That's kind of what I'm thinking. I love my MacBook Pro but there are times I really don't need it. Traveling, I might be able to easily get buy with just an OLPC that would let me do a little surfing or hacking. The battery life, weight, and size would be great. I don't need all the extra power most of the time.
I've been very impressed and occasionally amazed with the little things as I've followed their saga. I would love one, but I'm just not sure I'm up to the $400. At $200, almost no question. At $300, decent change. At $400, it's just too much. I know it's buy-one-donate-one, but that's still just too high. After a little time as some neat software starts appearing, they may get me. Initial run? I'm not very sure.
This is why people came to me, the neighborhood kid. I generally knew what I was doing. If it was trivial, I didn't charge. I leveled with 'em. I often had parts or cables or whatever I could try to see if that was the problem. I'd advise them on products if they had questions (should I buy X or Y?).
And when I didn't know what I was doing or didn't have the right tools... I'd try my best and tell them that. If I couldn't fix it, I would tell them to call Dell/Compaq/etc, or go to a pro computer repair service (Geek Squad type, but higher quality). Worst case scenario they lose some money. I only had to do that a handful of times, nearly always hardware.
I didn't say "well, just buy a new computer" much. If they had failing hardware and their computer was slow and old, sure. They usually asked. But far more than that I would tell them they didn't need a new PC, just some RAM or something like that.
Integrity counts for a lot. A great many people seem to lack it.
In those cases, knowing where your computer tech lives helps quite a bit at insuring quality.
Bad comparison. Is you Compaq designed to take all sorts of abuse, and be able to withstand water and dust and such? How long does your Compaq run on battery? Does it have no moving parts other than the keyboard? Or is it rather fragile.
This is not designed to compete in the regular laptop market, but if they upped the keyboard to adult size it would probably work for 90+% of US citizen's real needs.
These are ingenious little machines. It would be very smart to sell them to US consumers, but frankly I think the US computer market (something that includes me) tends to be... on average... far too ignorant to be able to buy these effectively. They will consider them all broken because they aren't "normal" computers.
All this is ignoring the fact the whole point of this project is to help 3rd world people, not give Americans another way to IM their friends.
They aren't underpowered, they have plenty of power. You don't NEED a dual CPU 2.x GHz laptop with 2 gigs of RAM to compute. This think would kick my Mac LC II around the block so bad it wouldn't be funny.
I remember that too. That was awesome. I created an account shortly after watching/., I didn't lurk for months like some. One of the first comments I remember posting (or perhaps jut my first to get a +5) was a little film-noir like description of something. After reading the story it just reminded me of noir style narration so I took the idea and ran with it. Wasn't my first comment, but I was quite surprised when it got modded up (I figured I'd get an off-topic or a troll).
I always love these little bits, although they usually spawn more organically.
Really, I'd like to see a list of when various account IDs were created. I know I've been around for a long time (I think 6-7 years or so) but I really don't know. But if I knew when 10000 was created, 100000, 200000, 1000000, etc... I could estimate. Plus is would just be interesting to see.
As I see it, this is suing for the wrong thing. You bought a device, did two unauthorized modifications (used a different SIM and hacked the software), then are mad that a software update for an unmodified device caused you problems. This is your fault. You should have seen this coming a mile away, whether intentional on Apple's part or not.
"I replaced the tires on my Ford Escort with big tracks, and when I installed the free hubcaps they sent me it caused the tracks to lock up and destroy themselves. Damn Ford killed my car!"
If you want to sue, then change the suit to something more appropriate. Sue Apple for only allowing you to use AT&T. Sue for not letting you unlock your phone after 90 days. Sue Apple for locking down the smart phone. You knew the phone was locked to 3rd party software when you bought it, but sue anyway. This is the US, it'll work. Sue AT&T for charing you $600 for a substandard phone (no games, can't record videos, etc) without clearly disclosing that stuff up front. Sue the FCC for allowing vender lock-in. Sue MS for making such a terrible platform (I used CE 1.0, and I had a WM 5 device. In many ways, it wasn't much better. In many ways, it was worse). Sue the management of Palm for driving the platform in the ground, thus reducing your choices. Sue MS for making it impossible to use their phones with non-Windows software (illegal bundling/tie-in? And yes, I know about Missing Sync).
