Just my prediction, going by all other Apple products, this Console will likely fetch a PS3 like price, will have, at best, Wii like capabilities, with the addition of iTunes/iPod integration. Considering my PC is hooked up to the same entertainment center as my Wii, a big YAWN from my end. I'm sure there's a casual gaming market out there that they can try to leech off, but honestly, I'd invest about zero dollars into this. Lets not forget that Apple is a company that has very basic at best gaming experience on their PCs, let alone their hand-helds - as opposed to Nintendo that has been game oriented for what 20 years now? More even?
Good luck to apple and all. I will never get any mp3 player other then the iPod, but I would not touch their PCs/laptops with a 10 foot pole. Will keep an open mind about a console to give it a fair chance, but honestly, at this point, what the market needs is a PS3/Wii hybrid - computing/graphical power of a PS3 with the user-friendliness and fun/party factor of the Wii would destroy all competition. If Apple can do this, I'm sold. But as I've said, historically at least, Apple uses sub-par hardware which ultimately results in sub-par performance. If its priced high, it better have the graphical processing power of the PS3 or better and full HD output.
But prove me wrong, Apple. I'd love to see real competition to the PS3 to force the prices down some, so I can actually justify purchasing one.
"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
Online voting, but in regular voting locations.
How to do it? Simple - well not so much so, but considering the importance, I wouldn't mind my taxes going to pay for something like this. Anyway, create a closed network, completely separate from the internet. Have voting machines run together on this nationwide network. Only polling machines and electoral officials should have access to this network. Any machines on the network can never be connected to the internet.
Done.
One man, one vote. Time to retire the whole electoral vote system. Good for 18th century. Terrible for today.
"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
Levitating a ball by concentrating? This article is a bit behind. Please refer to:
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/ocz_peripherals/nia-neural_impulse_actuator
And for an earlier poster, no these things will never work straight out the box (not for years anyway), because just like teaching your brain to control your muscles, teaching your brain to control the computer is also a long learning process. It requires mental states and processes that, in some cases, are completely foreign to our brains. Prothetics are a little different because the brain already knows how to control an arm, so by teaching the computer exactly what signal to expect for any given motion, when you get into things like controling additional "appendages" beyond your regular biological nerves, you are, in effect, teaching your brain to use a whole brand new appandage. Now, some of these are very simple - such as the levitating ball if you concentrate trick. It will simply read the brain-wave intensity and if strong enough, the ball will rise. But when you start getting into things even as simple as the OCZ NIA above, where only 3 different brain-waves or "fingers" they call them are picked up by the device, the task for your brain is signifiantly increased. Its never as easy as just WANTing to move forward - the brain wave associated with controling the device has nothing to do with your desire to move forward - at least not right away. Only with long long practice and calibration does your brain adapt and learn and able to actually control a device. Its almost impossible to explain in words the state of mind required for something like this to work. The closest I can come is - for those who have ever practiced mediation or a martial art - the empty zen state one can sometimes achieve with these practices. Thinking nothing, blank. You then throw yourself into the game and watch as your character moves around completely randomly, or so it would seem at first. After a few hours, you begin to see that the motion isn't entirely random. And after many many more hours the subconsious connection between a certain state of mind and the resulting action on the computer screen begins to solidify. You practice long enough, and controling the machine WILL be as easy as walking or lifting your arm - you never even have to think about it - just WANT to do it.
"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
And for an earlier poster, no these things will never work straight out the box (not for years anyway), because just like teaching your brain to control your muscles, teaching your brain to control the computer is also a long learning process. It requires mental states and processes that, in some cases, are completely foreign to our brains. Prothetics are a little different because the brain already knows how to control an arm, so by teaching the computer exactly what signal to expect for any given motion, when you get into things like controling additional "appendages" beyond your regular biological nerves, you are, in effect, teaching your brain to use a whole brand new appandage. Now, some of these are very simple - such as the levitating ball if you concentrate trick. It will simply read the brain-wave intensity and if strong enough, the ball will rise. But when you start getting into things even as simple as the OCZ NIA above, where only 3 different brain-waves or "fingers" they call them are picked up by the device, the task for your brain is signifiantly increased. Its never as easy as just WANTing to move forward - the brain wave associated with controling the device has nothing to do with your desire to move forward - at least not right away. Only with long long practice and calibration does your brain adapt and learn and able to actually control a device. Its almost impossible to explain in words the state of mind required for something like this to work. The closest I can come is - for those who have ever practiced mediation or a martial art - the empty zen state one can sometimes achieve with these practices. Thinking nothing, blank. You then throw yourself into the game and watch as your character moves around completely randomly, or so it would seem at first. After a few hours, you begin to see that the motion isn't entirely random. And after many many more hours the subconsious connection between a certain state of mind and the resulting action on the computer screen begins to solidify. You practice long enough, and controling the machine WILL be as easy as walking or lifting your arm - you never even have to think about it - just WANT to do it.
