As you said Microsoft stuff is pirated and would be too expensive to buy if it wasn't. So while MS have a monopoly on the pirate scene which has some worth, it isn't exactly and ideal situation. And if China stamps down on the pirates (at the insistence of the US government and Microsoft) it is in effect creating a vacuum that Linux can fill. Just from a idealogical stance, I'm sure the concept of community and open source software combined with paranoia of backdoors or malware in Windows makes Linux very appealing.
The problem is, people ARE thieves. There are some basic ways to offset this:
DRM your content. Prevents piracy but means you treat your paying customers like shit. Force them to use proprietary movie players, install spyware, encrypted content, time limited viewing etc. The net result is you have no or very few customers.
Prosecute thieves. Log IP addresses. Prosecute 9 year olds and dead people for downloading one lousy song. Become hated and despised for your tactics. Repeat for as long as civilization endures as p2ps go dark and harder to trace.
Sell your content cheaper in any open format in a way more reliable and accessible than any P2P. Gain millions of customers, earning far more than you lose through piracy. If you must use anti-piracy measures, make them passive such as watermarking and combine it with a less aggressive form of 2.
It is odd everyone thinks the first two approaches are the best.
It doesn't to me either. No one would be THAT stoked about any console let alone the 360 to cause such a result. That is unless someone has been resorting to a spot of ballot stuffing.
This is an interesting video clip of people from 1UP talking about the PS3 vs XBox 360. Their opinion is that there is zero buzz about the 360 over in Japan and the PS3 got everything right.
The 360 is going to tank in Japan, with the Wii taking the bottom end and the PS3 the top.
Now, GTA4 is also being released on the 360 and Sony is killing the Gran Turismo series for me.
Rockstar & Microsoft have already announced they will be producing episodic content for GTA. Want to bet that it costs money? Perhaps the lower capacity DVD of the 360 version means it will be missing out on content or textures that the PS3 has straight from the disc.
I can think of another money spinner in the same spirit as Microsoft's Vista upgrade - employ 1 million people to paint metal buckets and another million who scrape the paint off. The benefits to the economy as a whole (and especially the paint & bucket industry) will be enormous.
So far most of the attention has been squarely on the video game aspects of the device. Aside from a few side shows the TGS was all about showing off the games it played. I haven't seen much coverage of other aspects of the device (e.g. music & video features) and there certainly hasn't been much technical meat to hang an opinion on.
It's hard to speculate until the game comes out, but most likely it would follow the Oblivion model. On the XBox 360 you get the basic Oblivion game (though basic is an understatement for such a massive game), but then you pay for extra weapons, horses, zones. I expect that GT would do similar, offering a bunch of cars by default and then sell new vehicles or special paint jobs if you pay extra for them.
Personally I think that this is a slippery slope. I wouldn't buy any game that required I buy extra content to unlock some lousy car, weapon or whatever needed to complete the game. Even episodic content sucks since it encourages games to be stripped to the bone.
This is a pretty strawman argument. Not everyone wants or needs Adobe Photoshop. Some people just want to show their family snaps and a PS3 (or XBox 360 or Wii) and an HDTV is a perfect way to do it. If you're moaning about the ability to show photos, your criticism should be aimed at every console not just the PS3. After all, the Wii has a picture viewer and makes great stock of it too (which isn't surprising considering the dearth of other features).
As for DVD players etc., why shouldn't it offer playback? It reads DVDs, it has the CPU horsepower, and a TV-out. It's just dumb *not* to play DVDs. Sony might save themselves a lousy few dollars if it didn't but also deprive the system of a major feature which is easy to implement. Some people appreciate having DVD (and BD) playback, music, video content, games, browsing and other features from a single device rather than having to buy and configure multiple devices for the same functionality.
Clearly Sony are not alone in this thinking. One only has to look at what Apple and Microsoft are doing to see they have similar plans.
That is pretty bizarre thinking. The PS3 has the horsepower, and capacity to offer a browser, music and video playback and many other features in addition to games. So why shouldn't it offer them? Do you think that there is absolutely no benefit at all to having a single device by your TV which can do all of those things?
Nintendo will also be crushed to learn you don't want a browser because they're making one for the Wii (and DS).
