So wait, you donate money to the bands but LegalTorrents takes money off of there for what? Yes, servers are expensive and hosting isn't free, but really, it isn't your bandwidth, or anything. It is like saying you have to pay $15 to host your files on TPB. Just another reason to support the artist by going to the artist's website and donating or buying CDs/going to concerts. Seriously, LegalTorrents makes money off of what? Making a logo?
By "Linux" I mean a Linux distro such as Ubuntu. Not the kernel. Just as if I said NT, I would generally mean the Windows NT operating system, not just the NT kernel.
what is the benefit of having thousands of geeks compiling the same code over and over, when you can download 1 binary distribution and be done? If you sum up the manhours of all this compilation, the power consumed by countless hard drives and processors churning away, whats the point?
Speed. Now a binary distro can install things quickly but not run them very quickly. If you have a nice dual-core CPU setup and 1 GB of RAM the binary distros will serve you well, but if you have an aging desktop such a a low-end Pentium 4, or a high-end Pentium III, with RAM maxed out at 512 MB, Gentoo will run faster then even Xubuntu. Now, it might take a week to get everything installed, but once it is installed you have the fastest system you can get on that hardware.
I didn't say that it wasn't I put them both in the "Both Windows 2K and Linux have these in common side"
4. There are far more applications for Windows than for Linux. Further, there are far more quality applications for Windows than for Linux. I would gladly give my money for Photoshop than to use Gimp for free. Same for games, same for Office.
Yes there are far more applications, however there are also far more applications that charge outrageous amounts of money for use, and buggy software just the same. The average person, has no need for Photoshop, and right now Linux is trying to hit the average person point, The GIMP is even overkill for most (85% or more) people. Now, if you were a graphic artist for a living, you might need Photoshop, for the rest of us who might need to just crop a photo or make a small banner, The GIMP does fine. As for Office, OOo does what most people want/need. However, it does things differently from Office, now some of the specialist tools are not there, but for most people (85% or more) it does the job and the fact it is different is becoming less of an issue as Office 2007 looks nothing like all the rest of the Offices and OOo.
2 & 3. Win2000's GUI was stable and consistent. Neither Windows nor MacOS have a need for a dozen window managers.
Neither does Linux, you really only need one DE and WM, and that is either Gnome or KDE (and perhaps XFCE). Pick the one you want. While some people want something different and use lighter WMs such as IceWm or Fluxbox, most users will never use them or even need to know about them. Different people prefer applications to be coded in different ways, with different featuresets which is why we have tons of different text editors, etc. But all distros usually install one, so they can use that and not worry about the rest.
On to your other points where you try to compare current Linux to Windows 2000 (again, an 8-year-old OS): 1. Not all Linuxes have out-of-the-box drivers, particularly those that try to be free-software-only. Windows typically has all the drivers you need (USB, SCSI), and even when I buy new peripherals (scanners, printers, iPod, video camera), the products will come with a CD with the driver.
I am only comparing Windows 2000 to Linux because that is what the post I replied to was comparing them to, a lot of my points can carry over to XP or Vista.
It is true that perhaps Debian will not have the latest drivers, but Ubuntu which is what most people will use, usually does. Linux has drivers for just about everything out of the box unless you use *really* specialty stuff. Most printers/scanners work with a bit of configuring and will work without configuration if they are HP, most media players who support USB standards will, again, work just fine with no configuration on Linux, and even though I haven't tried, I am rather sure that most big-name video cameras will work with Linux. And those drivers are rather hard to find if you don't have the CD (or in the case with some UMPCs, no CD drive) and if your wireless card isn't supported out-of-the-box in Windows (and most aren't), and your only connection is wireless (like many people's and you can't just plug in an cord) you can't download the drivers. And every wireless card I have come across I have gotten to work with either Ubuntu, Mepis or Puppy Linux.
