hmm... I hate to point it out, but "ni" is perfectly OK to use in this case.
Anyway, I do agree with you about "kimochi warui" otaku, and how they are viewed by most people over here (in Tokyo). I myself find some of the people that can be seen, say, in Akihabara, pretty scary.
However, while you speak the language, have lived in Japan, and can understand the culture, I don't think it's fair to expect people who haven't lived in Japan to understand the difference between "good" anime and "otaku" anime. Especially when just about everything availible outside of Japan falls under the "otaku" variety.
(Actually, I'm not 100% sure what falls under the "normal" category myself! Miyazaki stuff and "Sazae-san" seem to be generally viewed as OK, but almost anything else has at least a slight "otaku" association with it.)
Anyway, since I think the slashdot crew and most of the readers have only a little exposure to Japanese culture, I see nothing wrong with articles about some "chou-otaku" anime that I would never watch (or at least admit to having watched, ha ha). As many people have pointed out, slashdot is "News for Nerds", and I think anything anime-related falls under this category!
It all depends on the network environment you're having to go through. If you have some of the various QoS methods implemented, then the delay is pretty much unnoticeable.
I personally don't know how far the carrier IP network (esp. in the US) has progressed in this matter, but I do know that QoS is at least starting to be implemented industry-wide.
One thing I noticed, though, is that people here seem to be expecting that you can just hook up these phones and have instant clean and delay-free VoIP from your home to the home of your friend on the other side of the country. While this may be the case (like I said, not familar with the US market), most "IP Phones" utilize the IP Type of Service field. This is one of the QoS methods: "best-effort" traffic is given an IP TOS of 0, while VoIP traffic is given a TOS of 5 or higher. The router then throws TOS 5 traffic into the low latency queue, while TOS 0 traffic is just treated as normal internet packets. Now, if you are paying for for the privilege of sending traffic marked as you see fit to your ISP, you would see no delays perhaps. But it doesn't take much effort to relabel all of a "best-effort subscriber level" user's packets as TOS 0 (well, the settings are simple).
This doesn't necessarily mean non-business private individuals can't use an IP Phone, but you may experience the delay traditionally associated with VoIP.
But as seen on the IDEO IP Phone information page, this is mainly aimed at businesses, who have full controll over their own internal networks and can pay for the nice extra services (Low Latency Traffic, VPNs, etc), to their upstream providers when connecting remote offices.
Incidentally #1, with a full QoS setup, VoIP works surprisingly well....even with thrashing a router with best effort traffic, a voice call goes though and despite the heavy load most people would hardly tell the difference between VoIP and a normal TDM line.
Incidentally #2, I believe this is just another step in an overall trend of making all networks packet-based, even the traditional phone network (so don't worry too much about the phone company getting jealous). There have been lots of recent developments in SS7 gateways to connect VoIP type networks with traditional PSTN.
(sorry, too lazy to make multiple posts, so I just crammed everything I wanted to say into one reply, heh heh)
In attition to the Electronic Book Player line, Sony also sells a smaller "business card case size" DD-IC100 model. It of course lacks CD-ROM support and there is no way to change out the dictionaries, but as a simple J->E E->J dictionary, it's great. And it's so small, you can take it pretty much anywhere. The only thing it lacks is a Japanese-Japanese dictionary and a kanji-lookup dictionary (which I think the DD-150 and up have).
And of course, as someone else mentioned, the Sharp Zaurus (PI is the type of processor I think) is great for doing kanji lookups, as one of the many input methods it offers is the ability to recognize a character that you write on the screen. Just be careful, at least one model does not have the dictionary software (the "iGet" models with the iMac-looking colors. The black "business" version does include the dictionary).
Well seeing how there are several used game shops in the area where I live, I would say it's not illegal per se. The article you cite mentions that the game makers were accusing the merchant of "unauthorized" selling, so perhaps there is some sort of "authorized" way to sell used games.
ha ha, a bunch of young kids with cell phones set to the latest strange songs? sounds like a typical weekend in Shibuya! (part of Tokyo where you can find a lot of kids, at least some of you will know what I'm referring to...)