"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
For the uninitiated, perhaps someone should explain. These statistics are absolutely meaningless because they do not akgnowlege at all how large corps with sophistacted intranets update their software.
Step 1: Exploratory research. Studies are requested, reviewed, or conducted to determine increase in productivity/cost reductions/other benefits of upgrading. At the same time, increase/decrease in costs is considered. Finally the actual investment cost of switching enters ethe mix. A final number is compile. If gain from benefits significantly greater the loss from detriments, we move on to round 2.
Step 2: the test environment. So managment said OK, lets update. The entire corp will not see the results of this decision for anywhere from weeks to months, depending on size of the organization. Test environments are set up with the new software and mission critical jobs are performed in the test environment for, you guessed it, testing. Lets assume that no major flaws are discovered and workarounds/solutions are implemented for those issues that do arise. Moving on.
Step 3: partial rollout. Some machines in the intranet get the software upgrade. Commence another test phase. Assuming that regular employees can continue to do regular work, after even more weeks or months, the rollout finally reaches the entire intranet.
As you can see, much money is spent even BEFORE the software leaves the test labs. Why would ANY corp even consider cutting edge software at release when they know for a fact, there will be zero day flaws, as happens with any sophisticated software designed by anyone, anywhere, ever. This isn't the biggest issue however. Its the fact that these bugs will be getting fixes, which would require further intranet testing before those FIXES are pushed to employees machines. Not to mention introductory prices are always far too high. It only makes sense to A) wait for bug fixes to be worked out and to come down in quantity/period of time and B) wait for introductory prices to deflate. Doing this VASTly reduces costs, and any successful corporation will always be cost conscious.
So, as was said in the first few posts, this is not news by any definition of the word, the statistics quotes are completely irrelevant and altered to make it seem anti-MS. Mission acomplished I suppose. We aren't buying it.
"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
I know, its harsh and maybe too soon, but essentially that is what is going on here. Finally, a real credible threat of prosecution due to file sharing, and so SOME started buying legally. Sales go up and now this is going to be used by corps as evidence that we need stricter online laws etc etc, file sharing dies, corps rake in more dough for subpar products. Nothing good will come of this... that is of course until smart, talented coders come up with even a more anonymous way of sharing that keeps everyone's nose out of our business. Pirate Bay is trying something in this respect, but not quite there, still just disguising you using the old method. New guys will code around this by summer and things will go back to normal - I will hope.
Slashdot Mirror
Just my prediction, going by all other Apple products, this Console will likely fetch a PS3 like price, will have, at best, Wii like capabilities, with the addition of iTunes/iPod integration. Considering my PC is hooked up to the same entertainment center as my Wii, a big YAWN from my end. I'm sure there's a casual gaming market out there that they can try to leech off, but honestly, I'd invest about zero dollars into this. Lets not forget that Apple is a company that has very basic at best gaming experience on their PCs, let alone their hand-helds - as opposed to Nintendo that has been game oriented for what 20 years now? More even? Good luck to apple and all. I will never get any mp3 player other then the iPod, but I would not touch their PCs/laptops with a 10 foot pole. Will keep an open mind about a console to give it a fair chance, but honestly, at this point, what the market needs is a PS3/Wii hybrid - computing/graphical power of a PS3 with the user-friendliness and fun/party factor of the Wii would destroy all competition. If Apple can do this, I'm sold. But as I've said, historically at least, Apple uses sub-par hardware which ultimately results in sub-par performance. If its priced high, it better have the graphical processing power of the PS3 or better and full HD output. But prove me wrong, Apple. I'd love to see real competition to the PS3 to force the prices down some, so I can actually justify purchasing one. "The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
Online voting, but in regular voting locations. How to do it? Simple - well not so much so, but considering the importance, I wouldn't mind my taxes going to pay for something like this. Anyway, create a closed network, completely separate from the internet. Have voting machines run together on this nationwide network. Only polling machines and electoral officials should have access to this network. Any machines on the network can never be connected to the internet. Done. One man, one vote. Time to retire the whole electoral vote system. Good for 18th century. Terrible for today. "The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
Levitating a ball by concentrating? This article is a bit behind. Please refer to: http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/ocz_peripherals/nia-neural_impulse_actuator And for an earlier poster, no these things will never work straight out the box (not for years anyway), because just like teaching your brain to control your muscles, teaching your brain to control the computer is also a long learning process. It requires mental states and processes that, in some cases, are completely foreign to our brains. Prothetics are a little different because the brain already knows how to control an arm, so by teaching the computer exactly what signal to expect for any given motion, when you get into things like controling additional "appendages" beyond your regular biological nerves, you are, in effect, teaching your brain to use a whole brand new appandage. Now, some of these are very simple - such as the levitating ball if you concentrate trick. It will simply read the brain-wave intensity and if strong enough, the ball will rise. But when you start getting into things even as simple as the OCZ NIA above, where only 3 different brain-waves or "fingers" they call them are picked up by the device, the task for your brain is signifiantly increased. Its never as easy as just WANTing to move forward - the