The grandparent's point was valid, and one I've been pounding on for years.
Mark my words.... in a matter of decades, a century or two at the MOST, mankind will be no longer be generating radio waves for communication - most likely we'll be using quantum entangled pairs or some form of wormhole to provide secure, instant data communication between two points, regardless of distance. Any alien race advanced enough to conquer even the outer reaches of their own star systems will likely have abandoned RF and it's limit of the Speed of Light in favor of low-lag repeater networks of point-to-point devices. After advancing that far, why would they concern themselves with primitive races still using radio (other than to exploit them or their resources in some manner)?
Knowing that, as most scientists do, what, exactly is the narrow window that such a race would be using radio? A few hundred years? Even a few thousand years would present such a narrow slice as to make it nearly impossible for us to detect them passively, since that window would have to coincide with our own detection efforts and specifically with the distance between our system and theirs - even forgetting signal loss against the background noise over interstellar distances... in short, the chances we would detect another intelligent race drops to, for all PRACTICAL purposes, impossible.
I believe Carl Sagan knew this. I believe the people running SETI know this. SETI is a red herring, a scam.
So why?
As others posted here, Sagan and his colleagues probably knew more than we'll ever know. As cynical as that may seem, I'd rather believe that then give in to the truly cynical thought - that SETI is just a scam to collect government and private grants.
The result of GetProcesses() won't free up the memory once it leaves scope, nor does manually going in and freeing the individual Process data. I even tried freeing the individual members of the class, elements that should have been marshaled in.
I had a problem using this in a loop, ended up using a different technique to get the information I needed (I was scanning for a process starting up and shutting down). My app consumed over 1GB in an hour, before I figured out the culprit, I tried forcing garbage collection, finally ended up doing a post-mortem on the heap and seeing that bits of the Process information data was still sitting out there, somehow orphaned, then attempted to remedy that, but C# apparently prevented me from freeing those orphaned elements. My "fix" was to use instances of the Process performance counter (all I needed was the names of the currently running processes), and I've tested it over a period of days with no memory consumption (beyond the initial 20MB or so the app needs to run)
The lesson here is: Don't use GetProcesses() in a loop.
I like Radiohead's music, but not fond of the political messages - I'll probably download and even pay a couple of dollars for the album, but I'd pay more if they were apolitical. Same rule would apply to any group, of any political leaning, for me.
I want to hear music, not experience propaganda. Political discourse is not something I need from a musician, actor, or comedian.
"...Our approach is simple: We look at who said what and why it's FUD. Lots of companies engage in FUD, and we only single out Microsoft because we're Microsoft Watch"
First off, I question whether either the PS3 or the 360 could push any engine running 20GB worth of textures; Did Carmack demonstrate it using a console, or an SLI rig with top of the line cards, many gigs of RAM and high-RPM, RAID arrays driving the textures from storage?
As for PS3 game "world sizes" - again, we'll see what's delivered. So far, the PS3 has struggled in many areas it seemingly shouldn't, based on theoretical power. I'll also take anything hyped with those games with a grain of salt (as you should anything that isn't out yet).
I agree that worlds will get far more complex - I don't think either of the two current generation rigs are up to the challenges that PC games will present in the near future, but that's not the target audience, and they are still capable of rendering stunning worlds without high resources. I also think that Sony's philosophy tends toward large amounts of pre-rendered video, which eats up their extra capacity quickly on an HD platform - texture, model, and audio resources still don't make up a large portion of their game data, even when those games fill out to 15GB.
My point is that this isn't about the idea that GTA IV will deliver less because of the limitations of the chosen storage medium - it's that these are EXPANSIONS, and part of a business model that Microsoft has been pressing with games like Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Valve's successful Half-Life episodic content. Sony will be doing the same thing. Sure, they could deliver GT completely on a disc, but why do that when they can milk customers for more money buying components? Same deal, same business model, but Slashdotters are coming up with bizarre arguments to rip on Microsoft and their console. Even Nintendo is in on the game - selling "virtual console" games for far more than you'd pay for them at the local garage sale or flea market as original cartridges, but hey! it's playing on the Wii!
I'm just surprised at the number of Slashdotters jumping on the bandwagon in this thread, though, to rag on Microsoft for following it's Live business roadmap. Cries of "monopoly" are the worst - exclusives are FAR from unusual in the console world, where getting any sort of exclusive, be it a special feature in a multi-platform game, exclusive episodic content, or a complete game series, is a matter of business pride.
The 360 game disc format is a Dual Layer DVD, 7GB... but honestly, with more and more cinematics moving to the game engine, that's not a limitation. I really don't understand what you are trying to say with your nonsensical quotation of "Storage" that has no basis in reality.
Want to know what's going on here?
Microsoft can't get the exclusive on GTA IV, so they are going for an exclusive on the expansion - a very smart thing to do. It has NOTHING to do with disc capacity, understand? Microsoft will make a mint on the Content downloads, and 360 owners will be happy that they get additional content not available on any other platform.
Content is intended for owners with a hard drive (20GB or 120GB drives) and a broadband Live connection. What's new about this? Sony required a hard drive for some games on the PS2... GTA fanatics will gladly pony up the cash for an Elite or replace their Premium 20GB drive with a 120GB drive.
I honestly can't understand why people bitch about Microsoft's downloadable content charges (or Sony's for that matter), unless the costs are excessive for the user. Reasonably priced Live downloads are good business, and until it gets cracked, it's a very solid model for everybody.
Commute to work continually held up by: - Gay pride marches - Exciting car chases starring Steve McQueen - Massive cascades of small, brightly-coloured balls
Massive cascades of small, brightly-coloured balls? Seems redundant, since you already mentioned the gay pride marches.
1) To re-iterate what others are saying, the firmware hack does not defeat executable signatures, so the integrity of game code has not been compromised, however, game data files can be, and have been, compromised (Exo's GoW hacks). The simple solution is to update the executable with hard-coded data file checksums to go along with their weak signature security (in this case, on the GoW data files). So it's not entirely true that the firmware hack doesn't allow cheaters - but Microsoft has other avenues they can pursue in preventing cheaters. This wave of bannings represents an escalation in Microsoft's policy toward modders.
2) Something that many here miss, is that Microsoft has no direct access to the firmware for some models of the DVD drive they are using. Toshiba-Samsung MS28 drives, for example, have "Firmguard" - an attempt to thwart modders that has backfired on Microsoft. Why? Because powercycling the DVD with the correct VIA SATA chipset bypasses Firmguard as part of it's "Bad Flash" recovery mode. Microsoft cannot do this on the 360. This means they cannot read, nor write firmware to these drives.