What's even funnier is when you see a bunch of old business men ("salaryman") who look really rough and unfriendly, and their phones start ringing with cutesy little songs!
BTW, I'm kinda ashamed to admit, yes I set my phone to play recent hits (but by all means, never the Titanic song!!)
ha ha, does "special ringtones" include all of the nice melodies I can automatically set a phone to play instead of normal ringing?
For those who don't know, first came the ability to set your own melody into phones, by punching in notes and rests via the keypad. This became so popular there were tons of books made to help you set your phone to play the popular songs of the time.
Now the cell phone companies maintain a database of tons and tons of songs, and you can keep your phone updated to playing the latest hits by downloading new songs when ever you want. Add to that the latest feature, which is 2 or 3 or 4 note melodies, and it's really interesting hearing some of the strange songs people have their phones set to play.
heh heh heh, I wonder if there is a market for such a service outside of Japan?
Interestingly enough, Rental CD's here all have a little sticker on them saying they are an "official rental CD", and the letters that appear on the sticker are RIAJ, which I guess is our equivalent of the RIAA. I never noticed that until I started reading all the stuff on slashdot about the RIAA.
Anyway it's really nice to be able to rent (and record) CD's; the market seems to be very much like the video rental market. I wonder why such a system was never created in the US.
BTW, my stereo has a one-button high speed digital copy to facilitate ripping. But to discourage piracy, when you copy one disc, somehow the system stores a record of that internally and sets a timestamp on when you recorded it. You cannot make another digital copy of the same disc for 74 minutes. I guess that stops you from mass producing copies (unless you have 3 or 4 of such stereos, ha ha ha).
it uses "ground" effects, but does this necessarily mean the real ground? I think a flat surface is really what is required. The structure in place for the most part is more like a raised highway; long stretches of a relatively level, semi-enclosed concrete system upon which rails are placed. I can imagine that despite the effort it would require to install such a system, it is very do-able. (if you are familiar with the Japanese bullet train system, the highway system, and various other civil engineering projects, you would see why I think constructing kilometers of raised, specialized track over and through various terrain is not completely unreasonable)
Of course, I don't want them taking the Toukaidou shinkansen offline to do this; that would be a pain!
Think about what you have to do to take a plane somewhere. You have to go to an airport, (not as many as train stations), sit on a cramped plane (especially if it's a short distance you are trying to go to, the plane will be tiny). Once you arrive, you are not very close to where you really want to go (once again, because not as many airports).
For a high speed train, as far as boarding and getting off, it's almost like riding a normal train. There are lots more stations, so you often arrive much nearer to your final destination than you would in an airplane. In the end, with a high speed train I feel like I have just taken a trip across town, whereas if I take a plane, I actually feel as if I have really travelled a great distance!
Add in the fact that you can run several high speed trains from point A to point B every hour, you start to see that for certain distances/destinations, trains are much better.
Re:Too much infrastructure required
on
Flying Trains
·
· Score: 1
I agree that this doesn't seem like the best way to do things perhaps. But from an infrastructure point of view, if these trains are simply replacements for the shinkansen (the bullet trains), then I don't think it would be that much of a problem.
The bullet trains for the most part are built entirely on raised tracks, so you wouldn't need extra right of way, you would just need to rebuild the track system that is already in place. Of course that is easy to say, but a lot of work to do. Especially if a wider railway is needed, I can imagine all of the existing tunnels would have to be widened considerably; not a fun prospect if you know how many tunnels shinkansen pass through in some parts of the country.
But any non-conventional high speed rail will take lots of work to put in place...
Actually it's not a problem, since these would be used most likely as a high speed long distance system, like the bullet trains. The bullet trains are already on a completely independent track system than the normal commuter trains anyway. And in most places they are built on raised tracks pretty high off the ground, so the width of the tracks doesn't matter too much.
