintendo somehow has a monopoly on fun. That appears to be a cop out often used to make up for lack of titles, or for hardware specs. I expect that 2.5 million Gears of War owners are also enjoying their fair share of fun at the moment despite the fact there is no Nintendo hardware in sight.
That often strikes me too when in a newsagent. I see magazines touting to have pictures of the PS3 etc., or the latest 360 demo, or the latest reviews yet they're all out of date already. You could literally find the same info months ago online. However, I don't see why magazines couldn't continue to exist as online brands. I read 1up.com everyday as well as Gamespot and some others and value their reviews, opinion and features.
Just curious, but if the Xbox 360 has 10 million sold, and the PS3 hopes to have an additional 6 million by the end of the year (on top of this 1 million?)...
100 million PS2s were sold in its lifetime so 10 million still pretty small potatoes. Besides let's reasonably say that the PS3 sold 10 million by the end of the year (not unreasonable since Sony are pitching for 6 million by March and they haven't even launched in Europe yet). If you were a games developer, even if the 360 were up to 20 million, does that mean 10 million consoles is not worth your time to develop for? Even it it only adds 10-15% to your budget? Did it happen with the XBox?
I'd say hell no. Which is why the PS3 has a long life in it yet. It's close enough to the 360 to make it straightforward to port games from the 360 (or vice versa) and it will have enough sales to justify doing it too, as well as exclusives.
The odd man out is actually the Wii. While it's selling well now, how well will it sell when the realisation dawns that it really, really sucks compared to the 360 and PS3? Once the gimmick has worn off, and PS2 / XBox / GC games many titles are ported from has disappeared, it may well find itself stuck in 1st party Pokemon / Mario hell just like the Gamecube was with precious few 3rd party titles to bulk up its library.
Your sarcasm is unfounded. The single / double click launch behaviour of the desktop is clearly a desktop setting, and certainly not something that anybody would expect to be in a panel which controls mouse behaviour for all applications.
What's to laugh at? The PS3 has 1000baseT compared to 100baseT on the 360. Ten times as fast assuming the rest of your network were up to snuff. Obviously this is mostly a nonsense argument in the home but the original poster was claiming that PS3 wi-fi was anecdotally worse than fixed network, totally ignoring the fact that even if it were the PS3 still is superior to a 360 on the fixed networking.
At least the PS3 offers Wifi. To do the same on the 360 requires a $80-100 "gaming router". By the time you get the 360 anything remotely approaching a 60Gb you'd have spent a lot more.
Slashdot Mirror
He can become "Head of Entertainment" just like in a Mafia controlled casino.
Windows is becoming as hellishly difficult to develop for as Linux. There are just so many versions, with so many different security settings, and so many features that are present or not present that it is rapidly becoming a QA nightmare. I thought it bad enough on XP + Server 2003. Vista and Server 2003 are going to make some QA tester's heads pop.
That depends if all the women you see in real life are caked in makeup, have boob jobs (complete with scars) and razor rash.
I'm surprised the porn industry really cares about either format. Seems like they would make lots more money by going straight to digital downloads. Besides this story manages to cite two different and mutually exclusive reasons that they would choose HD-DVD - 1) they were denied the ability to use Sony's production facilities 2) it was too expensive for them. So which was it?
Just guessing, but I expect IBM doesn't want to be raped over a barrel by some cowboy outfit that has some tenuous claim on IBM's business. I'm sure they could have paid up, or bought them out, and perhaps with hindsight they may even have done it. But at this point they just want to see SCO die in a fire and send out a message to any other SCO wannabe.
Perhaps Big Boss killed it
I wonder if that will stop MS trying to shove Windows Live in your face when you first start Vista. They certainly did it in the beta release, and it would be hard to see how they could justify that if they seek to ban other AV / Firewall products from being installed by Dell or whoever. It's like what they did when they bundled MSN with Windows 95.
All these stories thus far have been spun out of wishful thinking. The Wii probably is selling a lot more than the PS3, but it doesn't mean that because the Wii is in short supply now that the same won't affect it either when supply catches up with demand. Fact is it probably will and you'll see piles of them too. Again, it doesn't mean they're not selling - just that stores are getting enough to meet demand.
Alright then, "I walked into my local Apple Store and they had piles of [insert-latest-fad-item-here] therefore they can't be selling". Except of course they are, just that the store is getting a regular supply of them. I don't see any difference between that and a PS3. What's surprising is that people think the PS3 should be in short supply forever, that Sony should have perpetual production issues which they cannot resolve.
And my local supermarket has tins of beans sitting on shelves. After all, they can't be selling because they had a whole pile of them when last I looked.
Not saying he's lying this time but he has made claims in the past that have bent the truth or have been outright lies (e.g. claiming Intel Macs were 2-4x faster than PPC macs). Claiming to have a better battery life on their device (driving a huge screen no less) than any existing phone from Nokia, Siemens, Alcatel, Sony Ericsson, Samsung etc. seems to be pretty unbelievable. In a bad way.