The iPhone is neat. I'd like one. I'd LOVE to try to develop for it. But you bought the device in one state, modified it, and are mad that your modifications caused problems. Sue for the right reason. Don't start a trend of companies being forced to support modifications of their devices that they were explicitly trying to prevent.
There are two options. First, buy a Mac. I've had great luck with 'em, they tend to be lovely hardware, and I've had great results with Apple service.
But you probably don't want it. Plus, they are made in China, I think.
Your best bet: used Thinkpad. You can get one made by IBM, or Lenovo. But if you buy it used, then you aren't giving money to the Chinese. At most, you are raising the average resale value on the things which would very slightly raise demand on new ones if many other people did the same.
Of course, unless you are lucky, you can't get the latest and greatest this way.
I run FF on Windows at work. It's not a problem for a day or so (which is quite common for me) but after two or three days it will be using a ton. Just making sure I close all windows once in a while fixes all that.
For everything running under firefox-bin... hooking malloc is exactly what I'd suggest. If they are written in something like JavaScript it shouldn't be that hard to tag allocations. If they are written native then scan them for malloc calls and such and refuse to load. They should call ffmalloc (or whatever you want to call it) and it's (new) friends. That would make keeping track of it rather easy.
I'm not saying this is perfect. I'm not saying it's the world's cleanest idea. But it would give a good idea of what was going on. Using a separate thread for each thing would improve things, but that has tons of problems (especially synchronization, unless you run everything serially one thread chaining to the next, but that's quite hideous).
As for the "when X is doing Y" thing... that's near impossible. With the above in the developer should be able to put some sane warnings on it, but that was mostly a little "think is how I think things should behave" bit, not really something to implement. It was going to be that kind of suggestion, but it got nearly impossible fast.
I've heard the new JS/EMCA engine that they are working on should fix some of that stuff, but that is quite a ways off.
It's OK. Firefox is a great browser. I love Safari on my Mac, but on Windows I'm hooked on FF. Safari is nice, but since Apple loves to re-implement everything it isn't the fastest horse in town. IE is... well... the browser just got tabs last year. It's really hard to debug CSS type issues, and I frankly thing 7 is just plain ugly.
Some of their graphical glitz I find slightly pointless. But I think the inclusion of Time Machine alone makes this release important and terribly useful. That would save me tons of time with random computer users who have learned to ask me for help with stuff. That is a BIG thing.
I only dabble in web stuff, my of my work is back-end. I use Flashblock to speed things up and keep my CPU use down, and Firebug for those few times I need to figure out why some CSS thing isn't displaying right. There are similar things for other browsers. The inspector built into Safari 3 is very nice.
Strange, I remember saying exclusive and after Halo 3. Halo 3 is not after Halo 3.
Mass Effect looks to be exclusive. Lost Odyssey too. Culdept Saga too.
That's 3 out of 21 games, 20 if you don't count Halo.
You made a list of 3 games. Good job.
I said it was a nice console. I said I'll probably buy one. I said it looked like a great console to play multi-platform games on. I asked for exclusive games. The vast majority of your list can be played on a PS3.
I've heard that too. I use FF on my desktop at work with one or two plugins (FlashBlock and FireBug, mostly). It does leak memory after enough time. Closing the browser always fixes it, so it's not much of a problem.
That said, if a plugin leaks memory, there are a few options. First, the system should know. Even if the plugin in used constantly, I should be able to open the extensions options panel and see how much memory each one is using, so I can identify the culprit. There should be a warning system ("Plug-in 'MemHog2' is using 500MB of ram, close/ignore/disable?").
Also, when a plugin isn't in use, then it shouldn't cause a problem. Let's say that the problem is Flashblock. If it isn't actively rendering (say I only have one window/tab open and it's pure text, no flash/etc) then it really shouldn't be using any memory. If I have FireBug inactive it should use next to no memory (when I have it actively checked CSS/JS/etc I expect it to use memory).
I'm glad they are working on this. I've heard this complaint for a while. But even if the problem is the plugins, it needs fixing or roping in.
How about being able to set memory limits for plug-ins, Mac OS 1-9.x style? Maybe total, maybe per active page, maybe both. Just a random idea.