There were several techniques Microsoft employed against modders in this last wave, verified by special debugging firmware employed - Microsoft was using an anomaly in the firmware's fetch of special sectors to determine if backups were employed (moddded Hitachi drives gave up the goods on this one), as well as more strict checking of those sectors (catching non-"stealth" backups), and finally, using Challenge/Response commands to do threshold timing (many used slower or faster timings on the firmware, which was detectable as being outside of thresholds).
There are still less reliable checks Microsoft may employ, but that dragnet will scoop up some legitmate users, too (No DVD Error code check, used to see who's been using their Xbox 360 as a power supply for the drive as they flashed it). If I was on the team, I'd rule that one out. There are a few other techniques, which I won't mention, since they haven't been discussed publicly, as the others I mentioned have (besides, Microsoft KNOWS how they are checking currently) - which have been identified and "fixed" in the current iXtreme 1.0 firmware.
For what it's worth, many, many 360 modders have NOT been banned. It may be these checks were only performed when they were actively playing a backup on Live... no pattern has emerged, and much of the data is suspect (panicky users, usual liars, etc...).
If Microsoft wants to defeat cheaters, all they need to do is employ a couple of interns to surf the scene sites for hack news, then simply order up special bannin' updates for those hacked games, to detect cheater's data files and ban those specific machines. Future game releases could incorporate some security libraries to make data files more secure (the code currently cannot be hacked).
If you were paying to the article at all (why would you? this is/. after all) you'd know that they said they were sticking with doing all the cinematics with in the game engine.
It's using the IN-GAME ENGINE. No pre-rendered scenes.
This isn't the PS3 - no need to fill the useless space of a Blu-Ray disc to make Sony execs and fanboys feel good.
Say what youy want about his gaffs with the PS3, but keep in mind that the primary factor that ruined the PS3 was the insistence that it include a Blu-Ray drive, most likely driven from the Media-oriented Mr. Stringer. Kutaragi was forced to support a product that was flawed because its development was driven (and delayed) by motivations that had nothing to do with gamers, and everything to do with promoting a new DRM scheme.
Remove the 6 month delay necessitated by adding the Blu-Ray drive, as well as the expense, and the obvious maneuver to push Blu-Ray into homes using fanboys and loyal customers, and it's an entirely different story... Sony still has a problem with the gaming experience, and the whole fiasco over feedback controllers, but those become minor issues. In making DRM so central to the PS3's strategy (or should I say, making the PS3 central to Sony's invasive DRM strategy) after Sony's horrible anti-consumer behavior primarily in its media divisions has made many of its loyal customers angry and resolute in not supporting the company. It's made them consciously avoid all things "Sony" - from CDs that may install rootkits that open security holes on your PCs, to movies that take extreme measures to eliminate fair use of customers to back up their own movies (while pirates release those same movies on the net days or even weeks before they are released for retail). Until Blu-Ray is added to the mix, one can simply argue that the PS3 is an island in the sea of things wrong with Sony as a corporate citizen; with Blu-Ray, however, the PS3 becomes yet another pawn - a cynical move in an agenda to control consumers' rights and increase control in media markets.
So, here we are, months after the PS3's dismal launch, and we all can agree, game quality issue aside, the PS3 would have sold much better without the Blu-Ray drive inflating the price. All of Ken's crazy words would have merely been a sidenote in a frenzied battle of consoles. It's launch would have occurred 6 months BEFORE the Wii, striking quicker and likely deeper into the market that the Wii got exposure to on equal terms with last holiday season. Can you blame Kutaragi for it all? Would he have agreed to include the Blu-Ray drive if he had not gotten incredible pressure from higher up?
It's no coincidence that Sony's leaders are media people - their media division makes money by the tankerful. What nobody seems to grasp is that those profits are not thanks to those same executives that wield so much political power within Sony's corporate arena.... media sells these days, even crap media. The world is hungry for movies and music - I suppose you could say they at least didn't make so many boneheaded moves that they dragged the company down, but even that's not entirely true - yet they hold the power, and likely forced Blu-Ray upon the PS3.
Ah well... they sweep Ken out the door and play it up as a "shake up" between the lines, it looks like SCE is making moves to improve the PS3 situation, but in reality, it does nothing to solve the underlying problem of a system tied down with a 50-ton boat anchor. It will satisfy the stockholders, many of whome have no idea when it comes to gaming consoles, only that that division has lost money for the last 5 years and is losing money at a rapid pace (even though others might realize it's a strategy to lose money on every PS3 sold).
>> 'This shows that Intel is willing to take AMD seriously as a competitive threat, and is prepared to act upon it.'
I'm not sure how much sense this statement really makes. If they take AMD as a serious threat, wouldn't they WANT AMD to be forced to continue using their own bus? AM2 was probably a misstep, given the performance drops, giving intel the upper hand, but now they are willing to let AMD play in their sandbox - it helps AMD more than it hurts them.
I'm not complaining about the move, I just found the article a bit sparse on details and the statement at odds with common sense. Is it fully open, or does it require licensing? What is AMD's take on this news? How much re-work will be required to move AMD's processor cores to the intel bus? Will they gain performance or lose it in the translation?
Lots of questions that the Inquirer seems to totally ignore in what may be a significant development in the battle of the big boys.
Actually, I don't think Xbox1 has lost them all that much money, and they intended on losing a ton of money to get their foot in the door.
Xbox 360, on the other hand, has been a success, by any measure. Except in the Japanese market, it's got respect and market share... and the Japanese market is a special case.
What Microsoft has done wrong, however, is pull a "Sony-like" attempt to force Vista down our throats with DX10. I'm not terribly happy that Halo 2 will not run without Vista, nor that games like Crysis will lack everything that makes them next-gen shooters when running in DX9. On the other hand, this will just mean I'll play games more on my modeed PS2, Xbox, and Xbox 360 consoles.
If I had meta-mod points, I'd mod you down as flamebait or up as funny.
Most Canadians I know have pretty thick skins, and I hope you are no different. If Sony wants to code-name the PS4 "Pearl Harbor", why not? I'll take it in the spirit it was intended, and not immediately get offended and spaz out enough to "take a stand".