I think Sugar (the UI) would be hateful, but it is just Linux running underneath so I expect you could shove a cut down dist onto the thing and it work pretty much like a regular laptop. In terms of usefulness, I think that if it were bundled with Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice (or even Abiword / Gnumeric), Skype + a few games and multimedia things that it would satisfy what most people want to do when they're out and about.
The software side can probably be changed (given it's linux based, I expect major improvements will happen if the OLPC becomes popular in the west). Perhaps a different color (black or white instead of green?) would make it more appealing. But storage would be a serious issue unless it allowed secure and fast access to home systems from anywhere.
I wouldn't mind the colour at all but black would look nice. As for storage I believe the thing supports standard USB key devices so there should be no issue there.
Personally I just think of the times that I go away on a holiday (to the beach, weekend or city break) and salivate over these things. At the moment I take a PocketPC loaded with Skype but it absolutely sucks for web browsing because the screen & input are so tiny. I could take one of these instead and use it on the plane over, or in the hotel room and the small size means its easy to carry with me without being scared of breaking it. It would knock the spots off a PocketPC in this role.
Just as important - what's the battery life like. If they expect you to plug this thing every day into a dock, then it stinks as a phone. Besides, I don't even see anything about it to justify the enormous price except for storage. Most of what it offers has been available for years in various forms (e.g. O2's XDA phone range).
Exactly. If you crack open the Mesa (OpenGL) source, you can see that it plugs into various backends. The PS3 graphics driver is framebuffer only which implies you'd be stuck with a software backend. However there are 6 SPUs sitting there doing nothing... It must be possible to feed them with vector transformations, shading etc and have performance somewhat comparable to an IGP. Not stellar but enough to enjoy some games and desktop eye candy.
Anyway, the PS3 is absolutely the last machine you should ever, ever need Gentoo on. Every single PS3 is exactly the same. There is no need to "optimise" a build for a PS3 simply because the build should be optimal anyway, assuming you pick a dist which targets the PS3 exclusively. It's not like x86 where you have a gazillion different processors and devices that you might get some measurable gain by tweaking a build switch or two.
It's too bad the PS3 didn't accept an HDMI input. The thing would make a very cool pvr. It might still be possible with a USB dongle and MythTV running on it, but not as elegant.
Interesting. If that were the conditions, I'd say yes to it. I wouldn't want sugar UI - just Fedora & GNOME / xfce or similar, but other than that I can live with it the way it is, even down to the lime green finish.
I'd pay $300 for a rugged laptop that runs 6 hours, can be stuffed into a small bag, has wifi, browser and other functionality. I'm sure a lot of other people would too - who knows perhaps it would be great way to subsidize the educational version.
The 1 million in this headline was to the US only. Japan got 400,000. So still short of 2 million but not by as much. Certainly the fact that Sony managed to ship / sell 1.4 million by end of December demonstrates they're on top of the production issues - they sold 400,000 at launch or thereabouts which means they've managed to produce, ship and sell 1 million units by year end. Which suggests they're not having issues with blue laser diodes any more.
Obviously lots of cross-platform games are a load of old crap. But there are some excellent games in there too which may be denied to the Wii and even the crap (e.g any EA sports title) is still bought by somebody.
Now concerning "fun", I wonder why anybody thinks Nintendo somehow has a monopoly on fun. That appears to be a cop out often used to make up for lack of titles, or for hardware specs. I expect that 2.5 million Gears of War owners are also enjoying their fair share of fun at the moment despite the fact there is no Nintendo hardware in sight.
That often strikes me too when in a newsagent. I see magazines touting to have pictures of the PS3 etc., or the latest 360 demo, or the latest reviews yet they're all out of date already. You could literally find the same info months ago online. However, I don't see why magazines couldn't continue to exist as online brands. I read 1up.com everyday as well as Gamespot and some others and value their reviews, opinion and features.
100 million PS2s were sold in its lifetime so 10 million still pretty small potatoes. Besides let's reasonably say that the PS3 sold 10 million by the end of the year (not unreasonable since Sony are pitching for 6 million by March and they haven't even launched in Europe yet). If you were a games developer, even if the 360 were up to 20 million, does that mean 10 million consoles is not worth your time to develop for? Even it it only adds 10-15% to your budget? Did it happen with the XBox?
I'd say hell no. Which is why the PS3 has a long life in it yet. It's close enough to the 360 to make it straightforward to port games from the 360 (or vice versa) and it will have enough sales to justify doing it too, as well as exclusives.
The odd man out is actually the Wii. While it's selling well now, how well will it sell when the realisation dawns that it really, really sucks compared to the 360 and PS3? Once the gimmick has worn off, and PS2 / XBox / GC games many titles are ported from has disappeared, it may well find itself stuck in 1st party Pokemon / Mario hell just like the Gamecube was with precious few 3rd party titles to bulk up its library.
Your sarcasm is unfounded. The single / double click launch behaviour of the desktop is clearly a desktop setting, and certainly not something that anybody would expect to be in a panel which controls mouse behaviour for all applications.
At least the PS3 offers Wifi. To do the same on the 360 requires a $80-100 "gaming router". By the time you get the 360 anything remotely approaching a 60Gb you'd have spent a lot more.
Good catch, I'm always doing that :)