And the Xbox 360 might even be helped by this. Think about it, the XBOX is not quiet enough to play a disc movie, at least for a lot of people. But it's just fine for downloads. Microsoft may ramp up and accelerate their download service now that this war is ending, instead of gaming each company against eachother like fools to slow adoption. Ps2 owners are slow adopted, but in my opinion 360 owners are fast adopters, and the console is more internet oriented. These people are much more likely to download movies, and I think the 360 is going to continue to do very well.
I firmly believe that online distribution of HD content is the way of the future, and disk formats are mostly dead except as a medium for games (even then, expect to see more and more games selling through downloadable markets like Steam, PSN, and Xbox Live). Thus far I've held off on buying any HD disk format player, and currently get my HD movie fix from Xbox Live Marketplace. If HD-DVD does die, I think your prediction is correct and we'll see more and more content move to places like Xbox Live Marketplace, which is good for me.
If this plays out as I suspect, Sony's going to be pissed because just as they finally "win" a media format war (they lost out with Betamax, Minidisc, Memory Stick, and UMD) content moves away from physical media into online distribution. Sony hasn't put anything beyond trailers up on PSN, and I question whether or not they have the experience necessary to "win" in that arena (as with networked gameplay, Microsoft's Xbox Live has a huge jump on PSN and generally executes much better with a more coherent experience, December's issues not withstanding). Sony might "win" with Blu-Ray, but they're going to have to really scramble to get into online distribution.
If your system is constantly creating restore points, you're doing something wrong and disabling system restore isn't going to fix that. Volume Shadow Copy service is really only used when a system restore snapshot is being taken or you kicked off a backup (either manually or through a scheduled task), so turning off VSS isn't really going to buy you much.
Indexing is a different issue entirely. You can certainly turn it off, but then you significantly cripple the search functionality available everywhere in Vista (for example, I've come to totally rely on the Start Menu's search function). If you do find that indexing is causing you problems, you can tweak a number of indexing settings, including which folders to watch for indexing. Changing watch locations is a bit of a judgement call. On the one hand, if you have a folder with documents that change often and thus kick off indexing, you might want to stop watching that folder for performance reasons. On the other hand, if the documents change often they're obviously important and so you might want to keep them indexed for quicker search access.
While I will agree that disabling indexing will definitely help performance in limited scenarios, at least for me the functionality of having it enabled completely outweighs what minor performance hit I take when it decides it needs to update the index. At least in my case it's been smart about when it starts (never had indexing run in the middle of a game or while on battery power, for example).
Many, many people seem to like misusing the term SKU. At least, I think they're misusing the term. After all, I wouldn't tell my wife "Wow, these new Doritos bar codes are mighty tasty! Pass me a bar code of that lemonade."
For what it's worth, I agree with you. On the other hand, that's what Microsoft uses to refer to the various versions of a product (they seem to alternate between "SKU" and "Edition" with no rhyme or reason why one word is used over the other), so that's what I used to refer to them. I don't like it, but at least it's not as horribly misused as phrases like "begs the question" (at least "SKU" in this context could potentially be referring to a real Stock Keeping Unit).
Also, your examples aren't quite right. You're referring to instances of a bag of chips or a glass of lemonade, while the Windows Server SKU references are to types of items that can be sold. A better example might be, "I prefer the yellow lemonade SKU over the pink lemonade." Still just as silly, but at least now it's correct:).
Windows Server 2008 is the server version of Vista. Will it have the same licensing model? Will this unlimited Windows Web Server be available only in the Ultimate version?
That's not exactly a fair comparison. While Windows Server 2008 is the same codebase as Windows Vista, it's not "just" the server version of Vista. By that same rationale, Windows Server 2003 was "just" the server version of Windows XP. However Windows Server 2003 had different SKUs than XP with different licensing models, and you can expect that Windows Server 2008 will be the same. Windows Server 2008 SKUs are much more inline with what is available for 2003 (though the total number is higher due to the duplication of editions for "without Hyper-V" versions). For the Server product, differentiation is more about licensing than features (the only feature difference between Standard, Enterprise, and Data Center is the lack of clustering in Standard).
If I could stream the TV on my PC to my TV through my XBOX then it would be a huge success at my house. Of course Microsoft will wait until someone else does this before they invent it.
Huh? The Xbox 360 already does that. The only "problem" is that Netflix doesn't actually have downloadable movies. They stream, and you can't stream a stream from your PC to your 360. This would be a perfect opportunity for Microsoft to partner with Netflix and give access to Netflix streaming videos based on your Netflix subscription (possibly using Netflix's current model of 1 hour of online video per $1 you pay for your physical DVD subscription, so a larger subscription like 4-out or 5-out will give you more online video time as well).
I'm not going to hold my breath, but Xbox 360 + Netflix content would be the home media holy grail.
- The DRM. It's locked and they break third-party apps. Sure one can work around that but at $599 one shouldn't have to
I'm not sure I'd call that "DRM". I guess it's fair enough to use "DRM" as a generic term, but the lack of third-party access isn't exactly "Digital Rights Management".
- I think the touch screen may be a safety issue when placing a call on the road. I can dial my sync by feel without taking my eyes off the road. Not possible with a touch screen.
Evil, evil cell phone user! The inability to touch-type on the keypad is a feature, keeping idiots from trying to dial on cell phones while driving. Now if only it took more than one touch to answer, to keep people from answering calls while driving...
- No [micro|mini|.*]SD slot
Personally, I don't care about that. The integrated storage (4GB or 8GB) is more than enough for what I need, so I don't see any reason to have removable storage. Since it's easy enough to sync stuff to or from the phone (unlike my old RAZR, great phone but piece of crap Motorola software), adding a card reader would've just increased the bulk of the phone and an unsexy hole on the side.