Now, if the Japanese were planning a "mod-proof" console targeting the Chinese with a code name of "Nanking" - well, that's a little different. Midway, on the other hand, was a decisive MILITARY battle that helped turn the tide in a war that began with a sneak attack. The war was ended with atomic destruction - and while mildly insensitive, I think "wiping out the Japanese Console market share" as analogous to a nuke can be taken in less offensive ways, too. Take offense at DirectX (Radioactive symbol) and stop playing games on your PC if you are that offended, but that was old news by the time the Xbox (Midway) debuted.
Actually, I did find it a little surprising that the Toyota trucks symbol looks like a mushroom cloud. Maybe their symbolism for "returning the favor" upon American truck manufacturers?
By the way, as an Asian-Canadian, do you always cover for allof your continental brethren? I mean, a Vietnamese or Idnonesian is about as related to a Japanese person as I (a US citizen) am to a Honduran. Actually, a better example, going to my European (Polish/French/German) roots (though I have Native American roots, as well), might see me offended of some slight made at the expense of Italians. It seems rather silly.
This system, however, as a supplimental to the existing systems used in navigation, would provide greater accuracy and a means to recalibrate existing systems.
I can see this being used in the future to allow submarines the ability to navigate more accurately, even away from a GPS buoy, through shallow areas, thanks to the correction from any drift they may have encountered since their last surfacing.
Inertial guidance, dead reckoning, undersea terrain tracking and of course, the standard compass all provide means for navigation underwater, but some are imprecise and cumulative error will creep in during long undersea voyages. Surfacing to re-calibrate the navigation systems exposes a submarine to potentially hostile observation by air and satellite. A simple "ping" minimizes that exposure, as long as a hostile presence isn't already nearby in the water.
Please, get it straight. It's nice to see a decent shooter for the PS3, but with it being probably the most compelling title for the PS3, it should be selling better than it is.
Microsoft will probably settle in on an alternating cycle - giving shooter fans Halo 3 this holiday season, GoW 2 the next, and so on... Halo defined the Xbox and put it squarely on the map in a way that Resistance has utterly failed. There have been plenty of great shooters for the PS2 and Xbox, but how many truly **defined** a console? Nobody is really getting that sort of vibe from Resistance (no disrespect here, as I said, it is a compelling title); it's a competent shooter and likely the start of a franchise of at least a few more sequels, but if a year from now, it is the "defining" PS3 title, Sony will be woefully in trouble.
Looking at it from the outside, I just get the feeling Resistance is the PS3 Killzone. A better title to "define" the PS3 might have been Gods Of War 2, but we'll see that on PS2, right? I think Sony has fallen into the trap of trying to beat Microsoft, answering GoW with Resistance, doing little, costly things to "beat" the 360, but nothing to really surpass it.
Make no mistake about it: Many gamers who don't own an Xbox 360 today will line up when Halo 3 is released and walk away with both the game and a console to play it on. GoW has caused similar reactions, but has taken a while for people to really experience it and catch the interest. For both consoles, there is simply no "wow" factor without HDTV, so that's a variable that has to be taken into account, but for some gamers, that's just another purchase to play the game they most desire.
Microsoft doesn't need a "Resistance killer". It's already got that in spades, and Halo 3 only ups the ante. If Sony was smart, they'd can the PS2 version and make sure a PS3 version came out that maximized the PS3's power. That doesn't seem to be happening, and without any TRULY compelling exclusives, why should Microsoft sweat it?
If they do a key revokation, any discs produced afterward means that any players not connected to the internet are broken. This is a "worst case scenario" and is, indeed, the DRM world's equivalent of a scorched earth policy. At this point, it's a toss up if they will follow through with a revokation, given the bad feelings, all around, that will result... on the other hand, what better time to go through with this fire drill? Work out the bugs early on and see what happens!
I don't know that I concur with the grandparent's point; like I just said, it's a toss up what they'll do. What I do think is that there are more compromised player keys out there, and even better, knowing a bunch of those keys gives the crackers more information to attack the encryption via other keys (like CSS did), so we could see an endless stream of compromised keys, with the DRM crackers laughing their asses off the whole time, pissed off customers angry that their expensive HD-DVD/BD players are constantly "broken" with new movies until an update disc arrives or a firmware upgrade downloads from the internet. This doesn't even consider those whose firmware upgrades "brick" their players accidentally (which will occur at a higher rate, with more updates).
I'd bet the dedicated players out there have been well compromised already, to the point that updating them will merely give the crackers the new keys, anyway, even if they don't have the whole scheme opened up.
See, this is what I'm talking about. The typical slashdotter is a small minority of consumers - the most vociferous are usually not Microsoft customers anyway.
Your blanket statement is no more valid than mine, with one exception, I've worked in the industry with everything from big movers to mass-produced consumer goods. Please, take it from me, cross-platform is not that important to a consumer.
There is a point of diminishing returns, where MOST consumers simply don't want an all-in-one device, for example, or simply don't care to have a spreadsheet work in Linux and Windows. People just want to turn on a computer and USE it. They want to turn on a DVR and USE it. They want to dial a number and USE it. Inter-operability, multi-functionality, cross-platform code... all results in more complexity, and usually a "Jack of all trades, master of none" device. This is also known as the "lowest common denominator".
Servers demand performance. A server farm picks a technology and sticks to it (unless they are a service provider, in which case they may offer a variety to meet costumer needs - but still, each tech is an island unto itself). Devices demand performance. A cell phone should be able to make phone calls. An MP3 player should be able to play lots of music well for long periods of time. Cell phones with MP3 players? Fewer songs, poor interfaces, less battery life... if I use my battery up listening to music, how can I use the phone? I demand performance from my computer to play games... I need to be able to compile and run apps, install what I need... but that's more than 70% of the people out there need, since most people are casual gamers and web surfers; for them, Windows just works (aside from spyware, virus and trojan issues). My Mom doesn't know what Linux is, and would kill me if her system ever booted it. Same goes for MacOS.
Well, I can't speak to your own experience with other groups, but most of the work I've been involved with (including government work), has been pretty good. UATs? Yes, we do those; once you get to that point, the worst is over anyway (I loathe writing test plans, just because I always feel like I'm leaving something out).
Perhaps our group is atypical in EDS... most projects I've seen have been renewed far past anybody's expectations - and that speaks to customer's satisfaction.