And despite the fact that they are trying to reduce the speed at which the train lifts off the tracks, I doubt anyone would want to use them for normal commuter service. Especially in Tokyo, where you reach the next station 1-2 minutes, doesn't seem too efficient as a replacement for the normal electric trains.
Well, it's either that or it's a bug in how Ridge Racer writes to the memory card. But you're right, it's not such a big deal, especially to one who hardly ever rents movies like me. But now my curiousity is piqued, I want to see if there is anything to this.
I wonder if PS2 games can save their data on PSX memory cards? I know it can read from them just fine though.
And is the PSX memory card really 1MB? I never bothered to find that out. Anyway, I ask because if you look at files on one with the PS2, it lists each "block" as being 8KB...
Well, the DVD player is pretty much a software DVD player. It's completely (as far as I can tell) stored on the memory card.
FYI, the memory card also contains a file called "System Drivers", which may or may not have anything to do with the DVD playback functionality.
FYI#2, the memory card browser is kinda cool, the information on stuff saved on the card is given to you in real KB, not mysterious "blocks". The DVD player is 634 KB, the system drivers file is 42 KB. Neither can be copied directly from the memory card, I guess you have to do this from the Utility disk.
Thanks for the link! Seems like everyone here has been citing the Dailyradar article when mentioning the DVD playback bug. This gives the bug rumors more credibility...
BUT, I still want to see this for myself; in other words does this affect each and every PS2, or just a certain number of them? Is there anyone out there that has tried this out themselves??
I plan to try it out probably tonight...go rent a DVD and see if the DVD player has been corrupted. Seems like if this is a universal problem, scores of people would have found and been talking about it already over here. Still, even over here, I don't know too many who own one that could have tested this yet. But most BBSs only seem to have "normal" discussions of games, etc, (so far....)
I've also haven't found any reports of a recall or any major problems with PS2 from any of the news sources over here (in Japan) either, though I've been keeping an eye out since I saw this article. Now some people have posted links to another story which says there never was a recall.
Judging by the fact I haven't heard one thing about it over here, I would say there is nothing to this.
I was wondering why I couldn't find anything about a massive recall in the news over here! However, in the article, the Daily Radar says that they have experienced DVD player corruption when writing to the memory card using Ridge Racer. I'm curious to see if this is true so I'll try it out this weekend...
Anyone have any other links about problems with PS2?
I did a quick check of most of the online newspapers here, and found nothing. Nothing was said about this on the news this morning. And one would expect to see some big banner on the playstation web site (www.scei.co.jp), but it looks the same as always. However, checking out some online BBS's, there were quite a few messages from people having problems with various games (strange sound errors, loading errors, etc).
I haven't tried any DVD's yet, but I'll rent some this weekend and see what happens. And I guess I'll pop by a game store sometime and see if they've heard anything.
Anyway, I'm especially worried, since I've mainly been playing Ridge Racer since Saturday...
heh, I guess I just don't put as much effort into it as others. I got to the last boss, couldn't beat it the first time around. Did some leveling up, some rethinking of strategy, then had another go at it, and an hour later had won. After that I never bothered trying to discover any other methods...
But even with Squall's limit breaks (at the level and weapon/junction combination I had), it still took forever. But actually I was happy I had to work a bit to clear the game...
but, man, all this FF8 talk though makes me want to pull it out and try some things out again, as if I wasn't already running short of free time!
Right, but with KoTR, Sepiroth was a bit TOO easy. Now the guy at the end of FF8, that's a challenge. How long has it been out in the US? Have most people got to that point yet? I'll just say that that battle took me about an hour of real-time battle to win. And my characters were pretty strong, too. I don't think there is any super overly-powerful kind of attack in FF8, which made it a lot more interesting, all the way to the end. But yeah, those battles where you barely come out alive are some best, don't you think!
