The start.com guys are doing some neat stuff, not just with the pages they're building but also with their development methods (neat for a huge corporation like MSFT, anyway). They've only been doing the start.com thing for a few months now, not years.
The difference is unlike Sony which keeps enforcing the PSP lockdown through bios updates, the GP32 and this new system are designed to make homebrew and emulation easy.
And also unlike Sony, this will never have official support from developers that create games that sell systems (Square, Rockstar, Capcom, etc). It's all well and good that it caters to the homebrew developer, but that's a very tiny market at best. However, just because they're not trying to compete with the PSP or DS doesn't mean they can't try to get commercial developers interested in the platform. The GBA is still going strong on 2D games, so it's not like there's no audience out there.
Seriously, though. Where are the games? The article covers the hardware, which sounds pretty neat, but the only mention about games is that an SDK will be provided (duh), and it can run emulators (neat, but where's the money in this?). A handheld gaming device needs games, preferably professionally designed and developed (please, no Tux Racer).
please recall that few world-wide households have HDTV - less than 1%
Care to cite your source? Anyway, "worldwide" numbers aren't important. What is important is the growth rate in target markets -- US, Japan, and Europe (Australia's in there somewhere, too). For the US, HDTV adoption doubled to 7% in 2004, and I see no reason to expect that not to continue (source). More importantly, 14% of households with income over $75,000 have HDTVs (same source), which is also the same market segment that includes bleeding-edge early adopters (the people who'll be lining up to buy a 360 at launch).
Then again, if you want to make up statistics, based on my surveys I've decided that HDTV adoption in the US is > 90% (survey sample consists of my friends, most of whom own an HDTV, dd5.1 or 7.1 surround system, broadband, etc).
And about zero percent have HD-DVD discs.
How many HD-DVD movies have been released? I don't know but I'd assume it's very few, if any. In other words, this argument is a red herring. Besides, owning media doesn't drive hardware adoption (availability of media is a different matter). Nobody went out and bought a bunch of DVDs and then thought to themselves, "Wow. Now I need a DVD player. Should've thought of that before." No, what happened with DVDs was that devices like the PS2 and many PCs shipped with DVD players built-in, giving people a reason to then go out and buy movies. The same thing could happen here to drive HD-DVD adoption (or alternatively, Blu-Ray DVD adoption).
Microsoft is playing second fiddle now, and it's XBox division WILL die if it doesn't improve its very disappointing numbers.
Maybe, but on what timeline? Microsoft takes a very long-term view on projects (they can afford to). Look how long it took MSN to be profitable (~10 years? MSN launched in 95,and didn't start making a profit until 2004, IIRC). More importantly, Microsoft has other unprofitable projects in less important markets that they would kill off first if they really needed to start cutting off unprofitable projects. Besides, not going with HD-DVD is a way to keep costs down (Sony will take a huge hit per unit on cost if they really do ship with Blu-Ray, which I doubt they'll actually end up doing). Anyway, I wouldn't expect the hammer to come down on Xbox for unprofitability any time soon.
Microsoft requires the advantage of delivering significantly before Sony. If it means that HD-DVD comes in as an upgrade, so be it.
Reading the quotes others have posted (paraphrasing, "We're looking at incorporating HD-DVD into an Xbox release in the future"), I read those to mean, "The next-next generation will have HD-DVD if we can't do it by launch." Microsoft understands the importance of a standardized hardware platform for a console (even though the 360 was rumored to ship without a hard drive, Microsoft was smart enough to decide against doing so). Peripherals don't sell anywhere near as much as consoles (which is why light gun games have all but died out since the NES, when consoles stopped shipping with a gun in the box), and can't be relied upon (how many games on the PS2 can even use the optional hard drive? Two?). If Microsoft were to later ship an upgraded 360 with HD-DVD support, don't expect any games to actually use that format (game developers aren't stupid, and they won't artificially limit their potential market; well, with the exception of Capcom's team that did Steel Battallion). And that's assuming Microsoft even let's game developers ship games on HD-DVDs (I could see an upgrade being available to play HD-DVD movies, similar to the DVD movie dongle and remote you can buy for Xbox 1, or the multi-function machines in Japan based off of the Gamecube and PS2).
What's wrong with the review? I don't know. I couldn't bring myself to read through it. But from looking at the presentation and skimming the article, it sucks. Why?
7 pages? WTF? Was that really necessary? Combine several pages (especially page 1 which only has two paragraphs) or at least provide a printer-friendly version.
Photographs for screenshots? Weak. Maybe that's fine for cases where you can't really get a screenshot (during installation, though you could've run an installation through Virtual PC or VMWare to get screenshots), but after that you can easily take normal screenshots. In fact, the images are a mishmash of screenshots and photographs. Why would you take a photo of the Linspire Control Center (for example) when you could take a screenshot?
Horrible conclusion. If you're going to give a pro/con list, you should explain it in your conclusion. You say that Linspire is "not as performance oriented as others", or "lacks important features"? What are they? I saw nothing about either of those two problems in the conclusion, and I really don't feel like going back through six other pages looking for the one sentence where you explained what you meant by "lacks important features".
Grammar. "These lax requirements is what allows Linspire (and other Linux distros)..." wtf? "Requirements" is plural, so you need to match that with your verb ("are" instead of "is").
No explanation of system requirements. What is a "Linspire-compatbile sound card" or a "Linspire-compatbile... modem, cable modem, or DSL modem"? If Linspire has a compat list, link to it. If they don't, why not do a bit of research and provide a nice list for users?
Still too much focus on installation, and praise for stupid crap. Linspire uses a GUI installer, making it appear more friendly? Woo! Distros have been doing this for years! Installation is pretty much a solved problem as far as I'm concerned (even Debian is supposedly getting a better installer some time). Besides that, though, the installer still doesn't appear to make partitioning any easier (whether it should or not is not the question here). The review chooses to go through the Advanced installation option, but never touches on the most difficult part. If everybody simply had their partitions magically configured like the reviewers, I'm sure nobody would ever be confused by partitioning.
Credit to the GROWTH of the industry? I, and a lot of people, would argue that it's indicative of the downfall of the industry.
And here I just thought Zonk was trying to be a pretentious yap. "Look at me! I'm reviewing a game, and unlike all of those other reviewers, I'll tell you that it's fun!"
Think about it. Would you want to read a review that consisted of two words? "It's fun." The end. Woo! I'm going to go buy it now! Reviews are one resource used to decide whether or not you're going to buy a game. I want a review that tells me what's good about the game ("It's fun" is a start, but I want to know why the reviewer thinks it's fun -- I may have a different perspective than the reviewer, so if I know where the reviewer is coming from I can judge better). More than that, I want to know what's bad about the game. When I'm spending $30-60 on a game, I want to know what I'm getting into. I'll read reviews and talk to friends. Applying those to my own preferences (eg, I like racing games and shooters, not so much RTS or puzzles), I will end up in one of three states: "Will buy it", "won't buy it", and "need to rent it or borrow from a friend to make up my mind". If reviewers only spouted off "It's fun", I'd end up in the third case way too often for my liking. (Note that I'm not saying I base my buying decisions solely on reviews. I use them as a source of information, nothing more, and generally will gather reviews from multiple sources by using a site like GameRankings.com to get an aggregated score and multiple review perspectives.)