2. Windows 2000 had the "add/remove software" control.
Yah, but how could you add software? With Linux it is simple as opening up Synaptic checking "mark for installation" and clicking the big green check mark and your software is installed, same thing with uninstalling software. And, even in Vista add/remove software usually hangs the machine and sometimes even when you do remove the software, icons, directories, and registry values s
1) NIMBY - If Z is a feature or program I don't use, not only do I not care about it, I don't care about whether or not it can interact properly with programs I do care about.
And... So would you rather have someone who doesn't care about how something works/knows what works write something or would you rather have someone who uses it all the time write something? It is like saying, would you rather a graphics program be written by an artist or a songwriter? The songwriter may make a graphics program that is nice for him, but doesn't satisfy the needs of an artist.
4) Esoterism - The command line is better than graphics. Graphics, and especially graphic quality is unimportant, and studies with evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, whether an interface is cleaner or more obvious or better-looking is irrelevant. It's okay for GUI tools and programs to just be front-ends for their command-line equivalents, even if it puts unnecessary limits on the graphical version.
Again, most people using Linux are not artists nor do they use GUIs much, so their needs are different then the ones of other people. So they write programs to fit the needs they have.
3) Real Programmers - If a program isn't hard to write, it isn't worth writing, and if you make it easy for programmers to write for a platform, especially new ones, they will only produce crap that you somehow have to deal with. Compare this with MS's "Developers developer developers" motto, or Apple's excellent dev tools.
Yep, and as you have seen with all the Visual Basic crap that floats around for Windows.
You could sit down with a Mac or Windows machine and a Linux box running KDE and come up with thousands of stupid little,a nd boring to fix, problems in KDE that could be addressed and fixed TODAY?
A few things, KDE/Gnome/Xfce isn't supposed to be a remake of Windows or Mac. It is KDE/Gnome/Xfce. It is different. Get used to it. I bet that I could sit down at a Mac or Windows machine and come up with thousands of stupid little and boring to fix problems in the Mac/Windows GUI that could be adressed and fixed TODAY. For one thing, in Windows I can't rearrange my open windows on the bottom bar like I can in some Linux DEs.
and they still can't come up with something remotely polished as Win2k was years ago?
What is your idea of "remotely polished"? If you mean any modern Linux distro I would say that it is better than W2K. Lets start from the top...
1. Solid kernel.
2. Solid GUI base (X)
3. Solid GUI (take your pick, XFCE, GNOME, KDE, etc)
4. Lots of programs (just take a look at the Ubuntu repos)
Now look at all the things that Windows 2000 doesn't have that Linux has
1. Out-of-the-box driver support for just about everything (only exceptions are ATI/nVidia graphics cards, but some distros now include them)
2. Central package management system
3. 3-D effects
4. Support for all major filesystems out-of-the-box
5. Support for all major filetypes out-of-the-box
Your comments are nothing but trolling. Show me how Windows 2000 or any Windows is better than Linux and stop making up your "facts"
"Everyone" agrees that Vista is "a failure", even though it's really not. So why can't dumb generalizations be applied to software that's supposed to be perfect in every way?
The thing though is, I can take KDE 3 and use it till the year 5436656563577 or beyond if I feel like and still patch it. With XP I can't really even get it anymore and I can't patch it and modify it. With KDE 4 I can customize it by customizing the source, with Vista I can't.
How are these going to be damaged by a flatbed scanner?!? Most game magazines have only been around for ~20 years, max. And I don't see how the heat would be an issue...
But if I was running an online poker game I would make the house win like 50% of the time and a "player" which was another bot win 25% of the time leaving the other players to fight over the extra 25%. Also, if you control what comes out of the deck and who it goes to, it is not that hard to win
In order to support IE6, I need to code specifically for IE6.
But this was about blocking IE6. If you just code as you normally do and the page doesn't render right in IE6, tough luck for the IE6 users, if they e-mail you, tell them to install Firefox.
Because it is a browser that people use... The same thing could be said on why should we have to support Konqueror, or the Mozilla Suite, or Seamonkey, why not even block Safari just because we can. Basically, IE6 is a browser, it is even a popular browser. And saying we should block it is like saying we should block Firefox 1.5 and earlier and hey! Firefox 3 is out now, lets block Firefox 2!