- proprietary connector, not USB (although that's also true of my Sync)
While the connector is proprietary, it's not exactly uncommon. It's simply an iPod connector, which you can pick up just about anywhere. The other end of the cable is USB, and it comes with a nice little USB-to-mains brick for charging from a wall socket.
I do agree with you on the other points. 3G and a user-replaceable battery would be nice. I'm hoping for IM apps to show up once the SDK is released early next year (I could hack the phone, but I really don't care enough to bother).
I need to check a website that only lets me in once I have uploaded my digital certificate & password.
I assume the password is no problem, but can I upload (via a web form) a *.cer file from iPhone Safari?
(I know piss poor security since the certificate can be freely copied. It is really only a password system, but I didn't set it up. And they don't care what I think.)
Once I am in I need to click thru a selection web form, and look at a few PDFs. Which I believe Safari lets me do, correct?
Safari on the iPhone can't upload or download files, and I don't believe jailbreaking your phone changes that (I could be wrong, I haven't hacked my phone). If you could get around the cert upload issue (perhaps build a proxy that acts as a middleman? Not sure how possible that would be), the rest will work just fine, including viewing PDFs. Aside from upload/download issues and Safari-specific issues, the only other important things missing in the iPhone Safari implementation are Java and Flash. Personally, I view that as a good thing, as missing Flash support on a high-profile item like the iPhone might prompt web developers to get away from Flash-only interfaces (or at even build pages specific for iPhone, like Google does).
Look I want to buy a hybrid car but I can't expect them to make any model available today as a hybrid. If I want a hybrid I have to buy what is available. Similarly if I convert a car into some form of biodiesel or hybrid I have to assume I'm breaking warrantly so if something happens to the engine there's a chance it won't be covered.
To take your car analogy one step further, once you've done your hybrid/biofuel conversion, you're probably not going to take it back to the dealer for work. Similarly, once you've unlocked your iPhone, you should be wary of upgrading the firmware. Just as it would be dumb to ask your dealer to reflash your ECU back to stock and "brick" your car, it would be just as dumb to update your iPhone firmware back to stock and "brick" your iPhone.
Dear Steve Jobs, I will *never* buy a iphone if you keep pulling this BS. (along with the fact that you are tied into AT&T) Stop behaving like MS, or I'll just build another PC next year vs purchasing a iMac.. and of course, install linux on the PC.
Funny. Microsoft allows complete and open access to their Windows Mobile OS (whether or not you can load your apps onto the phone is left to the decision of the carriers). In fact they even opened the source for the OS (okay, it's a Shared Source license, and it requires having an officially licensed version of Windows Embedded CE 6.0, but the source code is all there if you want to modify it while building a new device of your own). I think this is a case where you want Apple to act more like Microsoft rather than less.
On the other hand, I'm an iPhone user. I spent a fair amount of time playing with Windows CE in the past, and while I like the system I was not a fan of any of the current phones using it today. So I bought an iPhone, and I like it. The current lack of an SDK isn't slowing me down, since I probably wouldn't write any iPhone apps anyway (as much as I'd like to think I would, I know that I'd just dabble a bit and never actually finish anything). Sure, there are some things that are missing (GPS, full Exchange connectivity, an IM app), but I can live without those at least for now.
That's why you go to the Apple store. Because instead of waiting at a cashier for someone to show up, or waiting much in line, Apple stores have wandering cashiers. And on the iPhone launch day they had dedicated lines just for the iPhone. I was out well before the poor bastards that went to the AT&T store...
Your mistake was going on launch day. I bought in November, well after the price drop and demand had waned. I walked right into the AT&T store, had my choice of three different cashiers, paid for my iPhone, and walked out.
I am not so sure about DLP sets. There have recently been some revelations about longevity of nanomachines and DLP chips probably fall under that same issue since they are silicon that really gets a workout as it aims the little mirrors. Also, one dead pixel and you can have a super bright pixel on your screen. I'd rather have a pixel go dark than super bright.
As long as the DMD can last 5-6 years (which shouldn't be a problem), that's fine with me. My TV upgrade cycle is about that long, so what do I care if DMDs will fail after 10 years of use? Also, dead pixels on a DMD are just like dead pixels on an LCD. How they die determines what type of dead pixel you get. If the pixel dies "closed", you get a dark pixel. If it dies "open", you get a bright pixel. The only thing you won't get is colored pixel death. Also, my 2 year old 50" DLP has 0 dead pixels, while my 2.5 year old 17" laptop LCD has a number of dead pixels cropping up around the edges (a few more and it'll be time to buy a new laptop).
Plasma sets are also having issues, suffer from burn-in, and are expensive.
That's the risk you take when you use phosphor-based technology (plasma TVs still use phosphors to emit colored light, just like a CRT; the difference is in the excitation model). As far as I'm concerned, I'm done with phosphor-based technology. That includes SED, if it ever materializes.
I think LCD (either reflective or transmissive) is the best bet for a long-lived and trouble free TV.
It depends on your criteria. LCDs have the worst picture quality and contrast of all of the technologies. Black level is horrible. LCDs also are very prone to dead pixels, especially at larger sizes. Cold cathode backlights have a relatively low half-life (on the order of ~5 years to half-brightness), though that is being solved with LED backlights. For my TV dollar, DLP is the way to go. The DMD is reliable enough for medium-term use (none of these TVs are going to last 20-30 years like your parents' old CRT), the price is great, and being front- or rear-projection allows for more flexible sizes. The downsides (rainbow effect, viewing angle, extra cabinet depth) at least for me are completely outweighed by the upsides. When I upgrade again in ~3 years, I fully expect I'll get another DLP.