There's a reason why reviewers don't boil down a review to "It's fun" or "It's not fun" -- they'd be out of a job, because nobody would bother reading their reviews. You can attack the reviewing industry for taking payola, or for giving generous scores (how many times have you seen a review where the text of the review makes it sound like the game should've actually scored 2-3 points lower than it did?), but attacking it because they don't summarize with, "It's fun"? That's just silly.
Anyway, I'm begging here: Can't we please have a Roland Piquepaille section so we can filter this stuff out? I'm not saying anything negative. I'm sure he's a wonderful guy and has a tremendous singing voice. I just don't want to read his blog.
The Slashdot editors are slow (in more ways than one). Do it yourself (requires Greasemonkey for Firefox or Turnabout for IE (be sure to get the advanced installer so you can add new scripts), and may be compatible with Opera 8).
And yes, I use my own script. I just decided to slum it and pimp my crap:)
In other words, to fix a barely-annoying problem with LCD displays they're willing to get rid of one of the greatest benefits. I'd rather deal with ghosting than have to go back to the days of CRT eyestrain.
They said the EXACT same thing when Windows XP was on the horizon. They wanted to eliminate reboots after application installs and the like, and guess what... I don't think it really worked. I swear pretty much every time I install some app or another, it asks me to reboot the system, ESPECIALLY MS apps such as their own AntiSpyware, Visual Studio, etc. and every time they release some security update (on a nearly weekly basis) I *still* need to reboot. Drives me nuts, especially since I tend to have a many-windowed workspace open for many days at a time (or would, if it wasn't for their damn reboots!).
A lot of those reboots are ignorable. For example, I have no idea why AntiSpyware needs a reboot, so I told it I'll reboot "later" (as in, maybe a few weeks from now) and it's still running just fine. I don't recall Visual Studio ever asking me to reboot. Security updates may make sense, as you could be updating system components that will force a reboot (hey, if you have to update X in Linux, you have to stop and restart X; if you have to update the kernel, you have to reboot). For pretty much anything else besides drivers, and especially third party software, there's absolutely no reason an application install or uninstall should require a reboot, and thus I'll ignore your installer when it prompts me. If your app can't run without a reboot, I'm not going to use it.
Windows XP introduces a little bit of the flashy new UI - the start menu fades in for example.
Alpha blending (or "layered windows", as Microsoft calls it) was introduced in Win2k, along with all of the fancy effects (fading menus, tooltips, etc). XP's biggest "lickable" contribution was the built-in theming engine (that was neutered out of the box by only allowing Microsoft-signed themes, but was quickly hacked when XP was still only in beta).
I could really care less about fewer reboots - I only reboot my windows xp machine once every month anyways, so I could care less. In terms of installing windows, a reboot on my 3ghz machine takes no time at all, so once again, I can care less.
If you could care less, that means that you do care somewhat. Otherwise, you couldn't care less. So I guess you do care. Anyway, the time cost of a reboot is not measured from when you click "Reboot" to the time the login screen comes back up. It's measured from when you're warned that a reboot needs to happen and so you have to stop working, to the time you've logged back in, started up all your apps, gotten back to the point in the code or document where you were before you had to reboot, and context switched back into "work mode". Context switches are expensive for computers, and they're much more expensive for people. Reboots cause you to lose more work than the time it takes the PC to get back to the login screen.
It'd be cool to watch a dvd without turning on my laptop
I almost agreed with you about the laptop stuff being useless until you added this. I have a nice laptop, but playing DVDs on it is the last thing I want to do. When I'm using my laptop I'm working or playing. When I'm watching a DVD, I'm in my home theater area (if you can call a 4 year old HDTV, cheap 5.1 setup, and 4 year old progressive scan DVD player a "home theater"). If I do want to run a DVD on my laptop, chances are I want to do other stuff as well. If you're buying a laptop to be a dedicated DVD machine, why not spend $200 on a portable DVD player rather than $1200 on a laptop?
A new UI? I could really care less. Indigo doesn't really add anything different to the OS experience. There have been programs to add transparency out for windows for a while and if I really wanted transparency I could have done it. I really could care less about it.
There you go, caring again. But you're wrong anyway. First, Aero (the new UI) is not mandatory (just as Luna, the XP UI was not mandatory -- you could still use Classic). Second, Avalon, not Indigo, is the updated presentation layer (Indigo is some networking thing). Third, it's not just about the transparency. It's about hardware acceleration using your idle 3D accelerator, and using vector graphics to have good looking, well-scaling graphics and images.
Icon previews? Are they really that important? 90% of the time you know what file you want and you don't need a little preview icon to show you its contents
I'll buy this argument. Two Word documents, or even a text file and a Word document, look pretty much identical at 32x32 or 64x64 (and I really don't want 128x128 or 256x256 icons).
The same goes for searching. I'd rather have my files in an organized manner and not in some random "virtual directory structure." Sure I could use the search tool to find the file for me, but what if I've completely forgotten the file name or a a few words in the file, but I do know that it's a file from my history class that I took junior year. Sure I could search by date but it'd be much easier if I had organized all my files in terms of "My Documents -> School work -> Junior Year -> History 101 -> some_file.doc." (which I currently do).
I don't know if this was in the US or the UK, but I remember hearing of someone who went into traffic court to fight a ticket and challanged the equipment. Seems that, with a hand-held radar gun, moving the hand while pulling the trigger can add (and probably also could subtract) some mph from the reading. Right there in the court room, the defendant clocked the judge's bench as moving at about 20mph...
Not RADAR, LIDAR. RADAR measures direct velocity. LIDAR measures distance over time and infers velocity. The possibly-apocryphal story you're referring to is a guy who challenged the legality of LIDAR (in a jurisdiction where it had not yet been challenged) and won by showing the that with a slight jerk of his hand he could register a couple mph off of the judge's desk. It wasn't anything as insane as 20mph, but it was enough to throw the accuracy of the gun into doubt when coupled with the distance at which it's used and the difficulty of using it well (as I've mentioned elsewhere, you really do need to be a qualified sharpshooter to successfully use LIDAR because of a) the length of time you need to hold a lock, b) the small diameter of the laser even after several thousand feet, and c) the small optimum target area on a car that's properly reflective -- the headlights and the front license plate). BTW, this is also why LIDAR must be used from a stationary position while RADAR can be and is often used on the move. RADAR's only limitation is the angle of attack. You can't get a solid reading perdendicular to a vehicle's direction of travel. Head-on or from-behind is fine.