Think of it this way, say you were a company that had a name that was a misspelling of a site, they typed it in, and clicked on the "Did you mean *insert real site here*" link, now the AVG bot just visited your site. And most company web pages are on low-bandwidth plans anyways so this could seriously cost you tons of money.
But how many times does Google go to the site? About once a day, if even that. This is obviously going there much more then once a day. So taking the 5 major search engines (Google, Ask, Live, Yahoo!, and MSN) that equals to about 5 visitors per day, again, it could be a bit less or a bit more but around 5 visitors per day, not downloading images or anything else, it wouldn't stress your bandwidth much, but say you had 1,000, 10,000 per day, that might start to create problems when your site is used to getting say about 500-5,000 human hits per day.
Perhaps, someone could elaborate on how they are slimey. This appears to be an attempt to protect people.
Ok, think of the/. effect. Now take that on almost any website who's servers aren't as strong. This is basically a huge DDoS attack on many websites by AVG that has a reason behind it. But it is still a DDoS attack.
With the push for more sustainable energy, easy DIY kits for alternative energy sources are likely to become quite popular in the coming years.
Two words. Doubt it. There are all kinds of ways to save money, but most people don't do them. To put it into a computer perspective, how many people do you know upgrade RAM? Out of that many how many do them themselves? How many people upgrade a CPU? How many people salvage CD-ROM drives from old computers? How many save old cases and build computers in them? Very few I would think. Same thing with these, they are a way to save money, but for most people they will just complain about high oil prices, try to get a raise, petition for an increase in minimum wage, repeat. These will be about as popular as running BSD on your toaster. You can do it, it might be cool, but most people don't see the need.
But again, that was the firmware. Wikipedia defines firmware as
As its name suggests, firmware is somewhere between hardware and software. Like software, it is a computer program which is executed by a microprocessor or a microcontroller. But it is also tightly linked to a piece of hardware, and has little meaning outside of it.
So would the Xbox OS be considered firmware, yes as I can't just fire that up onto a non Xbox platform and have it work. Same with the Wii's OS, and the PS3's OS. They are all OSes but they are firmware just the same.
Ok, well there were tons of random expansions released by various companies to boost RAM/etc. But the games that required them were rather few and if I remember correctly the official Nintendo expansion pack cost like $30 and you could get third-party ones for $15. Today though, computer RAM costs you $40+ for a GB of extra RAM and isn't in a nice cartage like for the N64.
Required to play
* Donkey Kong 64[1]
* The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
[edit] Required for major features
* Perfect Dark[2]
* StarCraft 64[3]
From Wikipedia. Sure there were others that made the game look nicer, but that is more like using component cables or HDMI cables rather then normal ones. Rather then, the game is unplayable or is slower without it, as in the case with a computer game that needs more RAM. Oh and Donkey Kong 64 came with the pack.
Or say a protocol was change. Do you know exactly was changed? Because, I'm calling bullshit on what you're saying. That is unless you can show your insider knowledge and prove to me that this change is unnecessarily preventing on-line play.
What I was saying, is that unless something major was changed to naturally prevent online play like a server address change or a protocol change or whatever, Sony shouldn't prevent people from going online. I'm not saying anything of what Sony did.
Yah, because fixing errors in the OS is a bad idea. Get a clue. We're *far* beyond the 8-bit NES that didn't have an OS. We're in an age where consoles are basically specialised computers. Computers that have an OS which is software, which will have bugs that need to be fixed from time to time. Computers that will have features added.
But, prove to me that what Sony fixed was some major bug or a major feature. From my experience with my Wii (I don't have a PS3 though I have played one), they release patches for completely trivial things. Things that shouldn't have to risk bricking your console to update.
But, that's ok. We don't need an evolving set of features or improvements on features or increased stability or... We'll just go back to the old model of a static stagnant system reducing the systems lifespan increasing costs for everyone.