One of the things that holds Apple back is that many people simply don't want to join a cult, and the whole Apple store experience is like having to take some initiation. They should call it to the Kool-Aid Bar.
That's why I bought my iPhone from an AT&T Wireless store rather than going to the local Apple store. I knew what I wanted, and I wanted to be in and out as quickly as possible. I didn't want to deal with stuck-up attitudes and the feigned shock of using my iPhone on *gasp!* Windows. I didn't need a pile of accessories, lessons on how to use the phone, or a MacBook to go along with it. I wanted the phone and nothing more, so I bought it from a phone store. Easy, simple, and no dealing with "better than thou" attitudes.
This is NOT exactly the vehicle that one would really consider for any sort of high speed chase.
If I were a motorcycle cop, I would not want to be involved in any high-speed chases. You want to be safe within a cage for that type of work.
On the other hand, it seems silly to replace motorcycles (already quite fuel-efficient due to their light weight) while leaving gas-guzzling cars and SUVs in the fleet. Why not replace all patrol cars with hybrids? They can run on battery around town, and switch over to ICE for the high-speed chases (obviously you'd want something beefier than a Prius).
Better graphics on 4(on an inferior system), you can turn the music off, and you have to play a ton to get cars you actually want to race.
I'd actually recommend against getting GT3 or GT4, or at least get them along with FM2.
Graphics: You're comparing PS2 games to an Xbox 360 game. GT4 launched a few months before the original Forza, back in 2005. Forza 2 launched this year on Xbox 360. That in itself means it has better graphics, but Forza 2 also has per-track lighting effects (a desert track like Laguna Seca has much more harsh lighting than the fictional Maple Valley track, for example), collision damage which actually affects driving (If your wing comes off, you lose your downforce, for example), much better track depictions (compare the Nurburgring Nordschleife in GT4 against the same in FM2), and more detailed cars. There are only two little issues I have with FM2 graphics: Cars with movable parts like retractable spoilers (Porsches, Lamborghinis, etc) don't move, and there's no in-cockpit view. Neither of those are in the GT3/4 games either.
Gameplay: Forza 1 had a much better/more realistic physics engine than GT3/4, and Forza 2 takes that even further. The Gran Turismo series uses a modified version of Pacejka's Magic Formula, which is decent but not entirely realistic and suffers at the limit. Forza uses a more expensive model based on actually modelling the suspension and tires (across three separate points on the tire contact patch), which leads to a much more realistic physics model. FM1 ran input and physics at 60fps with graphics locked to 30fps. FM2 runs input and physics at 360fps with graphics locked to 60fps. Collisions are realistic, compared to GT's bumper car/billiard ball collision model (no wall-riding in FM, using other cars as movable ARMCOs risks damaging your own car). Real-world tracks are the most realistic yet, with a real sense of elevation changes, traction surface changes, etc. There are PC games that have better physics simulations than FM, but FM is leaps and bounds beyond GT.
Control: Assuming you're using a controller rather than a wheel, the analog triggers on the Xbox and Xbox 360 are much better for throttle and brake control than trying to use a PS2's analog buttons. There are a few third-party PS2 controllers with triggers, but they're few and far between and suffer from typical third-party controller problems (fragile, sloppy, etc). GT3/4 may play better on a PS3 with its fully-analog L2/R2 buttons, but if you're trying to play on a PS2 you pretty much have to have a wheel. And that's the only place that GT beats FM in my opinion -- the Logitech wheels are the gold standard, and they simply don't exist for 360 (yet?).
Cars: I don't know about you, but GT's car selection has never really done it for me. While it's great that you can choose from 15 different models of Skylines or 12 different Civics, the cars I want to drive aren't available in GT. I want to drive Porsches, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis, and those aren't in GT3/4 (GT5 is supposed to have Ferraris and maybe Lamborghinis, but I don't believe they'll have Porsche this time around). And no, RUF cars don't cut it.
Sound: Who cares about in-game music? When I'm driving, I want to hear the engine so I can know when to shift without having my eyes glued to the tach. And when it comes to engine sounds, Forza has always been better than GT (this video pretty much says it all. That's FM1 vs. GT4, but FM2's engine sounds are even better. It's pretty obvious when you hear the Corvette comparison). If you must have in-game music, use the 360's custom soundtrack feature and play your own music. I'll guarantee that any music you choose to play will be better than the built-in soundtracks for either series.
Oh I am blocking. I like the poop thing but redirecting to someone else...Hmmm then I become just like that blogger. Sorta. Just being gross/obscene I kinda like but what if a kid comes by?
When I'm redirecting, it's either because I don't want a linker killing my bandwidth limit and costing me money (why I'll block sites like myspace), or because I dislike the source of the link (why I'll block sites like myspace:). In the former case, it'd be best to just redirect to a 404 or if you're feeling gracious a thumbnail of the actual image, but I've really not run into many high-volume hotlinking situations. In the latter case, I'm redirecting to gross/obscene stuff in part because I dislike the source, but also because I'm teaching a lesson about linking. If a kid comes by, that's not my problem -- you're looking at somebody else's site, and they're the ones who'll take a beating for violating TOUs and such ("no porn" policies, for example).
Getting back to the IP subject, aren't we then just protecting our IP which only 2% of college people believe is OK?
This is probably a matter of semantics, but I see it as protecting services which cost me money (bandwidth) and/or protecting my own sensibilities. Then again, I really don't have much people link (the top three are a photochop I did of the Amelie DVD box with Mr. Bean's face in place of Audrey Tautau's, a picture of my cat when he was a kitten, and pictures of my truck), and I'm not really sure I'd consider any of that "intellectual property". If someone wants to copy my images and host them somewhere else, they're perfectly free to do so. I just don't want them leeching my bandwidth that costs me real money.
