I understand that this seems incredibly bogus, and I agree. However, you have to understand where Wal-mart does the bulk of its business, in my experience. This decision didn't come down to affect scientifically enlightened locations like Silicon Valley or New York City. These are areas where if the local church objects, there will be mass boycotts and negative media attention, because EVERYONE in town goes to that church. And, of course, the local church will object to anything that sounds like it's not a) conservative, b) WWJD, c) wont someone think of the children, etc.
Wow! A bigot! Who'd have guessed.
Allow me to give you a clue. I've lived everywhere from Salt Lake City to Ohio to my current home in Kansas. Life isn't like that. I have never experienced that. Now if you get out into the middle of Kansas into some little town of 120 people, that my be true. But anywhere near a decent sized city it is pretty much like any other decent sized city. A single church may do that kind of thing, but by and large you don't hear about it.
I lived in Salt Lake City when Mortal Combat came out. Most of the kids in school were Mormon. You know what? Tons of them bought it. You could rent it at Blockbuster. As I remember, I think you could even buy it at ZCMY (a big department store based there).
It's nice you put in "Scientifically Englightened" like the people in the center of the country are brain-dead cavemen. Grow the hell up.
Wal-Mart had good reason to do this. It makes perfect sense with their standard stance. You don't like their stance? Well obviously many people do.
Now I could make arguments about why us "WWJD think of the children" middle-of-nowhere-unenlightened-idiots are better than people in NYC, but I'm not going to.
This is a good decision. They are free to make it. They aren't saying they wont sell those games. They just want to make it so a parent doesn't reserve a game and later find out it became AO.
I can't believe you got modded up. I know it's common on/. to be liberal and look down on conservatives, but you comment is just such blatant biggotry.
I agree, I think that you shouldn't need too much sync. As for how to sync them up, it would be trivial to just flash a LED in the middle of the scene for 1/30th of a second (1/25th in PAL) and use that flash for the sync. That way you don't have to do it by hand since it should be on only one frame or so.
Here is what I can tell you. My guess is that FireWire would be easier because all FW video uses the same driver. Find yourself (or just borrow or rent) two video cameras with firewire and use that. You only need two because one can capture one pair of axis (X and Z) and the other the other pair (Y and Z). If you put the cameras at right angles to each-other (pointing down the axis) you should have all you need. The programming half shouldn't be too bad, in relative terms. All you have to do is extract the coords of the white dots and then pair them up between the images. With that (and a little calibrations to fix the slight distortion the cameras will have) you should be able to get decent coords easily. If you get it working, write it up. I'm sure others on/. would love to hear about exactly how you did it as I would.
The video camera approach also lets you just pre-record the sessions, you don't have to do the capture live if you're computers can't handle it. Standard video cameras would be 640x480.
Now you could also do it by analog capture using some simple video capture boards. The WinTV series works VERY well under Linux, and the WinPVR series has models that work well and have hardware MPEG encoding to offload the CPU use. Just look at a project like MythTV and buy the cards they like/use.
See I don't believe this. That article seems to be about the version shown at E3. The fact is by the time the game comes out E3 will have been about 6 months before. In the mean time I have heard that the controls on Excite Truck and it's visuals have improved. I've heard the same about Red Steel and Metroid Prime Three.
I really think that they would have fixed that kind of stuff since then. Nintendo doesn't tend to do that half-assed tack-on-features stuff for something so important as core game play on one of their AAA titles.
Now that I think about it, you're both right. There was just one. They are all so similar they blended in my mind. Let me make up for that: Tetris DS. There is another great DS game that I got a ton of play out of. Tetris is fun, but online Tetris rules.
The book sounds interesting. But I'd like to pose a question for/.ers... has convergence ever really worked?
The biggest piece of convergence I can think of would be TV/VCR combos. While they do sell, they've never over taken TVs (even in small sizes).
Everything else I can try to think of I wouldn't call convergence. I'm not sure Clock-Radios should be counted, as it is just an enhancement of an alarm clock with a different alarm. Sure every oven and microwave has a clock in it, but that doesn't replace the clock elsewhere.
Everyone keeps talking about convergence, but by and large it doesn't seem to be successful anywhere that I can think of.
Anyone have any going counter-points to prove me wrong? I'd love to hear them. The only thing I can think of would be cell-phone/PDAs, but I would consider that arguable (after all, most are just PDAs with cell-phone hardware in them and one little application to drive the phone, they are hardly well merged; form factor is the same as a PDA).
I basically regret my PSP purchase. I've played a handful of games. The last game I played that I really enjoyed was Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee which was released a little over a year ago. Me and My Katamari was kind of fun, as were a few of the early games, but by and large I don't feel like I've gotten much in the way of games. What's coming up? Not much. The only two games I am looking forward to are MGS: Portable Ops and Gitaroo Man Lives! (which is supposed to be part re-release/port).
Compare that to my DS. Two or three Castlevania games. Mario Kart. Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time. Kirby. Yoshi's Touch and Go. Wario Ware. Phoenix Wright and Trauma Center. That's what I can think of off the top of my head. Then there is the upcoming Yoshi's Island sequel, the next Phoenix Wright, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Elite Beat Agents, Kirby Squak Squad, another Castlevania, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and I'm sure more.