(anyway, I don't know for sure if there are any powerful types of attacks, since in the end I was able to finish using normal game abilities. Maybe they changed somethings in the US version, too?)
3. Actually, I think there are no enhancements for original PSX games. At least, I haven't found the settings for them yet (heh heh, yup, I was one of the lucky ones who bought one on Saturday). I actually haven't played with the system settings yet, so can't give you a 100% sure report on that (just don't remember seeing anything about that in the manual).
4. The new Dual Shock controller is, as you said, all analog. The only game I tried that takes advantage of this is Ridge Racer V (which is really really nice, as far as the graphics are concerned). You can set the Accelerator and Brake buttons to use 3 levels of sensitivity. In the light mode, simply pressing the button maxes out the gage (eg, flooring it), whereas in the heavy mode, a simple press of the button only takes the gage halfway, if you press down harder, you can max it out. This has an side-effect of making you really press the button hard at times (when you are trying to overtake a car, etc), and after an hour or so of this, I switched to light mode since my thumb was hurting.
As a whole, though, the system lives up to my expectations pretty well...
Compared to my PS, it seems to be a little less than an inch taller (sorry, no ruler a the moment! Using CD jewel cases to estimate). And lengthwise, it looks to be about an inch longer (lengthwise meaning the length of the front face of the two machines). The width (from the front of the machine to the back) is actually slightly less than the original PS, by about a milimeter or two.
And it's a bit heavier than the original PS, maybe twice as heavy? (yup, no scale either). Overall, though, I was pleasantly surprised to find it just about the same size as the original. The pictures did make it look huge.
Oh, and BTW, it also has a cooling fan! Not a big loud one like a computer's power supply, but definitely there. Kinda surprised about that at first.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what I thought when I saw the headline for this article, too. I just checked, and sure enough, keepalives can use an MD5 hash.
here's the relevant documentation page
Check under "Configuring Global Keepalive Hash"
hmm... I hate to point it out, but "ni" is perfectly OK to use in this case.
Anyway, I do agree with you about "kimochi warui" otaku, and how they are viewed by most people over here (in Tokyo). I myself find some of the people that can be seen, say, in Akihabara, pretty scary.
However, while you speak the language, have lived in Japan, and can understand the culture, I don't think it's fair to expect people who haven't lived in Japan to understand the difference between "good" anime and "otaku" anime. Especially when just about everything availible outside of Japan falls under the "otaku" variety.
(Actually, I'm not 100% sure what falls under the "normal" category myself! Miyazaki stuff and "Sazae-san" seem to be generally viewed as OK, but almost anything else has at least a slight "otaku" association with it.)
Anyway, since I think the slashdot crew and most of the readers have only a little exposure to Japanese culture, I see nothing wrong with articles about some "chou-otaku" anime that I would never watch (or at least admit to having watched, ha ha). As many people have pointed out, slashdot is "News for Nerds", and I think anything anime-related falls under this category!
It all depends on the network environment you're having to go through. If you have some of the various QoS methods implemented, then the delay is pretty much unnoticeable.
I personally don't know how far the carrier IP network (esp. in the US) has progressed in this matter, but I do know that QoS is at least starting to be implemented industry-wide.
One thing I noticed, though, is that people here seem to be expecting that you can just hook up these phones and have instant clean and delay-free VoIP from your home to the home of your friend on the other side of the country. While this may be the case (like I said, not familar with the US market), most "IP Phones" utilize the IP Type of Service field. This is one of the QoS methods: "best-effort" traffic is given an IP TOS of 0, while VoIP traffic is given a TOS of 5 or higher. The router then throws TOS 5 traffic into the low latency queue, while TOS 0 traffic is just treated as normal internet packets. Now, if you are paying for for the privilege of sending traffic marked as you see fit to your ISP, you would see no delays perhaps. But it doesn't take much effort to relabel all of a "best-effort subscriber level" user's packets as TOS 0 (well, the settings are simple).