If someone reading this is doing this hotlink stuff, Hey just steal my image outright and put it in your space.
These people were screwed over by real estate snake oil salespeople.
And all the people who lost their shirts in the DotCom bubble burst were screwed over by Wall Street snake oil salespeople?
The housing bubble is just another manifestation of the same problem as the DotCom bubble -- uneducated people trying to make a buck on the "hot new thing", and then crying when the market cycles (as markets ALWAYS do). Day traders were the hardest-hit in the DotCom bubble (properly managed mutual funds weren't really affected, and all of the IPO millionaires never had the money to begin with), but in some respects they caused it as well, by being much more reactionary to market swings than a seasoned professional. In the same vein, house flippers and overnight real estate agents caused the exact same problem in the housing market.
We've since returned to some state of normalcy in tech stocks (Bubble 2.0 is going at a much more maintainable pace), and we will return to normalcy in the housing market as well in a few years (maybe as much as a decade). Some people will have made fortunes through timing and proper information. Others will have lost everything, but so it goes. The moral of the story? By the time something has become the "hot new thing" sweeping the country, it's too late for you to jump in. WTF were people thinking buying $200K houses for $600K? Can't you tell that the house is horribly overvalued? I got a great deal on my own home back in 2003 (bought it for ~$40K under list, with a proper mortgage), and even it has at least doubled in value on paper since them. The only thing that does for me is screw my tax payments, but when this bubble has finally popped I'll be in a good position and my taxes will drop drastically.
I'm not one of these people, and I don't necessarily agree with a government bailout. But to blame everyone for predatory lending practices is just wrong. In CA at least, people with little grasp of English were being talked into signing for loans they couldn't afford. The real estate swing was making fools of many people, and some of those people were screwing others.
Let the States deal with bailouts as they choose, with State money, then. I see no reason why I should bail out a homeowner in CA with money I made in WA. If the States in trouble can't handle the bailout on their own, then I question their own fiscal responsibility (WTF have they done with the insane property tax revenue they've collected on over-inflated home values?).
The mistake many people make is that those of us complaining about the Federal government want no government at all. That's simply not true. What we want is power situated as locally as possible. Whether that's the city, county, or state level depends on the issue, but there's very little that the federal government should own (interstate travel infrastructure, crimes crossing state borders, federal government property, and armed forces for national protection is about it, IMHO).
The best example of that is a blogger with a popular site that brings in 60-70 bucks a day in Adsense. All of the material is from someone else and all the images are hotlinked to another sites. One of those sites is yours and now because that site is so popular you get to pay 10 dollars a month in extra bandwidth.
Meh. It's easy enough to simply redirect offending hotlinkers to obscene pictures. Imagine the ad revenue hit when that blog linking your picture of a butterfly suddenly starts displaying a penis or poop instead. And since you're redirecting, the bandwidth cost on your site is minimal (push it to somebody else, who can then redirect as they please). If you want to be nice about it, create a 1x1 transparent gif and redirect to that instead. Or better yet, spread around the redirection so that you're not giving massive traffic to any one site yet you still get the full effect of hurting people you don't want hotlinking your stuff.
Just one note: I have no problem with linking in general, and I'm not a fan of blanket "no-linking" policies that many sites have. While I've been known to redirect image links on occasion, I do so in response to specific links that I don't like (for example, somebody linking an image on my site as a myspace background) and will target redirection to just that item and site. Of course if I don't like you linking my stuff, you're going to get something extremely gross in exchange, and you're probably not even going to know it unless you visit your site every single day (and even then, caching may keep you from seeing that I broke your link while your visiters get an eyeful of gaping hole...).
Could you define 'true, rational human behavior' in this context for me?
And by "price" being the biggest factor in any economics, are you defining price as 'purchase price' or as 'total cost over the useful lifetime of the product'?
Human nature is to do what's best for yourself and possibly your family. Using the jar of pickles analogy and assuming a rational market and a hands-off government, the cost of buying that imported jar of pickles is pretty much $3, while the cost of the non-imported is still $3.50. You could argue that buying the $3 pickles will lead to job losses, which will lead to more people on social welfare, which will lead to higher taxes and possibly higher crime, but from the point of view of the consumer in a rational world and who doesn't work in a pickle factory or as a cucumber farmer the true price of the pickles really doesn't change.
The CFL vs. incandescent costs are trickier. From a pure point-of-sale view, CFLs are quite a bit more expensive (why buy one CFL when I can buy a pack of incadescents for less?). When you take a longer view, it's still not clear that CFL bulbs are any cheaper. They're more efficient, but they still have to be replaced eventually. They're more expensive up front, so you're banking on getting more life out of the CFL than you would for the equivalent amount of incandescents. Then there's the backend costs. CFLs are much more expensive to dispose properly, which may or may not balance out the cost required to clean up the higher pollution caused by incandescents' use of more energy (assuming a fossil fuel energy service, rather than wind, hydro, or nuclear). I've not seen any studies that show the true total cost of either, so as a consumer I look at the package price plus my expectation of CFL life* to determine whether I buy CFLs or incandescents.
* Actually, that's not quite true in my case. I do use CFLs for a few lights, but the majority of the lighting energy in my home is spent around electronic equipment controlled by IR remotes. I've found that CFLs (at least the few I've tried) emit a massive amount of IR noise that causes interference with remote control operations. As such, I've leaned mostly towards halogen lamps and incadescent bulbs rather than CFLs. The energy savings of switching to CFLs (maybe a couple dollars a month on my energy bill) is not worth the IR noise problems, at least for me. And that's why I choose not to use CFLs everywhere.