Also, definitely in the UK, my father was once pulled over for speeding. Unfortunately for the cop, he'd been concealed behind a fence or tree or something, and that's not allowed in the UK - an officer at a "speed trap" must be fully visible. My father explained this to the cop in some detail. I don't know if he still got the ticket, but he *did* describe the incident to the county Chief Constable and suggested that his men needed some training. Stepping from concealment while holding something similar to a handgun, and pointing said weapon at passing cars in the regulation two-handed firing stance, was likely to cause a reduction in the police force by at least one man, because my father would certainly attempt to run him down.
That's standard in the states as well. However, I wouldn't have bothered talking to the cop (you just give him the chance to trump up some other stupid charge), and save it for court. Cops in most states also aren't allowed to clock from private property, though that doesn't stop them (a cop used to sit inside the entrance driveway to my old apartment complex quite often, even though it was private land and not a valid place to clock speeders). Similarly, they can't "poach" bars by staking out the parking lots looking for DUIs.
In court, the lawyer pointed out that the cop had not used a radar detector, but rather used his cruiser to pace my teacher. Once this was out, he pointed out the the cop had not had his speedometer certified within 30 days prior to the ticket, so the case was thrown out.
That's a valid method -- the lawyer attacked the state of the equipment. The grand-parent's post sounds like myth, because he attacked the legality of radar as evidence. Such a case would set a precedence, and that jurisdiction would never be able to use radar guns again. Since I don't know of any place where that's the case (there are a number of jurisdictions where LIDAR is not considered legal evidence), I'd say his story is BS. Never mind the fact that it's a well-known fact that radar doesn't register well from a perpendicular angle, and thus cops don't use it that way. I think if you're going to argue that angle, you'd have to be able to prove that the cop was never at such an angle (something like a 30 degree arc directly in front of or behind the vehicle) to gather an accurate reading, which will be damn near impossible.
Here's another strategy: In other states, when you are pulled over you can demand to see the numbers on the radar readout. Often they'll have a lower number since they also clocked you after you hit the brakes. If you request to see the radar display, and the officer refuses, tehre's a way to get the ticket thrown out.
Urban legend, and more importantly you have no legal right to see the radar. Skip it. Besides, they're going to lock the reading on whatever it was when they decided to pull you over. If you were braking at that time, it must've still been high enough for them to justify a stop. If the cop didn't lock the reading, he's an idiot and you can petition his ticketing records during discovery, but you're not going to get anything by asking to see the radar display. All this will accomplish is making the cop nervous. Exiting your vehicle is a big no-no unless requested by the cop, and even then it makes them nervous. I was once asked to exit my vehicle and proceed to the rear because the dumb cop had never seen a retractable spoiler before. He thought my car was broken and wanted to show me the problem. His hand was on his gun holster the entire time I was out of the car, even though I was entirely non-threatening. By exiting the car or otherwise giving the cop a hard time (saying anything other than "yes, sir" and "no, sir", telling him you'll see him in court, etc) will do nothing but erase any possible chance you had for getting off with a warning. He doesn't need to know that you're pissed off, and that you're going to fight the ticket. Let him find that out when he's subpeonaed for court.
If your name is misspelled on the ticket, or anything is wrong about it, such as the street number, or statute number, etc. you can request for the ticket to be dismissed because the citation contains "procedural errors."
Another urban legend. Name misspellings, hair color differences (within reason -- if you're a dark blonde and they marked brunette, it's not going to fly -- if you have bright pink hair and they marked it as black, then maybe you have a shot), address typos, etc, are not enough to get the ticket thrown. You need something major, like they wrote down a street that's blocks away from where the stop happened, or they listed your vehicle as a Chevy Suburban when you're obviously driving a Mini. Unless something is significantly wrong, don't bother. You'll just get laughed at, and your credibility will suffer.
On your court date, you can talk to the county attorney or prosecutor, and strike a deal. Pay a court fee equal to the fine, but have the charges stayed for 12 months and if you have no similar offenses during that time, the chartges get dismissed. They do this quite often, especially if your record is relatively clear.
They do this so often that most states have a name for it -- deferment (I probably butchered the spelling). It's law, and you can ask for it any time you like. However, you need to know your state's laws, because most (all?) of them only allow you to defer one ticket every 7 years. Deferment is a very last resort if there's nothing else you can do. It's absolutely not your first option. Also keep in mind that if you do get another infraction during the deferred period (which could last up to 2 years in some states), the previous offense comes back as a guilty (and in some states, it may not matter whether or not you're convicted of the new offense, which is why you need to know the law).
Now here's my favorite. In many states, including MN, the basic speed law is "Safe and Reasonable." There is nothing in the statutes which says you must be obeying the posted "speed limits." Those posted signs are actually just guidelines to help you get an idea of what a good speed might be.
If on your court date, you say something like, "Yes your honor, I was driving 65 mph on
I wouldn't bother using these lines on a police officer when they've pulled you over, but it's worth trying the line about calibrating the radar gun in court.
You can't just ask him that in open court. At best the judge will grant a continuance for the officer to gather the calibration records (continuances can and do happen in traffic cases -- I had a case continued for over two years, and it was nothing more than a 10-over ticket). At worst the judge will deem it irrelevant and you'll have to continue with a different line of questioning. If you're going to attack the equipment or the officer's training, you need to file for discovery. And when you do file for discovery, try to get anything you could possibly think of -- radar gun manuals or LIDAR gun manuals, calibration records for the device or spedometer (you may have been paced -- your ticket will tell you the method of speed measurement), the officer's sharpshooter training and record (very relevant if you're up against LIDAR), the officer's ticketing history, etc. Also, you need to do some research to know what you can and can't attack. For example, LIDAR is a highly suspect speed measurment mechanism (it measures distance over time, so hand movement such as shaking from too much coffee can effectively measure two different objects over a period of time -- say, a stop sign and a moving car), but if it's accepted evidence in your state based on court ruling, you're not going to be able to petition to exclude LIDAR readings based on the unsound design. At that point, you can question whether it was properly calibrated, if the officer knew how to use it (training records), or if the officer was a qualified sharpshooter (because using LIDAR effectively is just as difficult as sniping, if not more so), but you can't question whether or not it was legal to use LIDAR at all.
There's a reason why there are lawyers who specialize in traffic law, and it's not to screw you over. Fees are reasonable (usually in the $200-$300 range, which could be in the fine range for a ticket if you get caught doing something like 85 in a 60), and they know all of the local laws and loopholes. More importantly, they know the judges, DAs, and clerks, and may be able to barter a deal you'd never have any chance to get on your own. Find a good one, and you'll never have to worry about losing a traffic case again.