After reading a few things I just wonder what's left. The Wii looks like it will stay pretty fantastic. I've got a whole little list of games I'm waiting for. I'm glad I've got my Wii (and I'm loving Metroid Prime 3, which I'm playing now).
But what is left for the 360? The entire time it's been out people have been saying "Wait for Halo 3... that will do it". What if it doesn't? I'm not saying there won't be some new breakout game, but with Halo 3 out there isn't much on the way that I know of that will have that kind of draw. Nintendo has their series. The PS3 has Final Fantasy XIII (I'm laying XII now, it's great) and Metal Gear Solid 4. What is coming for the 360 like that?
So if Halo 3 doesn't skyrocket sales of the 360... short of a come from nowhere hit MS looks like it will not be catching up for a long time.
Sony has a few good looking games coming, but the price point is still a big problem for me.
I used to say "Wait until GTA comes out on the PSP, that will really drive sales" but when it happened... things didn't seem to really change. Halo 3 is supposed to be good and all but the system is still up there in price. I don't think most people can just drop the near $400 to buy the system and game if they weren't planning for the release.
But if you like the 360 and think it has a really bright future (nice console, I might buy one this XMas)... what exclusive content is coming that has you excited? I don't deny that as the "which system should I buy to play multi-platform games" the 360 is very appealing, but what is coming is a great draw that the PS3 doesn't have?
It didn't work out very well for the PS2 for quite a while. Games were a bit slow at the start. It took quite a while. The best thing Sony had with the PS2 was the huge demand. Coming off the PS1 (which took Sony from not in the market to #1 by far), developers wanted to be on the PS2. They were willing to put up with the tough times until tools got better and middleware started to appear. I've read things by developers that said that was a HUGE screw-up on Sony's part. If they had tried to pull that with a new console (say the PS2 was their first video game console) they may have failed.
The XBox had (from what I've heard) fantastic development tools. But that's what you would expect from MS and from someone trying to woo developers. I seem to remember reading that the dev tools for the PS1 were very good and one of the reasons the platform took off as it did (N64 cartridge prices and the Saturn multi-CPU setup being some of the others).
The PS3 doesn't have the momentum this time. The 360 had a head start. The XBox put up a very good fight in the last generation (relative to how well the Saturn or Dreamcast did). The 360 is simpler to develop for (thanks to the CPU and tools). The PS3 is very expensive (down from incredibly expensive). At $300 tons and tons of people wanted to get a PS2 for their kids. At $600, the PS3 was.. to put it charitably... a little more of a luxury item. Compared to the cheaper and already out 360 and the yet cheaper and innovative Wii... the PS3 didn't have the golden-boy status that the PS2 had.
The PS3 may end up doing quite well, and may turn out to be the most powerful. But if it does, it will take quite a while to hit it's stride the way the PS2 did.
Let's say you sell it for use on any network. For the sake of argument, let's pretend that it would magically work on GSM or CDMA so you could use it on Sprint/Verizon too.
Firs thing is first, that's 4 times the compatibility testing (minimum). That is 4 carries that you have to make Visual Voicemail work on. That would be tough. Or you could let some customers have it and some not. Or you could just cut the feature which is probably what would happen.
With four carriers (we'll just assume the big ones for this discussion and leave out the little ones), that is also 4 sets of data plans you have to mess with. Don't forget that you have to support all this including answering questions about it at your Apple stores.
Apple had bargaining power with AT&T. They could walk and go to someone else. When you let four carriers do that, you lose your power. They can all agree not to do feature X, because they other guys aren't. They can just assume the other guys won't, because they wouldn't.
That means Apple would have to customize the software for each carrier. Each would have their own little issues with iTunes (after all, they all have their pathetic over-priced music stores). They would want their own crazy user interfaces or software changes. The whole thing would be a huge mess and very confusing for consumers. I would be amazed if Apple could get two carriers to agree to near-identicle stuff (terms, contracts, phone modifications, etc)... let alone 4.
The grand-parent has it right. AT&T was the most logical choice.
Apple had three choices. Go with one carrier (probably AT&T, which they did), go many carriers (see above), or go MVNO (be their own carrier... huge hassle).