That would be a valid argument if we had a free market economy. We don't. In a true free market, people would weigh the costs and benefits of each purchase both to themselves and to the society in general. Free markets require educated, thoughtful consumers. We don't have those. We have people who shop at Wal*Mart and think it's great that pickles only cost $3 instead of $3.50
It seems to me that the non-"educated, thoughtful consumers" in our free market have a different value system than you do. You look at that jar of Wal*Mart pickles and see lost jobs, so you buy the local jar instead for more money. The rest of the consumers act exactly as economics predicts -- they look at the price ($3 is less than $3.50), they look at the elasticity of the product (a pickle is a pickle, whether it's from China, Mexico, or California), and they act. In this case, economics dictates that people will tend to buy the $3 Wal*Mart pickle because it's the lowest price for a highly elastic good.
If you don't like the laws being passed, write your congressman. Until then, they're doing the job we elected them to do. If the majority of voters don't like what an elected official does, they get voted out of office. If the majority of voters find these kinds of laws inappropriate or objectionable, they'll remove them from office.
I would argue that this is where our lack of "educated, thougthful" citizens actually matters. The same people who are capable of operating optimally in a free market (because the free market was designed around true, rational human behavior) fall apart when dealing with politics (because politics revolves around idealized concepts of human nature that aren't in the least bit true). This is why you can have people voting in xenophobic candidates (stop illegal immigration, stop out-sourcing of jobs overseas, etc) who then turn right around and buy imported goods from the likes of Wal*Mart. Which is the correct behavior? Neither, because "correct" is not the right word. The "natural" behavior is the latter, because price will always be the biggest factor in any economics, to the point where most everything else just factors out. The former is a mix of gullibility and wishful thinking.
Yah, people in a free market VOTED for the ARM mortgages. That sure has worked out well, didn't it?
From the perspective of the market? Yes, it worked out exactly as designed. The market is correcting itself. It's unfortunate that so many people will lose their homes in the process, but that's how the free market works.
Have you played Bladestorm? It's -not- like Dynasty Warriors. (I love the Warriors series, with DW Gundam being my favorite, with Samurai Warriors second.)
DW has you, a single person, be an amazing bad-ass 'general' who is more of a 1-man army. You completely control the character and are always on the front lines.
Bladestorm has you lead a troup (which can be changed any time you are near another troup) and you have very little interaction. You tell them when to to attack and activate powerups. Instead of being front-lines, it works best to stand behind your troup and guide them.
I did play the Bladestorm demo a while ago, and it left me with the distinct impression of "DW clone". Yes, there's a bit of a new gameplay component, but it's really nothing new. Basically Bladestorm is what you'd get if you mixed the Kingdom Under Fire (KUF has you controlling squads rather than just your individual hero) games with Full Spectrum Warrior (where you play the game by issuing orders, and the AI carries out those orders without your intervention). So yeah, "Bladestorm is just KUF mixed with FSW, yawn".
And I'm not claiming they aren't worth my time without having played them. Every game I've mentioned, I either bought or rented. The ones that bored me, they bored me because they were the same old thing. They didn't have anything interesting. And by interesting, I mean different than other games that I've already played.
And I argue that just because a game isn't different from one you've already played doesn't mean it's not a good game. That's especially true with sequels. Halo 3 isn't substantially different than Halo 2 in gameplay, but it was worth playing for the story, at least for me. Even non-sequels aren't necessarily going to be "new", depending on how you define new. For example, Assassin's Creed == Prince of Persia + Grand Theft Auto. Nothing really new there, right? Yet it was still worth playing through (for me, it was short enough that the main "repetitive" complaint didn't really have time to factor into it).
Bladestorm is at least different, and oddly addictive.
You're holding up Bladestorm as a model of uniqueness? It's just fucking Dynasty Warriors set in Europe rather than China (or Japan, like Samurai Warriors). It's got a few new gameplay mechanics, but so do most of the other titles you derided.
If you like Bladestorm, great. More power to you, it's great that you found a game you can like. It's just a little hypocritical to claim that many of the other games are not worth your time because they're just the same old thing you've already played, but Bladestorm's not. Choose not to play Halo, Metroid, Mario, etc because you don't enjoy the games, or you have no interest in the story, or even because you're too "1337" to play the same games as us plebs (though in that case I'd expect you to extoll the virtues of indie developers, which so far you haven't). But stop claiming that you only like stuff that's "new" when it's patently obvious that's not true.
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I firmly believe that online distribution of HD content is the way of the future, and disk formats are mostly dead except as a medium for games (even then, expect to see more and more games selling through downloadable markets like Steam, PSN, and Xbox Live). Thus far I've held off on buying any HD disk format player, and currently get my HD movie fix from Xbox Live Marketplace. If HD-DVD does die, I think your prediction is correct and we'll see more and more content move to places like Xbox Live Marketplace, which is good for me.
If this plays out as I suspect, Sony's going to be pissed because just as they finally "win" a media format war (they lost out with Betamax, Minidisc, Memory Stick, and UMD) content moves away from physical media into online distribution. Sony hasn't put anything beyond trailers up on PSN, and I question whether or not they have the experience necessary to "win" in that arena (as with networked gameplay, Microsoft's Xbox Live has a huge jump on PSN and generally executes much better with a more coherent experience, December's issues not withstanding). Sony might "win" with Blu-Ray, but they're going to have to really scramble to get into online distribution.
If your system is constantly creating restore points, you're doing something wrong and disabling system restore isn't going to fix that. Volume Shadow Copy service is really only used when a system restore snapshot is being taken or you kicked off a backup (either manually or through a scheduled task), so turning off VSS isn't really going to buy you much.
