Well, if Sony is willing to buy back unsold stock (I have never seen this idea in print before, tohugh I have heard it once or twice)
It's been a long time since I worked in the retail channel, but generally the stores do business with distributors, not with the manufacturer directly (eg Sony). Distributors will "buy back" unsold inventory and sell it to other stores. If no stores want said inventory, only then does it go back to the manufacturer. This applies to (unopened) software as well.
Same with stores that exchange defective merchandise, the distributor is the one who deals with sending stuff back to the manufacturer.
I'm sure stores aren't too concerned with the "money sitting on the shelves" with unsold PS3s, the major concern is the shelf space itself as it could have been filled with something that sells instead.
Are you in XP now? Open a file dialog. Look at the pull-down menu at the top center that says where you are. Look just to the right. The first button is back. The second is up a folder. In explorer, the third button (just to the right of forward) is up a folder. Did you miss those?
Sorry I wasn't clear. I meant using the keyboard shortcuts. There is only Alt-Left and Alt-Right to go Back and Forward, and no way to go to the parent besides clicking on the toolbar button. This irritates me to no end and finally it's fixed in Vista with Alt-Up.
Simply stated there is no one button that will always bring you back up to the parent.
Uh? In Vista you can use Alt-Up (yeah, same as OSX) to go to the parent of an open folder. He must be thinking of XP with its retarded Back/Forward only navigation.
Now when I want a simple search for any file that contains the string 'IntelliAdmin' I can't do it.
Hmm, no. Perhaps he missed the "Advanced Search" drop down? The MS UI monkey hid it well, but it's there in his screenshot... (It still ignores unknown formats though, like XP SP2 does)
Still, he makes some good points. There are many UI "regressions" in Vista, and for some things productivity drops down. For example it takes ages to delete a bunch of files now, apparently because of the new progress bar... ("computing time remaining" shouldn't take 10 seconds for three files!)
I sincerely hope SP1 addresses these issues, because they are a nuisance...
And of course the Steam EULA will force you to bend over and be raped by Valve Software. You don't even have the right to run the game you pay for.
Right, and this is why I'll buy the 360 version. I'll get to play on my HDTV, with no slowdowns, multiplayer without cheaters, and will have EP1/EP2/Portal as a bonus.
I unfortunately bought the PC version (stupid collector's edition -- what a waste that was), yet finished HL2 on Xbox 1. It's an awesome game, but I refuse to support Steam. I look forward to playing through HL2 on 360, as the Xbox 1 version suffered quite a lot graphically:)
What kind of second rate vendor isn't giving you a reinstall CD?
Dell asks you to pay for the clean reinstall CD (though it's about $10 extra). All you get for free now is a hidden 2GB partition which auto-restores the original installation, with all the craplets intact. There is no recovery disk anymore.
I know this is slightly off-topic for this question, but I still think that all the people and developers who keep talking about the 'ability to choose' is so great - is the big reason why Linux on the desktop never gets anywhere.
My thoughts exactly. Too much choice is just as bad as not enough...
If all the bright minds of KDE, gnome, QT, the people behind xfree etc would come together, and work out one single system that they all afterwards work on together, I think Linux could stand a chance again.
In an ideal world, that'd work fine. However part of the problem is that no one can agree on the One True Way to do X or Y. There's always someone, somewhere who thinks "this is crap, I can do better" and starts his own version. While there is certainly value in being able to do that, the downside is that it also splits the developer pool for a particular feature. That is why on Linux there is a multitude of programming IDEs, yet none of them comes close to Visual Studio on Windows. If all of those devs worked together on ONE IDE, we'd have that by now.
Same thing with KDE and Gnome, same thing with the multitude of X composition managers, etc.
I read in my local newspaper that Ubisoft is located at fourth place, yet this is not what this article is saying.
That's what I remember as well.
And didn't the headquarters of Ubisoft moved from Paris to Montreal some years ago?
No, the headquarter is still in Paris. The president of the Montreal branch changed though, creating a small scandal since the original one (a fervent defender of the Non-Compete Agreement) left for Vivendi...
You think there's any chance that the Nintendo Power Glove will be resurrected?
Modded offtopic? Oh come on mods, this is obviously a reference to the "Special Wii Glove" mentionned in TFA...:)
(Sorry, used up all my mod points earlier in the day so I can't help you more)
I'm surprised that the "Special Glove" is the best they can offer, just making a better strap (ie, not a flimsy wire!) would solve the issue once and for all...
one of the main resons i like sonys consoles is the fact that they make is easy to make games for it
Did you ever ship a game for a Sony console?