Well, I've never been trained in COBOL (outside of college, over 20 years ago). I'm an embedded systems guy, and maybe my group is rather unique... most of our disaffection comes from the business model that treats people like a resource and our group like a pool. Account execs get the bonuses for re-signing business that ultimately, we win in the trenches by our performance (no support from account execs, other than slipping contracts in front of the customers). Not seeing raises, even though we've managed to get a juicy contract extended for 4 times the original term, can be a bit disheartening.
We had genuinely hoped that axeman Dick Brown was going to break EDS up, and we'd be spun off to IBM or CompuWare... that didn't happen. Instead we languished, and our manager got a mandate to fire X number of people, no matter how much better our worst guy was compared to the next group's "best".
Then again, this sort of thing happens in a lot of companies, so it's mostly "grass is greener" stuff.
Let's not forget that both people discussing "screw Sun" used to work for them. There is probably a whole lot of baggage we'll never know that goes along with two guys switching companies and paradigms.
As an EDSer, I've seen plenty of my former colleagues take a "screw EDS" view in their new companies... they were dissatisfied with aspects of business and how they were managed (sometimes justifiably, sometimes not so much); until they became just as disafected by their new employers, they were considerably hostile in words and action, at times, to their old employer.
Given that they were involved with J++, discussing a cross-platform mandate (big with Slashdotters, but not even a blip on the radar screen with 99% of Microsoft's customer base), and the context of the discussion involved co-opting lessons learned and design imperitives (not really the product itself), this discussion was not exactly the smoking gun you guys would like it to be.
>> It appears that around 75% of the people that have bought a PS3 have tried a blu-ray movie in it.
Of course. THE PS3 CAME WITH A MOVIE. It's natural they'd try it out. It might even be natural that they'd buy one that's actually going to show off the hi-def much better than a comedy. Does that mean they'll keep buying Blu-Ray discs? Of course not. It's purely a toss-up, and you simply can't read any motivations into their minds one way or another. This is why it's very misleading, and any numbers with the PS3 should be taken with a grain of salt... not to mention that the difference between SHIPPING and SOLD (I've seen PS3s collecting dust at every place I've shopped at recently... the clerks at EB Games said they simply don't sell now, whereas the Wii flies out of the store the same day they get them in).
>>Not exactly true. There are a ton of reasons that people bought the PS3 and having a cheaper blu-ray player is, for some a reason. Is it the ONLY reason? No, but it is a reason.
Erm, read what I said. I didn't say that nobody bought a PS3 as a Blu-Ray player; I said **most** bought it as a game console, which implies a few probably bought it as a cheap Blu-Ray player, which brings up a rather touchy issue: Sony is dumping BD players on the market at a loss, while Samsung and its other partners' systems will be collecting dust at much higher prices. If I was Sony's partner in the BD arena, I'd seriously consider switching sides... or at least seeking legal means to fight the problem. I can't imagine anybody else making BD players is happy about that - their sales have plummeted since the PS3 came out (given the choice, would you buy a Samsung stand-alone for ~$1000, or a PS3 at ~$500?).
>> Sony gave the game manufacturers a 50GB storage media for games and the ability to play BluRay movies on your PS3. They do this at a current loss of around $150 to $200 on the system (which will be reduced greatly this year by manufacturing improvements).
They aren't taking the hit to provide game publishers more space though - but considering the difficulties in programming games on the PS3, the space needed for PS3 games may jump up as a self-fulfilling prophecy; i.e. HD pre-rendered cut-scenes, which became popular with the PSX's expanded CD space, even more so on the PS2 (particularly since the PS2 couldn't render anti-aliased in real time very well). The reality is that systems like the 360 don't need to resort to a lot of pre-rendered cut scenes (good examples are Dead Rising and Gears Of War), since the real-time engine looks just as good as any hi-def pre-rendered scene. Beyond a certain point, how much space to you need for audio samples, models, and textures? The Japanese mentality, however, has attached high value to pre-rendered cut scenes, and refuses to let it go, now that it's no longer required (why have all this graphical power and not use it?). I think the 50GB figure doesn't really matter that much when it comes to games, unless you wanted to watch an interactive movie... and if I wanted that, I could simply stick to a PS2.
That monetary loss isn't likely to see relief for some time, either... Microsoft currently makes a profit (~$45 per console), and recently stated they are seeing further reductions in production costs. I suspect they could easily "up the ante" by reducing the price by $100 in the near future - and given the recent revelation of the Zephyr (HDMI and digital scaling chip + 120GB HD), I suspect they'll do that in a few months to ratchet up the pressure on Sony - with the Standard edition coming in at $199, the Premium at $299 and probably a "Platinum" edition (120GB + HD-DVD built in?) at $399. Microsoft has room to do this, Sony doesn't. The PS2 didn't see price drops for over a year, so don't expect the PS3 to drop prices any time soon.
Lastly on that point, HD-DVD is far cheaper to manufacture than Blu-Ray. I'd be willing to bet that while Sony takes a hit on every player and every movie sold (yes, the movies probably co
How many of all those PS3s will be used to watch anything more than a lackluster (for Hi-Def, at least) Talladega Nights?
The problem with "updated numbers" is that most people bought a PS3 as a GAME SYSTEM. The movie player, for the PS3 owners, just happens to be there, but that doesn't mean they will go out and buy movies, or use the player.
In contrast, people who went out and purchased an HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 ACTUALLY ***WANTED*** THE HI-DEF DVD FORMAT.
The difference is significant, because we can't reach into the minds of PS3 owners and determine what percentage yawned at the pack-in movie and said, "what crap, why would I want to spend more money on a Blu-Ray movie, just to see Will Farrell's cold sore in excruciating detail?" - and be assured, there is a percentage.
So Sony has only managed to muddy the Blu-Ray numbers by forcing consumers who bought a game console to also buy a player./Owns a PS2 but doesn't use it to watch DVDs
Check xbox-scene.com - they have not been "officially" confirmed by Microsoft, but there's a video demonstrating the HDMI.
I expect a $100 price drop in the next 6 months, with an introduction of Xbox 360 "Gold" taking the price slot of the "Premium" with the 120GB drive, and maybe HD-DVD drive built in.
I also suspect Microsoft may prepare a USB-based tuner to incorporate the missing feature from this gen's - Tivo-like capability.
Slashdot Mirror
No, that's not a good answer at all.
The grandparent's point was valid, and one I've been pounding on for years.