This doesn't necessarily mean non-business private individuals can't use an IP Phone, but you may experience the delay traditionally associated with VoIP.
But as seen on the IDEO IP Phone information page, this is mainly aimed at businesses, who have full controll over their own internal networks and can pay for the nice extra services (Low Latency Traffic, VPNs, etc), to their upstream providers when connecting remote offices.
Incidentally #1, with a full QoS setup, VoIP works surprisingly well....even with thrashing a router with best effort traffic, a voice call goes though and despite the heavy load most people would hardly tell the difference between VoIP and a normal TDM line.
Incidentally #2, I believe this is just another step in an overall trend of making all networks packet-based, even the traditional phone network (so don't worry too much about the phone company getting jealous). There have been lots of recent developments in SS7 gateways to connect VoIP type networks with traditional PSTN.
(sorry, too lazy to make multiple posts, so I just crammed everything I wanted to say into one reply, heh heh)
In attition to the Electronic Book Player line, Sony also sells a smaller "business card case size" DD-IC100 model. It of course lacks CD-ROM support and there is no way to change out the dictionaries, but as a simple J->E E->J dictionary, it's great. And it's so small, you can take it pretty much anywhere. The only thing it lacks is a Japanese-Japanese dictionary and a kanji-lookup dictionary (which I think the DD-150 and up have).
And of course, as someone else mentioned, the Sharp Zaurus (PI is the type of processor I think) is great for doing kanji lookups, as one of the many input methods it offers is the ability to recognize a character that you write on the screen. Just be careful, at least one model does not have the dictionary software (the "iGet" models with the iMac-looking colors. The black "business" version does include the dictionary).
Hmm...
Well seeing how there are several used game shops in the area where I live, I would say it's not illegal per se. The article you cite mentions that the game makers were accusing the merchant of "unauthorized" selling, so perhaps there is some sort of "authorized" way to sell used games.
Typing on a phone is hard, but there is one good thing. I can write about 2 long mails during my train ride home, so it keeps me busy!
But you are right, you can see so many people recently doing as much mail on their phone as talking.
Unfortunately, cdmaOne does not have color phones yet, but I hope they have some soon!
ha ha, a bunch of young kids with cell phones set to the latest strange songs? sounds like a typical weekend in Shibuya! (part of Tokyo where you can find a lot of kids, at least some of you will know what I'm referring to...)
What's even funnier is when you see a bunch of old business men ("salaryman") who look really rough and unfriendly, and their phones start ringing with cutesy little songs!
BTW, I'm kinda ashamed to admit, yes I set my phone to play recent hits (but by all means, never the Titanic song!!)
ha ha, does "special ringtones" include all of the nice melodies I can automatically set a phone to play instead of normal ringing?
For those who don't know, first came the ability to set your own melody into phones, by punching in notes and rests via the keypad. This became so popular there were tons of books made to help you set your phone to play the popular songs of the time.
Now the cell phone companies maintain a database of tons and tons of songs, and you can keep your phone updated to playing the latest hits by downloading new songs when ever you want. Add to that the latest feature, which is 2 or 3 or 4 note melodies, and it's really interesting hearing some of the strange songs people have their phones set to play.
heh heh heh, I wonder if there is a market for such a service outside of Japan?
Interestingly enough, Rental CD's here all have a little sticker on them saying they are an "official rental CD", and the letters that appear on the sticker are RIAJ, which I guess is our equivalent of the RIAA. I never noticed that until I started reading all the stuff on slashdot about the RIAA.
Anyway it's really nice to be able to rent (and record) CD's; the market seems to be very much like the video rental market. I wonder why such a system was never created in the US.
