For what it's worth, my Oakley Rx pair cost me so much it would have been far cheaper to just get contacts. But, given that I'm too much of a wuss to put a bit of plastic in my eye, I think they've been worth the money. I went with the metal A-wire, rather than the really silly shapes they do, though. The enhanced peripheral vision is a godsend when skiing, and trying to keep track of where all the nutcase snowboarders are going, as they're usually blind on their off side.
Ah, both you and the other person replying have misunderstood me (given that, it's probably my fault).
I merely mean that I decided on going the Microsoft 360 route after the last batch of Sony PR mess, coupled with the news that most of the PS3 titles I was interested have been announced for the 360 as well. I'd also decided that HD-DVD made more sense than Blu-Ray, and so the add-on HD-DVD player is a relative bargain at precisely a tenth of the price of the standalone Panasonic BR player.
i.e. I don't have a choice about whether to boycott Sony and Blu-Ray because I now can't afford them after going down the other route. Not that I don't have a choice about whether to ignore the new generation of machines completely. Although, strictly speaking, I don't have a choice about that either unless you've got a spare time machine I could borrow.
I've got a rather nice HDTV (made by Sony, ironically enough) and I can quite easily appreciate the improvement in image quality that HD-DVD offers over normal DVD. I think it's worth £129.99 for the player, and roughly a £2 surcharge on disc prices. If you don't, I'm not going to force you to get one.
Until they killed Lik-Sang, I was indeed toying with the idea of purchasing a PS3 at what is a loss to Sony. However, this means I can no longer buy the Japanese model that costs almost exactly half of what SCEE are eventually charging in the UK directly. Cunts.
Actually, HD-DVD doesn't have region locking, wheras Blu-Ray does.
Which is why I've just bought a 360, and will be buying the HD-DVD add-on once it comes out. Sony's attempts to stop me playing imports were the deciding factor, given that the add-on pushes the 360's price up to around that of the PS3.
I buy most of my movies from the US, to avoid the wait, save a little money and sidestep what can often be inferior quality of the UK releases, as they reduce video bitrate or drop advanced audio to make way for language tracks I don't need. But I can't be bothered to import videogames most of the time, as I appreciate the ability to swap them with friends who don't have import consoles.
They aren't licensed in the US _YET_. I'm sure the owners would be quite happy to do so, in exchange for money.
If Google and anyone else was allowed to distribute their copyrighted work left, right and centre due to this, why would anyone bother to pay for a license?
When they don't spend rather more than the rest of the planet put together on their military. The US ignores international law because it knows there's nothing anyone can do about it.
The 360 does this already, to a fair extent. So you're right there are still privacy issues.
What really concerns me, however, is the idea that individual developers are installing and leaving running applications that track me while I'm doing something other than playing those games. My PC is for doing useful things, and I don't want their buggy spyware interfering with that.
That's odd. I was playing PGR3 last night, and I didn't see any framedropping below 30fps, nor aliasing problems for that matter. It's a problem with some games, but I haven't seen it there.
I had an original XBox, and now I've got a 360 Premium.
So I'm fully aware that the presence of a hard drive doesn't stop some games having painfully slow loading times, thanks.
If anything, having 25Gb of data on the disc to fit into the cache is going to make things worse than the 9Gb of a 360 disc, not better, quite apart from the PS2's BluRay drive have slower transfer and seek times.
The Gamecube generally had the shortest loading times of the three machines last-gen, XBox in the middle and PS2 last. So it's all about how you prepare for these things, rather than just whether or not you have a HD to cache to.
Between this, Starforce and various and sundry other egregious invasions by game software, I've completely given up on the PC as a games platform. Sure, I've still got one for web browsing, video editing and other "serious" things, but if I want to play games I'll keep them to the consoles, thanks. This rather helpfully keeps my PC a fair bit more stable, too.
You can't kill people in the game without violence, no. But that's why I put civilian in quotes - in the game logic, rival gangs aren't innocent bystanders, assassination attempts are on other murderers and drug dealers. Clearly that's not the real-world case from a legal perspective, I know.
The Government, via the Army, funds that online FPS whose name currently escapes me. So arguing that _all_ violence in videogames should be banned is going to be rather more of a challenge.
It's also possible to make it through most of the GTA games with minimal 'civilian' casualties. That little fact fails to stop Thompson insisting that they're rape and murder simulators, simply because the game carries on working when his sick little depraved mind continues to play out his own violent fantasies.
If this TV can demonstrate such a massively wider colour gamut than normal TVs, what were you watching the demo on?
While I'm posting, I'll also call bull on the "quarter of the electricity of conventional plasma and LCD TVs" claim. Simply because my LCD already uses a third of my friend's plasma, so I'm guessing they're just picking the numbers that make them look good, or they would have said a 10th or more.