But the Sony PSP can play MP3, ATRAC3plus, WMA and AAC. Not copy protected content, but the unprotected stuff. You can also rip DVDs, encode them with AVC upload them to the PSP to play. That is what I am referring to, not what physical discs it plays. Sony has also done some incredibly stupid things such as your example and the whole DRM CD debacle. Let's hope that they gotten a clue because its probably their last chance.
But as for HD-DVD, I'm sure that can be attributed to the fact that Sony co-invented Blu-Ray and simply can't support HD-DVD. If they did so, the HD-DVD would become the defacto standard and Sony would lose. But there is no "standard" yet. Both formats use the same video codecs and the same or similar standards for other things. I expect that players could support both formats in time. Personally I don't own an HDTV and don't care which format wins, however I do think that ultimately Blu-Ray will win. The PS3 will see to that unless MS pull a rabbit out of the hat and start shipping XBox 360s with internal HD-DVDs some time in the next 3 months. They're certainly not going to win with that rotten external HD-DVD player.
Yes, but Richard Hoagland wouldn't sell any books if he just said it was just a rock formation. No, it's a CONSPIRACY and will be as long as there are people stupid enough to believe him.
The sad thing is if the 360 came with native divx and FLAC support I'd probably pick on up right now (as I have no desire to install windows xp media center).
Exactly. The 360 had a great potential for multimedia but was deliberately crippled to prop up Windows Media Center. I expect some flack at Microsoft thought "if we let this thing store and play movies then who is going to buy WMC? So let's cripple it so it only streams movies!".
One would hope that as Sony is more agnostic on video formats than MS that they might at least allow you to store files on the PS3 and possibly support several major codecs. They might not support Divx though simply because that is what most pirate content is in. But if Sony are really smart, they'd let people play their own ripped content while providing convenient access to their own video store.
You're right. I don't think anyone would want the ugly external HD-DVD drive. But you can bet Microsoft will stick an internal HD-DVD in their next revision of the 360. I expect they'll also want to include HDMI and some other bits and pieces to close the gap with the PS3. HD-DVD still won't be any use to games though, unlike Blu-Ray.
Anyway, for Japan at least, the basic PS3 is almost the same price as the XBox premium which isn't bad going at all.
The first thing you see after logging into RC1 is a screen trying to sign you up to Windows Live OneCare and others linking to Windows Live which is MS online search & email capabilities. It's no wonder that companies are going nuts.
And is the iTV used in conjunction with some other device that holds your content or is it standalone? If it works in conjunction with a device that you stream from then you can add the price of that onto your figure. Besides, the XBox 360 has had similar capability to stream from Windows Media Center PCs for a year now. Even Sony has something similar called LocationFree which is tied to the PSP and probably the PS3 too. Then there are various homebrew solutions around MythTV or VLC. In every case it's not a particularly convenient or useful technology simply because you have to buy two quite expensive devices and leave them on just to watch a picture through your TV.
Which is where a console could come in. XBox 360 was crippled by Microsoft to only support video streaming, presumably to force sales of Windows Media Center. If Sony are smart (and usually they are not), they'll make the PS3 capable not only of playing content but receiving it and even acting like a LocationFree base station to send it anywhere else in the house. That's the way around it should be and it would be awesome.
Why do you assume people have to fight with a PS3? If Sony does choose to implement some kind of music, video, game download service you can expect that it will be very straightforward. More likely to scupper any such service would be if they try to rape their customers for that content, charging near DVD prices for content that is bound to the box. If they are smart, they'll follow some kind of movie rental service better suited to the finite capacity in the console.
As for secondary consideration, I think the PS3 stands a good chance of being used as much for its music & video capabilities as for games. After all, it will ship with a Blu-Ray drive and HD capacity. Given the capabilities it shouldn't be some second rate system in that department. You may even find that you can plug your iPod into it and play your unprotected content with little difficulty.
Apple never market Mac mini as a playback hardware for your TV
"The full-screen Front Row media experience -- with its intuitive menus, large text and brilliant graphics -- lets you browse the music, photos, and videos on your Mac mini as easily as you browse music on your iPod. The included Apple Remote lets you enjoy your media from anywhere in the room from your desk chair to favorite sofa. Front Row and Mac mini can even play music, photos, and videos saved on other computers in the house, thanks to Bonjour instant networking.(3) So gather your friends and dazzle them with a slideshow of your vacation pics, a home movie, your latest playlist, or a DVD."