I feel my DS has been a great purchase and I've gotten tons of play time out of it. I've barely touched my PSP in the last year and I regret it's purchase.
Sony has delivered tons of games on their last two platforms. The PSP is just sitting there. Not many games so far. Not many coming. The seeming killer feature that is to come is old PS1 games.
They simply don't care. The fact is Half-Life was one of the best selling games of all time. They promised a Mac port and showed it off in '98 or '99 but it was never released. I don't think that was because of DirectX.
Actually one of the things that I've heard about the Mac is Havok is a problem. It runs, and Havok as written a port, but no one is willing to pay for it (they have to pay for the port and the license, despite the fact it is already complete). I think I got this from MacGamer, but I'm not sure.
Considering [...] DirectX10 is only available on Vista and that 50% of employers say they are not going to purchase [soon], it's a safe bet to say that we won't be seeing any games [...] for at least 2 years.
I think I found the flaw in your logic. Employers != Consumers.
The fact is, games will probably drive Vista adoption more than any other factor save factory pre-installs. We proabaly won't see much requiring DX10 for a year or more, but that is because most big games take 1-3 years to develop so that's about the earliest that we'll see stuff.
This may cause game manufacturers to change tactics since OpenGL is supported on ALL OS's.
That fact has always been true, and it hasn't made much of a difference so far, even back when OpenGL and DirectX were much closer in abilities (without needing extensions and such).
It's just like the rest of Win32. There is nothing magical. But as you implement it new versions will come out and you'll be in constant catch-up. On top of that, DirectX is used for games so you need to have it perform well. This combination makes it hard. CodeWeavers and Cedega are both trying.
Well even with the RIAA around, I bet there are ways that could be implemented; and it would be a great feature. What if you could browse and listen to any song on my iPod, but only when you were near me physically. Once you left, you would lose files (they would only be in RAM). That would be a fun feature (especially when sitting in the airport or something like that). Best of all, you could make a way to mark songs you liked and take that list back to your computer to make purchasing easy.
But it would be expensive (battery wise) to offer music all the time, so the other person would have to have their iPod out and on (and the feature enabled). Plus there is the cost of spinning up the disc to access the songs the other person wants to hear. This could be "fixed" by limiting the songs to what is currently in the iPod's RAM cache (5 to 10 songs at a time, I think). But doing this you wouldn't be able to look through their library.
I would simply like the ability to sync my iPod over Bluetooth when I set it in it's cradle. Updating play-counts doesn't take any time, and using Bluetooth 2 EDR (which has been available in Macs since early '05) downloading a new album or two wouldn't take long. That would be such a great feature. To be able to set my iPod down in it's cradle and have it automatically sync with my laptop (which it doesn't do now because I don't keep the cradle plugged into my laptop). A very minor use of wireless, but one I would love.
I'm still hoping against all odds that they make the next iPod touch screen and a Newton replacement. Windows Mobile is so clunky.
It won't succeed. They are aiming after something that is WAY too popular and extremely well designed. To get people off the iPod, you're going to have to pass it and that will be very tough with current technology (especially batteries).
But let's talk about the BIG feature. Let's talk about something people have been wanting from the iPod for quite a while. Let's talk wireless. People say Zune will be able to buy and download music wirelessly.
It won't.
I read a report earlier today that said that was a misunderstanding and that basically the wireless functionality was to let you see what OTHER people with Zunes in the area were listening to. I read a little blurb that one of the low end MP3 player makers was looking at doing the same thing (only not using WiFi for it). Or are we supposed to surf the 'net on this thing too? Guess what, my PDA does that. So does my phone. And my DS. And my PSP. And my laptop. And that desktop over there. And...
That is a BIG difference between telling people what you're listening to and buying new music.
And I'm not surprised. To do that would require a ton of power. The WiFi on my Dell Axim X50v eats up battery life, that's why it's off unless I'm using it. You'd have to do the same thing, which would somewhat defeat the "buy music any time" idea. Plus, when downloading music (lots of data!) it would use a large amount of battery. You want wireless headphones instead? So do I! But then you have to keep bluetooth running which will use up power. Plus your wireless headphones are expensive and need batteries. Two sets of batteries to recharge and fail for the price of one!
Watch TV/Movies? The iPod does it.
Look at the proposed updates to the iPod. A touch screen? That's a little pointless (unless they make it into the new Newton).
And let's not forget the iTMS lock-in problem. The people who spend the most on iTMS are probably the ones you want most (because they will buy from you/your partners). But they are also the ones with the most to lose from abandoning the iPod. So you have to give away free music for every song that they bought. Fun logistics there. And you don't think the RIAA will let you do that for FREE do you?
Bob has $200 in iTMS music. He moves to Zune. MS gives him his music in their DRMed format. They just paid the RIAA the same "taxes" as if he spent $200 with them. Don't forget the hardware probably isn't high margin (like the iPod) and may even be close to even (so it's fancier for the $$$ compared to the iPod). You just lost money on that customer. What a way to make money!