But like you said the consoles were becoming more like computers, so how long before I have to upgrade my RAM in a PS3 to play a new game? How long before they come out with different CPU models? This is killing what made console gaming popular in the first place the fact that you didn't need to upgrade the RAM to play a new game, the fact that everyone was equal whether you bought your console on launch or bought it near the end of the console's lifetime you could all play the same games, with the same performance. One of the reasons I don't play many computer games (aside from a few games of Wesnoth here and there and OpenArena) is that you have to upgrade your system every few months to play the newest games. With consoles the big point was you could play every game within the console's lifetime and that being about 5-7 years that was a lot of games. Now tell me, will a stock PC from 2001 play a game released in 2007? No, but a PS2 bought in 2000 will play the games made in 2006 the exact same as a PS2 bought in 2006 will play a game made in 2006. That is why console gaming has increased so much and computer gaming has declines.
Probably the game code is DRM-ed to your PS3 console. So if you buy a new PS3 the data isn't readable on that console. That is the same way with the Wii's SD cards.
Really though, all the current-gen consoles suffer from the flaw of upgradable firmwares. Now, they are a great idea in principle but all of them upgrade the thing for trivial features (really, who needs to upgrade the entire firmware to upgrade an internet application?!?!). To put this in perspective, as a GP2x owner (they are a handheld game system running Linux and are made in Korea) you can upgrade your firmware to do whatever, however I and most other users don't because of the possibility of bricking it. Even with a stable open-source OS it is possible to brick it with firmware upgrades, who knows what all these firmware upgrades are doing to a (no doubt) quickly written, proprietary OS.
Well, in the game console world firmware == operating system. So it is basically the PS3's OS. And running games in an OS above the firmware would be too slow to run most of them at top speed and then we get back into the horrible world of upgrades etc. That has made many computer gamers switch back to consoles.
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So wait, you donate money to the bands but LegalTorrents takes money off of there for what? Yes, servers are expensive and hosting isn't free, but really, it isn't your bandwidth, or anything. It is like saying you have to pay $15 to host your files on TPB. Just another reason to support the artist by going to the artist's website and donating or buying CDs/going to concerts. Seriously, LegalTorrents makes money off of what? Making a logo?
By "Linux" I mean a Linux distro such as Ubuntu. Not the kernel. Just as if I said NT, I would generally mean the Windows NT operating system, not just the NT kernel.
what is the benefit of having thousands of geeks compiling the same code over and over, when you can download 1 binary distribution and be done? If you sum up the manhours of all this compilation, the power consumed by countless hard drives and processors churning away, whats the point?
Speed. Now a binary distro can install things quickly but not run them very quickly. If you have a nice dual-core CPU setup and 1 GB of RAM the binary distros will serve you well, but if you have an aging desktop such a a low-end Pentium 4, or a high-end Pentium III, with RAM maxed out at 512 MB, Gentoo will run faster then even Xubuntu. Now, it might take a week to get everything installed, but once it is installed you have the fastest system you can get on that hardware.
1. The NT kernel is well known to be excellent.
I didn't say that it wasn't I put them both in the "Both Windows 2K and Linux have these in common side"
4. There are far more applications for Windows than for Linux. Further, there are far more quality applications for Windows than for Linux. I would gladly give my money for Photoshop than to use Gimp for free. Same for games, same for Office.
Yes there are far more applications, however there are also far more applications that charge outrageous amounts of money for use, and buggy software just the same. The average person, has no need for Photoshop, and right now Linux is trying to hit the average person point, The GIMP is even overkill for most (85% or more) people. Now, if you were a graphic artist for a living, you might need Photoshop, for the rest of us who might need to just crop a photo or make a small banner, The GIMP does fine. As for Office, OOo does what most people want/need. However, it does things differently from Office, now some of the specialist tools are not there, but for most people (85% or more) it does the job and the fact it is different is becoming less of an issue as Office 2007 looks nothing like all the rest of the Offices and OOo.