Straight from their site. Now they don't mention TV, but go on to the accessory page and you will see them selling various audio and video convertors with hints how to hook it up to the TV. Clearly they want you to use it from your TV.
I expect the pairing will be even more pronounced with the next release, and perhaps that is exactly what the "iTV" is - a diskless Mac Mini, to be stacked on top of a real Mac Mini, or used in the vicinity of one.
Why should any Linux distro do that, when Microsoft never has ?
Microsoft does allow operating systems to be upgraded. They even sell a retail version of XP that is for upgrade only. It may well be that you can't upgrade from an OEM CD, but that is not meant for upgrading. Here is an article that describes what the upgrade version does. It even provides a way to uninstall XP and revert to Win98 if you have a problem. Does Linux come anywhere near to that?
I can't see why people who give their time for free should do so much more than a company who have made so much profit by not providing that service
Unfortunately you are wrong since XP upgrade goes to extreme lengths to make the upgrade simple. Server upgrades also ship with various tools to help things go smoothly. As for these "volunteers", anyone employed by RedHat, Novell, IBM, Sun etc. is not a volunteer. Is there no value at all to these companies in producing a version of Linux which makes upgrading from NT or W2K a snap? Is there no value at all to volunteers Ubuntu which supposedly prides itself on making stuff easy to make stuff easy?
"Where is the install that dual boots between Linux and Win98 from the same disk?" At a guess, ALL OF THEM !
Nonsense. Win98 users typically have partitions occupying the whole of their disks. Which Linux repartitions their FAT32 partition installs Linux in the free other half and then offers dual boot? Which Linux offers to install in the FAT32 partition and offers to dual boot between them?
"Where is the Linux install that works on FAT32 and preserves the existing disk contents?" At a guess, ALL OF THEM ! except that Linux won't be running on FAT32, but it can read and write to it fine. Where is the microsoft install that keeps the existing disk contents ?
See above. Unless Linux makes space for itself on the disk, the answer is none of them do. The "express" install wipes everything on the disk. The custom install expects you to delete the partitions for yourself.
"Where is the install that replicates their existing printer.". Apart from windows not doing that anyway, all I had to do with Fedora, was (after installation was finished) turn on the printer, and check for new hardware.
If Fedora can do it after installation, why can't it do it during installation? Why can't it see that the user's ISP or network settings are this or that and replicate them? The answer is that it could.
You just want everything done for you it seems, and from your attitude, you have never installed windows in your life.
BTW this subject is called "Can Linux Pick Up Users Abandoning Win98?" and from your attitude, the answer is no. Faced with the RTFM jerk mentality shown by Linux they'll pick Windows every time.
I think Ubuntu does a very good job of being friendly to Windows users considering an upgrade, but no dist really upgrades so much as overwrite.
Part of the problem with "upgrading" to Linux is that it dumps all of the settings and files that users may have spent years accumulating. Where is the install that dual boots between Linux and Win98 from the same disk? Where is the Linux install that works on FAT32 and preserves the existing disk contents? Or offers to copy all of their files during installation? Where is the install that replicates their existing printer, ISP, file shares in Linux? Where is the Linux that sets up Wine to run any programmes they have copied?
This is not just a problem for Win98. It is probably even more important for NT4.0 and W2K that network and share settings are preserved or replicated as closely as possible. And if not that, that the installer offers to print or save a tasklist to disk that can be done automatically or manually after installation. Needless pain and suffering will simply cause users give up and go with Microsoft.
I dimly recall reading that some dists do boot from FAT32, but these need to be mainstream features.
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As you said Microsoft stuff is pirated and would be too expensive to buy if it wasn't. So while MS have a monopoly on the pirate scene which has some worth, it isn't exactly and ideal situation. And if China stamps down on the pirates (at the insistence of the US government and Microsoft) it is in effect creating a vacuum that Linux can fill. Just from a idealogical stance, I'm sure the concept of community and open source software combined with paranoia of backdoors or malware in Windows makes Linux very appealing.