Until DRM gets outlawed, Apple somehow screws up royally, or batteries improve enough to allow some of the features not useful now (wireless, longer movie playback)... Apple will remain on top.
Their position is just too strong (combined with MS's history) for me to think that Zune will change anything in the market any time soon.
PS: I have heard Zune will abandon "Plays For Sure" for something else. Considering MS did that, I'm sure that the successor will be supported for a LONG time. Sheesh.
PPS: Changing DRM to force everyone to buy a new player. Not something I can see Apple doing. MS might be considering it (given their market share is much lower but still...)
That's true. They are random forums, one time sign ups for some feature on a website, etc. I don't keep my real passwords to import stuff around where they can be easily found. I have them memorized. It's "important" because these are the ones I can see myself looking for in the future (as opposed to something I'll only need a password for once).
You are using Mail.app and Spotlight (I do too) so you don't think gmail is so amazing.
But if you were to use another e-mail client for a while (AOL, Outlook, etc) you would realize just how TERRIBLE the average e-mail program's search ability is. It just doesn't work that well. Often, they search by (seemingly) walking though the e-mails one by one. Thus when you have 1000 e-mails searches take 10x as long as when you have 100. If you were to try to search through my backed e-mail (2-3 years) it would take a LONG time. Compare this to a fraction of a second to do the same with Spotlight (or gmail).
The live results and updates that Spotlight gives is what makes it so powerful.
I'm sort of the same way. I keep all my e-mail (that I don't actively want to see) in a set of folder for mostly historical reasons (I like being organized, and dumping it all in one huge folder would annoy me). The main folders are:
School Stuff - I just graduated, but all school e-mails went in there
Important Passwords - Passwords I may need to look up
Job Search - I'm looking for a job so all job correspondence goes there
Letters - Letters from friends
Old Mail - Miscellaneous
Now the last one contains all other old mail that doesn't go into the specific folders above. Inside there are many subfolders for specific things that generate a ton of e-mail (Slashdot, Netflix, mailing lists, etc).
But like I said, I do that for historical reasons. It's a habit. It made it easy to find things.
But I use OS X and specifically Mail.app, so I have spotlight. Ever since I got Tiger (I bought my Mac about a month before it came out so I feel like I've always had it here) I've used spotlight. What's my Netflix password? Type "netflix password" into Spotlight (usually in Mail, but you don't have to be). Want an e-mail from a friend that says what they got for their last birthday? Search for their name and birthday. Want the e-mails you traded with someone about configuring hardware x on Linux under a 2.6 kernel? Search for x, Linux, and 2.6
Finding things under Outlook (what I used before I got the Mac) was easier manually. The search didn't work too well. But now, it doesn't matter what I'm doing I can just Spotlight it. It's fantastic. Same basic thing as gmail.
To a certain degree having years of old mail was useless before because it was so hard to find something. Now, it's not. Now it's trivial. I usually have about 3 months of spam on my machine (that's how often I delete the spam folder's contents). If I think I lost an e-mail there is no reason to go looking at the spam subjects one-by-one. Just type the name or a keyword in Spotlight and have it search the Junk folder. If it's there, it will be found almost instantly.
It can really change the way you do things, and it's great. It's very obvious why MS is putting the same kind of thing in Vista, it's just so handy.
Myself, I'm a hoarder with organization. I save EVERY email somewhere (except for spam which gets cleared out once and a while). Things get filed away as soon as possible. I read it, then I file it. The exceptions are the things I want kept at my attention. Open orders, ongoing discussions, and the last letter from a select friend or two are always in there. If I'm done with it, it's filed. I'd have mail going back 6 or 7 years if it wasn't for a hard drive crash. As it is, it only goes back about 2 or 3.
Now the thing I finder interesting is my parents. They use AOL and are self taught. I've been moving them over to gmail but their habits have stayed with them.
The thing you have to understand is that AOL has this really queer behavior where if you've read an e-mail, it will delete it. If you read an e-mail and then leave AOL, it gets moved somewhere. After that, it quickly gets deleted automatically. I'm not sure why they do this, but it is the behavior I've seen. So if you want to keep an e-mail, you have two options. You can save it somewhere in another folder (which they do sometimes), or you can click "keep as new" (marks the message unread). So anything they think they'll read again gets marked "keep as new". This means they always have "new" mail. They can't look and see "I have 2 new messages" because they are ALL new messages (so they would have to remember the previous number).
But by and large they are deleters. When they are done with an e-mail unless they think they have a good reason to save it, they just let it get deleted (or recently they have been speeding it up by pressing delete).
I've read that the drive only does the reading, all the processing takes place in the 360. That's kind of interesting. However, I read a comment some where that I'd like to reprint (paraphrased or so):
I wonder if they will let you play games with it?
Now they've said "no games on HD-DVD" (which frankly I expect them to change in a few years). But what about normal XBox games in there? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to put one game in the 360 (like Dead Rising) and another in the HD-DVD drive (like PGR3)? Then you could choose either one when the console starts up. I'd love to be able to do that with my PS2 and Guitar Hero. It would save me quite a bit of disc swapping.