I don't know where people get this idea from (you're not the first one to say it), but it's much harder to write for Sony's and Nintendo's consoles than for Microsoft's. Even the president of Sony was spinning "if it's easy it's not next-gen" (paraphrased, I can't find the link) to try to justify this.
I can't go into details without breaking NDAs, but the reality is the exact opposite of what you're saying.
.perhaps Mr. McInerney hasn't heard of DVI cables?
Perhaps you haven't heard of DRM?
D'oh, I completely forgot about DRM. I guess I block it mentally or something.
Still, I can't see how Unblock could actually use HDCP today, since (as you point out) only Vista is HDCP-compliant. Surely Unblock works today on XP? Assuming it does, a DVI cable should work fine, as long as your MediaCenter PC has a license for playback.
When your content is DVD-quality, S-Video cable is plenty sufficient for carrying the signal.
Perhaps on SDTV, but on an HD set, component cables make a fairly big difference on quality, and allow for HD modes. There is also that nice auto-widescreen detection, so no hunting for the TV remote when the extra content is in 4:3...
Putting the whole quote in context:
A Windows Media Center PC can be cabled to a TV, but only through a relatively low-resolution S-video line. "The last piece of the puzzle is the connection to the television," says Thomas McInerney, CEO of video download service GUBA.
..perhaps Mr. McInerney hasn't heard of DVI cables? I have a DVI connector on my HDTV, and you can easily convert from DVI to HDMI for "recent" HD sets. You'll get a decent quality output on your TV (perfect output if you have an LCD set -- which I don't); you don't even need a special video card...
What about SharePoint? Any good collaborative, real-time tools out there being developed on the Open Source front?
Honestly I don't know what SharePoint is good for. We recently switched to it at work, and I just don't see the point. Maybe we have it set up wrong, but from my experience it's just a glorified.doc wrapper in HTML (and IE-specific at that, SP functionnality is severely limited with Firefox).
Some examples: there is no page version history, only linked document versionning. No one but the SP admin can edit the pages, as a SP user all you can do is add more documents to a page. Bleh.
We had Twiki before, which IMO was way better and much more flexible. Anyone could edit anything, which is a Good Thing (this isn't accessible from the outside so security is not much of a concern).
The games created with XNA Game Studio Express will not initially be available to regular Xbox 360 users
That's the quote in the article that really disappoints me. MS's desire for control and fear of truly "opening" up the game market is a real hindrance here.
That was a sticking point for me also, but you have to keep in mind that "normal" games have to go through a certification process in order to standardize certain behaviors (controllers, profiles, saved games, multiplayer, etc) and ensure a certain quality level to the end user. More than likely, indie games will not go through that process. By limiting the audience to other indies, MS doesn't pollute XBLA with crappy/buggy/tasteless games.
By that same token, MS also gets to control what is available to end users. If someone ports MAME to X360, then what's the point of paying for PacMan, Galaga, Joust, Gauntlet, etc on XBLA? And I'm sure Nintendo wouldn't be happy if someone ported ZSNES, etc. You get the idea.
That being said, I'm sure that gems in the "indie space" will be noticed and offered a chance to be certified & available as real games on XBLA (similar to Mutant Storm and Marble Blast).
Do these remotes have the ability to discern which devices are currently in what state
The remote knows the current state of each device in your setup. You can tell it to turn off unused devices too.
To solve the "missed state" problem, there is a "help" button on the remote which asks questions like "is the TV on, is the receiver on" and the remote takes the appropriate action to resolve the problem. Higher-end models use an RF transmitter to avoid the missed state problem entirely (no need to keep pointing the remote at your stuff for X seconds).
These remotes pass the Wife Acceptance Test with flying colors:)
the "coders cable" for loading programs into Dreamcast RAM is limited to dial-up speeds, creating a major bottleneck in the edit-compile-send-test cycle.
Hmm, wasn't there a version of the DC loader that used the LAN adapter? I quit the scene soon after the US release of the adapter (after paying too much for it on eBay, of course) so I don't remember exactly.
At the time I ported gdbstubs on the DC with Insight as a shell on the PC side, but never made a version using the LAN adapter. Despite the crappy speed, just being able to debug your code already made the cycle much more productive than setting border colors to see where the crash occurs...
You think all the energy is going solely into the RAM? Alot is wasted by the PSU and by the fans.
On my system (Asus P4P-800), the PSU and the fans shut off when in Sleep mode... In fact I've more than once mistaken Sleep mode for an actual shutdown when pulling PCI cards out (oops!).