It still wouldn't matter. If they went with T-Mobile, people would complain them. People complain about Sprint (I'm one) and Verizon is right up there. There are 4 big cell phone companies in the US, and I don't know of any of them having a decent reputation. My knowledge ranges from not great (T-Moblie, I haven't talked to many people about them) to annoying (Sprint: decent service, poor phones, poorer prices) to horrible (Verizon: poor phones, horrid software, and lock-downs that make Sprint look like a bastion of freedom).
People would be here complaining about the iPhone carrier no matter who it was.
I'm still just a tad surprised that Apple didn't go MVNO. They would have had the draw to pull it off (where as most, like Boost, didn't have any real draw compared to Sprint (who, IIRC, ran Boost)).
But then people would probably complain about Apple directly in that case.
Let's face it, there is next to no one on/. who thinks the cell system in the US is anything better than problematic. And there are very few who would be even that kind.
I've got to say, when I first started to see all the marketing crud they are doing for Halo 3 I thought it was pathetic. The "game fuel" thing really clenched it for me.
I've heard that. I was referring to non-real-time 3D rendering. Basically, what Pixar does with their render farm. The Cell can be quite good at that, as well as video processing and other such effects. It's a SIMD beast, but will fall flat if you try to ask it to do DB work.
There is a big difference. While L2 almost always helps (especially with the cores be so much faster than the memory bus), Intel's current designs end up in bus contention if you try to use them to much. While the Opteron's have their own memory controllers, all four cores on this chip have to go through the Northbridge to get to memory, so they have to share those two channels.
It used to be even worse. When Intel was pulling the dual-dual core thing, to access one core was wicked quick, to access the other two cores had to go over the FSB and contend with memory traffic and such.
Until Intel's upcoming platforms that look suspiciously like what AMD has been doing for years (on-die memory controller, point to point serial bus, etc)... extra cache can make a big difference for them.
POWER is one thing (but I'm not sure how common they are for non-ultra-high-end servers), but the Cell is not a server chip by any means. It would fall flat on it's face. The SPEs would sit nearly idle, and the one general purpose core would be swamped. Cell would only be useful for batch numerical processing work of specific kinds (I'm guessing accounting would be bad, 3D rendering would work very well).
I'd say the standard should be the same as all evidence. Are they allowed to keep your mug-shot forever (yes, as far as I know). If they take a handwriting sample and you are not convicted, are they allowed to keep that? The standard should be the same for DNA. They certainly get to keep your fingerprints right?
If they request and get it during the course of an investigation I think they should get to keep it. I see no reason why they shouldn't.
If they start abusing this (arresting people on provably fake charges and such) just to get DNA, they you can do a civil suit. The judge will make 'em toss it and the millions they'll have to shell out every time will help keep them honest.
But if you are at a murder scene and have knife scratches on you, the police should get to keep your DNA if they use it to rule you in or out, just like they get to keep pictures of you.
Now if you want to make it so they can keep the DNA but it can't be admitted to court (so they couldn't convict you on that alone) then I would be fine with that. That's probably a good idea, in fact.
I seriously doubt this. That would mean writing 2 full graphical back-ends for the engine. That would be almost double the work. There is no way they would do that. There would be no point since OpenGL is available on Windows. I have no doubt that they are using DirectInput and such (as basically every game on Windows does) but I would be amazed is they wrote a Direct3D renderer in addition to the OpenGL one.
I know the general opinion of the DMCA here on/. (and I tend to agree). That said, I have a question I wonder if anyone can answer. We hear lots about DMCA abuses (partly due to the standard thoughts on it). Can anyone point to one or more big cases where the DMCA helped and the person/people wronged would have been without recourse before the DMCA that aren't abuses?
Every time I hear about the DMCA it is being used to do something stupid or flat out illegal under the act (after all, just claim it as a reason for anything and many people will back off). Is anyone actually using it successfully and correctly where it provides a tangible benefit from before the act was enacted?
I think that is the litmus test of if it really was useful or good.
But as long as the RIAA/MPAA/whoever else get to "use" it to fix "problem" then it is "working."
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That's kind of what I'm thinking. I love my MacBook Pro but there are times I really don't need it. Traveling, I might be able to easily get buy with just an OLPC that would let me do a little surfing or hacking. The battery life, weight, and size would be great. I don't need all the extra power most of the time.