OK, I thought gamers were suckers (paying $600+ for graphics cards) but really.
A $280 network card.
But wait, there's more!
It's also... a Linux box. And not just a Linux box, an "Open Source Linux" box.
Plus it has USB so you can connect a hard drive or headset???
OK, the basic idea is interesting. Offload all the TCP/UDP/IP processing. I have to wonder how much impact that would really have. But how does the data get onto the host computer? If it's via a driver that shows up as a NIC, then it still has to go through the network layers of the OS. If it shows up as some kind of memory, then the host applications must be written to use it. The idea of offloading a few other features too (like voice chat) is nice too, but again, you'd have to write special software or drivers or something on the host OS to use that.
And you can use it for a hard drive. If they open it, background bittorrent anyone?
Or you could just let your NIC have a hard drive for fun that you can't access. Genius!
Look, if they had a little ARM processor and it did the network stuff only, that would be cute. But I think they over built it, it's over priced, and I seriously doubt it has much impact.
I wonder if they'll make Linux drivers available *smirk*
I don't know what the deal with this week is, but I've seen so many non-sensical comments on/. it's amazing.
Quake4 - Boring - I haven't played it, so I can't comment (although I seem to remember reading reviews saying it was nothing special).
Half-Life 2 - DRM so restrictive that most people did not bother buying it
Yes. That's why Half-Life 2 is one of the best selling games of the past few years. Because people didn't buy it because of the DRM. That's also why they are not making two expansion packs. That's why they aren't releasing new mods for it (no one plays, after all). That's why it's not getting put on consoles (tentativly scheduled for this fall). Oh wait...
SIMS2 - selling poorly compared to the outdates Sims and the 65,000 expansions packs that sold at the same price
Really? It's not quite as innovative as the last (after all, there was no Sims before Sims) but it's still a very nice game. My little sister and all her friends rushed out to buy it. They are churning out money making expansion packs as fast as they can. Again, my little sister and all her friends rush out to buy them. So Sims 2 isn't as successfull as the first (according to you). Well since Sims is the best selling game of all time, that might be a little hard to live up to (considering how long the two have been on the market).
How about that games suck right now? the few DS games I like are very different from what I can get for the PC.
Newsflash, different platforms have diffent games! Film at 11! The DS has some of the most innovative games on the market, and many games currently made are terrible. But if you look at the PC, it has them too. The problem is the signal-to-noise ratio.
Piracy is NOT hurting the Gaming industry. Their lack of ability to make a game that people want is.
If they made games no-one wanted, why are they being pirated? If they made games no one wanted, why is the industry making so much money? Piracy hurts. If the games were better, people may be less inclined to pirate.
But your entire post reeks of hyperboly and your points get lost in it.
Microsoft is the exception, because they are 90% of the market. The reason you can't have a proprietary OS is because you can't get past MS. At this point, it is currently impossible.
The only exception I can think of this would be to have a proprietary OS and give it away for free. Even then, you'd have a very tough time.
I agree. Over the past few years I've seen just how bad Windows is for the average person. This is through a combination of exposure to Linux and later OS X. If OS X didn't exist (or I couldn't afford the Mac) then I would run Linux. OS X is worth the extra cost. But if that is an issue, then I can see using Linux. It may come time that Linux surpasses OS X.
I also agree about the Xnu being open source. It's cute and all, but for practical reasons who cares? They have nice projects that I can see being useful (iCal Server, Bonjour, etc) but to try to take Xnu and such and make something to compete with a Linux distro just seems pointless.
Oh please. If you switched to OS X because you are a hard core FOSS person, you're an idiot. OS X is not open source. It never was, it never will be. Linux will ALWAYS be more open. Apple may open the kernel and various low level things, but OS X in total will not be. It's a great OS and if you want a no-fuss desktop with true Unix under it, it's great. If you want to be that hardcore ("Apple was late so forget them") then why did you choose a proprietary closed-source OS in the first place?
As for the comment that most OSes are open today, that's because you can't survive otherwise. No one has survived the desktop/server space except MS (who was once up near 100% of the market) and Apple (who bundles with their computers). Solaris is open because it wasn't profitable enough. OS/2 died. BeOS died. At this point, if you want your new general purpose desktop/server OS to have a chance in hell it has to be open source. The only way to live and be proprietary is to have a niche and run on custom or embedded hardware.
Spaces is hardly a new idea. But there have been two desktop environments that lacked it (Windows and OS X) and now only one does. As for copying from Entourage, Entourage has all that stuff in one app, where Apple split them up into pieces (which I like better) but gave them strong integration. They are just strengthening it.
Nothing Apple released was really mind-blowing or inventive, but it's all good stuff.
Yes. I thought it was a good idea then too. Many of the privacy nuts here on/. said that, but then again many people also said it was a good idea. There is nothing wrong with it on Windows, except on the corporate desktop. I'm glad Apple put it in. I'm glad MS put it in.
I like that Apple took it further and made it possible to use in applications like iCal, Address Book, and iPhoto. MS doesn't have anything like that as far as I know, it is filesystem only.