brain wave associated with controling the device has nothing to do with your desire to move forward - at least not right away. Only with long long practice and calibration does your brain adapt and learn and able to actually control a device. Its almost impossible to explain in words the state of mind required for something like this to work. The closest I can come is - for those who have ever practiced mediation or a martial art - the empty zen state one can sometimes achieve with these practices. Thinking nothing, blank. You then throw yourself into the game and watch as your character moves around completely randomly, or so it would seem at first. After a few hours, you begin to see that the motion isn't entirely random. And after many many more hours the subconsious connection between a certain state of mind and the resulting action on the computer screen begins to solidify. You practice long enough, and controling the machine WILL be as easy as walking or lifting your arm - you never even have to think about it - just WANT to do it. "The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
Levitating a ball by concentrating? This article is a bit behind. Please refer to:
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/ocz_peripherals/nia-neural_impulse_actuator
And for an earlier poster, no these things will never work straight out the box (not for years anyway), because just like teaching your brain to control your muscles, teaching your brain to control the computer is also a long learning process. It requires mental states and processes that, in some cases, are completely foreign to our brains. Prothetics are a little different because the brain already knows how to control an arm, so by teaching the computer exactly what signal to expect for any given motion, when you get into things like controling additional "appendages" beyond your regular biological nerves, you are, in effect, teaching your brain to use a whole brand new appandage. Now, some of these are very simple - such as the levitating ball if you concentrate trick. It will simply read the brain-wave intensity and if strong enough, the ball will rise. But when you start getting into things even as simple as the OCZ NIA above, where only 3 different brain-waves or "fingers" they call them are picked up by the device, the task for your brain is signifiantly increased. Its never as easy as just WANTing to move forward - the brain wave associated with controling the device has nothing to do with your desire to move forward - at least not right away. Only with long long practice and calibration does your brain adapt and learn and able to actually control a device. Its almost impossible to explain in words the state of mind required for something like this to work. The closest I can come is - for those who have ever practiced mediation or a martial art - the empty zen state one can sometimes achieve with these practices. Thinking nothing, blank. You then throw yourself into the game and watch as your character moves around completely randomly, or so it would seem at first. After a few hours, you begin to see that the motion isn't entirely random. And after many many more hours the subconsious connection between a certain state of mind and the resulting action on the computer screen begins to solidify. You practice long enough, and controling the machine WILL be as easy as walking or lifting your arm - you never even have to think about it - just WANT to do it.
"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
For the uninitiated, perhaps someone should explain. These statistics are absolutely meaningless because they do not akgnowlege at all how large corps with sophistacted intranets update their software. Step 1: Exploratory research. Studies are requested, reviewed, or conducted to determine increase in productivity/cost reductions/other benefits of upgrading. At the same time, increase/decrease in costs is considered. Finally the actual investment cost of switching enters ethe mix. A final number is compile. If gain from benefits significantly greater the loss from detriments, we move on to round 2. Step 2: the test environment. So managment said OK, lets update. The entire corp will not see the results of this decision for anywhere from weeks to months, depending on size of the organization. Test environments are set up with the new software and mission critical jobs are performed in the test environment for, you guessed it, testing. Lets assume that no major flaws are discovered and workarounds/solutions are implemented for those issues that do arise. Moving on. Step 3: partial rollout. Some machines in the intranet get the software upgrade. Commence another test phase. Assuming that regular employees can continue to do regular work, after even more weeks or months, the rollout finally reaches the entire intranet. As you can see, much money is spent even BEFORE the software leaves the test labs. Why would ANY corp even consider cutting edge software at release when they know for a fact, there will be zero day flaws, as happens with any sophisticated software designed by anyone, anywhere, ever. This isn't the biggest issue however. Its the fact that these bugs will be getting fixes, which would require further intranet testing before those FIXES are pushed to employees machines. Not to mention introductory prices are always far too high. It only makes sense to A) wait for bug fixes to be worked out and to come down in quantity/period of time and B) wait for introductory prices to deflate. Doing this VASTly reduces costs, and any successful corporation will always be cost conscious. So, as was said in the first few posts, this is not news by any definition of the word, the statistics quotes are completely irrelevant and altered to make it seem anti-MS. Mission acomplished I suppose. We aren't buying it. "The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."
I know, its harsh and maybe too soon, but essentially that is what is going on here. Finally, a real credible threat of prosecution due to file sharing, and so SOME started buying legally. Sales go up and now this is going to be used by corps as evidence that we need stricter online laws etc etc, file sharing dies, corps rake in more dough for subpar products. Nothing good will come of this... that is of course until smart, talented coders come up with even a more anonymous way of sharing that keeps everyone's nose out of our business. Pirate Bay is trying something in this respect, but not quite there, still just disguising you using the old method. New guys will code around this by summer and things will go back to normal - I will hope.