I've been very impressed and occasionally amazed with the little things as I've followed their saga. I would love one, but I'm just not sure I'm up to the $400. At $200, almost no question. At $300, decent change. At $400, it's just too much. I know it's buy-one-donate-one, but that's still just too high. After a little time as some neat software starts appearing, they may get me. Initial run? I'm not very sure.
This is why people came to me, the neighborhood kid. I generally knew what I was doing. If it was trivial, I didn't charge. I leveled with 'em. I often had parts or cables or whatever I could try to see if that was the problem. I'd advise them on products if they had questions (should I buy X or Y?).
And when I didn't know what I was doing or didn't have the right tools... I'd try my best and tell them that. If I couldn't fix it, I would tell them to call Dell/Compaq/etc, or go to a pro computer repair service (Geek Squad type, but higher quality). Worst case scenario they lose some money. I only had to do that a handful of times, nearly always hardware.
I didn't say "well, just buy a new computer" much. If they had failing hardware and their computer was slow and old, sure. They usually asked. But far more than that I would tell them they didn't need a new PC, just some RAM or something like that.
Integrity counts for a lot. A great many people seem to lack it.
In those cases, knowing where your computer tech lives helps quite a bit at insuring quality.
Bad comparison. Is you Compaq designed to take all sorts of abuse, and be able to withstand water and dust and such? How long does your Compaq run on battery? Does it have no moving parts other than the keyboard? Or is it rather fragile.
This is not designed to compete in the regular laptop market, but if they upped the keyboard to adult size it would probably work for 90+% of US citizen's real needs.
That's flat out moronic. It's an amazing machine.
So why not sell them in the US?
These are ingenious little machines. It would be very smart to sell them to US consumers, but frankly I think the US computer market (something that includes me) tends to be... on average... far too ignorant to be able to buy these effectively. They will consider them all broken because they aren't "normal" computers.
All this is ignoring the fact the whole point of this project is to help 3rd world people, not give Americans another way to IM their friends.
They aren't underpowered, they have plenty of power. You don't NEED a dual CPU 2.x GHz laptop with 2 gigs of RAM to compute. This think would kick my Mac LC II around the block so bad it wouldn't be funny.
I remember that too. That was awesome. I created an account shortly after watching /., I didn't lurk for months like some. One of the first comments I remember posting (or perhaps jut my first to get a +5) was a little film-noir like description of something. After reading the story it just reminded me of noir style narration so I took the idea and ran with it. Wasn't my first comment, but I was quite surprised when it got modded up (I figured I'd get an off-topic or a troll).
I always love these little bits, although they usually spawn more organically.
Really, I'd like to see a list of when various account IDs were created. I know I've been around for a long time (I think 6-7 years or so) but I really don't know. But if I knew when 10000 was created, 100000, 200000, 1000000, etc... I could estimate. Plus is would just be interesting to see.
As I see it, this is suing for the wrong thing. You bought a device, did two unauthorized modifications (used a different SIM and hacked the software), then are mad that a software update for an unmodified device caused you problems. This is your fault. You should have seen this coming a mile away, whether intentional on Apple's part or not.
"I replaced the tires on my Ford Escort with big tracks, and when I installed the free hubcaps they sent me it caused the tracks to lock up and destroy themselves. Damn Ford killed my car!"
If you want to sue, then change the suit to something more appropriate. Sue Apple for only allowing you to use AT&T. Sue for not letting you unlock your phone after 90 days. Sue Apple for locking down the smart phone. You knew the phone was locked to 3rd party software when you bought it, but sue anyway. This is the US, it'll work. Sue AT&T for charing you $600 for a substandard phone (no games, can't record videos, etc) without clearly disclosing that stuff up front. Sue the FCC for allowing vender lock-in. Sue MS for making such a terrible platform (I used CE 1.0, and I had a WM 5 device. In many ways, it wasn't much better. In many ways, it was worse). Sue the management of Palm for driving the platform in the ground, thus reducing your choices. Sue MS for making it impossible to use their phones with non-Windows software (illegal bundling/tie-in? And yes, I know about Missing Sync).