Of course, that brings up the question of why you continue to speed in the first place. All I can say is, consider that "going with the flow of traffic" when that traffic is over the speed limit is illegal, but going the speed limit when everybody else is going 10-15 mph is also illegal (you're a road hazard). Add to that a unique, eye-catching car that looks and sounds like it's doing 50mph when it's only doing 25mph and you'll find that the deck is pretty much stacked against you.
Not so obvious to me. I though GM was a kind of filter for how the page was displayed. I don't see why it should alter anything outside the browser display or why it should respond to external scripts.
Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to write scripts that alter the web pages you visit. You can use it to make a web site more readable or more usable. You can fix rendering bugs that the site owner can't be bothered to fix themselves. You can alter pages so they work better with assistive technologies that speak a web page out loud or convert it to Braille. You can even automatically retrieve data from other sites to make two sites more interconnected.
Greasemonkey does this by injecting scripts that exist on the client machine into the page as it's loading (a bit more complicated than that, but that'll do). These scripts can't be automatically installed by a bad website, so you shouldn't be concerned that you'll suddenly have spyware user scripts installed without your knowledge. The problem here is that GM exposes a few functions for script authors (a simplified interface to XMLHttpRequest, a logging function, persistent data storage and retrieval per script, etc). Due to how the scripts are injected into the page, these functions need to be visible to all scripts on a page. That means that a malicious web author could add script code to his page to check if a GM_* function is defined, and then do nasty stuff with it (especially GM_xmlhttpRequest, because it allows cross-domain access). If you don't have GM installed, you'd never know the malicious page was trying to do something bad. If you do have GM installed, you probably still wouldn't know the page was being bad, but you'd be hurt by it anyway. Exposure of these scripts to all scripts on the page and not just the inserted GM scripts is the flaw.
2. Script-specific configuration values. I don't think these are commonly used, but they could be nice to have. Oh well, chances are your scripts will keep working.
If your scripts rely on GM_[set|get]Value, they won't work. The scripts may still run, but what value will they have? For example, I have a script that is only useful in the presence of GM_*Value and GM_xmlhttpRequest. Without that functionality, my script will add a useless bar to the page and never populate it with any data.
4. Fancy GM_XmlHttpRequest. This is just like XmlHttpRequest but without domain restrictions. This may cause a few extensions to stop working (not many, but a few), but it also closes the security hole.
It also breaks one of the biggest features of GM -- the ability to pull data from other sites and integrate it into the current page. Scripts like Book Burro are now completely useless. Security is important, and it is the right thing to do to remove this functionality while the GM folks look for a better fix, but it does make GM much less attractive (you're pretty much left with page cleanup scripts now that you can't pull data from other sites).
Any idea why all of the GM_* functions had to go? I can see why GM_xmlhttpRequest could be a problem, but what's wrong with GM_log, or the GM_*Value functions?
Hopefully this can help shed some lite for some of the GUI addicted PFY's out there missing out on a decent tool kit 'cause their OS of choice doesn't have a shell or basic programming (Pun Intended) facility.
When will the unix admins learn that just because Windows doesn't do as much piping as *nix doesn't mean it's not fully scriptable? The paradigm is different, is all. In *nix, if I want to programmatically kill a process I grep for it, cut or awk out the pid, and pipe that into kill (ignoring killall). In Windows, I query the process table with a WMI query object, retrieve the returned Process object, and call Kill (actually, I'm not sure what the name of the method is, but the idea is that you call methods on objects rather than piping text to processes). They both get the job done, and there's very little that piping or object automation can't do. I'd even argue that the object method is more robust because it doesn't have to infer information from presentation-formatted data (what do you do if the column of data you want changed positions because you're using different command line options to ps?). In either case, you're relying on developers to support the interface mechanism (stin/stdout in *nix, IDispatch in Windows), and it's not the system's fault if an application's implementation is sub-standard.
The widely-held belief that a *nix administrator can adequately perform the job of a knowledgeable windows administrator is just wrong. You'd laugh if I tried to suggest that a Windows admin could do the job of a *nix admin, so why is it assumed that the other way around works? And no, you're not going to install cygwin and bash and perl on my production systems unless they're absolutely critical (ie, a web server that needs to serve perl-based CGI scripts). No, helping you do your job the wrong way (*nix admin attempting to be a windows admin) is not "mission critical".
Yours... does nothing at all. Click on a link and nothing will happen. Goodbye to browsing a site using your "cross-browser" method.
That's fixable. You can simply set the href to a nice default page, and make sure the onClick method kills default click handling (I believe returning "false" will do that). That way, non-JS browsers get whatever the standard link action should be, and JS browsers will get a nice menu.
It seems to me, though, that the use of these resources would be better utilized by making the experience more satisfying. Oh well.
Others have already commented on your other points, so I'll address this. What would make a game experience "more satisfying" that could be achieved by under-utilizing the GPU? In a racing game, it's all about physics (usually by implementing Pacejka's Magic Formula (and yes, that's really the name)), which are not going to be pushed to the GPU. For example, Forza Motorsport uses a different physics system than Pacejka's (they model each tire of the car independently). It's much more CPU intensive, and this results in a lower framerate (30fps, as opposed to GT4 running at 60fps). Reducing the size of textures the game uses won't gain any more frames per second, because the engine is taxed by the physics calculations.
That's exactly what Greasemap is. Javascript for Greasemonkey.
Then it's not, as the article summary states, "a GPL Firefox plugin". If the Greasemap link wasn't Slashdotted, maybe I could've found that out for myself.
Sorry the server is slashdotted already. For people who asked "what's the point", it was to add maps to the many pages which contain addresses and/or Lat+Long geocoded coordinates but which don't yet have maps.
And you need a whole new extension for this? Sounds like something the Greasemonkey could do with relative ease and a little bit of javascript munging.
PSone - Remodeled version of PlayStation. "one" is used to differentiate the chassis from the older PSX-style.
PStwo - See PSone
You missed the most important reason for the PSOne -- it was integral in redesigning the PlayStation architecture into a much smaller package (a single chip) for inclusion in the PS2 for backwards compatibility. Given that history, it's my belief that the PSTwo is to the PS3 as the PSOne was to the PS2 -- a design excercise to reduce the internals of the PS2 down to a handful of chips (or even a single chip?) for inclusion in the PS3 for backwards compatibility.
Nintendo said the same thing about HDTV support and the Revolution, and all the gaming magazines started screaming bloody murder. Even though...
...your average consumer doesn't need HDTV support either! Let alone the promised 2 screen support.