Mark my words.... in a matter of decades, a century or two at the MOST, mankind will be no longer be generating radio waves for communication - most likely we'll be using quantum entangled pairs or some form of wormhole to provide secure, instant data communication between two points, regardless of distance. Any alien race advanced enough to conquer even the outer reaches of their own star systems will likely have abandoned RF and it's limit of the Speed of Light in favor of low-lag repeater networks of point-to-point devices. After advancing that far, why would they concern themselves with primitive races still using radio (other than to exploit them or their resources in some manner)?
Knowing that, as most scientists do, what, exactly is the narrow window that such a race would be using radio? A few hundred years? Even a few thousand years would present such a narrow slice as to make it nearly impossible for us to detect them passively, since that window would have to coincide with our own detection efforts and specifically with the distance between our system and theirs - even forgetting signal loss against the background noise over interstellar distances... in short, the chances we would detect another intelligent race drops to, for all PRACTICAL purposes, impossible.
I believe Carl Sagan knew this. I believe the people running SETI know this. SETI is a red herring, a scam.
So why?
As others posted here, Sagan and his colleagues probably knew more than we'll ever know. As cynical as that may seem, I'd rather believe that then give in to the truly cynical thought - that SETI is just a scam to collect government and private grants.
The result of GetProcesses() won't free up the memory once it leaves scope, nor does manually going in and freeing the individual Process data. I even tried freeing the individual members of the class, elements that should have been marshaled in.
I had a problem using this in a loop, ended up using a different technique to get the information I needed (I was scanning for a process starting up and shutting down). My app consumed over 1GB in an hour, before I figured out the culprit, I tried forcing garbage collection, finally ended up doing a post-mortem on the heap and seeing that bits of the Process information data was still sitting out there, somehow orphaned, then attempted to remedy that, but C# apparently prevented me from freeing those orphaned elements. My "fix" was to use instances of the Process performance counter (all I needed was the names of the currently running processes), and I've tested it over a period of days with no memory consumption (beyond the initial 20MB or so the app needs to run)
The lesson here is: Don't use GetProcesses() in a loop.
I like Radiohead's music, but not fond of the political messages - I'll probably download and even pay a couple of dollars for the album, but I'd pay more if they were apolitical. Same rule would apply to any group, of any political leaning, for me.
I want to hear music, not experience propaganda. Political discourse is not something I need from a musician, actor, or comedian.
"...Our approach is simple: We look at who said what and why it's FUD. Lots of companies engage in FUD, and we only single out Microsoft because we're Microsoft Watch"
Isn't this the first item?
First off, I question whether either the PS3 or the 360 could push any engine running 20GB worth of textures; Did Carmack demonstrate it using a console, or an SLI rig with top of the line cards, many gigs of RAM and high-RPM, RAID arrays driving the textures from storage?
As for PS3 game "world sizes" - again, we'll see what's delivered. So far, the PS3 has struggled in many areas it seemingly shouldn't, based on theoretical power. I'll also take anything hyped with those games with a grain of salt (as you should anything that isn't out yet).
I agree that worlds will get far more complex - I don't think either of the two current generation rigs are up to the challenges that PC games will present in the near future, but that's not the target audience, and they are still capable of rendering stunning worlds without high resources. I also think that Sony's philosophy tends toward large amounts of pre-rendered video, which eats up their extra capacity quickly on an HD platform - texture, model, and audio resources still don't make up a large portion of their game data, even when those games fill out to 15GB.
My point is that this isn't about the idea that GTA IV will deliver less because of the limitations of the chosen storage medium - it's that these are EXPANSIONS, and part of a business model that Microsoft has been pressing with games like Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Valve's successful Half-Life episodic content. Sony will be doing the same thing. Sure, they could deliver GT completely on a disc, but why do that when they can milk customers for more money buying components? Same deal, same business model, but Slashdotters are coming up with bizarre arguments to rip on Microsoft and their console. Even Nintendo is in on the game - selling "virtual console" games for far more than you'd pay for them at the local garage sale or flea market as original cartridges, but hey! it's playing on the Wii!
I'm just surprised at the number of Slashdotters jumping on the bandwagon in this thread, though, to rag on Microsoft for following it's Live business roadmap. Cries of "monopoly" are the worst - exclusives are FAR from unusual in the console world, where getting any sort of exclusive, be it a special feature in a multi-platform game, exclusive episodic content, or a complete game series, is a matter of business pride.
After all, they are out to make money.
That makes no sense.
The 360 game disc format is a Dual Layer DVD, 7GB... but honestly, with more and more cinematics moving to the game engine, that's not a limitation. I really don't understand what you are trying to say with your nonsensical quotation of "Storage" that has no basis in reality.
Want to know what's going on here?
Microsoft can't get the exclusive on GTA IV, so they are going for an exclusive on the expansion - a very smart thing to do. It has NOTHING to do with disc capacity, understand? Microsoft will make a mint on the Content downloads, and 360 owners will be happy that they get additional content not available on any other platform.
Content is intended for owners with a hard drive (20GB or 120GB drives) and a broadband Live connection. What's new about this? Sony required a hard drive for some games on the PS2... GTA fanatics will gladly pony up the cash for an Elite or replace their Premium 20GB drive with a 120GB drive.
I honestly can't understand why people bitch about Microsoft's downloadable content charges (or Sony's for that matter), unless the costs are excessive for the user. Reasonably priced Live downloads are good business, and until it gets cracked, it's a very solid model for everybody.
Massive cascades of small, brightly-coloured balls? Seems redundant, since you already mentioned the gay pride marches.
A couple of things:
1) To re-iterate what others are saying, the firmware hack does not defeat executable signatures, so the integrity of game code has not been compromised, however, game data files can be, and have been, compromised (Exo's GoW hacks). The simple solution is to update the executable with hard-coded data file checksums to go along with their weak signature security (in this case, on the GoW data files). So it's not entirely true that the firmware hack doesn't allow cheaters - but Microsoft has other avenues they can pursue in preventing cheaters. This wave of bannings represents an escalation in Microsoft's policy toward modders.
2) Something that many here miss, is that Microsoft has no direct access to the firmware for some models of the DVD drive they are using. Toshiba-Samsung MS28 drives, for example, have "Firmguard" - an attempt to thwart modders that has backfired on Microsoft. Why? Because powercycling the DVD with the correct VIA SATA chipset bypasses Firmguard as part of it's "Bad Flash" recovery mode. Microsoft cannot do this on the 360. This means they cannot read, nor write firmware to these drives.