The iPhone is neat. I'd like one. I'd LOVE to try to develop for it. But you bought the device in one state, modified it, and are mad that your modifications caused problems. Sue for the right reason. Don't start a trend of companies being forced to support modifications of their devices that they were explicitly trying to prevent.
There are two options. First, buy a Mac. I've had great luck with 'em, they tend to be lovely hardware, and I've had great results with Apple service.
But you probably don't want it. Plus, they are made in China, I think.
Your best bet: used Thinkpad. You can get one made by IBM, or Lenovo. But if you buy it used, then you aren't giving money to the Chinese. At most, you are raising the average resale value on the things which would very slightly raise demand on new ones if many other people did the same.
Of course, unless you are lucky, you can't get the latest and greatest this way.
I run FF on Windows at work. It's not a problem for a day or so (which is quite common for me) but after two or three days it will be using a ton. Just making sure I close all windows once in a while fixes all that.
For everything running under firefox-bin... hooking malloc is exactly what I'd suggest. If they are written in something like JavaScript it shouldn't be that hard to tag allocations. If they are written native then scan them for malloc calls and such and refuse to load. They should call ffmalloc (or whatever you want to call it) and it's (new) friends. That would make keeping track of it rather easy.
I'm not saying this is perfect. I'm not saying it's the world's cleanest idea. But it would give a good idea of what was going on. Using a separate thread for each thing would improve things, but that has tons of problems (especially synchronization, unless you run everything serially one thread chaining to the next, but that's quite hideous).
As for the "when X is doing Y" thing... that's near impossible. With the above in the developer should be able to put some sane warnings on it, but that was mostly a little "think is how I think things should behave" bit, not really something to implement. It was going to be that kind of suggestion, but it got nearly impossible fast.
I've heard the new JS/EMCA engine that they are working on should fix some of that stuff, but that is quite a ways off.
It's OK. Firefox is a great browser. I love Safari on my Mac, but on Windows I'm hooked on FF. Safari is nice, but since Apple loves to re-implement everything it isn't the fastest horse in town. IE is... well... the browser just got tabs last year. It's really hard to debug CSS type issues, and I frankly thing 7 is just plain ugly.
Some of their graphical glitz I find slightly pointless. But I think the inclusion of Time Machine alone makes this release important and terribly useful. That would save me tons of time with random computer users who have learned to ask me for help with stuff. That is a BIG thing.
I only dabble in web stuff, my of my work is back-end. I use Flashblock to speed things up and keep my CPU use down, and Firebug for those few times I need to figure out why some CSS thing isn't displaying right. There are similar things for other browsers. The inspector built into Safari 3 is very nice.
Strange, I remember saying exclusive and after Halo 3. Halo 3 is not after Halo 3.
Mass Effect looks to be exclusive. Lost Odyssey too. Culdept Saga too.
That's 3 out of 21 games, 20 if you don't count Halo.
You made a list of 3 games. Good job.
I said it was a nice console. I said I'll probably buy one. I said it looked like a great console to play multi-platform games on. I asked for exclusive games. The vast majority of your list can be played on a PS3.
I've heard that too. I use FF on my desktop at work with one or two plugins (FlashBlock and FireBug, mostly). It does leak memory after enough time. Closing the browser always fixes it, so it's not much of a problem.
That said, if a plugin leaks memory, there are a few options. First, the system should know. Even if the plugin in used constantly, I should be able to open the extensions options panel and see how much memory each one is using, so I can identify the culprit. There should be a warning system ("Plug-in 'MemHog2' is using 500MB of ram, close/ignore/disable?").
Also, when a plugin isn't in use, then it shouldn't cause a problem. Let's say that the problem is Flashblock. If it isn't actively rendering (say I only have one window/tab open and it's pure text, no flash/etc) then it really shouldn't be using any memory. If I have FireBug inactive it should use next to no memory (when I have it actively checked CSS/JS/etc I expect it to use memory).
I'm glad they are working on this. I've heard this complaint for a while. But even if the problem is the plugins, it needs fixing or roping in.
How about being able to set memory limits for plug-ins, Mac OS 1-9.x style? Maybe total, maybe per active page, maybe both. Just a random idea.