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. While the "average" gamer may not have an HDTV nor care about HDTV support, there are two factors that make HDTV support critical to this generation, unlike having three gigabit network ports:
The current generation of consoles have already maxed out the graphical potential of SDTV. Xbox was ahead of its time with HD support from the beginning, and the PS2 was able to hack it in with some software tricks (hint: GT4 running in 1080i really isn't being rendered at that resolution). Only Nintendo chickened out. They started with 480p support (that was actually pretty good, especially compared to their non-progressive scan support -- maybe it was my TV or my Gamecube, but in 480i mode Mario's hat was a big blocky mess of red; in 480p it was nice and smooth), but pulled it in later hardware revisions. I can't help but think they're now in a self-fulfilling prophecy:
The Gamecube ships with 480p support but the cables are only available direct from Ninteno (a $20 cable is an impulse buy for the target market, if only they were available at Best Buy or Gamestop; buying them online requires thought, and most people will just not bother);
Nobody buys the cables because they don't know where to get them, or it's inconvenient to order from Nintendo
Nintendo pulls 480p support from later hardware revisions
Nintendo claims they're not going to support HD in the Revolution because the "average" gamer doesn't care.
Might the average gamer have cared more if Nintendo had sold its component cable in stores, with proper advertising behind it?
The early adopters have HDTVs, dolby digital 5.1 surround sound systems, and the disposable income to make or break a console in its early life. They may only be 5% of your total market, but they're nearly 100% of your launch day/week/month/quarter market. Without them, you're dead in the water before you even got off your first shot.
The early adopters don't care that they could use their PS3 as a gigabit router. Chances are, being early adopters, they've completely moved to wi-fi and would rather see built-in 802.11g (I know I would, and I just barely fit into the "early adopter" category). They do care about things like HDTV support or 5.1 DD audio, and it's in the best interest of the console manufacturers to give it to them, lest they buy someone else's product (I didn't buy a GC or even a PS2 until they'd gone through at least one price drop, because the Xbox catered to my wants -- HDTV, DD, and a stack of enjoyable games).
Nowadays, when I use Windows, I get annoyed by windows just disappearing into thin air.
Right-click "My Computer", choose Properties, go to the Advanced tab, click the "Settings" button under the "Performance" group, and check the very first checkbox in the list on the "Visual Effects" tab, "Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing" and "Ok" your way out of the dialogs (May be XP-specific, and you probably already have this enabled; if you don't, then you went through this convoluted chain to change it anyway so don't bitch about it being "hidden"). Now go minimize a window. Look at that! It animates down (or over, or up, depending on where you have your taskbar) to the entry on the Windows taskbar where you can later restore the window! Yes, it's nowhere near as flashy as the genie effect, but it's there and it's noticeable, and it's enough to let you know where your window went.
I like the way that Windows Media Player 10 seems to have built-in 'buy music' links to all the online music stores except iTunes...
First, WMP10 is not Longhorn-specific. It's out (has been out for a while). Second, the links to music stores have been there for a while too (not some Longhorn conspiracy). Third, they don't link to all online stores. For example, Rhapsody is not there. Finally, the linked stores are part of the Plays For Sure program. iTunes and Rhapsody are not, which makes sense -- they don't "play for sure" in WMP (there are different codecs you can install that will make them work with WMP, but they don't work out of the box). So, why would Microsoft link to stores where the music you buy can't be played in their music player?
The music store integration with WMP is very unobtrusive. It defaults to MSN Music (naturally), so if you didn't know any better you'd just think there's an MSN butterfly icon on the screen because MSN == Microsoft. You can use the stores if you want to, and you can totally ignore them if you don't. WMP will never navigate you to one of the stores unless you tell it to (by clicking one of the stores in the drop-down).
Longhorn looks better than the garish XP, at least. But is it anything more than a re-skinned update?
Well, there is Avalon and Indigo, part of that whole WinFX thing (which will be available for XP). Aside from that, sure, Longhorn is just the next revision of the operating system that started with NT 4 (and earlier, but NT 4 was a fairly large change from 3.x). In that sense, yes it's just a reskinned update of XP. The question is, how big is the update?
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If by "years" you mean "weeks", then sure.
The start.com guys are doing some neat stuff, not just with the pages they're building but also with their development methods (neat for a huge corporation like MSFT, anyway). They've only been doing the start.com thing for a few months now, not years.
And also unlike Sony, this will never have official support from developers that create games that sell systems (Square, Rockstar, Capcom, etc). It's all well and good that it caters to the homebrew developer, but that's a very tiny market at best. However, just because they're not trying to compete with the PSP or DS doesn't mean they can't try to get commercial developers interested in the platform. The GBA is still going strong on 2D games, so it's not like there's no audience out there.
Oh, wait, you were wanting trolls. My bad :)
Seriously, though. Where are the games? The article covers the hardware, which sounds pretty neat, but the only mention about games is that an SDK will be provided (duh), and it can run emulators (neat, but where's the money in this?). A handheld gaming device needs games, preferably professionally designed and developed (please, no Tux Racer).
Care to cite your source? Anyway, "worldwide" numbers aren't important. What is important is the growth rate in target markets -- US, Japan, and Europe (Australia's in there somewhere, too). For the US, HDTV adoption doubled to 7% in 2004, and I see no reason to expect that not to continue (source). More importantly, 14% of households with income over $75,000 have HDTVs (same source), which is also the same market segment that includes bleeding-edge early adopters (the people who'll be lining up to buy a 360 at launch).
Then again, if you want to make up statistics, based on my surveys I've decided that HDTV adoption in the US is > 90% (survey sample consists of my friends, most of whom own an HDTV, dd5.1 or 7.1 surround system, broadband, etc).
How many HD-DVD movies have been released? I don't know but I'd assume it's very few, if any. In other words, this argument is a red herring. Besides, owning media doesn't drive hardware adoption (availability of media is a different matter). Nobody went out and bought a bunch of DVDs and then thought to themselves, "Wow. Now I need a DVD player. Should've thought of that before." No, what happened with DVDs was that devices like the PS2 and many PCs shipped with DVD players built-in, giving people a reason to then go out and buy movies. The same thing could happen here to drive HD-DVD adoption (or alternatively, Blu-Ray DVD adoption).
Maybe, but on what timeline? Microsoft takes a very long-term view on projects (they can afford to). Look how long it took MSN to be profitable (~10 years? MSN launched in 95,and didn't start making a profit until 2004, IIRC). More importantly, Microsoft has other unprofitable projects in less important markets that they would kill off first if they really needed to start cutting off unprofitable projects. Besides, not going with HD-DVD is a way to keep costs down (Sony will take a huge hit per unit on cost if they really do ship with Blu-Ray, which I doubt they'll actually end up doing). Anyway, I wouldn't expect the hammer to come down on Xbox for unprofitability any time soon.