BTW, my stereo has a one-button high speed digital copy to facilitate ripping. But to discourage piracy, when you copy one disc, somehow the system stores a record of that internally and sets a timestamp on when you recorded it. You cannot make another digital copy of the same disc for 74 minutes. I guess that stops you from mass producing copies (unless you have 3 or 4 of such stereos, ha ha ha).
it uses "ground" effects, but does this necessarily mean the real ground? I think a flat surface is really what is required. The structure in place for the most part is more like a raised highway; long stretches of a relatively level, semi-enclosed concrete system upon which rails are placed. I can imagine that despite the effort it would require to install such a system, it is very do-able. (if you are familiar with the Japanese bullet train system, the highway system, and various other civil engineering projects, you would see why I think constructing kilometers of raised, specialized track over and through various terrain is not completely unreasonable)
Of course, I don't want them taking the Toukaidou shinkansen offline to do this; that would be a pain!
And they are better than planes in lots of cases.
Think about what you have to do to take a plane somewhere. You have to go to an airport, (not as many as train stations), sit on a cramped plane (especially if it's a short distance you are trying to go to, the plane will be tiny). Once you arrive, you are not very close to where you really want to go (once again, because not as many airports).
For a high speed train, as far as boarding and getting off, it's almost like riding a normal train. There are lots more stations, so you often arrive much nearer to your final destination than you would in an airplane. In the end, with a high speed train I feel like I have just taken a trip across town, whereas if I take a plane, I actually feel as if I have really travelled a great distance!
Add in the fact that you can run several high speed trains from point A to point B every hour, you start to see that for certain distances/destinations, trains are much better.
I agree that this doesn't seem like the best way to do things perhaps. But from an infrastructure point of view, if these trains are simply replacements for the shinkansen (the bullet trains), then I don't think it would be that much of a problem.
The bullet trains for the most part are built entirely on raised tracks, so you wouldn't need extra right of way, you would just need to rebuild the track system that is already in place. Of course that is easy to say, but a lot of work to do. Especially if a wider railway is needed, I can imagine all of the existing tunnels would have to be widened considerably; not a fun prospect if you know how many tunnels shinkansen pass through in some parts of the country.
But any non-conventional high speed rail will take lots of work to put in place...
Actually it's not a problem, since these would be used most likely as a high speed long distance system, like the bullet trains. The bullet trains are already on a completely independent track system than the normal commuter trains anyway. And in most places they are built on raised tracks pretty high off the ground, so the width of the tracks doesn't matter too much.
And despite the fact that they are trying to reduce the speed at which the train lifts off the tracks, I doubt anyone would want to use them for normal commuter service. Especially in Tokyo, where you reach the next station 1-2 minutes, doesn't seem too efficient as a replacement for the normal electric trains.
Well, it's either that or it's a bug in how Ridge Racer writes to the memory card. But you're right, it's not such a big deal, especially to one who hardly ever rents movies like me. But now my curiousity is piqued, I want to see if there is anything to this.
I wonder if PS2 games can save their data on PSX memory cards? I know it can read from them just fine though.
And is the PSX memory card really 1MB? I never bothered to find that out. Anyway, I ask because if you look at files on one with the PS2, it lists each "block" as being 8KB...
Well, the DVD player is pretty much a software DVD player. It's completely (as far as I can tell) stored on the memory card.
FYI, the memory card also contains a file called "System Drivers", which may or may not have anything to do with the DVD playback functionality.
FYI#2, the memory card browser is kinda cool, the information on stuff saved on the card is given to you in real KB, not mysterious "blocks". The DVD player is 634 KB, the system drivers file is 42 KB. Neither can be copied directly from the memory card, I guess you have to do this from the Utility disk.
Thanks for the link! Seems like everyone here has been citing the Dailyradar article when mentioning the DVD playback bug. This gives the bug rumors more credibility...
BUT, I still want to see this for myself; in other words does this affect each and every PS2, or just a certain number of them? Is there anyone out there that has tried this out themselves??
I plan to try it out probably tonight...go rent a DVD and see if the DVD player has been corrupted.