After reading a few things I just wonder what's left. The Wii looks like it will stay pretty fantastic. I've got a whole little list of games I'm waiting for. I'm glad I've got my Wii (and I'm loving Metroid Prime 3, which I'm playing now).
But what is left for the 360? The entire time it's been out people have been saying "Wait for Halo 3... that will do it". What if it doesn't? I'm not saying there won't be some new breakout game, but with Halo 3 out there isn't much on the way that I know of that will have that kind of draw. Nintendo has their series. The PS3 has Final Fantasy XIII (I'm laying XII now, it's great) and Metal Gear Solid 4. What is coming for the 360 like that?
So if Halo 3 doesn't skyrocket sales of the 360... short of a come from nowhere hit MS looks like it will not be catching up for a long time.
Sony has a few good looking games coming, but the price point is still a big problem for me.
I used to say "Wait until GTA comes out on the PSP, that will really drive sales" but when it happened... things didn't seem to really change. Halo 3 is supposed to be good and all but the system is still up there in price. I don't think most people can just drop the near $400 to buy the system and game if they weren't planning for the release.
But if you like the 360 and think it has a really bright future (nice console, I might buy one this XMas)... what exclusive content is coming that has you excited? I don't deny that as the "which system should I buy to play multi-platform games" the 360 is very appealing, but what is coming is a great draw that the PS3 doesn't have?
It didn't work out very well for the PS2 for quite a while. Games were a bit slow at the start. It took quite a while. The best thing Sony had with the PS2 was the huge demand. Coming off the PS1 (which took Sony from not in the market to #1 by far), developers wanted to be on the PS2. They were willing to put up with the tough times until tools got better and middleware started to appear. I've read things by developers that said that was a HUGE screw-up on Sony's part. If they had tried to pull that with a new console (say the PS2 was their first video game console) they may have failed.
The XBox had (from what I've heard) fantastic development tools. But that's what you would expect from MS and from someone trying to woo developers. I seem to remember reading that the dev tools for the PS1 were very good and one of the reasons the platform took off as it did (N64 cartridge prices and the Saturn multi-CPU setup being some of the others).
The PS3 doesn't have the momentum this time. The 360 had a head start. The XBox put up a very good fight in the last generation (relative to how well the Saturn or Dreamcast did). The 360 is simpler to develop for (thanks to the CPU and tools). The PS3 is very expensive (down from incredibly expensive). At $300 tons and tons of people wanted to get a PS2 for their kids. At $600, the PS3 was.. to put it charitably... a little more of a luxury item. Compared to the cheaper and already out 360 and the yet cheaper and innovative Wii... the PS3 didn't have the golden-boy status that the PS2 had.
The PS3 may end up doing quite well, and may turn out to be the most powerful. But if it does, it will take quite a while to hit it's stride the way the PS2 did.
Let's say you sell it for use on any network. For the sake of argument, let's pretend that it would magically work on GSM or CDMA so you could use it on Sprint/Verizon too.
Firs thing is first, that's 4 times the compatibility testing (minimum). That is 4 carries that you have to make Visual Voicemail work on. That would be tough. Or you could let some customers have it and some not. Or you could just cut the feature which is probably what would happen.
With four carriers (we'll just assume the big ones for this discussion and leave out the little ones), that is also 4 sets of data plans you have to mess with. Don't forget that you have to support all this including answering questions about it at your Apple stores.
Apple had bargaining power with AT&T. They could walk and go to someone else. When you let four carriers do that, you lose your power. They can all agree not to do feature X, because they other guys aren't. They can just assume the other guys won't, because they wouldn't.
That means Apple would have to customize the software for each carrier. Each would have their own little issues with iTunes (after all, they all have their pathetic over-priced music stores). They would want their own crazy user interfaces or software changes. The whole thing would be a huge mess and very confusing for consumers. I would be amazed if Apple could get two carriers to agree to near-identicle stuff (terms, contracts, phone modifications, etc)... let alone 4.
The grand-parent has it right. AT&T was the most logical choice.
Apple had three choices. Go with one carrier (probably AT&T, which they did), go many carriers (see above), or go MVNO (be their own carrier... huge hassle).