2 & 3. Win2000's GUI was stable and consistent. Neither Windows nor MacOS have a need for a dozen window managers.
Neither does Linux, you really only need one DE and WM, and that is either Gnome or KDE (and perhaps XFCE). Pick the one you want. While some people want something different and use lighter WMs such as IceWm or Fluxbox, most users will never use them or even need to know about them. Different people prefer applications to be coded in different ways, with different featuresets which is why we have tons of different text editors, etc. But all distros usually install one, so they can use that and not worry about the rest.
On to your other points where you try to compare current Linux to Windows 2000 (again, an 8-year-old OS): 1. Not all Linuxes have out-of-the-box drivers, particularly those that try to be free-software-only. Windows typically has all the drivers you need (USB, SCSI), and even when I buy new peripherals (scanners, printers, iPod, video camera), the products will come with a CD with the driver.
I am only comparing Windows 2000 to Linux because that is what the post I replied to was comparing them to, a lot of my points can carry over to XP or Vista.
It is true that perhaps Debian will not have the latest drivers, but Ubuntu which is what most people will use, usually does. Linux has drivers for just about everything out of the box unless you use *really* specialty stuff. Most printers/scanners work with a bit of configuring and will work without configuration if they are HP, most media players who support USB standards will, again, work just fine with no configuration on Linux, and even though I haven't tried, I am rather sure that most big-name video cameras will work with Linux. And those drivers are rather hard to find if you don't have the CD (or in the case with some UMPCs, no CD drive) and if your wireless card isn't supported out-of-the-box in Windows (and most aren't), and your only connection is wireless (like many people's and you can't just plug in an cord) you can't download the drivers. And every wireless card I have come across I have gotten to work with either Ubuntu, Mepis or Puppy Linux.
2. Windows 2000 had the "add/remove software" control.
Yah, but how could you add software? With Linux it is simple as opening up Synaptic checking "mark for installation" and clicking the big green check mark and your software is installed, same thing with uninstalling software. And, even in Vista add/remove software usually hangs the machine and sometimes even when you do remove the software, icons, directories, and registry values s
1) NIMBY - If Z is a feature or program I don't use, not only do I not care about it, I don't care about whether or not it can interact properly with programs I do care about.
And... So would you rather have someone who doesn't care about how something works/knows what works write something or would you rather have someone who uses it all the time write something? It is like saying, would you rather a graphics program be written by an artist or a songwriter? The songwriter may make a graphics program that is nice for him, but doesn't satisfy the needs of an artist.
4) Esoterism - The command line is better than graphics. Graphics, and especially graphic quality is unimportant, and studies with evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, whether an interface is cleaner or more obvious or better-looking is irrelevant. It's okay for GUI tools and programs to just be front-ends for their command-line equivalents, even if it puts unnecessary limits on the graphical version.
Again, most people using Linux are not artists nor do they use GUIs much, so their needs are different then the ones of other people. So they write programs to fit the needs they have.
3) Real Programmers - If a program isn't hard to write, it isn't worth writing, and if you make it easy for programmers to write for a platform, especially new ones, they will only produce crap that you somehow have to deal with. Compare this with MS's "Developers developer developers" motto, or Apple's excellent dev tools.
Yep, and as you have seen with all the Visual Basic crap that floats around for Windows.
You could sit down with a Mac or Windows machine and a Linux box running KDE and come up with thousands of stupid little,a nd boring to fix, problems in KDE that could be addressed and fixed TODAY?
A few things, KDE/Gnome/Xfce isn't supposed to be a remake of Windows or Mac. It is KDE/Gnome/Xfce. It is different. Get used to it. I bet that I could sit down at a Mac or Windows machine and come up with thousands of stupid little and boring to fix problems in the Mac/Windows GUI that could be adressed and fixed TODAY. For one thing, in Windows I can't rearrange my open windows on the bottom bar like I can in some Linux DEs.
and they still can't come up with something remotely polished as Win2k was years ago?
What is your idea of "remotely polished"? If you mean any modern Linux distro I would say that it is better than W2K. Lets start from the top...