It is odd everyone thinks the first two approaches are the best.
It doesn't to me either. No one would be THAT stoked about any console let alone the 360 to cause such a result. That is unless someone has been resorting to a spot of ballot stuffing.
The 360 is going to tank in Japan, with the Wii taking the bottom end and the PS3 the top.
Rockstar & Microsoft have already announced they will be producing episodic content for GTA. Want to bet that it costs money? Perhaps the lower capacity DVD of the 360 version means it will be missing out on content or textures that the PS3 has straight from the disc.
I can think of another money spinner in the same spirit as Microsoft's Vista upgrade - employ 1 million people to paint metal buckets and another million who scrape the paint off. The benefits to the economy as a whole (and especially the paint & bucket industry) will be enormous.
So far most of the attention has been squarely on the video game aspects of the device. Aside from a few side shows the TGS was all about showing off the games it played. I haven't seen much coverage of other aspects of the device (e.g. music & video features) and there certainly hasn't been much technical meat to hang an opinion on.
Personally I think that this is a slippery slope. I wouldn't buy any game that required I buy extra content to unlock some lousy car, weapon or whatever needed to complete the game. Even episodic content sucks since it encourages games to be stripped to the bone.
As for DVD players etc., why shouldn't it offer playback? It reads DVDs, it has the CPU horsepower, and a TV-out. It's just dumb *not* to play DVDs. Sony might save themselves a lousy few dollars if it didn't but also deprive the system of a major feature which is easy to implement. Some people appreciate having DVD (and BD) playback, music, video content, games, browsing and other features from a single device rather than having to buy and configure multiple devices for the same functionality.
Clearly Sony are not alone in this thinking. One only has to look at what Apple and Microsoft are doing to see they have similar plans.
Nintendo will also be crushed to learn you don't want a browser because they're making one for the Wii (and DS).
But as for HD-DVD, I'm sure that can be attributed to the fact that Sony co-invented Blu-Ray and simply can't support HD-DVD. If they did so, the HD-DVD would become the defacto standard and Sony would lose. But there is no "standard" yet. Both formats use the same video codecs and the same or similar standards for other things. I expect that players could support both formats in time. Personally I don't own an HDTV and don't care which format wins, however I do think that ultimately Blu-Ray will win. The PS3 will see to that unless MS pull a rabbit out of the hat and start shipping XBox 360s with internal HD-DVDs some time in the next 3 months. They're certainly not going to win with that rotten external HD-DVD player.
Yes, but Richard Hoagland wouldn't sell any books if he just said it was just a rock formation. No, it's a CONSPIRACY and will be as long as there are people stupid enough to believe him.
Exactly. The 360 had a great potential for multimedia but was deliberately crippled to prop up Windows Media Center. I expect some flack at Microsoft thought "if we let this thing store and play movies then who is going to buy WMC? So let's cripple it so it only streams movies!".
One would hope that as Sony is more agnostic on video formats than MS that they might at least allow you to store files on the PS3 and possibly support several major codecs. They might not support Divx though simply because that is what most pirate content is in. But if Sony are really smart, they'd let people play their own ripped content while providing convenient access to their own video store.
Anyway, for Japan at least, the basic PS3 is almost the same price as the XBox premium which isn't bad going at all.
The low-end PS3 is more comparable to the high-end XBox 360. It's lacking a wireless controller, but otherwise they're mostly at parity.
The Tokyo Game Show is on but this is nothing compared the number of Nintendo announcements that appeared on /. when E3 was on.
The first thing you see after logging into RC1 is a screen trying to sign you up to Windows Live OneCare and others linking to Windows Live which is MS online search & email capabilities. It's no wonder that companies are going nuts.
Which is where a console could come in. XBox 360 was crippled by Microsoft to only support video streaming, presumably to force sales of Windows Media Center. If Sony are smart (and usually they are not), they'll make the PS3 capable not only of playing content but receiving it and even acting like a LocationFree base station to send it anywhere else in the house. That's the way around it should be and it would be awesome.
As for secondary consideration, I think the PS3 stands a good chance of being used as much for its music & video capabilities as for games. After all, it will ship with a Blu-Ray drive and HD capacity. Given the capabilities it shouldn't be some second rate system in that department. You may even find that you can plug your iPod into it and play your unprotected content with little difficulty.