Reading the quotes others have posted (paraphrasing, "We're looking at incorporating HD-DVD into an Xbox release in the future"), I read those to mean, "The next-next generation will have HD-DVD if we can't do it by launch." Microsoft understands the importance of a standardized hardware platform for a console (even though the 360 was rumored to ship without a hard drive, Microsoft was smart enough to decide against doing so). Peripherals don't sell anywhere near as much as consoles (which is why light gun games have all but died out since the NES, when consoles stopped shipping with a gun in the box), and can't be relied upon (how many games on the PS2 can even use the optional hard drive? Two?). If Microsoft were to later ship an upgraded 360 with HD-DVD support, don't expect any games to actually use that format (game developers aren't stupid, and they won't artificially limit their potential market; well, with the exception of Capcom's team that did Steel Battallion). And that's assuming Microsoft even let's game developers ship games on HD-DVDs (I could see an upgrade being available to play HD-DVD movies, similar to the DVD movie dongle and remote you can buy for Xbox 1, or the multi-function machines in Japan based off of the Gamecube and PS2).
What's wrong with the review? I don't know. I couldn't bring myself to read through it. But from looking at the presentation and skimming the article, it sucks. Why?
And here I just thought Zonk was trying to be a pretentious yap. "Look at me! I'm reviewing a game, and unlike all of those other reviewers, I'll tell you that it's fun!"
Think about it. Would you want to read a review that consisted of two words? "It's fun." The end. Woo! I'm going to go buy it now! Reviews are one resource used to decide whether or not you're going to buy a game. I want a review that tells me what's good about the game ("It's fun" is a start, but I want to know why the reviewer thinks it's fun -- I may have a different perspective than the reviewer, so if I know where the reviewer is coming from I can judge better). More than that, I want to know what's bad about the game. When I'm spending $30-60 on a game, I want to know what I'm getting into. I'll read reviews and talk to friends. Applying those to my own preferences (eg, I like racing games and shooters, not so much RTS or puzzles), I will end up in one of three states: "Will buy it", "won't buy it", and "need to rent it or borrow from a friend to make up my mind". If reviewers only spouted off "It's fun", I'd end up in the third case way too often for my liking. (Note that I'm not saying I base my buying decisions solely on reviews. I use them as a source of information, nothing more, and generally will gather reviews from multiple sources by using a site like GameRankings.com to get an aggregated score and multiple review perspectives.)
There's a reason why reviewers don't boil down a review to "It's fun" or "It's not fun" -- they'd be out of a job, because nobody would bother reading their reviews. You can attack the reviewing industry for taking payola, or for giving generous scores (how many times have you seen a review where the text of the review makes it sound like the game should've actually scored 2-3 points lower than it did?), but attacking it because they don't summarize with, "It's fun"? That's just silly.
The Slashdot editors are slow (in more ways than one). Do it yourself (requires Greasemonkey for Firefox or Turnabout for IE (be sure to get the advanced installer so you can add new scripts), and may be compatible with Opera 8).
And yes, I use my own script. I just decided to slum it and pimp my crap :)
In other words, to fix a barely-annoying problem with LCD displays they're willing to get rid of one of the greatest benefits. I'd rather deal with ghosting than have to go back to the days of CRT eyestrain.
A lot of those reboots are ignorable. For example, I have no idea why AntiSpyware needs a reboot, so I told it I'll reboot "later" (as in, maybe a few weeks from now) and it's still running just fine. I don't recall Visual Studio ever asking me to reboot. Security updates may make sense, as you could be updating system components that will force a reboot (hey, if you have to update X in Linux, you have to stop and restart X; if you have to update the kernel, you have to reboot). For pretty much anything else besides drivers, and especially third party software, there's absolutely no reason an application install or uninstall should require a reboot, and thus I'll ignore your installer when it prompts me. If your app can't run without a reboot, I'm not going to use it.
Alpha blending (or "layered windows", as Microsoft calls it) was introduced in Win2k, along with all of the fancy effects (fading menus, tooltips, etc). XP's biggest "lickable" contribution was the built-in theming engine (that was neutered out of the box by only allowing Microsoft-signed themes, but was quickly hacked when XP was still only in beta).
If you could care less, that means that you do care somewhat. Otherwise, you couldn't care less. So I guess you do care. Anyway, the time cost of a reboot is not measured from when you click "Reboot" to the time the login screen comes back up. It's measured from when you're warned that a reboot needs to happen and so you have to stop working, to the time you've logged back in, started up all your apps, gotten back to the point in the code or document where you were before you had to reboot, and context switched back into "work mode". Context switches are expensive for computers, and they're much more expensive for people. Reboots cause you to lose more work than the time it takes the PC to get back to the login screen.
I almost agreed with you about the laptop stuff being useless until you added this. I have a nice laptop, but playing DVDs on it is the last thing I want to do. When I'm using my laptop I'm working or playing. When I'm watching a DVD, I'm in my home theater area (if you can call a 4 year old HDTV, cheap 5.1 setup, and 4 year old progressive scan DVD player a "home theater"). If I do want to run a DVD on my laptop, chances are I want to do other stuff as well. If you're buying a laptop to be a dedicated DVD machine, why not spend $200 on a portable DVD player rather than $1200 on a laptop?
There you go, caring again. But you're wrong anyway. First, Aero (the new UI) is not mandatory (just as Luna, the XP UI was not mandatory -- you could still use Classic). Second, Avalon, not Indigo, is the updated presentation layer (Indigo is some networking thing). Third, it's not just about the transparency. It's about hardware acceleration using your idle 3D accelerator, and using vector graphics to have good looking, well-scaling graphics and images.
I'll buy this argument. Two Word documents, or even a text file and a Word document, look pretty much identical at 32x32 or 64x64 (and I really don't want 128x128 or 256x256 icons).
The same goes for searching. I'd rather have my files in an organized manner and not in some random "virtual directory structure." Sure I could use the search tool to find the file for me, but what if I've completely forgotten the file name or a a few words in the file, but I do know that it's a file from my history class that I took junior year. Sure I could search by date but it'd be much easier if I had organized all my files in terms of "My Documents -> School work -> Junior Year -> History 101 -> some_file.doc." (which I currently do).
You could use filesystem attributes to tag your f
Not RADAR, LIDAR. RADAR measures direct velocity. LIDAR measures distance over time and infers velocity. The possibly-apocryphal story you're referring to is a guy who challenged the legality of LIDAR (in a jurisdiction where it had not yet been challenged) and won by showing the that with a slight jerk of his hand he could register a couple mph off of the judge's desk. It wasn't anything as insane as 20mph, but it was enough to throw the accuracy of the gun into doubt when coupled with the distance at which it's used and the difficulty of using it well (as I've mentioned elsewhere, you really do need to be a qualified sharpshooter to successfully use LIDAR because of a) the length of time you need to hold a lock, b) the small diameter of the laser even after several thousand feet, and c) the small optimum target area on a car that's properly reflective -- the headlights and the front license plate). BTW, this is also why LIDAR must be used from a stationary position while RADAR can be and is often used on the move. RADAR's only limitation is the angle of attack. You can't get a solid reading perdendicular to a vehicle's direction of travel. Head-on or from-behind is fine.
