They market the device as a handheld media box which can do video/audio/text and gaming including emulation. And emulators are not illegal. If you have a stack of NES carts - is it illegal to use a ROM image? Do you think everyone just rips their own CDs for use in an iPod? Or uses iTunes? How do you think that breaks down percentage wise? Realistically, most young kids I've talked with are well versed in the art of burning CDs, ripping MP3s and sharing with their friends. I would certainly argue that the iPod and related ripping software such as iTunes have caused way more copyright violation than the GP2X ever will. So yes they released the GP2X as an open platform fully knowing that some people would make use of it to violate copyright. Just as Apple released the iPod with MP3 support with full knowledge that some (at the time of launch most) people who purchased it would use it for copyright violations. I would argue that it is certainly possible that the GP2X developers:
1. don't understand the GPL 2. don't understand that what they are doing is wrong 3. don't really care either way
Perception of copyright law in parts of Asia is very different from in the US. The GP2X is a Korean product. You know Korea, the country that made the Rollex watch popular. They are notorious for producing shameless knock off products that violate trademark, and they really don't seem to care about it.
"A company released hardware that makes it easy and convenient to run all your favorite emulated copyright violations on portable hardware."
It just makes it easy write homebrew applications and run them on it. It doesn't have DRM to prohibit this. Much like oh say a computer? Or maybe... a PocketPc? Or a Palm handheld?
Just because it doesn't have DRM, the company is a bunch of evil people seeking to enable mass copyright violation? It plays videos and mp3s too without DRM! Oh no! Wait, now come to think of it Apple lets you play non-DRM MP3s on an iPod! Oh the humanity!
You should take a look at the GP2X software, in addition to the emulators there are a lot of nice homebrew games.
You have an opinion. No need to be rude about it. I agree that you should be grouping most of the time in an MMO. I don't agree that you should not have anything else to do in the game. Any components that can't be soloable. I live outside the continental United States and as a result I'm not online during prime hours. While I can frequently get a group, there are nights when I have game time and there is no one to game with. And yes I'm including pickup groups, not just guild mates or real life friends. During these times I like to be able to do something solo to further my character's development. I'm not expecting to solo run through hard dungeons or kill hard monsters, or to be able to do every quest/mission in the game solo. I'm not even asking that I get as much XP soloing. I just want there to be something for me to do solo when I log in - in case:
My point is that none of these items and many of the software parts of todays Mac as well, were not developed in house by Apple. This is in contrast to Apple many years ago which built their own flavor of many components internally.
PCI/PCI Express - you know what I mean. And it's the same on the PC. It's not like Apple adopted PCI Express before it launched on the PC platform.
ATA vs. SCSI - Once a long long time ago Apple even tried their hands at making their own hard drive interfaces. I'm talking back in the 5MB drive days. So Apple started in house and moved to a standard (SCSI initially). The move to ATA drives on the Mac was done as a cost saving move. Everyone complained at the time (myself included).
Ethernet = Apple pushed Localtalk for a long time and eventually transitioned to Ethernet (a standard) when Localtalk speeds were not enough. My point about TCP/IP is that they adopted a common networking standard as well. MS did the same thing by running Windows networking over TCP/IP. When TCP/IP took over in the early 90s both Apple and MS moved towards it.
USB = I think it's pretty debatable to say that it's in use because of Apple. The PC world transitioned to primarily USB over a much longer time period, but USB was standard on PCs back in the Pentium 2 days. The slow transition was done on purpose, versus Apple which dumped ADB overnight. Once again a lot of Mac users complained. All of a sudden their favorite mice, keyboards and printers would no longer work with a new iMac, just as their external SCSI hard drives, tape drives, Zips, Jaz and others wouldn't.
Anyone the point is that as of today with the launch of the x86 Macs, what you have is an Apple built PC using commodity components running OS X. And even the core structure of OS X is built on open source software. This isn't a dig on Apple - what Jobs has done by leveraging both open source and common PC parts is probably the smartest thing Apple could do. The bulk of there innovation is in the OS and the overall design of the systems. This is also the most consumer marketable aspect of a computer.