Slashdot Mirror
Dang, so close. Thanks for the info. I haven't lived there in 14 years or so. I just got rid of a couch I bought there last year.
I remember going there quite a bit while we lived there. They had a good toy department, as I remember.
I understand that this seems incredibly bogus, and I agree. However, you have to understand where Wal-mart does the bulk of its business, in my experience. This decision didn't come down to affect scientifically enlightened locations like Silicon Valley or New York City. These are areas where if the local church objects, there will be mass boycotts and negative media attention, because EVERYONE in town goes to that church. And, of course, the local church will object to anything that sounds like it's not a) conservative, b) WWJD, c) wont someone think of the children, etc.
Wow! A bigot! Who'd have guessed.
Allow me to give you a clue. I've lived everywhere from Salt Lake City to Ohio to my current home in Kansas. Life isn't like that. I have never experienced that. Now if you get out into the middle of Kansas into some little town of 120 people, that my be true. But anywhere near a decent sized city it is pretty much like any other decent sized city. A single church may do that kind of thing, but by and large you don't hear about it.
I lived in Salt Lake City when Mortal Combat came out. Most of the kids in school were Mormon. You know what? Tons of them bought it. You could rent it at Blockbuster. As I remember, I think you could even buy it at ZCMY (a big department store based there).
It's nice you put in "Scientifically Englightened" like the people in the center of the country are brain-dead cavemen. Grow the hell up.
Wal-Mart had good reason to do this. It makes perfect sense with their standard stance. You don't like their stance? Well obviously many people do.
Now I could make arguments about why us "WWJD think of the children" middle-of-nowhere-unenlightened-idiots are better than people in NYC, but I'm not going to.
This is a good decision. They are free to make it. They aren't saying they wont sell those games. They just want to make it so a parent doesn't reserve a game and later find out it became AO.
I can't believe you got modded up. I know it's common on /. to be liberal and look down on conservatives, but you comment is just such blatant biggotry.
Please, mod that troll down.
I agree, I think that you shouldn't need too much sync. As for how to sync them up, it would be trivial to just flash a LED in the middle of the scene for 1/30th of a second (1/25th in PAL) and use that flash for the sync. That way you don't have to do it by hand since it should be on only one frame or so.
Here is what I can tell you. My guess is that FireWire would be easier because all FW video uses the same driver. Find yourself (or just borrow or rent) two video cameras with firewire and use that. You only need two because one can capture one pair of axis (X and Z) and the other the other pair (Y and Z). If you put the cameras at right angles to each-other (pointing down the axis) you should have all you need. The programming half shouldn't be too bad, in relative terms. All you have to do is extract the coords of the white dots and then pair them up between the images. With that (and a little calibrations to fix the slight distortion the cameras will have) you should be able to get decent coords easily. If you get it working, write it up. I'm sure others on /. would love to hear about exactly how you did it as I would.
The video camera approach also lets you just pre-record the sessions, you don't have to do the capture live if you're computers can't handle it. Standard video cameras would be 640x480.
Now you could also do it by analog capture using some simple video capture boards. The WinTV series works VERY well under Linux, and the WinPVR series has models that work well and have hardware MPEG encoding to offload the CPU use. Just look at a project like MythTV and buy the cards they like/use.
See I don't believe this. That article seems to be about the version shown at E3. The fact is by the time the game comes out E3 will have been about 6 months before. In the mean time I have heard that the controls on Excite Truck and it's visuals have improved. I've heard the same about Red Steel and Metroid Prime Three.
I really think that they would have fixed that kind of stuff since then. Nintendo doesn't tend to do that half-assed tack-on-features stuff for something so important as core game play on one of their AAA titles.
Now that I think about it, you're both right. There was just one. They are all so similar they blended in my mind. Let me make up for that: Tetris DS. There is another great DS game that I got a ton of play out of. Tetris is fun, but online Tetris rules.
The biggest piece of convergence I can think of would be TV/VCR combos. While they do sell, they've never over taken TVs (even in small sizes).
Everything else I can try to think of I wouldn't call convergence. I'm not sure Clock-Radios should be counted, as it is just an enhancement of an alarm clock with a different alarm. Sure every oven and microwave has a clock in it, but that doesn't replace the clock elsewhere.
Everyone keeps talking about convergence, but by and large it doesn't seem to be successful anywhere that I can think of.
Anyone have any going counter-points to prove me wrong? I'd love to hear them. The only thing I can think of would be cell-phone/PDAs, but I would consider that arguable (after all, most are just PDAs with cell-phone hardware in them and one little application to drive the phone, they are hardly well merged; form factor is the same as a PDA).
I basically regret my PSP purchase. I've played a handful of games. The last game I played that I really enjoyed was Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee which was released a little over a year ago. Me and My Katamari was kind of fun, as were a few of the early games, but by and large I don't feel like I've gotten much in the way of games. What's coming up? Not much. The only two games I am looking forward to are MGS: Portable Ops and Gitaroo Man Lives! (which is supposed to be part re-release/port).