Indexing is a different issue entirely. You can certainly turn it off, but then you significantly cripple the search functionality available everywhere in Vista (for example, I've come to totally rely on the Start Menu's search function). If you do find that indexing is causing you problems, you can tweak a number of indexing settings, including which folders to watch for indexing. Changing watch locations is a bit of a judgement call. On the one hand, if you have a folder with documents that change often and thus kick off indexing, you might want to stop watching that folder for performance reasons. On the other hand, if the documents change often they're obviously important and so you might want to keep them indexed for quicker search access.
While I will agree that disabling indexing will definitely help performance in limited scenarios, at least for me the functionality of having it enabled completely outweighs what minor performance hit I take when it decides it needs to update the index. At least in my case it's been smart about when it starts (never had indexing run in the middle of a game or while on battery power, for example).
For what it's worth, I agree with you. On the other hand, that's what Microsoft uses to refer to the various versions of a product (they seem to alternate between "SKU" and "Edition" with no rhyme or reason why one word is used over the other), so that's what I used to refer to them. I don't like it, but at least it's not as horribly misused as phrases like "begs the question" (at least "SKU" in this context could potentially be referring to a real Stock Keeping Unit).
Also, your examples aren't quite right. You're referring to instances of a bag of chips or a glass of lemonade, while the Windows Server SKU references are to types of items that can be sold. A better example might be, "I prefer the yellow lemonade SKU over the pink lemonade." Still just as silly, but at least now it's correct :).
That's not exactly a fair comparison. While Windows Server 2008 is the same codebase as Windows Vista, it's not "just" the server version of Vista. By that same rationale, Windows Server 2003 was "just" the server version of Windows XP. However Windows Server 2003 had different SKUs than XP with different licensing models, and you can expect that Windows Server 2008 will be the same. Windows Server 2008 SKUs are much more inline with what is available for 2003 (though the total number is higher due to the duplication of editions for "without Hyper-V" versions). For the Server product, differentiation is more about licensing than features (the only feature difference between Standard, Enterprise, and Data Center is the lack of clustering in Standard).
Huh? The Xbox 360 already does that. The only "problem" is that Netflix doesn't actually have downloadable movies. They stream, and you can't stream a stream from your PC to your 360. This would be a perfect opportunity for Microsoft to partner with Netflix and give access to Netflix streaming videos based on your Netflix subscription (possibly using Netflix's current model of 1 hour of online video per $1 you pay for your physical DVD subscription, so a larger subscription like 4-out or 5-out will give you more online video time as well).
I'm not going to hold my breath, but Xbox 360 + Netflix content would be the home media holy grail.
I'm not sure I'd call that "DRM". I guess it's fair enough to use "DRM" as a generic term, but the lack of third-party access isn't exactly "Digital Rights Management".
Evil, evil cell phone user! The inability to touch-type on the keypad is a feature, keeping idiots from trying to dial on cell phones while driving. Now if only it took more than one touch to answer, to keep people from answering calls while driving ...
Personally, I don't care about that. The integrated storage (4GB or 8GB) is more than enough for what I need, so I don't see any reason to have removable storage. Since it's easy enough to sync stuff to or from the phone (unlike my old RAZR, great phone but piece of crap Motorola software), adding a card reader would've just increased the bulk of the phone and an unsexy hole on the side.
While the connector is proprietary, it's not exactly uncommon. It's simply an iPod connector, which you can pick up just about anywhere. The other end of the cable is USB, and it comes with a nice little USB-to-mains brick for charging from a wall socket.
I do agree with you on the other points. 3G and a user-replaceable battery would be nice. I'm hoping for IM apps to show up once the SDK is released early next year (I could hack the phone, but I really don't care enough to bother).
Safari on the iPhone can't upload or download files, and I don't believe jailbreaking your phone changes that (I could be wrong, I haven't hacked my phone). If you could get around the cert upload issue (perhaps build a proxy that acts as a middleman? Not sure how possible that would be), the rest will work just fine, including viewing PDFs. Aside from upload/download issues and Safari-specific issues, the only other important things missing in the iPhone Safari implementation are Java and Flash. Personally, I view that as a good thing, as missing Flash support on a high-profile item like the iPhone might prompt web developers to get away from Flash-only interfaces (or at even build pages specific for iPhone, like Google does).
Not quite a chip, but yes.
To take your car analogy one step further, once you've done your hybrid/biofuel conversion, you're probably not going to take it back to the dealer for work. Similarly, once you've unlocked your iPhone, you should be wary of upgrading the firmware. Just as it would be dumb to ask your dealer to reflash your ECU back to stock and "brick" your car, it would be just as dumb to update your iPhone firmware back to stock and "brick" your iPhone.
Funny. Microsoft allows complete and open access to their Windows Mobile OS (whether or not you can load your apps onto the phone is left to the decision of the carriers). In fact they even opened the source for the OS (okay, it's a Shared Source license, and it requires having an officially licensed version of Windows Embedded CE 6.0, but the source code is all there if you want to modify it while building a new device of your own). I think this is a case where you want Apple to act more like Microsoft rather than less.
On the other hand, I'm an iPhone user. I spent a fair amount of time playing with Windows CE in the past, and while I like the system I was not a fan of any of the current phones using it today. So I bought an iPhone, and I like it. The current lack of an SDK isn't slowing me down, since I probably wouldn't write any iPhone apps anyway (as much as I'd like to think I would, I know that I'd just dabble a bit and never actually finish anything). Sure, there are some things that are missing (GPS, full Exchange connectivity, an IM app), but I can live without those at least for now.
Your mistake was going on launch day. I bought in November, well after the price drop and demand had waned. I walked right into the AT&T store, had my choice of three different cashiers, paid for my iPhone, and walked out.