Running in Component on a US TV is as good as running in RGB SCART on a UK one, actually - it's just if you're using nasty composite (i.e. you've not bought any leads other than the ones that come in the Core box) that it's completely hideous.
Personally, though, I couldn't see the point of buying a 360 until I got my HDTV, so I've not tested it.
As for the lyrics, yes they're completely nuts - it's not acid; they've just got carried away with their conspiracy theory nonsense. But that was something of a running theme in Absolution, too.
It's not in the box, because their main market is people hooking them to TVs, but there is a VGA adaptor for both the 360 and the Dreamcast. So yes, if you want resolution rather than a giant screen, you can do just that.
I'm not modding you troll, but to be fair resisting the temptation would be a lot easier if there was a "-1, has rubbish taste and accuses others of being retarded" mod. Personally, I think it's the best thing they've done yet, despite a slightly saggy section between A Soldier's Poem and Exo-Politics.
We're still at a point where there are very few developers in the business where plenty of people will run out and get the latest game from them due to the name. Even the really big ones like Miyamoto didn't see first week sales for a new 'original' title like Pikmin when you look at what the Nth Mario or Zelda achieves.
So unless a game looks REALLY pretty, or someone has an absolutely killer license (which is hardly a sign of originality either), to get the marketing ball rolling it's a lot easier to have a known big title name. Microsoft didn't need to tell anyone other than the words "Halo 3" at E3 to get the masses drooling, and despite there being plenty of other games looking really nice too, all we hear about the PS3 are MGS4 and FF13.
How much profit do you think Sony makes on a Blu-Ray copy of a Warner Brothers movie?
I'm betting they're going to need to sell a fair few of them (Sony Pictures really doesn't have much of a catalogue that interests me) before any PS3 sold to me turns a profit for Sony themselves.
Oh, it's almost certainly so impractical as to be impossible for all useful intents and purposes.
But it's so cool, and Stephenson describes it sufficiently cleverly as to make it sound like it might just work. And that's good enough for me; I think I'm more offended that someone might be proclaiming on the tech in fiction without being a Stephenson nerd than whether they believe it or not.
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For what it's worth, my Oakley Rx pair cost me so much it would have been far cheaper to just get contacts. But, given that I'm too much of a wuss to put a bit of plastic in my eye, I think they've been worth the money. I went with the metal A-wire, rather than the really silly shapes they do, though. The enhanced peripheral vision is a godsend when skiing, and trying to keep track of where all the nutcase snowboarders are going, as they're usually blind on their off side.
Ah, both you and the other person replying have misunderstood me (given that, it's probably my fault).
I merely mean that I decided on going the Microsoft 360 route after the last batch of Sony PR mess, coupled with the news that most of the PS3 titles I was interested have been announced for the 360 as well. I'd also decided that HD-DVD made more sense than Blu-Ray, and so the add-on HD-DVD player is a relative bargain at precisely a tenth of the price of the standalone Panasonic BR player.
i.e. I don't have a choice about whether to boycott Sony and Blu-Ray because I now can't afford them after going down the other route. Not that I don't have a choice about whether to ignore the new generation of machines completely. Although, strictly speaking, I don't have a choice about that either unless you've got a spare time machine I could borrow.
I've got a rather nice HDTV (made by Sony, ironically enough) and I can quite easily appreciate the improvement in image quality that HD-DVD offers over normal DVD. I think it's worth £129.99 for the player, and roughly a £2 surcharge on disc prices. If you don't, I'm not going to force you to get one.
I've just bought an XBox 360, and I'll soon be buying a HD-DVD player. Is it still boycotting when you don't have a choice?
Until they killed Lik-Sang, I was indeed toying with the idea of purchasing a PS3 at what is a loss to Sony. However, this means I can no longer buy the Japanese model that costs almost exactly half of what SCEE are eventually charging in the UK directly. Cunts.
Good idea - could you give me a torrent link where I could download a PS3?
Actually, HD-DVD doesn't have region locking, wheras Blu-Ray does.
Which is why I've just bought a 360, and will be buying the HD-DVD add-on once it comes out. Sony's attempts to stop me playing imports were the deciding factor, given that the add-on pushes the 360's price up to around that of the PS3.
I buy most of my movies from the US, to avoid the wait, save a little money and sidestep what can often be inferior quality of the UK releases, as they reduce video bitrate or drop advanced audio to make way for language tracks I don't need. But I can't be bothered to import videogames most of the time, as I appreciate the ability to swap them with friends who don't have import consoles.
They aren't licensed in the US _YET_. I'm sure the owners would be quite happy to do so, in exchange for money.
If Google and anyone else was allowed to distribute their copyrighted work left, right and centre due to this, why would anyone bother to pay for a license?
When they don't spend rather more than the rest of the planet put together on their military. The US ignores international law because it knows there's nothing anyone can do about it.
The 360 does this already, to a fair extent. So you're right there are still privacy issues.