And you will find mostly commodity PC components now. Let's see:
PCI bus = check ATA or SATA hard drive = check ATA CD/DVD/ROM/R drive = check Standard PC style graphics card or chip = check USB = check (while Apple was one company in the standards body, so were Microsoft and Intel among many others) DVI connector for monitor = check Standard Ethernet using TCP/IP = check
And coming soon... Intel x86 CPU
Interestingly, it seems that Apple is phasing out Firewire (which it did create) in favor of USB (see iPod Shuffle, Nano and Video). Long gone are Localtalk, ADB, NuBus etc.
One of the big trends in Apple since Steve Jobs came aboard was transitioning the Macintosh to use lower cost commodity components. This approach in addition to reducing the number of different Macintosh models and configurations, allowed for cost cutting and increased margins on Mac sales. I'm not saying Apple hasn't innovated in the hardware space over the years, obviously it has. Today's Apple however leverages commodity hardware and innovates in overall system design, operating system and software.
As far as computer games go, in 1990 the US modified copyright law with the Computer Software Rental Amendments Act to prohibit software rental because it lead to piracy. Before the law, you could rent computer games. I used to rent computer games by mail back in the Commodore 64 days. As for console video games, they are rented all over the place. And the used copies are sold as well. Blockbuster puts its used copies up for sale just the same as pre-viewed movies. GameFly rents via mail and lets you keep the game if you decide you want to buy it. You just let them know you want to buy the game and they bill your credit card for it. Gamefly also sells off their used copies when demand for the game goes down.
a 5 button mouse can be a huge improvement. I use an older MS Intellimouse for gaming. It has the standard 2 buttons and wheel (which clicks) plus two side buttons accessible via the thumb. In Jedi Knight 2 and Jedi Academy you have weapon selection, force power selection, weapon activation and force power activation. With a five button mouse you can do all of these without using the keyboard. In MMOs I put additional things like autorun or camera rotation and reset on the mouse. I also use the thumb button for push-to-talk mode on a VOIP application for talking to clan/guild members. For games that have alternate weapon fire, zoom/aim and grenades (such as Call of Duty) - all of these functions can be on the mouse. I would imagine a wheel that tilted left and right would be nice for the look around corner functions as well. The more functions I can put on the mouse, the more I can activate without needing to stretch a finger away from the movement keys.
"For a DVR-like device in a media center, that issue would go away; the DVR remote shouldn't be controlling your TV's volume in the first place."
I think the remote should control your volume. Ideally you just want one remote, not to have to switch between one for each device, especially for a common function such as volume and changing channels. I would hate to have to put down the Tivo remote and pickup the TV remote just to change volume.
"WRT the issue of back-to-back shows, you'll note that I said "on the same channel". That's not a hardware problem."
You're right I miss read that. Yeah, it's a stupid problem with the software. Having to manually set a timed record for back to back shows means you lose all the functionality of the Season Pass for those shows. I have no idea why Tivo hasn't fixed this.
"I could go on for hours. It's not a great design. It's a mediocre design. It's just orders of magnitude better than the complete garbage that existed prior to it. I hope someone can do better."
Sure it's not the end all and be all of interface design. It's still pretty much the best one out there. So as "mediocre" as it may be you can't get a better one. As for the button situation, I'd rather have more buttons than less. In the case of Apple's Front Row, the buttons do different things depending on the context. So up and down might change volume, or it might navigate you up and down a list of items. And you use one function when the other is active. So for example you can't adjust your volume down while on the screen selecting a movie trailer to view. You have to select the movie first and then adjust volume. I find the arbitrary nature of the buttons less than ideal. And of course Front Row is not doing nearly as much as a Tivo. We'll see if they change the remote when they add TV functionality to the Mac. I'd hate to have to cycle up and down through 100 channels rather than entering the channel with a number pad. BTW in regards to your problem with Tivo recording back to back shows - that's really a hardware problem. Since the Tivo series 1 and 2 only have a single tuner, and back to back programs overlap thanks to the stupid networks, it can't record both at the same time. It could just switch channels at the supposed show time, but you would possibly get the tail end of your show chopped off.
"Psst. Hey geniuses. The Japanese already beat you to it."