As long as the DMD can last 5-6 years (which shouldn't be a problem), that's fine with me. My TV upgrade cycle is about that long, so what do I care if DMDs will fail after 10 years of use? Also, dead pixels on a DMD are just like dead pixels on an LCD. How they die determines what type of dead pixel you get. If the pixel dies "closed", you get a dark pixel. If it dies "open", you get a bright pixel. The only thing you won't get is colored pixel death. Also, my 2 year old 50" DLP has 0 dead pixels, while my 2.5 year old 17" laptop LCD has a number of dead pixels cropping up around the edges (a few more and it'll be time to buy a new laptop).
That's the risk you take when you use phosphor-based technology (plasma TVs still use phosphors to emit colored light, just like a CRT; the difference is in the excitation model). As far as I'm concerned, I'm done with phosphor-based technology. That includes SED, if it ever materializes.
It depends on your criteria. LCDs have the worst picture quality and contrast of all of the technologies. Black level is horrible. LCDs also are very prone to dead pixels, especially at larger sizes. Cold cathode backlights have a relatively low half-life (on the order of ~5 years to half-brightness), though that is being solved with LED backlights. For my TV dollar, DLP is the way to go. The DMD is reliable enough for medium-term use (none of these TVs are going to last 20-30 years like your parents' old CRT), the price is great, and being front- or rear-projection allows for more flexible sizes. The downsides (rainbow effect, viewing angle, extra cabinet depth) at least for me are completely outweighed by the upsides. When I upgrade again in ~3 years, I fully expect I'll get another DLP.
That's why I bought my iPhone from an AT&T Wireless store rather than going to the local Apple store. I knew what I wanted, and I wanted to be in and out as quickly as possible. I didn't want to deal with stuck-up attitudes and the feigned shock of using my iPhone on *gasp!* Windows. I didn't need a pile of accessories, lessons on how to use the phone, or a MacBook to go along with it. I wanted the phone and nothing more, so I bought it from a phone store. Easy, simple, and no dealing with "better than thou" attitudes.
If I were a motorcycle cop, I would not want to be involved in any high-speed chases. You want to be safe within a cage for that type of work.
On the other hand, it seems silly to replace motorcycles (already quite fuel-efficient due to their light weight) while leaving gas-guzzling cars and SUVs in the fleet. Why not replace all patrol cars with hybrids? They can run on battery around town, and switch over to ICE for the high-speed chases (obviously you'd want something beefier than a Prius).
I'd actually recommend against getting GT3 or GT4, or at least get them along with FM2.
When I'm redirecting, it's either because I don't want a linker killing my bandwidth limit and costing me money (why I'll block sites like myspace), or because I dislike the source of the link (why I'll block sites like myspace :). In the former case, it'd be best to just redirect to a 404 or if you're feeling gracious a thumbnail of the actual image, but I've really not run into many high-volume hotlinking situations. In the latter case, I'm redirecting to gross/obscene stuff in part because I dislike the source, but also because I'm teaching a lesson about linking. If a kid comes by, that's not my problem -- you're looking at somebody else's site, and they're the ones who'll take a beating for violating TOUs and such ("no porn" policies, for example).
This is probably a matter of semantics, but I see it as protecting services which cost me money (bandwidth) and/or protecting my own sensibilities. Then again, I really don't have much people link (the top three are a photochop I did of the Amelie DVD box with Mr. Bean's face in place of Audrey Tautau's, a picture of my cat when he was a kitten, and pictures of my truck), and I'm not really sure I'd consider any of that "intellectual property". If someone wants to copy my images and host them somewhere else, they're perfectly free to do so. I just don't want them leeching my bandwidth that costs me real money.
Exactly! :)
And all the people who lost their shirts in the DotCom bubble burst were screwed over by Wall Street snake oil salespeople?
The housing bubble is just another manifestation of the same problem as the DotCom bubble -- uneducated people trying to make a buck on the "hot new thing", and then crying when the market cycles (as markets ALWAYS do). Day traders were the hardest-hit in the DotCom bubble (properly managed mutual funds weren't really affected, and all of the IPO millionaires never had the money to begin with), but in some respects they caused it as well, by being much more reactionary to market swings than a seasoned professional. In the same vein, house flippers and overnight real estate agents caused the exact same problem in the housing market.
We've since returned to some state of normalcy in tech stocks (Bubble 2.0 is going at a much more maintainable pace), and we will return to normalcy in the housing market as well in a few years (maybe as much as a decade). Some people will have made fortunes through timing and proper information. Others will have lost everything, but so it goes. The moral of the story? By the time something has become the "hot new thing" sweeping the country, it's too late for you to jump in. WTF were people thinking buying $200K houses for $600K? Can't you tell that the house is horribly overvalued? I got a great deal on my own home back in 2003 (bought it for ~$40K under list, with a proper mortgage), and even it has at least doubled in value on paper since them. The only thing that does for me is screw my tax payments, but when this bubble has finally popped I'll be in a good position and my taxes will drop drastically.
Let the States deal with bailouts as they choose, with State money, then. I see no reason why I should bail out a homeowner in CA with money I made in WA. If the States in trouble can't handle the bailout on their own, then I question their own fiscal responsibility (WTF have they done with the insane property tax revenue they've collected on over-inflated home values?).
The mistake many people make is that those of us complaining about the Federal government want no government at all. That's simply not true. What we want is power situated as locally as possible. Whether that's the city, county, or state level depends on the issue, but there's very little that the federal government should own (interstate travel infrastructure, crimes crossing state borders, federal government property, and armed forces for national protection is about it, IMHO).
If you are going to dip into the egg nog, at least do it right. Drinking that pre-made swill is not recommended.