There were several techniques Microsoft employed against modders in this last wave, verified by special debugging firmware employed - Microsoft was using an anomaly in the firmware's fetch of special sectors to determine if backups were employed (moddded Hitachi drives gave up the goods on this one), as well as more strict checking of those sectors (catching non-"stealth" backups), and finally, using Challenge/Response commands to do threshold timing (many used slower or faster timings on the firmware, which was detectable as being outside of thresholds).
There are still less reliable checks Microsoft may employ, but that dragnet will scoop up some legitmate users, too (No DVD Error code check, used to see who's been using their Xbox 360 as a power supply for the drive as they flashed it). If I was on the team, I'd rule that one out. There are a few other techniques, which I won't mention, since they haven't been discussed publicly, as the others I mentioned have (besides, Microsoft KNOWS how they are checking currently) - which have been identified and "fixed" in the current iXtreme 1.0 firmware.
For what it's worth, many, many 360 modders have NOT been banned. It may be these checks were only performed when they were actively playing a backup on Live... no pattern has emerged, and much of the data is suspect (panicky users, usual liars, etc...).
If Microsoft wants to defeat cheaters, all they need to do is employ a couple of interns to surf the scene sites for hack news, then simply order up special bannin' updates for those hacked games, to detect cheater's data files and ban those specific machines. Future game releases could incorporate some security libraries to make data files more secure (the code currently cannot be hacked).
Parent needs to be modded up.
/. after all) you'd know that they said they were sticking with doing all the cinematics with in the game engine.
To reiterate:
If you were paying to the article at all (why would you? this is
It's using the IN-GAME ENGINE. No pre-rendered scenes.
This isn't the PS3 - no need to fill the useless space of a Blu-Ray disc to make Sony execs and fanboys feel good.
Say what youy want about his gaffs with the PS3, but keep in mind that the primary factor that ruined the PS3 was the insistence that it include a Blu-Ray drive, most likely driven from the Media-oriented Mr. Stringer. Kutaragi was forced to support a product that was flawed because its development was driven (and delayed) by motivations that had nothing to do with gamers, and everything to do with promoting a new DRM scheme.
Remove the 6 month delay necessitated by adding the Blu-Ray drive, as well as the expense, and the obvious maneuver to push Blu-Ray into homes using fanboys and loyal customers, and it's an entirely different story... Sony still has a problem with the gaming experience, and the whole fiasco over feedback controllers, but those become minor issues. In making DRM so central to the PS3's strategy (or should I say, making the PS3 central to Sony's invasive DRM strategy) after Sony's horrible anti-consumer behavior primarily in its media divisions has made many of its loyal customers angry and resolute in not supporting the company. It's made them consciously avoid all things "Sony" - from CDs that may install rootkits that open security holes on your PCs, to movies that take extreme measures to eliminate fair use of customers to back up their own movies (while pirates release those same movies on the net days or even weeks before they are released for retail). Until Blu-Ray is added to the mix, one can simply argue that the PS3 is an island in the sea of things wrong with Sony as a corporate citizen; with Blu-Ray, however, the PS3 becomes yet another pawn - a cynical move in an agenda to control consumers' rights and increase control in media markets.
So, here we are, months after the PS3's dismal launch, and we all can agree, game quality issue aside, the PS3 would have sold much better without the Blu-Ray drive inflating the price. All of Ken's crazy words would have merely been a sidenote in a frenzied battle of consoles. It's launch would have occurred 6 months BEFORE the Wii, striking quicker and likely deeper into the market that the Wii got exposure to on equal terms with last holiday season. Can you blame Kutaragi for it all? Would he have agreed to include the Blu-Ray drive if he had not gotten incredible pressure from higher up?
It's no coincidence that Sony's leaders are media people - their media division makes money by the tankerful. What nobody seems to grasp is that those profits are not thanks to those same executives that wield so much political power within Sony's corporate arena.... media sells these days, even crap media. The world is hungry for movies and music - I suppose you could say they at least didn't make so many boneheaded moves that they dragged the company down, but even that's not entirely true - yet they hold the power, and likely forced Blu-Ray upon the PS3.
Ah well... they sweep Ken out the door and play it up as a "shake up" between the lines, it looks like SCE is making moves to improve the PS3 situation, but in reality, it does nothing to solve the underlying problem of a system tied down with a 50-ton boat anchor. It will satisfy the stockholders, many of whome have no idea when it comes to gaming consoles, only that that division has lost money for the last 5 years and is losing money at a rapid pace (even though others might realize it's a strategy to lose money on every PS3 sold).
>> 'This shows that Intel is willing to take AMD seriously as a competitive threat, and is prepared to act upon it.'
I'm not sure how much sense this statement really makes. If they take AMD as a serious threat, wouldn't they WANT AMD to be forced to continue using their own bus? AM2 was probably a misstep, given the performance drops, giving intel the upper hand, but now they are willing to let AMD play in their sandbox - it helps AMD more than it hurts them.
I'm not complaining about the move, I just found the article a bit sparse on details and the statement at odds with common sense. Is it fully open, or does it require licensing? What is AMD's take on this news? How much re-work will be required to move AMD's processor cores to the intel bus? Will they gain performance or lose it in the translation?
Lots of questions that the Inquirer seems to totally ignore in what may be a significant development in the battle of the big boys.
Actually, I don't think Xbox1 has lost them all that much money, and they intended on losing a ton of money to get their foot in the door.
Xbox 360, on the other hand, has been a success, by any measure. Except in the Japanese market, it's got respect and market share... and the Japanese market is a special case.
What Microsoft has done wrong, however, is pull a "Sony-like" attempt to force Vista down our throats with DX10. I'm not terribly happy that Halo 2 will not run without Vista, nor that games like Crysis will lack everything that makes them next-gen shooters when running in DX9. On the other hand, this will just mean I'll play games more on my modeed PS2, Xbox, and Xbox 360 consoles.
If I had meta-mod points, I'd mod you down as flamebait or up as funny.
Most Canadians I know have pretty thick skins, and I hope you are no different. If Sony wants to code-name the PS4 "Pearl Harbor", why not? I'll take it in the spirit it was intended, and not immediately get offended and spaz out enough to "take a stand".