I don't know about that. I think the Tivo user interface and remote control are excellent and a hell of a lot easier than those crapola VCR programming tools.
Yes that is a bad argument and yes any type of abuse is tragic BUT acting stupidly can and often times will get you into trouble. If you decide to visit the tigers up close in the zoo cage you may just get bit or eaten. They are predators. So is the pedophile sending porn to a kid he found on the Internet. Play with predators and you just might get bit.
In World of Warcraft and City of Heroes, I don't think I've ever seen a player refer to their character as an avatar in game. The most common terms are main, alt or toon - and occasionally using the term character. Main being the main one you play, alt being your alternate character and toon just being quicker to type than character. No one seems to use char anymore, although this abbreviation was commonly used back in the old days and pen and paper gaming. I don't like the term avatar, because it implies that this is "you" in the game. I don't make an avatar, I make a character which is seperate from me and does not represent myself or my traits.
"So in summary, as soon as members of the WoW community learn new lingo, they bring it into use in order to fit-in, and not because it's easier to use."
I don't think this is entirely true. People (myself included) use abbreviations like LFG, LFM, WTS etc. because they are quicker to type. Just like zone/dungeon abbreviations such as IF and UBRS. Other types of abbreviations and terms are more likely to be used to "insult n00bs" who are not part of the hip-know-all-the-acronyms crowd. A fairly recent example of this is L2P (learn to play). But then smack talking is part of online play anyway. I've never had a problem asking people in game what a term means, although I usually ask guildies/friends because the likelihood of getting a complete BS answer is slimmer. Although sometimes I like to have someone call me a "lolzer noob l2p" because then I can sarcastically comment "my what a large epeen you have".
There are plenty of generic acronyms used both in instant messaging and online gaming, but a bunch of other ones are game specific. I don't really see them as a barrier to entry. After playing World of Warcraft for awhile you learn what UBRS is and why people are "LFM for UBRS have key" in "IF" all the time. Besides the acronyms, you have your leet-speak and purposeful misspellings (pwned, teh, pron etc.). Every once in awhile a word is coined that really is necessary online and describes something you only encounter online. My current favorite is ePenis.
"As pointed out above, the problem with this is that the adjective maybe factually correctly, but it's inconsequential to the problem."
The reason I have called farmers from China, Chinese during in game dialogue - is because they SPEAK Chinese. Which is important because it means that unless you have someone who speaks Chinese with you, you will probably not be able to communicate with them. A small percentage of these Chinese know English or enough English to communicate. Most do not. Why is this consequential? Well, because I can't say things like "Don't steal my kills" or "Don't train mobs on me" or "You ninja'd that item". I have gone so far as to learn some simple Chinese phrases in order to communicate with them. I wouldn't have done that if they weren't Chinese. Besides, Chinese is a NATIONALITY. I have no idea what they look like, what their racial heritage is. I can't see them. I can only read what they write and most of them write the Chinese language.
True, you could run Linux instead. You don't need to install/run Linux on the Xbox in order to run emulators, Xbox media center or xbox home brew applications. Those are built and compiled with the MS Xbox dev kit. They just aren't signed by MS which is why you need a mod chip. I paid $150 for my Xbox + $100 for 160GB hard drive + $50 for mod chip. So $300 total. And in truth you can get a much cheaper mod chip, I got the top of the line one which allows you to load and switch between different bios.
I did. I got a just a minute. Minute turned into multiple minutes. So I might as well just wait in line - which is what I did. And when I left with my purchase after waiting in line for 15 minutes, the employee was still chatting with the girls.
"Basically, the PSP is easier to get your own code into right now."
Sort of. Yes you don't need to purchase anything (they do have devices for the DS that are sold now btw) - but you may have to do some goofy futzing or setup files in a special way to get your homebrew to work. Plus if your bios gets updated, you can no longer use your homebrew.
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They market the device as a handheld media box which can do video/audio/text and gaming including emulation. And emulators are not illegal. If you have a stack of NES carts - is it illegal to use a ROM image?
Do you think everyone just rips their own CDs for use in an iPod? Or uses iTunes? How do you think that breaks down percentage wise? Realistically, most young kids I've talked with are well versed in the art of burning CDs, ripping MP3s and sharing with their friends. I would certainly argue that the iPod and related ripping software such as iTunes have caused way more copyright violation than the GP2X ever will.