Meh. It's easy enough to simply redirect offending hotlinkers to obscene pictures. Imagine the ad revenue hit when that blog linking your picture of a butterfly suddenly starts displaying a penis or poop instead. And since you're redirecting, the bandwidth cost on your site is minimal (push it to somebody else, who can then redirect as they please). If you want to be nice about it, create a 1x1 transparent gif and redirect to that instead. Or better yet, spread around the redirection so that you're not giving massive traffic to any one site yet you still get the full effect of hurting people you don't want hotlinking your stuff.
Just one note: I have no problem with linking in general, and I'm not a fan of blanket "no-linking" policies that many sites have. While I've been known to redirect image links on occasion, I do so in response to specific links that I don't like (for example, somebody linking an image on my site as a myspace background) and will target redirection to just that item and site. Of course if I don't like you linking my stuff, you're going to get something extremely gross in exchange, and you're probably not even going to know it unless you visit your site every single day (and even then, caching may keep you from seeing that I broke your link while your visiters get an eyeful of gaping hole ...).
Human nature is to do what's best for yourself and possibly your family. Using the jar of pickles analogy and assuming a rational market and a hands-off government, the cost of buying that imported jar of pickles is pretty much $3, while the cost of the non-imported is still $3.50. You could argue that buying the $3 pickles will lead to job losses, which will lead to more people on social welfare, which will lead to higher taxes and possibly higher crime, but from the point of view of the consumer in a rational world and who doesn't work in a pickle factory or as a cucumber farmer the true price of the pickles really doesn't change.
The CFL vs. incandescent costs are trickier. From a pure point-of-sale view, CFLs are quite a bit more expensive (why buy one CFL when I can buy a pack of incadescents for less?). When you take a longer view, it's still not clear that CFL bulbs are any cheaper. They're more efficient, but they still have to be replaced eventually. They're more expensive up front, so you're banking on getting more life out of the CFL than you would for the equivalent amount of incandescents. Then there's the backend costs. CFLs are much more expensive to dispose properly, which may or may not balance out the cost required to clean up the higher pollution caused by incandescents' use of more energy (assuming a fossil fuel energy service, rather than wind, hydro, or nuclear). I've not seen any studies that show the true total cost of either, so as a consumer I look at the package price plus my expectation of CFL life* to determine whether I buy CFLs or incandescents.
* Actually, that's not quite true in my case. I do use CFLs for a few lights, but the majority of the lighting energy in my home is spent around electronic equipment controlled by IR remotes. I've found that CFLs (at least the few I've tried) emit a massive amount of IR noise that causes interference with remote control operations. As such, I've leaned mostly towards halogen lamps and incadescent bulbs rather than CFLs. The energy savings of switching to CFLs (maybe a couple dollars a month on my energy bill) is not worth the IR noise problems, at least for me. And that's why I choose not to use CFLs everywhere.
It seems to me that the non-"educated, thoughtful consumers" in our free market have a different value system than you do. You look at that jar of Wal*Mart pickles and see lost jobs, so you buy the local jar instead for more money. The rest of the consumers act exactly as economics predicts -- they look at the price ($3 is less than $3.50), they look at the elasticity of the product (a pickle is a pickle, whether it's from China, Mexico, or California), and they act. In this case, economics dictates that people will tend to buy the $3 Wal*Mart pickle because it's the lowest price for a highly elastic good.
I would argue that this is where our lack of "educated, thougthful" citizens actually matters. The same people who are capable of operating optimally in a free market (because the free market was designed around true, rational human behavior) fall apart when dealing with politics (because politics revolves around idealized concepts of human nature that aren't in the least bit true). This is why you can have people voting in xenophobic candidates (stop illegal immigration, stop out-sourcing of jobs overseas, etc) who then turn right around and buy imported goods from the likes of Wal*Mart. Which is the correct behavior? Neither, because "correct" is not the right word. The "natural" behavior is the latter, because price will always be the biggest factor in any economics, to the point where most everything else just factors out. The former is a mix of gullibility and wishful thinking.
From the perspective of the market? Yes, it worked out exactly as designed. The market is correcting itself. It's unfortunate that so many people will lose their homes in the process, but that's how the free market works.
I did play the Bladestorm demo a while ago, and it left me with the distinct impression of "DW clone". Yes, there's a bit of a new gameplay component, but it's really nothing new. Basically Bladestorm is what you'd get if you mixed the Kingdom Under Fire (KUF has you controlling squads rather than just your individual hero) games with Full Spectrum Warrior (where you play the game by issuing orders, and the AI carries out those orders without your intervention). So yeah, "Bladestorm is just KUF mixed with FSW, yawn".
And I argue that just because a game isn't different from one you've already played doesn't mean it's not a good game. That's especially true with sequels. Halo 3 isn't substantially different than Halo 2 in gameplay, but it was worth playing for the story, at least for me. Even non-sequels aren't necessarily going to be "new", depending on how you define new. For example, Assassin's Creed == Prince of Persia + Grand Theft Auto. Nothing really new there, right? Yet it was still worth playing through (for me, it was short enough that the main "repetitive" complaint didn't really have time to factor into it).
Oh yeah, meant to add this to my last post.
You're holding up Bladestorm as a model of uniqueness? It's just fucking Dynasty Warriors set in Europe rather than China (or Japan, like Samurai Warriors). It's got a few new gameplay mechanics, but so do most of the other titles you derided.
If you like Bladestorm, great. More power to you, it's great that you found a game you can like. It's just a little hypocritical to claim that many of the other games are not worth your time because they're just the same old thing you've already played, but Bladestorm's not. Choose not to play Halo, Metroid, Mario, etc because you don't enjoy the games, or you have no interest in the story, or even because you're too "1337" to play the same games as us plebs (though in that case I'd expect you to extoll the virtues of indie developers, which so far you haven't). But stop claiming that you only like stuff that's "new" when it's patently obvious that's not true.