Compare that to my DS. Two or three Castlevania games. Mario Kart. Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time. Kirby. Yoshi's Touch and Go. Wario Ware. Phoenix Wright and Trauma Center. That's what I can think of off the top of my head. Then there is the upcoming Yoshi's Island sequel, the next Phoenix Wright, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Elite Beat Agents, Kirby Squak Squad, another Castlevania, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, and I'm sure more.
I feel my DS has been a great purchase and I've gotten tons of play time out of it. I've barely touched my PSP in the last year and I regret it's purchase.
Sony has delivered tons of games on their last two platforms. The PSP is just sitting there. Not many games so far. Not many coming. The seeming killer feature that is to come is old PS1 games.
They simply don't care. The fact is Half-Life was one of the best selling games of all time. They promised a Mac port and showed it off in '98 or '99 but it was never released. I don't think that was because of DirectX.
Actually one of the things that I've heard about the Mac is Havok is a problem. It runs, and Havok as written a port, but no one is willing to pay for it (they have to pay for the port and the license, despite the fact it is already complete). I think I got this from MacGamer, but I'm not sure.
Considering [...] DirectX10 is only available on Vista and that 50% of employers say they are not going to purchase [soon], it's a safe bet to say that we won't be seeing any games [...] for at least 2 years.
I think I found the flaw in your logic. Employers != Consumers.
The fact is, games will probably drive Vista adoption more than any other factor save factory pre-installs. We proabaly won't see much requiring DX10 for a year or more, but that is because most big games take 1-3 years to develop so that's about the earliest that we'll see stuff.
This may cause game manufacturers to change tactics since OpenGL is supported on ALL OS's.
That fact has always been true, and it hasn't made much of a difference so far, even back when OpenGL and DirectX were much closer in abilities (without needing extensions and such).
It's just like the rest of Win32. There is nothing magical. But as you implement it new versions will come out and you'll be in constant catch-up. On top of that, DirectX is used for games so you need to have it perform well. This combination makes it hard. CodeWeavers and Cedega are both trying.
Well even with the RIAA around, I bet there are ways that could be implemented; and it would be a great feature. What if you could browse and listen to any song on my iPod, but only when you were near me physically. Once you left, you would lose files (they would only be in RAM). That would be a fun feature (especially when sitting in the airport or something like that). Best of all, you could make a way to mark songs you liked and take that list back to your computer to make purchasing easy.
But it would be expensive (battery wise) to offer music all the time, so the other person would have to have their iPod out and on (and the feature enabled). Plus there is the cost of spinning up the disc to access the songs the other person wants to hear. This could be "fixed" by limiting the songs to what is currently in the iPod's RAM cache (5 to 10 songs at a time, I think). But doing this you wouldn't be able to look through their library.
I would simply like the ability to sync my iPod over Bluetooth when I set it in it's cradle. Updating play-counts doesn't take any time, and using Bluetooth 2 EDR (which has been available in Macs since early '05) downloading a new album or two wouldn't take long. That would be such a great feature. To be able to set my iPod down in it's cradle and have it automatically sync with my laptop (which it doesn't do now because I don't keep the cradle plugged into my laptop). A very minor use of wireless, but one I would love.
I'm still hoping against all odds that they make the next iPod touch screen and a Newton replacement. Windows Mobile is so clunky.
You're gonna need it.
It won't succeed. They are aiming after something that is WAY too popular and extremely well designed. To get people off the iPod, you're going to have to pass it and that will be very tough with current technology (especially batteries).
But let's talk about the BIG feature. Let's talk about something people have been wanting from the iPod for quite a while. Let's talk wireless. People say Zune will be able to buy and download music wirelessly.
It won't.
I read a report earlier today that said that was a misunderstanding and that basically the wireless functionality was to let you see what OTHER people with Zunes in the area were listening to. I read a little blurb that one of the low end MP3 player makers was looking at doing the same thing (only not using WiFi for it). Or are we supposed to surf the 'net on this thing too? Guess what, my PDA does that. So does my phone. And my DS. And my PSP. And my laptop. And that desktop over there. And...
That is a BIG difference between telling people what you're listening to and buying new music.
And I'm not surprised. To do that would require a ton of power. The WiFi on my Dell Axim X50v eats up battery life, that's why it's off unless I'm using it. You'd have to do the same thing, which would somewhat defeat the "buy music any time" idea. Plus, when downloading music (lots of data!) it would use a large amount of battery. You want wireless headphones instead? So do I! But then you have to keep bluetooth running which will use up power. Plus your wireless headphones are expensive and need batteries. Two sets of batteries to recharge and fail for the price of one!
Watch TV/Movies? The iPod does it.
Look at the proposed updates to the iPod. A touch screen? That's a little pointless (unless they make it into the new Newton).
And let's not forget the iTMS lock-in problem. The people who spend the most on iTMS are probably the ones you want most (because they will buy from you/your partners). But they are also the ones with the most to lose from abandoning the iPod. So you have to give away free music for every song that they bought. Fun logistics there. And you don't think the RIAA will let you do that for FREE do you?