It still wouldn't matter. If they went with T-Mobile, people would complain them. People complain about Sprint (I'm one) and Verizon is right up there. There are 4 big cell phone companies in the US, and I don't know of any of them having a decent reputation. My knowledge ranges from not great (T-Moblie, I haven't talked to many people about them) to annoying (Sprint: decent service, poor phones, poorer prices) to horrible (Verizon: poor phones, horrid software, and lock-downs that make Sprint look like a bastion of freedom).
People would be here complaining about the iPhone carrier no matter who it was.
I'm still just a tad surprised that Apple didn't go MVNO. They would have had the draw to pull it off (where as most, like Boost, didn't have any real draw compared to Sprint (who, IIRC, ran Boost)).
But then people would probably complain about Apple directly in that case.
Let's face it, there is next to no one on /. who thinks the cell system in the US is anything better than problematic. And there are very few who would be even that kind.
I've got to say, when I first started to see all the marketing crud they are doing for Halo 3 I thought it was pathetic. The "game fuel" thing really clenched it for me.
I think Ctrl+Alt+Del captured it.
I've heard that. I was referring to non-real-time 3D rendering. Basically, what Pixar does with their render farm. The Cell can be quite good at that, as well as video processing and other such effects. It's a SIMD beast, but will fall flat if you try to ask it to do DB work.
There is a big difference. While L2 almost always helps (especially with the cores be so much faster than the memory bus), Intel's current designs end up in bus contention if you try to use them to much. While the Opteron's have their own memory controllers, all four cores on this chip have to go through the Northbridge to get to memory, so they have to share those two channels.
It used to be even worse. When Intel was pulling the dual-dual core thing, to access one core was wicked quick, to access the other two cores had to go over the FSB and contend with memory traffic and such.
Until Intel's upcoming platforms that look suspiciously like what AMD has been doing for years (on-die memory controller, point to point serial bus, etc)... extra cache can make a big difference for them.
POWER is one thing (but I'm not sure how common they are for non-ultra-high-end servers), but the Cell is not a server chip by any means. It would fall flat on it's face. The SPEs would sit nearly idle, and the one general purpose core would be swamped. Cell would only be useful for batch numerical processing work of specific kinds (I'm guessing accounting would be bad, 3D rendering would work very well).
I'd say the standard should be the same as all evidence. Are they allowed to keep your mug-shot forever (yes, as far as I know). If they take a handwriting sample and you are not convicted, are they allowed to keep that? The standard should be the same for DNA. They certainly get to keep your fingerprints right?
If they request and get it during the course of an investigation I think they should get to keep it. I see no reason why they shouldn't.
If they start abusing this (arresting people on provably fake charges and such) just to get DNA, they you can do a civil suit. The judge will make 'em toss it and the millions they'll have to shell out every time will help keep them honest.
But if you are at a murder scene and have knife scratches on you, the police should get to keep your DNA if they use it to rule you in or out, just like they get to keep pictures of you.
Now if you want to make it so they can keep the DNA but it can't be admitted to court (so they couldn't convict you on that alone) then I would be fine with that. That's probably a good idea, in fact.
I seriously doubt this. That would mean writing 2 full graphical back-ends for the engine. That would be almost double the work. There is no way they would do that. There would be no point since OpenGL is available on Windows. I have no doubt that they are using DirectInput and such (as basically every game on Windows does) but I would be amazed is they wrote a Direct3D renderer in addition to the OpenGL one.
I know the general opinion of the DMCA here on /. (and I tend to agree). That said, I have a question I wonder if anyone can answer. We hear lots about DMCA abuses (partly due to the standard thoughts on it). Can anyone point to one or more big cases where the DMCA helped and the person/people wronged would have been without recourse before the DMCA that aren't abuses?
Every time I hear about the DMCA it is being used to do something stupid or flat out illegal under the act (after all, just claim it as a reason for anything and many people will back off). Is anyone actually using it successfully and correctly where it provides a tangible benefit from before the act was enacted?
I think that is the litmus test of if it really was useful or good.
But as long as the RIAA/MPAA/whoever else get to "use" it to fix "problem" then it is "working."
Ah, project Wildfire.
Or is this more of a Threshold situation.
Unless this is more like War of the Worlds.
Maybe I just watch too much Sci-Fi.