Now, if the Japanese were planning a "mod-proof" console targeting the Chinese with a code name of "Nanking" - well, that's a little different. Midway, on the other hand, was a decisive MILITARY battle that helped turn the tide in a war that began with a sneak attack. The war was ended with atomic destruction - and while mildly insensitive, I think "wiping out the Japanese Console market share" as analogous to a nuke can be taken in less offensive ways, too. Take offense at DirectX (Radioactive symbol) and stop playing games on your PC if you are that offended, but that was old news by the time the Xbox (Midway) debuted.
Actually, I did find it a little surprising that the Toyota trucks symbol looks like a mushroom cloud. Maybe their symbolism for "returning the favor" upon American truck manufacturers?
By the way, as an Asian-Canadian, do you always cover for allof your continental brethren? I mean, a Vietnamese or Idnonesian is about as related to a Japanese person as I (a US citizen) am to a Honduran. Actually, a better example, going to my European (Polish/French/German) roots (though I have Native American roots, as well), might see me offended of some slight made at the expense of Italians. It seems rather silly.
I'm absolutely positive they do.
This system, however, as a supplimental to the existing systems used in navigation, would provide greater accuracy and a means to recalibrate existing systems.
I can see this being used in the future to allow submarines the ability to navigate more accurately, even away from a GPS buoy, through shallow areas, thanks to the correction from any drift they may have encountered since their last surfacing.
Inertial guidance, dead reckoning, undersea terrain tracking and of course, the standard compass all provide means for navigation underwater, but some are imprecise and cumulative error will creep in during long undersea voyages. Surfacing to re-calibrate the navigation systems exposes a submarine to potentially hostile observation by air and satellite. A simple "ping" minimizes that exposure, as long as a hostile presence isn't already nearby in the water.
If Sony was smart, they'd can the PS2 version of Gods Of War 2 and make sure a PS3 version came out that maximized the PS3's power.
Please, get it straight. It's nice to see a decent shooter for the PS3, but with it being probably the most compelling title for the PS3, it should be selling better than it is.
Microsoft will probably settle in on an alternating cycle - giving shooter fans Halo 3 this holiday season, GoW 2 the next, and so on... Halo defined the Xbox and put it squarely on the map in a way that Resistance has utterly failed. There have been plenty of great shooters for the PS2 and Xbox, but how many truly **defined** a console? Nobody is really getting that sort of vibe from Resistance (no disrespect here, as I said, it is a compelling title); it's a competent shooter and likely the start of a franchise of at least a few more sequels, but if a year from now, it is the "defining" PS3 title, Sony will be woefully in trouble.
Looking at it from the outside, I just get the feeling Resistance is the PS3 Killzone. A better title to "define" the PS3 might have been Gods Of War 2, but we'll see that on PS2, right? I think Sony has fallen into the trap of trying to beat Microsoft, answering GoW with Resistance, doing little, costly things to "beat" the 360, but nothing to really surpass it.
Make no mistake about it: Many gamers who don't own an Xbox 360 today will line up when Halo 3 is released and walk away with both the game and a console to play it on. GoW has caused similar reactions, but has taken a while for people to really experience it and catch the interest. For both consoles, there is simply no "wow" factor without HDTV, so that's a variable that has to be taken into account, but for some gamers, that's just another purchase to play the game they most desire.
Microsoft doesn't need a "Resistance killer". It's already got that in spades, and Halo 3 only ups the ante. If Sony was smart, they'd can the PS2 version and make sure a PS3 version came out that maximized the PS3's power. That doesn't seem to be happening, and without any TRULY compelling exclusives, why should Microsoft sweat it?
You miss the parent's point.
If they do a key revokation, any discs produced afterward means that any players not connected to the internet are broken. This is a "worst case scenario" and is, indeed, the DRM world's equivalent of a scorched earth policy. At this point, it's a toss up if they will follow through with a revokation, given the bad feelings, all around, that will result... on the other hand, what better time to go through with this fire drill? Work out the bugs early on and see what happens!
I don't know that I concur with the grandparent's point; like I just said, it's a toss up what they'll do. What I do think is that there are more compromised player keys out there, and even better, knowing a bunch of those keys gives the crackers more information to attack the encryption via other keys (like CSS did), so we could see an endless stream of compromised keys, with the DRM crackers laughing their asses off the whole time, pissed off customers angry that their expensive HD-DVD/BD players are constantly "broken" with new movies until an update disc arrives or a firmware upgrade downloads from the internet. This doesn't even consider those whose firmware upgrades "brick" their players accidentally (which will occur at a higher rate, with more updates).
I'd bet the dedicated players out there have been well compromised already, to the point that updating them will merely give the crackers the new keys, anyway, even if they don't have the whole scheme opened up.
AACS was a lost cause the minute it was proposed.
See, this is what I'm talking about. The typical slashdotter is a small minority of consumers - the most vociferous are usually not Microsoft customers anyway.
Your blanket statement is no more valid than mine, with one exception, I've worked in the industry with everything from big movers to mass-produced consumer goods. Please, take it from me, cross-platform is not that important to a consumer.
There is a point of diminishing returns, where MOST consumers simply don't want an all-in-one device, for example, or simply don't care to have a spreadsheet work in Linux and Windows. People just want to turn on a computer and USE it. They want to turn on a DVR and USE it. They want to dial a number and USE it. Inter-operability, multi-functionality, cross-platform code... all results in more complexity, and usually a "Jack of all trades, master of none" device. This is also known as the "lowest common denominator".
Servers demand performance. A server farm picks a technology and sticks to it (unless they are a service provider, in which case they may offer a variety to meet costumer needs - but still, each tech is an island unto itself). Devices demand performance. A cell phone should be able to make phone calls. An MP3 player should be able to play lots of music well for long periods of time. Cell phones with MP3 players? Fewer songs, poor interfaces, less battery life... if I use my battery up listening to music, how can I use the phone? I demand performance from my computer to play games... I need to be able to compile and run apps, install what I need... but that's more than 70% of the people out there need, since most people are casual gamers and web surfers; for them, Windows just works (aside from spyware, virus and trojan issues). My Mom doesn't know what Linux is, and would kill me if her system ever booted it. Same goes for MacOS.
Well, I can't speak to your own experience with other groups, but most of the work I've been involved with (including government work), has been pretty good. UATs? Yes, we do those; once you get to that point, the worst is over anyway (I loathe writing test plans, just because I always feel like I'm leaving something out).
Perhaps our group is atypical in EDS... most projects I've seen have been renewed far past anybody's expectations - and that speaks to customer's satisfaction.