That's standard in the states as well. However, I wouldn't have bothered talking to the cop (you just give him the chance to trump up some other stupid charge), and save it for court. Cops in most states also aren't allowed to clock from private property, though that doesn't stop them (a cop used to sit inside the entrance driveway to my old apartment complex quite often, even though it was private land and not a valid place to clock speeders). Similarly, they can't "poach" bars by staking out the parking lots looking for DUIs.
That's a valid method -- the lawyer attacked the state of the equipment. The grand-parent's post sounds like myth, because he attacked the legality of radar as evidence. Such a case would set a precedence, and that jurisdiction would never be able to use radar guns again. Since I don't know of any place where that's the case (there are a number of jurisdictions where LIDAR is not considered legal evidence), I'd say his story is BS. Never mind the fact that it's a well-known fact that radar doesn't register well from a perpendicular angle, and thus cops don't use it that way. I think if you're going to argue that angle, you'd have to be able to prove that the cop was never at such an angle (something like a 30 degree arc directly in front of or behind the vehicle) to gather an accurate reading, which will be damn near impossible.
Urban legend, and more importantly you have no legal right to see the radar. Skip it. Besides, they're going to lock the reading on whatever it was when they decided to pull you over. If you were braking at that time, it must've still been high enough for them to justify a stop. If the cop didn't lock the reading, he's an idiot and you can petition his ticketing records during discovery, but you're not going to get anything by asking to see the radar display. All this will accomplish is making the cop nervous. Exiting your vehicle is a big no-no unless requested by the cop, and even then it makes them nervous. I was once asked to exit my vehicle and proceed to the rear because the dumb cop had never seen a retractable spoiler before. He thought my car was broken and wanted to show me the problem. His hand was on his gun holster the entire time I was out of the car, even though I was entirely non-threatening. By exiting the car or otherwise giving the cop a hard time (saying anything other than "yes, sir" and "no, sir", telling him you'll see him in court, etc) will do nothing but erase any possible chance you had for getting off with a warning. He doesn't need to know that you're pissed off, and that you're going to fight the ticket. Let him find that out when he's subpeonaed for court.
Another urban legend. Name misspellings, hair color differences (within reason -- if you're a dark blonde and they marked brunette, it's not going to fly -- if you have bright pink hair and they marked it as black, then maybe you have a shot), address typos, etc, are not enough to get the ticket thrown. You need something major, like they wrote down a street that's blocks away from where the stop happened, or they listed your vehicle as a Chevy Suburban when you're obviously driving a Mini. Unless something is significantly wrong, don't bother. You'll just get laughed at, and your credibility will suffer.
They do this so often that most states have a name for it -- deferment (I probably butchered the spelling). It's law, and you can ask for it any time you like. However, you need to know your state's laws, because most (all?) of them only allow you to defer one ticket every 7 years. Deferment is a very last resort if there's nothing else you can do. It's absolutely not your first option. Also keep in mind that if you do get another infraction during the deferred period (which could last up to 2 years in some states), the previous offense comes back as a guilty (and in some states, it may not matter whether or not you're convicted of the new offense, which is why you need to know the law).
You can't just ask him that in open court. At best the judge will grant a continuance for the officer to gather the calibration records (continuances can and do happen in traffic cases -- I had a case continued for over two years, and it was nothing more than a 10-over ticket). At worst the judge will deem it irrelevant and you'll have to continue with a different line of questioning. If you're going to attack the equipment or the officer's training, you need to file for discovery. And when you do file for discovery, try to get anything you could possibly think of -- radar gun manuals or LIDAR gun manuals, calibration records for the device or spedometer (you may have been paced -- your ticket will tell you the method of speed measurement), the officer's sharpshooter training and record (very relevant if you're up against LIDAR), the officer's ticketing history, etc. Also, you need to do some research to know what you can and can't attack. For example, LIDAR is a highly suspect speed measurment mechanism (it measures distance over time, so hand movement such as shaking from too much coffee can effectively measure two different objects over a period of time -- say, a stop sign and a moving car), but if it's accepted evidence in your state based on court ruling, you're not going to be able to petition to exclude LIDAR readings based on the unsound design. At that point, you can question whether it was properly calibrated, if the officer knew how to use it (training records), or if the officer was a qualified sharpshooter (because using LIDAR effectively is just as difficult as sniping, if not more so), but you can't question whether or not it was legal to use LIDAR at all.
There's a reason why there are lawyers who specialize in traffic law, and it's not to screw you over. Fees are reasonable (usually in the $200-$300 range, which could be in the fine range for a ticket if you get caught doing something like 85 in a 60), and they know all of the local laws and loopholes. More importantly, they know the judges, DAs, and clerks, and may be able to barter a deal you'd never have any chance to get on your own. Find a good one, and you'll never have to worry about losing a traffic case again.
Of course, that brings up the question of why you continue to speed in the first place. All I can say is, consider that "going with the flow of traffic" when that traffic is over the speed limit is illegal, but going the speed limit when everybody else is going 10-15 mph is also illegal (you're a road hazard). Add to that a unique, eye-catching car that looks and sounds like it's doing 50mph when it's only doing 25mph and you'll find that the deck is pretty much stacked against you.
From Dive Into Greasemonkey:
Greasemonkey does this by injecting scripts that exist on the client machine into the page as it's loading (a bit more complicated than that, but that'll do). These scripts can't be automatically installed by a bad website, so you shouldn't be concerned that you'll suddenly have spyware user scripts installed without your knowledge. The problem here is that GM exposes a few functions for script authors (a simplified interface to XMLHttpRequest, a logging function, persistent data storage and retrieval per script, etc). Due to how the scripts are injected into the page, these functions need to be visible to all scripts on a page. That means that a malicious web author could add script code to his page to check if a GM_* function is defined, and then do nasty stuff with it (especially GM_xmlhttpRequest, because it allows cross-domain access). If you don't have GM installed, you'd never know the malicious page was trying to do something bad. If you do have GM installed, you probably still wouldn't know the page was being bad, but you'd be hurt by it anyway. Exposure of these scripts to all scripts on the page and not just the inserted GM scripts is the flaw.If your scripts rely on GM_[set|get]Value, they won't work. The scripts may still run, but what value will they have? For example, I have a script that is only useful in the presence of GM_*Value and GM_xmlhttpRequest. Without that functionality, my script will add a useless bar to the page and never populate it with any data.
It also breaks one of the biggest features of GM -- the ability to pull data from other sites and integrate it into the current page. Scripts like Book Burro are now completely useless. Security is important, and it is the right thing to do to remove this functionality while the GM folks look for a better fix, but it does make GM much less attractive (you're pretty much left with page cleanup scripts now that you can't pull data from other sites).
