You assume that games must use Blu Ray when probably there is no requirement that they do. I expect that the PS3 will allow most games to ship on a DVD. But there is a very good reason that some might choose Blu-Ray more content, multiple language support. A single disc could support different languages, lowering costs and increasing flexibility for companies who don't want to pay for smaller production runs for every region they sell in.
My source is the sales figures link in the article that this story points to. The PSP has consistently outsold the DS since late last year. Not by a huge amount, but 10% or so. Considering how much more it costs that is quite an accomplishment. Considering how poor / mediocre most PSP titles have been in the last 12 months doubly so. Though games on the DS have been hardly anything to write about either.
Despite that, the PSP is starting to get some great titles so I think its over the hump. The strong sales have no doubt spurned games makers to do something interesting with the platform rather than shitting out poor PS2 ports.
Without digging too deeply I'd agree there is a distinction between units shipped and units sold - in the short term. But we're talking about a year's worth of data. No store is going to accumulate warehouses full of unsold PSPs so clearly shipping and sales equate over that length of time.
We all know in the short term that the units shipped is a great way to lie about a launch success. Expect to see Sony & Nintendo playing verbal gymnastics during their launches to bolster their sales figures.
A very, very, very compelling case for the PS3 could be made if the thing were a genuine DVR, could be made into one, or at least was able to cache all sorts of multimedia including DVDs.
While I'm sure there are legal issues with ripping DVD, BD content, I don't see them as being that much different than ripping music. If I own a DVD, why can't I rip it? Naturally it could encrypt the movie so it plays nowhere else. If Sony were smart, they'd offer this feature and ensure the PS3 also featured an online store where you could buy more content for reasonable prices. A reasonable price would be a timelimited movie for the same price as a rental, e.g. $6.
This is all hypothetical of course. In the past Sony would sell a device that hacked off their customer's hands off if their media divisions told them to. Here's hoping that a clue finally sinks in after years of mistakes. Aside from the UMD, the PSP actually offers a pretty good example of how you can make a cool multimedia device without crippling it to death in the process. UMDs were done to death by pure greed, but movie ripping via a memory stick is actually quite alright.
You're right. It isn't a realistic comparison at all. I expect the PS3 sales will be strong but will look meagre by comparison with the PS2 for a while yet.
One thing worth noting is that cheaper price doesn't guarantee more sales. Those same charts which compare the PS2 to the XBox360 also show that in the US, seven PS2s are selling for every NGC or XBox (the old one) sold. That's pretty impressive seeing as the PS2 is way past its sell-by date and probably the least capable of any console. Interestingly PSPs are also fairly consistently outselling the DS though there isn't so much in it.
This raises some interesting questions about how much people are prepared to pay for a console and if there are other motivations that drive sales one way or another. I expect that a massive, massive library of titles might have something to do with the PS2's success and some excellent titles but the PSP is far less clear. While the PSP is getting some very good games recently, it has spent the last year in the doldrums, so what are people buying the PSP for? Perhaps it is all these sales which is why some decent games are finally appearing.
All these browsers attempt to show you a lot of pages in one go. Assuming you're after sites that deal with fashion, or games, or cookery, or music etc. in broad categories then there is a usefulness to be able to see a bunch of sites in one go. I know it would be useful to just wander through a hall of today's articles and simply click on a site that has something that interests you. The problem as the article highlights is that showing a bunch of sites simultaneously should not be at the expense of your regular browsing experience. Therefore I'd say that if you could flip between regular browsing and 3D browsing, perhaps even based on what you're looking for, then you could reap the best of both worlds. I've played with 3B and it seems to work (extra points for using Firefox), but the experience is somewhat reminiscent of Wolfenstein 3D in that it's 3D in the same way that a hedge maze is 3D with no up, down, platforms or other points of interest. I'd like to see a more interesting world that is genuinely 3D rather than a hedge maze and perhaps one where there is a little more interaction than my solitary self wandering around aimlessly with not direction or interaction with fellow browsers.
Microsoft has long had the capability to support multiple architectures through the same installer. In fact most of their operating systems specifically arrange architecture specific files in their own subfolder. Service packs can also support multiple architectures. And with XP 64 being out for a while MS have had the chance to refine and streamline the process which might have bitrotten after they dumped Alpha & PPC.
I don't think there is a strong reason for not bundling them together, at least not in the consumer versions. If Apple & OS X can do it then so can Microsoft with XP. It's not like the whole OS even has to be native 64-bits - just the critical paths. It wouldn't make any significant difference to performace if stuff on the periphery such as control panel applets, help DLLs, if it were 32-bits on both architectures.