Bob has $200 in iTMS music. He moves to Zune. MS gives him his music in their DRMed format. They just paid the RIAA the same "taxes" as if he spent $200 with them. Don't forget the hardware probably isn't high margin (like the iPod) and may even be close to even (so it's fancier for the $$$ compared to the iPod). You just lost money on that customer. What a way to make money!
Until DRM gets outlawed, Apple somehow screws up royally, or batteries improve enough to allow some of the features not useful now (wireless, longer movie playback)... Apple will remain on top.
Their position is just too strong (combined with MS's history) for me to think that Zune will change anything in the market any time soon.
PS: I have heard Zune will abandon "Plays For Sure" for something else. Considering MS did that, I'm sure that the successor will be supported for a LONG time. Sheesh.
PPS: Changing DRM to force everyone to buy a new player. Not something I can see Apple doing. MS might be considering it (given their market share is much lower but still...)
That's true. They are random forums, one time sign ups for some feature on a website, etc. I don't keep my real passwords to import stuff around where they can be easily found. I have them memorized. It's "important" because these are the ones I can see myself looking for in the future (as opposed to something I'll only need a password for once).
Am I missing something here?
Yes.
You are using Mail.app and Spotlight (I do too) so you don't think gmail is so amazing.
But if you were to use another e-mail client for a while (AOL, Outlook, etc) you would realize just how TERRIBLE the average e-mail program's search ability is. It just doesn't work that well. Often, they search by (seemingly) walking though the e-mails one by one. Thus when you have 1000 e-mails searches take 10x as long as when you have 100. If you were to try to search through my backed e-mail (2-3 years) it would take a LONG time. Compare this to a fraction of a second to do the same with Spotlight (or gmail).
The live results and updates that Spotlight gives is what makes it so powerful.
I'm sort of the same way. I keep all my e-mail (that I don't actively want to see) in a set of folder for mostly historical reasons (I like being organized, and dumping it all in one huge folder would annoy me). The main folders are:
Now the last one contains all other old mail that doesn't go into the specific folders above. Inside there are many subfolders for specific things that generate a ton of e-mail (Slashdot, Netflix, mailing lists, etc).
But like I said, I do that for historical reasons. It's a habit. It made it easy to find things.
But I use OS X and specifically Mail.app, so I have spotlight. Ever since I got Tiger (I bought my Mac about a month before it came out so I feel like I've always had it here) I've used spotlight. What's my Netflix password? Type "netflix password" into Spotlight (usually in Mail, but you don't have to be). Want an e-mail from a friend that says what they got for their last birthday? Search for their name and birthday. Want the e-mails you traded with someone about configuring hardware x on Linux under a 2.6 kernel? Search for x, Linux, and 2.6
Finding things under Outlook (what I used before I got the Mac) was easier manually. The search didn't work too well. But now, it doesn't matter what I'm doing I can just Spotlight it. It's fantastic. Same basic thing as gmail.
To a certain degree having years of old mail was useless before because it was so hard to find something. Now, it's not. Now it's trivial. I usually have about 3 months of spam on my machine (that's how often I delete the spam folder's contents). If I think I lost an e-mail there is no reason to go looking at the spam subjects one-by-one. Just type the name or a keyword in Spotlight and have it search the Junk folder. If it's there, it will be found almost instantly.
It can really change the way you do things, and it's great. It's very obvious why MS is putting the same kind of thing in Vista, it's just so handy.
Myself, I'm a hoarder with organization. I save EVERY email somewhere (except for spam which gets cleared out once and a while). Things get filed away as soon as possible. I read it, then I file it. The exceptions are the things I want kept at my attention. Open orders, ongoing discussions, and the last letter from a select friend or two are always in there. If I'm done with it, it's filed. I'd have mail going back 6 or 7 years if it wasn't for a hard drive crash. As it is, it only goes back about 2 or 3.
Now the thing I finder interesting is my parents. They use AOL and are self taught. I've been moving them over to gmail but their habits have stayed with them.
The thing you have to understand is that AOL has this really queer behavior where if you've read an e-mail, it will delete it. If you read an e-mail and then leave AOL, it gets moved somewhere. After that, it quickly gets deleted automatically. I'm not sure why they do this, but it is the behavior I've seen. So if you want to keep an e-mail, you have two options. You can save it somewhere in another folder (which they do sometimes), or you can click "keep as new" (marks the message unread). So anything they think they'll read again gets marked "keep as new". This means they always have "new" mail. They can't look and see "I have 2 new messages" because they are ALL new messages (so they would have to remember the previous number).
But by and large they are deleters. When they are done with an e-mail unless they think they have a good reason to save it, they just let it get deleted (or recently they have been speeding it up by pressing delete).
I've read that the drive only does the reading, all the processing takes place in the 360. That's kind of interesting. However, I read a comment some where that I'd like to reprint (paraphrased or so):
I wonder if they will let you play games with it?
Now they've said "no games on HD-DVD" (which frankly I expect them to change in a few years). But what about normal XBox games in there? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to put one game in the 360 (like Dead Rising) and another in the HD-DVD drive (like PGR3)? Then you could choose either one when the console starts up. I'd love to be able to do that with my PS2 and Guitar Hero. It would save me quite a bit of disc swapping.