So yes they released the GP2X as an open platform fully knowing that some people would make use of it to violate copyright. Just as Apple released the iPod with MP3 support with full knowledge that some (at the time of launch most) people who purchased it would use it for copyright violations.
I would argue that it is certainly possible that the GP2X developers:
1. don't understand the GPL
2. don't understand that what they are doing is wrong
3. don't really care either way
Perception of copyright law in parts of Asia is very different from in the US. The GP2X is a Korean product. You know Korea, the country that made the Rollex watch popular. They are notorious for producing shameless knock off products that violate trademark, and they really don't seem to care about it.
"A company released hardware that makes it easy and convenient to run all your favorite emulated copyright violations on portable hardware."
It just makes it easy write homebrew applications and run them on it. It doesn't have DRM to prohibit this. Much like oh say a computer? Or maybe... a PocketPc? Or a Palm handheld?
Just because it doesn't have DRM, the company is a bunch of evil people seeking to enable mass copyright violation? It plays videos and mp3s too without DRM! Oh no! Wait, now come to think of it Apple lets you play non-DRM MP3s on an iPod! Oh the humanity!
You should take a look at the GP2X software, in addition to the emulators there are a lot of nice homebrew games.
Are the physics such that that women commonly give themselves black eyes from the flailing jugs?
If not, I see room for improvement.
You have an opinion. No need to be rude about it.
I agree that you should be grouping most of the time in an MMO. I don't agree that you should not have anything else to do in the game. Any components that can't be soloable.
I live outside the continental United States and as a result I'm not online during prime hours. While I can frequently get a group, there are nights when I have game time and there is no one to game with. And yes I'm including pickup groups, not just guild mates or real life friends. During these times I like to be able to do something solo to further my character's development. I'm not expecting to solo run through hard dungeons or kill hard monsters, or to be able to do every quest/mission in the game solo. I'm not even asking that I get as much XP soloing. I just want there to be something for me to do solo when I log in - in case:
1. I can't find a group
or
2. It takes a long time to get a group
My point is that none of these items and many of the software parts of todays Mac as well, were not developed in house by Apple. This is in contrast to Apple many years ago which built their own flavor of many components internally.
PCI/PCI Express - you know what I mean. And it's the same on the PC. It's not like Apple adopted PCI Express before it launched on the PC platform.
ATA vs. SCSI - Once a long long time ago Apple even tried their hands at making their own hard drive interfaces. I'm talking back in the 5MB drive days. So Apple started in house and moved to a standard (SCSI initially). The move to ATA drives on the Mac was done as a cost saving move. Everyone complained at the time (myself included).
Ethernet = Apple pushed Localtalk for a long time and eventually transitioned to Ethernet (a standard) when Localtalk speeds were not enough. My point about TCP/IP is that they adopted a common networking standard as well. MS did the same thing by running Windows networking over TCP/IP. When TCP/IP took over in the early 90s both Apple and MS moved towards it.
USB = I think it's pretty debatable to say that it's in use because of Apple. The PC world transitioned to primarily USB over a much longer time period, but USB was standard on PCs back in the Pentium 2 days. The slow transition was done on purpose, versus Apple which dumped ADB overnight. Once again a lot of Mac users complained. All of a sudden their favorite mice, keyboards and printers would no longer work with a new iMac, just as their external SCSI hard drives, tape drives, Zips, Jaz and others wouldn't.
Anyone the point is that as of today with the launch of the x86 Macs, what you have is an Apple built PC using commodity components running OS X. And even the core structure of OS X is built on open source software. This isn't a dig on Apple - what Jobs has done by leveraging both open source and common PC parts is probably the smartest thing Apple could do. The bulk of there innovation is in the OS and the overall design of the systems. This is also the most consumer marketable aspect of a computer.