Exactly, though more realistically retailers would probably carve a large slice of that $300 and another large slice would go to support and development. So more likely it might toss an extra $50 or so OLPC's way.
It might support nsITheme, but that doesn't mean nsITheme uses uxtheme.dll to render the page. XP has a uxtheme.dll that you call with a rectangle and a bunch of flags and tell it to draw a button there or whatever. It means that it picks up the XP, Aero or whatever theme automatically. To my recollection W2K has no uxtheme.dll so there is nothing to call. The behaviour of nsNativeThemeWin (which implements that interface) a themeless version of windows is to fall back on the "classic" look.
I will correct myself here. The classic look is not rendered with styles and css. It used to be a few years back but not anymore apparently. It's clear that the fallback behaviour is to manually the appearance of the classic Windows using GDI calls.
The difference though is there is justification for using a keyboard on a XBox360 and PS3 - email, online chat etc. And since they have standard USB ports, it seems a bit churlish to suggest people shouldn't use the functionality if it improves their gameplay.
As for Linux on the PS3 or PSP - I think are far more viable than the PS2. As you said, you had to buy a pack for the PS2 but neither is necessary for a PS3 or PSP. The PS3 has a harddrive and networking already so just plugin in any store bought keyboard & mouse and you're set. The PSP has a memory stick slot which can act as storage and networking support too. Both could be useful for something.
Besides, isn't the PS3 meant to be installed Linux anyway? I seem to recall that being mentioned somewhere. It might be a very neat system if it was, though it remains to be seen how useful it would be.
It seems weird for them to call it a computer. I would think a better tactic is to call it a multimedia centre. That would require that the PS3 can perform in such a role. Technically could, but this is Sony we're talking about here. The XBox 360 could have been that too but MS chose to NOT allow you to rip DVDs to the device and NOT have any kind of PVR functionality (even through a dongle) and NOT be any damned good for video content at all unless you stream from a PC (wtf?).
If Sony could produce a device which some or all of those things, that they could score a major coup. After, all most people only have so many plug points and space by their TV. If this thing can play discs, then why not store them too. They could sweeten the deal for themselves by having a built-in movie download service for $$$.
The system has the potential, but it remains to be seen if Sony being Sony will cut off its nose to spite its face. Again.
Well dumbass (two can play at that game), there was no mature content in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. They still got re-rated M with the ESRB because someone produced a mod that made your player naked. Explain that one.
If a game for which there was no offensive content can be re-rated because of a 3rd party mod, then why not Solitaire? Alright, you might say but Solitaire isn't meant to modded. Does that mean that if I can mod a game that I can get it re-rated? A kiddy's painting program for example? Or the Sims?
Ugly or not, if you offered me a laptop with a keyboard, touch pad and hi-res screen for $300 with some useful productivity apps, I'd buy one like a shot. Whether it looked like a demented speak & spell or not. I hate lugging around expensive, fragile, battery sapping laptops just to get internet access when I'm away for a bit. I hate the small unusable screens on a Pocket PC. These things are meant to be kidproof so you toss them in a backpack without much concern, or whip them out on a train or airline clip tray for practically instant-on computing. It's no wonder Bill Gates is afraid of these things. Who the hell would buy his Origami concept costing twice as much when this thing fits the bill so well? That's assuming a commercial version does appear.
Which is why my Vista download from Microsoft was a massive 5k per second until it timed out. I finally found a torrent and its clipping along a 60k per second. Not the fastest torrent but I expect it will pick up.
And Windows 98, NT users won't be affected either. Firefox version 1.whatever that they have installed is not going to disappear in a puff of smoke. But moving to W2K and above has a positive effect on such things as localization & Unicode, since Win98 & ME never supported it. In theory you could build Firefox in pure Unicode mode now and not only would it be marginally faster but it would also be far better internationalization.
At the same time, I wonder if Firefox shouldn't dump W2K as well or at least plan for it. Versions of Windows prior to XP don't have a theme engine to exploit. That means Firefox when draws a button in XUL, it has to emulate the "classic" Windows theme using stylesheets and graphics. If they could dump this it would make it considerably easier to maintain the skin and decrease the download size as well.
Dumb question perhaps, but why not stick them on the same disk and detect which to installed based on the CPU. Producing distinct versions is going to be a pain in the arse for everyone, not least for the poor consumers who don't know what the terms mean.