And there is no technical reason they couldn't.
OK, I thought gamers were suckers (paying $600+ for graphics cards) but really.
A $280 network card.
But wait, there's more!
It's also... a Linux box. And not just a Linux box, an "Open Source Linux" box.
Plus it has USB so you can connect a hard drive or headset???
OK, the basic idea is interesting. Offload all the TCP/UDP/IP processing. I have to wonder how much impact that would really have. But how does the data get onto the host computer? If it's via a driver that shows up as a NIC, then it still has to go through the network layers of the OS. If it shows up as some kind of memory, then the host applications must be written to use it. The idea of offloading a few other features too (like voice chat) is nice too, but again, you'd have to write special software or drivers or something on the host OS to use that.
And you can use it for a hard drive. If they open it, background bittorrent anyone?
Or you could just let your NIC have a hard drive for fun that you can't access. Genius!
Look, if they had a little ARM processor and it did the network stuff only, that would be cute. But I think they over built it, it's over priced, and I seriously doubt it has much impact.
I wonder if they'll make Linux drivers available *smirk*
I don't know what the deal with this week is, but I've seen so many non-sensical comments on /. it's amazing.
Quake4 - Boring - I haven't played it, so I can't comment (although I seem to remember reading reviews saying it was nothing special).
Half-Life 2 - DRM so restrictive that most people did not bother buying it
Yes. That's why Half-Life 2 is one of the best selling games of the past few years. Because people didn't buy it because of the DRM. That's also why they are not making two expansion packs. That's why they aren't releasing new mods for it (no one plays, after all). That's why it's not getting put on consoles (tentativly scheduled for this fall). Oh wait...
SIMS2 - selling poorly compared to the outdates Sims and the 65,000 expansions packs that sold at the same price
Really? It's not quite as innovative as the last (after all, there was no Sims before Sims) but it's still a very nice game. My little sister and all her friends rushed out to buy it. They are churning out money making expansion packs as fast as they can. Again, my little sister and all her friends rush out to buy them. So Sims 2 isn't as successfull as the first (according to you). Well since Sims is the best selling game of all time, that might be a little hard to live up to (considering how long the two have been on the market).
How about that games suck right now? the few DS games I like are very different from what I can get for the PC.
Newsflash, different platforms have diffent games! Film at 11! The DS has some of the most innovative games on the market, and many games currently made are terrible. But if you look at the PC, it has them too. The problem is the signal-to-noise ratio.
Piracy is NOT hurting the Gaming industry. Their lack of ability to make a game that people want is.
If they made games no-one wanted, why are they being pirated? If they made games no one wanted, why is the industry making so much money? Piracy hurts. If the games were better, people may be less inclined to pirate.
But your entire post reeks of hyperboly and your points get lost in it.
Microsoft is the exception, because they are 90% of the market. The reason you can't have a proprietary OS is because you can't get past MS. At this point, it is currently impossible.
The only exception I can think of this would be to have a proprietary OS and give it away for free. Even then, you'd have a very tough time.
I agree. Over the past few years I've seen just how bad Windows is for the average person. This is through a combination of exposure to Linux and later OS X. If OS X didn't exist (or I couldn't afford the Mac) then I would run Linux. OS X is worth the extra cost. But if that is an issue, then I can see using Linux. It may come time that Linux surpasses OS X.
I also agree about the Xnu being open source. It's cute and all, but for practical reasons who cares? They have nice projects that I can see being useful (iCal Server, Bonjour, etc) but to try to take Xnu and such and make something to compete with a Linux distro just seems pointless.
Oh please. If you switched to OS X because you are a hard core FOSS person, you're an idiot. OS X is not open source. It never was, it never will be. Linux will ALWAYS be more open. Apple may open the kernel and various low level things, but OS X in total will not be. It's a great OS and if you want a no-fuss desktop with true Unix under it, it's great. If you want to be that hardcore ("Apple was late so forget them") then why did you choose a proprietary closed-source OS in the first place?
As for the comment that most OSes are open today, that's because you can't survive otherwise. No one has survived the desktop/server space except MS (who was once up near 100% of the market) and Apple (who bundles with their computers). Solaris is open because it wasn't profitable enough. OS/2 died. BeOS died. At this point, if you want your new general purpose desktop/server OS to have a chance in hell it has to be open source. The only way to live and be proprietary is to have a niche and run on custom or embedded hardware.
Spaces is hardly a new idea. But there have been two desktop environments that lacked it (Windows and OS X) and now only one does. As for copying from Entourage, Entourage has all that stuff in one app, where Apple split them up into pieces (which I like better) but gave them strong integration. They are just strengthening it.
Nothing Apple released was really mind-blowing or inventive, but it's all good stuff.
Yes. I thought it was a good idea then too. Many of the privacy nuts here on /. said that, but then again many people also said it was a good idea. There is nothing wrong with it on Windows, except on the corporate desktop. I'm glad Apple put it in. I'm glad MS put it in.
I like that Apple took it further and made it possible to use in applications like iCal, Address Book, and iPhoto. MS doesn't have anything like that as far as I know, it is filesystem only.