Well, I've never been trained in COBOL (outside of college, over 20 years ago). I'm an embedded systems guy, and maybe my group is rather unique... most of our disaffection comes from the business model that treats people like a resource and our group like a pool. Account execs get the bonuses for re-signing business that ultimately, we win in the trenches by our performance (no support from account execs, other than slipping contracts in front of the customers). Not seeing raises, even though we've managed to get a juicy contract extended for 4 times the original term, can be a bit disheartening.
We had genuinely hoped that axeman Dick Brown was going to break EDS up, and we'd be spun off to IBM or CompuWare... that didn't happen. Instead we languished, and our manager got a mandate to fire X number of people, no matter how much better our worst guy was compared to the next group's "best".
Then again, this sort of thing happens in a lot of companies, so it's mostly "grass is greener" stuff.
Let's not forget that both people discussing "screw Sun" used to work for them. There is probably a whole lot of baggage we'll never know that goes along with two guys switching companies and paradigms.
As an EDSer, I've seen plenty of my former colleagues take a "screw EDS" view in their new companies... they were dissatisfied with aspects of business and how they were managed (sometimes justifiably, sometimes not so much); until they became just as disafected by their new employers, they were considerably hostile in words and action, at times, to their old employer.
Given that they were involved with J++, discussing a cross-platform mandate (big with Slashdotters, but not even a blip on the radar screen with 99% of Microsoft's customer base), and the context of the discussion involved co-opting lessons learned and design imperitives (not really the product itself), this discussion was not exactly the smoking gun you guys would like it to be.
>> It appears that around 75% of the people that have bought a PS3 have tried a blu-ray movie in it.
Of course. THE PS3 CAME WITH A MOVIE. It's natural they'd try it out. It might even be natural that they'd buy one that's actually going to show off the hi-def much better than a comedy. Does that mean they'll keep buying Blu-Ray discs? Of course not. It's purely a toss-up, and you simply can't read any motivations into their minds one way or another. This is why it's very misleading, and any numbers with the PS3 should be taken with a grain of salt... not to mention that the difference between SHIPPING and SOLD (I've seen PS3s collecting dust at every place I've shopped at recently... the clerks at EB Games said they simply don't sell now, whereas the Wii flies out of the store the same day they get them in).
>>Not exactly true. There are a ton of reasons that people bought the PS3 and having a cheaper blu-ray player is, for some a reason. Is it the ONLY reason? No, but it is a reason.
Erm, read what I said. I didn't say that nobody bought a PS3 as a Blu-Ray player; I said **most** bought it as a game console, which implies a few probably bought it as a cheap Blu-Ray player, which brings up a rather touchy issue: Sony is dumping BD players on the market at a loss, while Samsung and its other partners' systems will be collecting dust at much higher prices. If I was Sony's partner in the BD arena, I'd seriously consider switching sides... or at least seeking legal means to fight the problem. I can't imagine anybody else making BD players is happy about that - their sales have plummeted since the PS3 came out (given the choice, would you buy a Samsung stand-alone for ~$1000, or a PS3 at ~$500?).
>> Sony gave the game manufacturers a 50GB storage media for games and the ability to play BluRay movies on your PS3. They do this at a current loss of around $150 to $200 on the system (which will be reduced greatly this year by manufacturing improvements).
They aren't taking the hit to provide game publishers more space though - but considering the difficulties in programming games on the PS3, the space needed for PS3 games may jump up as a self-fulfilling prophecy; i.e. HD pre-rendered cut-scenes, which became popular with the PSX's expanded CD space, even more so on the PS2 (particularly since the PS2 couldn't render anti-aliased in real time very well). The reality is that systems like the 360 don't need to resort to a lot of pre-rendered cut scenes (good examples are Dead Rising and Gears Of War), since the real-time engine looks just as good as any hi-def pre-rendered scene. Beyond a certain point, how much space to you need for audio samples, models, and textures? The Japanese mentality, however, has attached high value to pre-rendered cut scenes, and refuses to let it go, now that it's no longer required (why have all this graphical power and not use it?). I think the 50GB figure doesn't really matter that much when it comes to games, unless you wanted to watch an interactive movie... and if I wanted that, I could simply stick to a PS2.
That monetary loss isn't likely to see relief for some time, either... Microsoft currently makes a profit (~$45 per console), and recently stated they are seeing further reductions in production costs. I suspect they could easily "up the ante" by reducing the price by $100 in the near future - and given the recent revelation of the Zephyr (HDMI and digital scaling chip + 120GB HD), I suspect they'll do that in a few months to ratchet up the pressure on Sony - with the Standard edition coming in at $199, the Premium at $299 and probably a "Platinum" edition (120GB + HD-DVD built in?) at $399. Microsoft has room to do this, Sony doesn't. The PS2 didn't see price drops for over a year, so don't expect the PS3 to drop prices any time soon.
Lastly on that point, HD-DVD is far cheaper to manufacture than Blu-Ray. I'd be willing to bet that while Sony takes a hit on every player and every movie sold (yes, the movies probably co
How many of all those PS3s will be used to watch anything more than a lackluster (for Hi-Def, at least) Talladega Nights?
/Owns a PS2 but doesn't use it to watch DVDs
The problem with "updated numbers" is that most people bought a PS3 as a GAME SYSTEM. The movie player, for the PS3 owners, just happens to be there, but that doesn't mean they will go out and buy movies, or use the player.
In contrast, people who went out and purchased an HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 ACTUALLY ***WANTED*** THE HI-DEF DVD FORMAT.
The difference is significant, because we can't reach into the minds of PS3 owners and determine what percentage yawned at the pack-in movie and said, "what crap, why would I want to spend more money on a Blu-Ray movie, just to see Will Farrell's cold sore in excruciating detail?" - and be assured, there is a percentage.
So Sony has only managed to muddy the Blu-Ray numbers by forcing consumers who bought a game console to also buy a player.
Just my luck, and the warranty says I can't return it unless I find at least 4 dead pixels!!!
Check xbox-scene.com - they have not been "officially" confirmed by Microsoft, but there's a video demonstrating the HDMI.
I expect a $100 price drop in the next 6 months, with an introduction of Xbox 360 "Gold" taking the price slot of the "Premium" with the 120GB drive, and maybe HD-DVD drive built in.
I also suspect Microsoft may prepare a USB-based tuner to incorporate the missing feature from this gen's - Tivo-like capability.