You'd think they'd release a torrent, but that's Microsoft for you. In their corporate mindset, to release a torrent probably makes them feel dirty. It's conceding BT (a defacto standard) has legitimate uses and that their servers can't cope with the demand. Oh well, I guess MS can explain tomorrow on CNet, ZD etc. why their servers crashed under the load.
Release a mode for the Windows Solitaire game so the cards feature sado-masochistic gay porn. Perhaps if the asshole runs with it, Vista will be rated NC17.
Look at their memory stick. While they didn't succeed it making it the de facto standard for portable media, I'm sure it's worked great for them. Their cameras, PSP, etc all use it and between their manufacturing and licensing I'm sure it helps them out some.
The problem with the memory stick is that a lot of people went out of their way to avoid anything using a memory stick, simply because it tied you to expensive Sony products. And memory stick is one of the most confusing as hell "standards" out there with numerous variants. I have one device that uses a memory stick - a PSP. I certainly have no intention of buying any other Sony product because of it.
The PSP's UMD bombed for movies, that's a given, but it was a worthwhile "attempt." Personally, I think it was the price that killed it, had they made it cheaper than it would have been worth it for travelling purposes (and only travelling).
Definitely the price. It should have been $10 or less per movie. Attempting to flog a movie for more than its DVD equivalent on a proprietary format that only plays on one device is sheer stupidity. It is doomed to fail. Still, Sony could salvage the situation and drive memory stick sales if after dumping UMD they opened up the PSP to play ripped movies at full res. They could still make a lot of money. Better yet (for them) if they hand out something akin iTunes for doing the ripping which also manages syncing the device and links to their own reasonably priced store. I read a rumour that there would be an 8Gb PSP soon so perhaps they are planning something like this. It has the potential to be great, but Sony is like an anti King Midas - turning gold into shit - so who knows.
Other than videos, the PSP is fairly reasonable as far as DRM goes. I can play MP3, AAC, WMA music and rip my own videos. The resolution thing is an annoyance but ripped movies look pretty fine anyway so it's not a big deal. If UMD dies, they should definitely unlock the restriction though.
I couldn't care less between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. I feel both formats are irrelevant unless you have an HD TV, or a computer with a BD/HD-DVD ROM. All I care about is that one of them wins so this pointless pissing contest is over. Personally I feel it will be Blu-ray that wins but I guess judgement must be reserved for six months at least to see what happens with the PS3. Again, the PS3 could be an awesome device assuming Sony internal politics don't castrate the thing.
I'm not asking them to distribute the stuff in the core distro. I'm asking that they offer to download and install it. i.e. offer to download and install the package from nvidia's home site. It's clear from the doc you supplied that most of the commercial but free things that people want are in the multiverse anyway, so why not have a post-install step that asks the user if they want commercial but free packages and then goes on to help them get them?
Re:Dapper is good, but it's not there yet.
on
Ubuntu 6.06 Reviewed
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Their hardware isn't crippled. It works just fine on XP and Linux and is my card maker of choice. And if you bothered to read what I said, you would see that I'm not complaining that the driver doesn't ship with Ubuntu at all. I'm perfectly happy if it doesn't ship on the CD. But that's no reason that Ubuntu shouldn't detect and offer to install the driver for me afterwards. No reason at all.
As for why Nvidia should contain trade secrets and Intels should not. Perhaps it's because Intel produces a mediocre integrated graphics chip for laptops and cheap PCs and certainly not something which is competing with Nvidia & ATI at the bleeding edge of graphics performance. If you don't want to buy a decent card then that's your business, but don't think for a second that your choice or your own lack of pragmatism should dictate what other people expect or want from their own systems.
Re:Dapper is good, but it's not there yet.
on
Ubuntu 6.06 Reviewed
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Why should I bitch to them? They produce some of the best graphics cards out there and go to the effort of ensuring it works on Linux. You seem to be complaining that they're not throwing away their trade secrets just for your benefit.
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You assume that games must use Blu Ray when probably there is no requirement that they do. I expect that the PS3 will allow most games to ship on a DVD. But there is a very good reason that some might choose Blu-Ray more content, multiple language support. A single disc could support different languages, lowering costs and increasing flexibility for companies who don't want to pay for smaller production runs for every region they sell in.
Despite that, the PSP is starting to get some great titles so I think its over the hump. The strong sales have no doubt spurned games makers to do something interesting with the platform rather than shitting out poor PS2 ports.
We all know in the short term that the units shipped is a great way to lie about a launch success. Expect to see Sony & Nintendo playing verbal gymnastics during their launches to bolster their sales figures.