Not all systems do this correctly though (my brother's machine leaves the PSU on even while Sleeping, so it's not that useful), so I see where you get this idea.
I've used enough Windows systems to know that sleep often does not work as advertised. I've heard many other Windows laptop owners make the same complaint.
Same here. My current machine (Asus P4P-800) is my first system where Sleep/Standby/Hibernate actually works correctly. On every other system I've had, the feature never worked - the computer would go to sleep, never to wake again.
Now that it works, I'm not going back:) It's cheaper than leaving the machine on all day, and easier on the UPS. I just love the instant boot.
On a related note, does anyone use Sleep with Linux? (Surely the laptop crowd uses this, lest the battery fails during fsck:)
I've looked around (though not that hard) and what I've seen had big "alpha" warnings all over so I assume it's not quite ready yet.
the XBOX does lack an optical out, which I love on the PS2
Get the S-Video or Component video adapter pack for your Xbox, both have an optical output jack. Since you don't seem to have HD yet, you may be happy to know the S-Video adapter also sports a composite output if you don't have the proper hookup on your screen (get a new TV already!).
I will continue using XBMC until my XBOX dies
Actually I will go so far as buying another Xbox 1 if my current one dies. XBMC as a Universal Media Player is just too awesome to give up, and it is quite unlikely anything else can come close, short of XBMC360:)
[...] I can tell you that Tom's usually gets engineering samples unless he's doing a retail package review. They would have to return it as the card is a loaner.
The problem I have with Tom's is that he will also happily supply your loaner to your competition before the time is up.
When I was working at a video card manufacturer, we would sometimes get engineering samples from a competitor for review, courtesy of THG. Of course this also meant our own engineering samples surely went to competitors as well... So much for NDAs.
Ever since I found that out, I've never trusted THG or any other hardware review site that gets pre-release samples.
Slashdot Mirror
Same with stores that exchange defective merchandise, the distributor is the one who deals with sending stuff back to the manufacturer.
I'm sure stores aren't too concerned with the "money sitting on the shelves" with unsold PS3s, the major concern is the shelf space itself as it could have been filled with something that sells instead.
Uh? In Vista you can use Alt-Up (yeah, same as OSX) to go to the parent of an open folder. He must be thinking of XP with its retarded Back/Forward only navigation.
Hmm, no. Perhaps he missed the "Advanced Search" drop down? The MS UI monkey hid it well, but it's there in his screenshot... (It still ignores unknown formats though, like XP SP2 does)
Still, he makes some good points. There are many UI "regressions" in Vista, and for some things productivity drops down. For example it takes ages to delete a bunch of files now, apparently because of the new progress bar... ("computing time remaining" shouldn't take 10 seconds for three files!)
I sincerely hope SP1 addresses these issues, because they are a nuisance...
I unfortunately bought the PC version (stupid collector's edition -- what a waste that was), yet finished HL2 on Xbox 1. It's an awesome game, but I refuse to support Steam. I look forward to playing through HL2 on 360, as the Xbox 1 version suffered quite a lot graphically
In an ideal world, that'd work fine. However part of the problem is that no one can agree on the One True Way to do X or Y. There's always someone, somewhere who thinks "this is crap, I can do better" and starts his own version. While there is certainly value in being able to do that, the downside is that it also splits the developer pool for a particular feature. That is why on Linux there is a multitude of programming IDEs, yet none of them comes close to Visual Studio on Windows. If all of those devs worked together on ONE IDE, we'd have that by now.
Same thing with KDE and Gnome, same thing with the multitude of X composition managers, etc.
No, the headquarter is still in Paris. The president of the Montreal branch changed though, creating a small scandal since the original one (a fervent defender of the Non-Compete Agreement) left for Vivendi...
(Sorry, used up all my mod points earlier in the day so I can't help you more)
I'm surprised that the "Special Glove" is the best they can offer, just making a better strap (ie, not a flimsy wire!) would solve the issue once and for all...
I don't know where people get this idea from (you're not the first one to say it), but it's much harder to write for Sony's and Nintendo's consoles than for Microsoft's. Even the president of Sony was spinning "if it's easy it's not next-gen" (paraphrased, I can't find the link) to try to justify this.
I can't go into details without breaking NDAs, but the reality is the exact opposite of what you're saying.
Still, I can't see how Unblock could actually use HDCP today, since (as you point out) only Vista is HDCP-compliant. Surely Unblock works today on XP? Assuming it does, a DVI cable should work fine, as long as your MediaCenter PC has a license for playback.
(phew, geek card saved...)