And you will find mostly commodity PC components now. Let's see:
PCI bus = check
ATA or SATA hard drive = check
ATA CD/DVD/ROM/R drive = check
Standard PC style graphics card or chip = check
USB = check (while Apple was one company in the standards body, so were Microsoft and Intel among many others)
DVI connector for monitor = check
Standard Ethernet using TCP/IP = check
And coming soon... Intel x86 CPU
Interestingly, it seems that Apple is phasing out Firewire (which it did create) in favor of USB (see iPod Shuffle, Nano and Video).
Long gone are Localtalk, ADB, NuBus etc.
One of the big trends in Apple since Steve Jobs came aboard was transitioning the Macintosh to use lower cost commodity components. This approach in addition to reducing the number of different Macintosh models and configurations, allowed for cost cutting and increased margins on Mac sales.
I'm not saying Apple hasn't innovated in the hardware space over the years, obviously it has. Today's Apple however leverages commodity hardware and innovates in overall system design, operating system and software.
As far as computer games go, in 1990 the US modified copyright law with the Computer Software Rental Amendments Act to prohibit software rental because it lead to piracy. Before the law, you could rent computer games. I used to rent computer games by mail back in the Commodore 64 days.
As for console video games, they are rented all over the place. And the used copies are sold as well. Blockbuster puts its used copies up for sale just the same as pre-viewed movies.
GameFly rents via mail and lets you keep the game if you decide you want to buy it. You just let them know you want to buy the game and they bill your credit card for it.
Gamefly also sells off their used copies when demand for the game goes down.
a 5 button mouse can be a huge improvement. I use an older MS Intellimouse for gaming. It has the standard 2 buttons and wheel (which clicks) plus two side buttons accessible via the thumb.
In Jedi Knight 2 and Jedi Academy you have weapon selection, force power selection, weapon activation and force power activation. With a five button mouse you can do all of these without using the keyboard.
In MMOs I put additional things like autorun or camera rotation and reset on the mouse. I also use the thumb button for push-to-talk mode on a VOIP application for talking to clan/guild members.
For games that have alternate weapon fire, zoom/aim and grenades (such as Call of Duty) - all of these functions can be on the mouse. I would imagine a wheel that tilted left and right would be nice for the look around corner functions as well.
The more functions I can put on the mouse, the more I can activate without needing to stretch a finger away from the movement keys.
Well I think Gayest Faggot in the World is officially the gayest alias in the history of gaming, but Fatal1ty is a close second.
I used to enjoy my Amiga with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
"For a DVR-like device in a media center, that issue would go away; the DVR remote shouldn't be controlling your TV's volume in the first place."
I think the remote should control your volume. Ideally you just want one remote, not to have to switch between one for each device, especially for a common function such as volume and changing channels. I would hate to have to put down the Tivo remote and pickup the TV remote just to change volume.
"WRT the issue of back-to-back shows, you'll note that I said "on the same channel". That's not a hardware problem."
You're right I miss read that. Yeah, it's a stupid problem with the software. Having to manually set a timed record for back to back shows means you lose all the functionality of the Season Pass for those shows. I have no idea why Tivo hasn't fixed this.
"I want more life, fucker."
-Roy Batty
"I could go on for hours. It's not a great design. It's a mediocre design. It's just orders of magnitude better than the complete garbage that existed prior to it. I hope someone can do better."
Sure it's not the end all and be all of interface design. It's still pretty much the best one out there. So as "mediocre" as it may be you can't get a better one.
As for the button situation, I'd rather have more buttons than less. In the case of Apple's Front Row, the buttons do different things depending on the context. So up and down might change volume, or it might navigate you up and down a list of items. And you use one function when the other is active. So for example you can't adjust your volume down while on the screen selecting a movie trailer to view. You have to select the movie first and then adjust volume. I find the arbitrary nature of the buttons less than ideal. And of course Front Row is not doing nearly as much as a Tivo. We'll see if they change the remote when they add TV functionality to the Mac. I'd hate to have to cycle up and down through 100 channels rather than entering the channel with a number pad.
BTW in regards to your problem with Tivo recording back to back shows - that's really a hardware problem. Since the Tivo series 1 and 2 only have a single tuner, and back to back programs overlap thanks to the stupid networks, it can't record both at the same time. It could just switch channels at the supposed show time, but you would possibly get the tail end of your show chopped off.