"The full-screen Front Row media experience -- with its intuitive menus, large text and brilliant graphics -- lets you browse the music, photos, and videos on your Mac mini as easily as you browse music on your iPod. The included Apple Remote lets you enjoy your media from anywhere in the room from your desk chair to favorite sofa. Front Row and Mac mini can even play music, photos, and videos saved on other computers in the house, thanks to Bonjour instant networking.(3) So gather your friends and dazzle them with a slideshow of your vacation pics, a home movie, your latest playlist, or a DVD."
Straight from their site. Now they don't mention TV, but go on to the accessory page and you will see them selling various audio and video convertors with hints how to hook it up to the TV. Clearly they want you to use it from your TV.
I expect the pairing will be even more pronounced with the next release, and perhaps that is exactly what the "iTV" is - a diskless Mac Mini, to be stacked on top of a real Mac Mini, or used in the vicinity of one.
Why do you need a general purpose computer under your TV to perform multimedia playback?
People bitch about paying $500 or $600 for a PS3, so why should they pay the same or more for a Mac Mini in a similar role?
My LCD monitor does 1080p just fine. What would have happened up until now if I plugged an XBox 360 into it?
Microsoft does allow operating systems to be upgraded. They even sell a retail version of XP that is for upgrade only. It may well be that you can't upgrade from an OEM CD, but that is not meant for upgrading. Here is an article that describes what the upgrade version does. It even provides a way to uninstall XP and revert to Win98 if you have a problem. Does Linux come anywhere near to that?
I can't see why people who give their time for free should do so much more than a company who have made so much profit by not providing that service
Unfortunately you are wrong since XP upgrade goes to extreme lengths to make the upgrade simple. Server upgrades also ship with various tools to help things go smoothly. As for these "volunteers", anyone employed by RedHat, Novell, IBM, Sun etc. is not a volunteer. Is there no value at all to these companies in producing a version of Linux which makes upgrading from NT or W2K a snap? Is there no value at all to volunteers Ubuntu which supposedly prides itself on making stuff easy to make stuff easy?
"Where is the install that dual boots between Linux and Win98 from the same disk?" At a guess, ALL OF THEM !
Nonsense. Win98 users typically have partitions occupying the whole of their disks. Which Linux repartitions their FAT32 partition installs Linux in the free other half and then offers dual boot? Which Linux offers to install in the FAT32 partition and offers to dual boot between them?
"Where is the Linux install that works on FAT32 and preserves the existing disk contents?" At a guess, ALL OF THEM ! except that Linux won't be running on FAT32, but it can read and write to it fine. Where is the microsoft install that keeps the existing disk contents ?
See above. Unless Linux makes space for itself on the disk, the answer is none of them do. The "express" install wipes everything on the disk. The custom install expects you to delete the partitions for yourself.
"Where is the install that replicates their existing printer.". Apart from windows not doing that anyway, all I had to do with Fedora, was (after installation was finished) turn on the printer, and check for new hardware.
If Fedora can do it after installation, why can't it do it during installation? Why can't it see that the user's ISP or network settings are this or that and replicate them? The answer is that it could.
You just want everything done for you it seems, and from your attitude, you have never installed windows in your life.
BTW this subject is called "Can Linux Pick Up Users Abandoning Win98?" and from your attitude, the answer is no. Faced with the RTFM jerk mentality shown by Linux they'll pick Windows every time.
Part of the problem with "upgrading" to Linux is that it dumps all of the settings and files that users may have spent years accumulating. Where is the install that dual boots between Linux and Win98 from the same disk? Where is the Linux install that works on FAT32 and preserves the existing disk contents? Or offers to copy all of their files during installation? Where is the install that replicates their existing printer, ISP, file shares in Linux? Where is the Linux that sets up Wine to run any programmes they have copied?
This is not just a problem for Win98. It is probably even more important for NT4.0 and W2K that network and share settings are preserved or replicated as closely as possible. And if not that, that the installer offers to print or save a tasklist to disk that can be done automatically or manually after installation. Needless pain and suffering will simply cause users give up and go with Microsoft.
I dimly recall reading that some dists do boot from FAT32, but these need to be mainstream features.