Perhaps on SDTV, but on an HD set, component cables make a fairly big difference on quality, and allow for HD modes. There is also that nice auto-widescreen detection, so no hunting for the TV remote when the extra content is in 4:3...
Putting the whole quote in context:
Where is the puzzle?
Actually in current betas, there is a startup sound *at* the login prompt, and the user-defined one after you log on.
By default (for now anyway) they use the same sound for both, so it's kinda weird.
Some examples: there is no page version history, only linked document versionning. No one but the SP admin can edit the pages, as a SP user all you can do is add more documents to a page. Bleh.
We had Twiki before, which IMO was way better and much more flexible. Anyone could edit anything, which is a Good Thing (this isn't accessible from the outside so security is not much of a concern).
Am I missing something?
For those who don't know: http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/
That was a sticking point for me also, but you have to keep in mind that "normal" games have to go through a certification process in order to standardize certain behaviors (controllers, profiles, saved games, multiplayer, etc) and ensure a certain quality level to the end user. More than likely, indie games will not go through that process. By limiting the audience to other indies, MS doesn't pollute XBLA with crappy/buggy/tasteless games.
By that same token, MS also gets to control what is available to end users. If someone ports MAME to X360, then what's the point of paying for PacMan, Galaga, Joust, Gauntlet, etc on XBLA? And I'm sure Nintendo wouldn't be happy if someone ported ZSNES, etc. You get the idea.
That being said, I'm sure that gems in the "indie space" will be noticed and offered a chance to be certified & available as real games on XBLA (similar to Mutant Storm and Marble Blast).
To solve the "missed state" problem, there is a "help" button on the remote which asks questions like "is the TV on, is the receiver on" and the remote takes the appropriate action to resolve the problem. Higher-end models use an RF transmitter to avoid the missed state problem entirely (no need to keep pointing the remote at your stuff for X seconds).
These remotes pass the Wife Acceptance Test with flying colors
Hmm, this would be a lot more useful if it merged the existing info from other sites such as mobygames.com. Now we have to start all over again.
So far this looks like the description of most SourceForge projects (see subject)...
(apologies to SourceForge - not trolling, honest!)
At the time I ported gdbstubs on the DC with Insight as a shell on the PC side, but never made a version using the LAN adapter. Despite the crappy speed, just being able to debug your code already made the cycle much more productive than setting border colors to see where the crash occurs...
You think all the energy is going solely into the RAM? Alot is wasted by the PSU and by the fans.
On my system (Asus P4P-800), the PSU and the fans shut off when in Sleep mode... In fact I've more than once mistaken Sleep mode for an actual shutdown when pulling PCI cards out (oops!).
Not all systems do this correctly though (my brother's machine leaves the PSU on even while Sleeping, so it's not that useful), so I see where you get this idea.
I've used enough Windows systems to know that sleep often does not work as advertised. I've heard many other Windows laptop owners make the same complaint.
:) It's cheaper than leaving the machine on all day, and easier on the UPS. I just love the instant boot.
:)
Same here. My current machine (Asus P4P-800) is my first system where Sleep/Standby/Hibernate actually works correctly. On every other system I've had, the feature never worked - the computer would go to sleep, never to wake again.
Now that it works, I'm not going back
On a related note, does anyone use Sleep with Linux? (Surely the laptop crowd uses this, lest the battery fails during fsck
I've looked around (though not that hard) and what I've seen had big "alpha" warnings all over so I assume it's not quite ready yet.
the XBOX does lack an optical out, which I love on the PS2
:)
Get the S-Video or Component video adapter pack for your Xbox, both have an optical output jack. Since you don't seem to have HD yet, you may be happy to know the S-Video adapter also sports a composite output if you don't have the proper hookup on your screen (get a new TV already!).
I will continue using XBMC until my XBOX dies
Actually I will go so far as buying another Xbox 1 if my current one dies. XBMC as a Universal Media Player is just too awesome to give up, and it is quite unlikely anything else can come close, short of XBMC360
...and yet it fails my simple 2-second usability test: you cannot use a black background for text editing.
It's amazing how many editors trip up over that one. For me that's an instant disqualification. I guess I'm in the minority...
[...] I can tell you that Tom's usually gets engineering samples unless he's doing a retail package review. They would have to return it as the card is a loaner.
The problem I have with Tom's is that he will also happily supply your loaner to your competition before the time is up.
When I was working at a video card manufacturer, we would sometimes get engineering samples from a competitor for review, courtesy of THG. Of course this also meant our own engineering samples surely went to competitors as well... So much for NDAs.
Ever since I found that out, I've never trusted THG or any other hardware review site that gets pre-release samples.