Any idea why all of the GM_* functions had to go? I can see why GM_xmlhttpRequest could be a problem, but what's wrong with GM_log, or the GM_*Value functions?
When will the unix admins learn that just because Windows doesn't do as much piping as *nix doesn't mean it's not fully scriptable? The paradigm is different, is all. In *nix, if I want to programmatically kill a process I grep for it, cut or awk out the pid, and pipe that into kill (ignoring killall). In Windows, I query the process table with a WMI query object, retrieve the returned Process object, and call Kill (actually, I'm not sure what the name of the method is, but the idea is that you call methods on objects rather than piping text to processes). They both get the job done, and there's very little that piping or object automation can't do. I'd even argue that the object method is more robust because it doesn't have to infer information from presentation-formatted data (what do you do if the column of data you want changed positions because you're using different command line options to ps?). In either case, you're relying on developers to support the interface mechanism (stin/stdout in *nix, IDispatch in Windows), and it's not the system's fault if an application's implementation is sub-standard.
The widely-held belief that a *nix administrator can adequately perform the job of a knowledgeable windows administrator is just wrong. You'd laugh if I tried to suggest that a Windows admin could do the job of a *nix admin, so why is it assumed that the other way around works? And no, you're not going to install cygwin and bash and perl on my production systems unless they're absolutely critical (ie, a web server that needs to serve perl-based CGI scripts). No, helping you do your job the wrong way (*nix admin attempting to be a windows admin) is not "mission critical".
That's fixable. You can simply set the href to a nice default page, and make sure the onClick method kills default click handling (I believe returning "false" will do that). That way, non-JS browsers get whatever the standard link action should be, and JS browsers will get a nice menu.
Others have already commented on your other points, so I'll address this. What would make a game experience "more satisfying" that could be achieved by under-utilizing the GPU? In a racing game, it's all about physics (usually by implementing Pacejka's Magic Formula (and yes, that's really the name)), which are not going to be pushed to the GPU. For example, Forza Motorsport uses a different physics system than Pacejka's (they model each tire of the car independently). It's much more CPU intensive, and this results in a lower framerate (30fps, as opposed to GT4 running at 60fps). Reducing the size of textures the game uses won't gain any more frames per second, because the engine is taxed by the physics calculations.
Then it's not, as the article summary states, "a GPL Firefox plugin". If the Greasemap link wasn't Slashdotted, maybe I could've found that out for myself.
And you need a whole new extension for this? Sounds like something the Greasemonkey could do with relative ease and a little bit of javascript munging.
You missed the most important reason for the PSOne -- it was integral in redesigning the PlayStation architecture into a much smaller package (a single chip) for inclusion in the PS2 for backwards compatibility. Given that history, it's my belief that the PSTwo is to the PS3 as the PSOne was to the PS2 -- a design excercise to reduce the internals of the PS2 down to a handful of chips (or even a single chip?) for inclusion in the PS3 for backwards compatibility.
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. While the "average" gamer may not have an HDTV nor care about HDTV support, there are two factors that make HDTV support critical to this generation, unlike having three gigabit network ports:
- The current generation of consoles have already maxed out the graphical potential of SDTV. Xbox was ahead of its time with HD support from the beginning, and the PS2 was able to hack it in with some software tricks (hint: GT4 running in 1080i really isn't being rendered at that resolution). Only Nintendo chickened out. They started with 480p support (that was actually pretty good, especially compared to their non-progressive scan support -- maybe it was my TV or my Gamecube, but in 480i mode Mario's hat was a big blocky mess of red; in 480p it was nice and smooth), but pulled it in later hardware revisions. I can't help but think they're now in a self-fulfilling prophecy:
- The early adopters have HDTVs, dolby digital 5.1 surround sound systems, and the disposable income to make or break a console in its early life. They may only be 5% of your total market, but they're nearly 100% of your launch day/week/month/quarter market. Without them, you're dead in the water before you even got off your first shot.
The early adopters don't care that they could use their PS3 as a gigabit router. Chances are, being early adopters, they've completely moved to wi-fi and would rather see built-in 802.11g (I know I would, and I just barely fit into the "early adopter" category). They do care about things like HDTV support or 5.1 DD audio, and it's in the best interest of the console manufacturers to give it to them, lest they buy someone else's product (I didn't buy a GC or even a PS2 until they'd gone through at least one price drop, because the Xbox catered to my wants -- HDTV, DD, and a stack of enjoyable games).- The Gamecube ships with 480p support but the cables are only available direct from Ninteno (a $20 cable is an impulse buy for the target market, if only they were available at Best Buy or Gamestop; buying them online requires thought, and most people will just not bother);
- Nobody buys the cables because they don't know where to get them, or it's inconvenient to order from Nintendo
- Nintendo pulls 480p support from later hardware revisions
- Nintendo claims they're not going to support HD in the Revolution because the "average" gamer doesn't care.
Might the average gamer have cared more if Nintendo had sold its component cable in stores, with proper advertising behind it?Right-click "My Computer", choose Properties, go to the Advanced tab, click the "Settings" button under the "Performance" group, and check the very first checkbox in the list on the "Visual Effects" tab, "Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing" and "Ok" your way out of the dialogs (May be XP-specific, and you probably already have this enabled; if you don't, then you went through this convoluted chain to change it anyway so don't bitch about it being "hidden"). Now go minimize a window. Look at that! It animates down (or over, or up, depending on where you have your taskbar) to the entry on the Windows taskbar where you can later restore the window! Yes, it's nowhere near as flashy as the genie effect, but it's there and it's noticeable, and it's enough to let you know where your window went.
First, WMP10 is not Longhorn-specific. It's out (has been out for a while). Second, the links to music stores have been there for a while too (not some Longhorn conspiracy). Third, they don't link to all online stores. For example, Rhapsody is not there. Finally, the linked stores are part of the Plays For Sure program. iTunes and Rhapsody are not, which makes sense -- they don't "play for sure" in WMP (there are different codecs you can install that will make them work with WMP, but they don't work out of the box). So, why would Microsoft link to stores where the music you buy can't be played in their music player?
The music store integration with WMP is very unobtrusive. It defaults to MSN Music (naturally), so if you didn't know any better you'd just think there's an MSN butterfly icon on the screen because MSN == Microsoft. You can use the stores if you want to, and you can totally ignore them if you don't. WMP will never navigate you to one of the stores unless you tell it to (by clicking one of the stores in the drop-down).
Well, there is Avalon and Indigo, part of that whole WinFX thing (which will be available for XP). Aside from that, sure, Longhorn is just the next revision of the operating system that started with NT 4 (and earlier, but NT 4 was a fairly large change from 3.x). In that sense, yes it's just a reskinned update of XP. The question is, how big is the update?