"Psst. Hey geniuses. The Japanese already beat you to it."
I don't know about that. I think the Tivo user interface and remote control are excellent and a hell of a lot easier than those crapola VCR programming tools.
Yes that is a bad argument and yes any type of abuse is tragic BUT acting stupidly can and often times will get you into trouble.
If you decide to visit the tigers up close in the zoo cage you may just get bit or eaten. They are predators. So is the pedophile sending porn to a kid he found on the Internet. Play with predators and you just might get bit.
In World of Warcraft and City of Heroes, I don't think I've ever seen a player refer to their character as an avatar in game. The most common terms are main, alt or toon - and occasionally using the term character. Main being the main one you play, alt being your alternate character and toon just being quicker to type than character. No one seems to use char anymore, although this abbreviation was commonly used back in the old days and pen and paper gaming.
I don't like the term avatar, because it implies that this is "you" in the game. I don't make an avatar, I make a character which is seperate from me and does not represent myself or my traits.
"So in summary, as soon as members of the WoW community learn new lingo, they bring it into use in order to fit-in, and not because it's easier to use."
I don't think this is entirely true. People (myself included) use abbreviations like LFG, LFM, WTS etc. because they are quicker to type. Just like zone/dungeon abbreviations such as IF and UBRS.
Other types of abbreviations and terms are more likely to be used to "insult n00bs" who are not part of the hip-know-all-the-acronyms crowd. A fairly recent example of this is L2P (learn to play). But then smack talking is part of online play anyway.
I've never had a problem asking people in game what a term means, although I usually ask guildies/friends because the likelihood of getting a complete BS answer is slimmer. Although sometimes I like to have someone call me a "lolzer noob l2p" because then I can sarcastically comment "my what a large epeen you have".
There are plenty of generic acronyms used both in instant messaging and online gaming, but a bunch of other ones are game specific. I don't really see them as a barrier to entry. After playing World of Warcraft for awhile you learn what UBRS is and why people are "LFM for UBRS have key" in "IF" all the time.
Besides the acronyms, you have your leet-speak and purposeful misspellings (pwned, teh, pron etc.). Every once in awhile a word is coined that really is necessary online and describes something you only encounter online. My current favorite is ePenis.
I see your Syndicate and raise you another Dungeon Keeper, Magic Carpet or hell even Theme Hospital.
All proper MOO players realize that MOO 3 was not MOO 3. It was the evil anti-MOO and should not be dicussed in pleasant company.
"As pointed out above, the problem with this is that the adjective maybe factually correctly, but it's inconsequential to the problem."
The reason I have called farmers from China, Chinese during in game dialogue - is because they SPEAK Chinese. Which is important because it means that unless you have someone who speaks Chinese with you, you will probably not be able to communicate with them. A small percentage of these Chinese know English or enough English to communicate. Most do not.
Why is this consequential? Well, because I can't say things like "Don't steal my kills" or "Don't train mobs on me" or "You ninja'd that item". I have gone so far as to learn some simple Chinese phrases in order to communicate with them. I wouldn't have done that if they weren't Chinese.
Besides, Chinese is a NATIONALITY. I have no idea what they look like, what their racial heritage is. I can't see them. I can only read what they write and most of them write the Chinese language.
True, you could run Linux instead.
You don't need to install/run Linux on the Xbox in order to run emulators, Xbox media center or xbox home brew applications. Those are built and compiled with the MS Xbox dev kit. They just aren't signed by MS which is why you need a mod chip.
I paid $150 for my Xbox + $100 for 160GB hard drive + $50 for mod chip. So $300 total. And in truth you can get a much cheaper mod chip, I got the top of the line one which allows you to load and switch between different bios.
I did. I got a just a minute. Minute turned into multiple minutes. So I might as well just wait in line - which is what I did.
And when I left with my purchase after waiting in line for 15 minutes, the employee was still chatting with the girls.
"Basically, the PSP is easier to get your own code into right now."
Sort of. Yes you don't need to purchase anything (they do have devices for the DS that are sold now btw) - but you may have to do some goofy futzing or setup files in a special way to get your homebrew to work. Plus if your bios gets updated, you can no longer use your homebrew.
Dishes all done!