While I'm sure there are legal issues with ripping DVD, BD content, I don't see them as being that much different than ripping music. If I own a DVD, why can't I rip it? Naturally it could encrypt the movie so it plays nowhere else. If Sony were smart, they'd offer this feature and ensure the PS3 also featured an online store where you could buy more content for reasonable prices. A reasonable price would be a timelimited movie for the same price as a rental, e.g. $6.
This is all hypothetical of course. In the past Sony would sell a device that hacked off their customer's hands off if their media divisions told them to. Here's hoping that a clue finally sinks in after years of mistakes. Aside from the UMD, the PSP actually offers a pretty good example of how you can make a cool multimedia device without crippling it to death in the process. UMDs were done to death by pure greed, but movie ripping via a memory stick is actually quite alright.
One thing worth noting is that cheaper price doesn't guarantee more sales. Those same charts which compare the PS2 to the XBox360 also show that in the US, seven PS2s are selling for every NGC or XBox (the old one) sold. That's pretty impressive seeing as the PS2 is way past its sell-by date and probably the least capable of any console. Interestingly PSPs are also fairly consistently outselling the DS though there isn't so much in it.
This raises some interesting questions about how much people are prepared to pay for a console and if there are other motivations that drive sales one way or another. I expect that a massive, massive library of titles might have something to do with the PS2's success and some excellent titles but the PSP is far less clear. While the PSP is getting some very good games recently, it has spent the last year in the doldrums, so what are people buying the PSP for? Perhaps it is all these sales which is why some decent games are finally appearing.
All these browsers attempt to show you a lot of pages in one go. Assuming you're after sites that deal with fashion, or games, or cookery, or music etc. in broad categories then there is a usefulness to be able to see a bunch of sites in one go. I know it would be useful to just wander through a hall of today's articles and simply click on a site that has something that interests you. The problem as the article highlights is that showing a bunch of sites simultaneously should not be at the expense of your regular browsing experience. Therefore I'd say that if you could flip between regular browsing and 3D browsing, perhaps even based on what you're looking for, then you could reap the best of both worlds. I've played with 3B and it seems to work (extra points for using Firefox), but the experience is somewhat reminiscent of Wolfenstein 3D in that it's 3D in the same way that a hedge maze is 3D with no up, down, platforms or other points of interest. I'd like to see a more interesting world that is genuinely 3D rather than a hedge maze and perhaps one where there is a little more interaction than my solitary self wandering around aimlessly with not direction or interaction with fellow browsers.
Not even after a $150 instant rebate?
I don't think there is a strong reason for not bundling them together, at least not in the consumer versions. If Apple & OS X can do it then so can Microsoft with XP. It's not like the whole OS even has to be native 64-bits - just the critical paths. It wouldn't make any significant difference to performace if stuff on the periphery such as control panel applets, help DLLs, if it were 32-bits on both architectures.
Exactly, though more realistically retailers would probably carve a large slice of that $300 and another large slice would go to support and development. So more likely it might toss an extra $50 or so OLPC's way.
I will correct myself here. The classic look is not rendered with styles and css. It used to be a few years back but not anymore apparently. It's clear that the fallback behaviour is to manually the appearance of the classic Windows using GDI calls.
As for Linux on the PS3 or PSP - I think are far more viable than the PS2. As you said, you had to buy a pack for the PS2 but neither is necessary for a PS3 or PSP. The PS3 has a harddrive and networking already so just plugin in any store bought keyboard & mouse and you're set. The PSP has a memory stick slot which can act as storage and networking support too. Both could be useful for something.
Besides, isn't the PS3 meant to be installed Linux anyway? I seem to recall that being mentioned somewhere. It might be a very neat system if it was, though it remains to be seen how useful it would be.
If Sony could produce a device which some or all of those things, that they could score a major coup. After, all most people only have so many plug points and space by their TV. If this thing can play discs, then why not store them too. They could sweeten the deal for themselves by having a built-in movie download service for $$$.
The system has the potential, but it remains to be seen if Sony being Sony will cut off its nose to spite its face. Again.
If a game for which there was no offensive content can be re-rated because of a 3rd party mod, then why not Solitaire? Alright, you might say but Solitaire isn't meant to modded. Does that mean that if I can mod a game that I can get it re-rated? A kiddy's painting program for example? Or the Sims?