Seems like if this is a universal problem, scores of people would have found and been talking about it already over here. Still, even over here, I don't know too many who own one that could have tested this yet. But most BBSs only seem to have "normal" discussions of games, etc, (so far....)
I've also haven't found any reports of a recall or any major problems with PS2 from any of the news sources over here (in Japan) either, though I've been keeping an eye out since I saw this article. Now some people have posted links to another story which says there never was a recall.
Judging by the fact I haven't heard one thing about it over here, I would say there is nothing to this.
I was wondering why I couldn't find anything about a massive recall in the news over here! However, in the article, the Daily Radar says that they have experienced DVD player corruption when writing to the memory card using Ridge Racer. I'm curious to see if this is true so I'll try it out this weekend...
Anyone have any other links about problems with PS2?
I did a quick check of most of the online newspapers here, and found nothing. Nothing was said about this on the news this morning. And one would expect to see some big banner on the playstation web site (www.scei.co.jp), but it looks the same as always. However, checking out some online BBS's, there were quite a few messages from people having problems with various games (strange sound errors, loading errors, etc).
I haven't tried any DVD's yet, but I'll rent some this weekend and see what happens. And I guess I'll pop by a game store sometime and see if they've heard anything.
Anyway, I'm especially worried, since I've mainly been playing Ridge Racer since Saturday...
so...anyone hear anything else?
heh, I guess I just don't put as much effort into it as others. I got to the last boss, couldn't beat it the first time around. Did some leveling up, some rethinking of strategy, then had another go at it, and an hour later had won. After that I never bothered trying to discover any other methods...
But even with Squall's limit breaks (at the level and weapon/junction combination I had), it still took forever. But actually I was happy I had to work a bit to clear the game...
but, man, all this FF8 talk though makes me want to pull it out and try some things out again, as if I wasn't already running short of free time!
Right, but with KoTR, Sepiroth was a bit TOO easy. Now the guy at the end of FF8, that's a challenge. How long has it been out in the US? Have most people got to that point yet? I'll just say that that battle took me about an hour of real-time battle to win. And my characters were pretty strong, too. I don't think there is any super overly-powerful kind of attack in FF8, which made it a lot more interesting, all the way to the end. But yeah, those battles where you barely come out alive are some best, don't you think!
(anyway, I don't know for sure if there are any powerful types of attacks, since in the end I was able to finish using normal game abilities. Maybe they changed somethings in the US version, too?)
3. Actually, I think there are no enhancements for original PSX games. At least, I haven't found the settings for them yet (heh heh, yup, I was one of the lucky ones who bought one on Saturday). I actually haven't played with the system settings yet, so can't give you a 100% sure report on that (just don't remember seeing anything about that in the manual).
4. The new Dual Shock controller is, as you said, all analog. The only game I tried that takes advantage of this is Ridge Racer V (which is really really nice, as far as the graphics are concerned). You can set the Accelerator and Brake buttons to use 3 levels of sensitivity. In the light mode, simply pressing the button maxes out the gage (eg, flooring it), whereas in the heavy mode, a simple press of the button only takes the gage halfway, if you press down harder, you can max it out. This has an side-effect of making you really press the button hard at times (when you are trying to overtake a car, etc), and after an hour or so of this, I switched to light mode since my thumb was hurting.
As a whole, though, the system lives up to my expectations pretty well...
Compared to my PS, it seems to be a little less than an inch taller (sorry, no ruler a the moment! Using CD jewel cases to estimate). And lengthwise, it looks to be about an inch longer (lengthwise meaning the length of the front face of the two machines). The width (from the front of the machine to the back) is actually slightly less than the original PS, by about a milimeter or two.
And it's a bit heavier than the original PS, maybe twice as heavy? (yup, no scale either). Overall, though, I was pleasantly surprised to find it just about the same size as the original. The pictures did make it look huge.
Oh, and BTW, it also has a cooling fan! Not a big loud one like a computer's power supply, but definitely there. Kinda surprised about that at first.