1. Solid kernel.
2. Solid GUI base (X)
3. Solid GUI (take your pick, XFCE, GNOME, KDE, etc)
4. Lots of programs (just take a look at the Ubuntu repos)
Now look at all the things that Windows 2000 doesn't have that Linux has
1. Out-of-the-box driver support for just about everything (only exceptions are ATI/nVidia graphics cards, but some distros now include them)
2. Central package management system
3. 3-D effects
4. Support for all major filesystems out-of-the-box
5. Support for all major filetypes out-of-the-box
Your comments are nothing but trolling. Show me how Windows 2000 or any Windows is better than Linux and stop making up your "facts"
"Everyone" agrees that Vista is "a failure", even though it's really not. So why can't dumb generalizations be applied to software that's supposed to be perfect in every way?
The thing though is, I can take KDE 3 and use it till the year 5436656563577 or beyond if I feel like and still patch it. With XP I can't really even get it anymore and I can't patch it and modify it. With KDE 4 I can customize it by customizing the source, with Vista I can't.
How are these going to be damaged by a flatbed scanner?!? Most game magazines have only been around for ~20 years, max. And I don't see how the heat would be an issue...
Why? Emacs uses less RAM. PLUS it has a web browser built in
But if I was running an online poker game I would make the house win like 50% of the time and a "player" which was another bot win 25% of the time leaving the other players to fight over the extra 25%. Also, if you control what comes out of the deck and who it goes to, it is not that hard to win
In order to support IE6, I need to code specifically for IE6.
But this was about blocking IE6. If you just code as you normally do and the page doesn't render right in IE6, tough luck for the IE6 users, if they e-mail you, tell them to install Firefox.
Even the very best hand crafted assembler poker games can't reach a quarter of the speed of Java.
Speed of Java!?! Don't make me laugh. Java has, and will always be slower then assembly.
Because it is a browser that people use... The same thing could be said on why should we have to support Konqueror, or the Mozilla Suite, or Seamonkey, why not even block Safari just because we can. Basically, IE6 is a browser, it is even a popular browser. And saying we should block it is like saying we should block Firefox 1.5 and earlier and hey! Firefox 3 is out now, lets block Firefox 2!
Think of it this way, say you were a company that had a name that was a misspelling of a site, they typed it in, and clicked on the "Did you mean *insert real site here*" link, now the AVG bot just visited your site. And most company web pages are on low-bandwidth plans anyways so this could seriously cost you tons of money.
But how many times does Google go to the site? About once a day, if even that. This is obviously going there much more then once a day. So taking the 5 major search engines (Google, Ask, Live, Yahoo!, and MSN) that equals to about 5 visitors per day, again, it could be a bit less or a bit more but around 5 visitors per day, not downloading images or anything else, it wouldn't stress your bandwidth much, but say you had 1,000, 10,000 per day, that might start to create problems when your site is used to getting say about 500-5,000 human hits per day.
Perhaps, someone could elaborate on how they are slimey. This appears to be an attempt to protect people.
Ok, think of the /. effect. Now take that on almost any website who's servers aren't as strong. This is basically a huge DDoS attack on many websites by AVG that has a reason behind it. But it is still a DDoS attack.
But most Google info stays with Google. And Google ads are easily blocked with custom CSS and a decent /etc/hosts file.
With the push for more sustainable energy, easy DIY kits for alternative energy sources are likely to become quite popular in the coming years.
Two words. Doubt it. There are all kinds of ways to save money, but most people don't do them. To put it into a computer perspective, how many people do you know upgrade RAM? Out of that many how many do them themselves? How many people upgrade a CPU? How many people salvage CD-ROM drives from old computers? How many save old cases and build computers in them? Very few I would think. Same thing with these, they are a way to save money, but for most people they will just complain about high oil prices, try to get a raise, petition for an increase in minimum wage, repeat. These will be about as popular as running BSD on your toaster. You can do it, it might be cool, but most people don't see the need.