Ugly or not, if you offered me a laptop with a keyboard, touch pad and hi-res screen for $300 with some useful productivity apps, I'd buy one like a shot. Whether it looked like a demented speak & spell or not. I hate lugging around expensive, fragile, battery sapping laptops just to get internet access when I'm away for a bit. I hate the small unusable screens on a Pocket PC. These things are meant to be kidproof so you toss them in a backpack without much concern, or whip them out on a train or airline clip tray for practically instant-on computing. It's no wonder Bill Gates is afraid of these things. Who the hell would buy his Origami concept costing twice as much when this thing fits the bill so well? That's assuming a commercial version does appear.
featuring gay BDSM cards, can I get Vista rated M?
Which is why my Vista download from Microsoft was a massive 5k per second until it timed out. I finally found a torrent and its clipping along a 60k per second. Not the fastest torrent but I expect it will pick up.
At the same time, I wonder if Firefox shouldn't dump W2K as well or at least plan for it. Versions of Windows prior to XP don't have a theme engine to exploit. That means Firefox when draws a button in XUL, it has to emulate the "classic" Windows theme using stylesheets and graphics. If they could dump this it would make it considerably easier to maintain the skin and decrease the download size as well.
Dumb question perhaps, but why not stick them on the same disk and detect which to installed based on the CPU. Producing distinct versions is going to be a pain in the arse for everyone, not least for the poor consumers who don't know what the terms mean.
You'd think they'd release a torrent, but that's Microsoft for you. In their corporate mindset, to release a torrent probably makes them feel dirty. It's conceding BT (a defacto standard) has legitimate uses and that their servers can't cope with the demand. Oh well, I guess MS can explain tomorrow on CNet, ZD etc. why their servers crashed under the load.
Release a mode for the Windows Solitaire game so the cards feature sado-masochistic gay porn. Perhaps if the asshole runs with it, Vista will be rated NC17.
The problem with the memory stick is that a lot of people went out of their way to avoid anything using a memory stick, simply because it tied you to expensive Sony products. And memory stick is one of the most confusing as hell "standards" out there with numerous variants. I have one device that uses a memory stick - a PSP. I certainly have no intention of buying any other Sony product because of it. The PSP's UMD bombed for movies, that's a given, but it was a worthwhile "attempt." Personally, I think it was the price that killed it, had they made it cheaper than it would have been worth it for travelling purposes (and only travelling).
Definitely the price. It should have been $10 or less per movie. Attempting to flog a movie for more than its DVD equivalent on a proprietary format that only plays on one device is sheer stupidity. It is doomed to fail. Still, Sony could salvage the situation and drive memory stick sales if after dumping UMD they opened up the PSP to play ripped movies at full res. They could still make a lot of money. Better yet (for them) if they hand out something akin iTunes for doing the ripping which also manages syncing the device and links to their own reasonably priced store. I read a rumour that there would be an 8Gb PSP soon so perhaps they are planning something like this. It has the potential to be great, but Sony is like an anti King Midas - turning gold into shit - so who knows.
Other than videos, the PSP is fairly reasonable as far as DRM goes. I can play MP3, AAC, WMA music and rip my own videos. The resolution thing is an annoyance but ripped movies look pretty fine anyway so it's not a big deal. If UMD dies, they should definitely unlock the restriction though.
I couldn't care less between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. I feel both formats are irrelevant unless you have an HD TV, or a computer with a BD/HD-DVD ROM. All I care about is that one of them wins so this pointless pissing contest is over. Personally I feel it will be Blu-ray that wins but I guess judgement must be reserved for six months at least to see what happens with the PS3. Again, the PS3 could be an awesome device assuming Sony internal politics don't castrate the thing.
One word - Zonk.
I'm not asking them to distribute the stuff in the core distro. I'm asking that they offer to download and install it. i.e. offer to download and install the package from nvidia's home site. It's clear from the doc you supplied that most of the commercial but free things that people want are in the multiverse anyway, so why not have a post-install step that asks the user if they want commercial but free packages and then goes on to help them get them?
As for why Nvidia should contain trade secrets and Intels should not. Perhaps it's because Intel produces a mediocre integrated graphics chip for laptops and cheap PCs and certainly not something which is competing with Nvidia & ATI at the bleeding edge of graphics performance. If you don't want to buy a decent card then that's your business, but don't think for a second that your choice or your own lack of pragmatism should dictate what other people expect or want from their own systems.
Why should I bitch to them? They produce some of the best graphics cards out there and go to the effort of ensuring it works on Linux. You seem to be complaining that they're not throwing away their trade secrets just for your benefit.