What really concerns me, however, is the idea that individual developers are installing and leaving running applications that track me while I'm doing something other than playing those games. My PC is for doing useful things, and I don't want their buggy spyware interfering with that.
Hang on.
"DO NOT INSTALL OR PLAY THE SOFTWARE ON ANY PLATFORM THAT IS USED TO CONNECT TO THE INTERNET."
How the merry heck is that supposed to work on a game that is entirely based around multiplayer?
That's odd. I was playing PGR3 last night, and I didn't see any framedropping below 30fps, nor aliasing problems for that matter. It's a problem with some games, but I haven't seen it there.
I had an original XBox, and now I've got a 360 Premium.
So I'm fully aware that the presence of a hard drive doesn't stop some games having painfully slow loading times, thanks.
If anything, having 25Gb of data on the disc to fit into the cache is going to make things worse than the 9Gb of a 360 disc, not better, quite apart from the PS2's BluRay drive have slower transfer and seek times.
The Gamecube generally had the shortest loading times of the three machines last-gen, XBox in the middle and PS2 last. So it's all about how you prepare for these things, rather than just whether or not you have a HD to cache to.
Between this, Starforce and various and sundry other egregious invasions by game software, I've completely given up on the PC as a games platform. Sure, I've still got one for web browsing, video editing and other "serious" things, but if I want to play games I'll keep them to the consoles, thanks. This rather helpfully keeps my PC a fair bit more stable, too.
You can't kill people in the game without violence, no. But that's why I put civilian in quotes - in the game logic, rival gangs aren't innocent bystanders, assassination attempts are on other murderers and drug dealers. Clearly that's not the real-world case from a legal perspective, I know.
The Government, via the Army, funds that online FPS whose name currently escapes me. So arguing that _all_ violence in videogames should be banned is going to be rather more of a challenge.
It's also possible to make it through most of the GTA games with minimal 'civilian' casualties. That little fact fails to stop Thompson insisting that they're rape and murder simulators, simply because the game carries on working when his sick little depraved mind continues to play out his own violent fantasies.
Don't lawyers normally get into some sort of trouble for calling Judges incompetent twats who don't know how to do their job?
If this TV can demonstrate such a massively wider colour gamut than normal TVs, what were you watching the demo on?
While I'm posting, I'll also call bull on the "quarter of the electricity of conventional plasma and LCD TVs" claim. Simply because my LCD already uses a third of my friend's plasma, so I'm guessing they're just picking the numbers that make them look good, or they would have said a 10th or more.
For what it's worth, Starforce have an x64 version now. I think you need Ubisoft to patch the game to use that version of the driver, however.
Personally, I keep my games on consoles and my work on a PC, so they won't interfere with each other this way.
Running in Component on a US TV is as good as running in RGB SCART on a UK one, actually - it's just if you're using nasty composite (i.e. you've not bought any leads other than the ones that come in the Core box) that it's completely hideous.
Personally, though, I couldn't see the point of buying a 360 until I got my HDTV, so I've not tested it.
I've no idea about the quote tag, sorry.
As for the lyrics, yes they're completely nuts - it's not acid; they've just got carried away with their conspiracy theory nonsense. But that was something of a running theme in Absolution, too.
I don't care, really - it's the music I like.
It's not in the box, because their main market is people hooking them to TVs, but there is a VGA adaptor for both the 360 and the Dreamcast. So yes, if you want resolution rather than a giant screen, you can do just that.
I'm not modding you troll, but to be fair resisting the temptation would be a lot easier if there was a "-1, has rubbish taste and accuses others of being retarded" mod. Personally, I think it's the best thing they've done yet, despite a slightly saggy section between A Soldier's Poem and Exo-Politics.
Or do we just get more excited about them?
We're still at a point where there are very few developers in the business where plenty of people will run out and get the latest game from them due to the name. Even the really big ones like Miyamoto didn't see first week sales for a new 'original' title like Pikmin when you look at what the Nth Mario or Zelda achieves.
So unless a game looks REALLY pretty, or someone has an absolutely killer license (which is hardly a sign of originality either), to get the marketing ball rolling it's a lot easier to have a known big title name. Microsoft didn't need to tell anyone other than the words "Halo 3" at E3 to get the masses drooling, and despite there being plenty of other games looking really nice too, all we hear about the PS3 are MGS4 and FF13.
How much profit do you think Sony makes on a Blu-Ray copy of a Warner Brothers movie?
I'm betting they're going to need to sell a fair few of them (Sony Pictures really doesn't have much of a catalogue that interests me) before any PS3 sold to me turns a profit for Sony themselves.
Oh, it's almost certainly so impractical as to be impossible for all useful intents and purposes.
But it's so cool, and Stephenson describes it sufficiently cleverly as to make it sound like it might just work. And that's good enough for me; I think I'm more offended that someone might be proclaiming on the tech in fiction without being a Stephenson nerd than whether they believe it or not.