As its name suggests, firmware is somewhere between hardware and software. Like software, it is a computer program which is executed by a microprocessor or a microcontroller. But it is also tightly linked to a piece of hardware, and has little meaning outside of it.
So would the Xbox OS be considered firmware, yes as I can't just fire that up onto a non Xbox platform and have it work. Same with the Wii's OS, and the PS3's OS. They are all OSes but they are firmware just the same.
Ok, well there were tons of random expansions released by various companies to boost RAM/etc. But the games that required them were rather few and if I remember correctly the official Nintendo expansion pack cost like $30 and you could get third-party ones for $15. Today though, computer RAM costs you $40+ for a GB of extra RAM and isn't in a nice cartage like for the N64.
Required to play * Donkey Kong 64[1] * The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask [edit] Required for major features * Perfect Dark[2] * StarCraft 64[3]
From Wikipedia. Sure there were others that made the game look nicer, but that is more like using component cables or HDMI cables rather then normal ones. Rather then, the game is unplayable or is slower without it, as in the case with a computer game that needs more RAM. Oh and Donkey Kong 64 came with the pack.
Or say a protocol was change. Do you know exactly was changed? Because, I'm calling bullshit on what you're saying. That is unless you can show your insider knowledge and prove to me that this change is unnecessarily preventing on-line play.
What I was saying, is that unless something major was changed to naturally prevent online play like a server address change or a protocol change or whatever, Sony shouldn't prevent people from going online. I'm not saying anything of what Sony did.
Yah, because fixing errors in the OS is a bad idea. Get a clue. We're *far* beyond the 8-bit NES that didn't have an OS. We're in an age where consoles are basically specialised computers. Computers that have an OS which is software, which will have bugs that need to be fixed from time to time. Computers that will have features added.
But, prove to me that what Sony fixed was some major bug or a major feature. From my experience with my Wii (I don't have a PS3 though I have played one), they release patches for completely trivial things. Things that shouldn't have to risk bricking your console to update.
But, that's ok. We don't need an evolving set of features or improvements on features or increased stability or... We'll just go back to the old model of a static stagnant system reducing the systems lifespan increasing costs for everyone.
But like you said the consoles were becoming more like computers, so how long before I have to upgrade my RAM in a PS3 to play a new game? How long before they come out with different CPU models? This is killing what made console gaming popular in the first place the fact that you didn't need to upgrade the RAM to play a new game, the fact that everyone was equal whether you bought your console on launch or bought it near the end of the console's lifetime you could all play the same games, with the same performance. One of the reasons I don't play many computer games (aside from a few games of Wesnoth here and there and OpenArena) is that you have to upgrade your system every few months to play the newest games. With consoles the big point was you could play every game within the console's lifetime and that being about 5-7 years that was a lot of games. Now tell me, will a stock PC from 2001 play a game released in 2007? No, but a PS2 bought in 2000 will play the games made in 2006 the exact same as a PS2 bought in 2006 will play a game made in 2006. That is why console gaming has increased so much and computer gaming has declines.
Probably the game code is DRM-ed to your PS3 console. So if you buy a new PS3 the data isn't readable on that console. That is the same way with the Wii's SD cards.
Really though, all the current-gen consoles suffer from the flaw of upgradable firmwares. Now, they are a great idea in principle but all of them upgrade the thing for trivial features (really, who needs to upgrade the entire firmware to upgrade an internet application?!?!). To put this in perspective, as a GP2x owner (they are a handheld game system running Linux and are made in Korea) you can upgrade your firmware to do whatever, however I and most other users don't because of the possibility of bricking it. Even with a stable open-source OS it is possible to brick it with firmware upgrades, who knows what all these firmware upgrades are doing to a (no doubt) quickly written, proprietary OS.
Well, in the game console world firmware == operating system. So it is basically the PS3's OS. And running games in an OS above the firmware would be too slow to run most of them at top speed and then we get back into the horrible world of upgrades etc. That has made many computer gamers switch back to consoles.