You release albums as individual cartridges for portable players... it gives you a tactile "thing" with a label, contains mp3's in a generic format, is in a durable case [...] The ultimate packaging.
Most people with good eyesight would probably notice a marked difference in detail between a 480i and 1080i signal, or even a 480p and 720p signal. The transition from standard-def to hi-def, while somewhat sluggish, is underway because people can appreciate its benefits.
But is anyone actually going to notice a difference between 1080i and 1080p? Or will it be a simply psychological effect found in those that pay $100/ft for special speaker cable where the "electrons are properly aligned" or what have you? "I paid a premium for this hardware, therefore it MUST be better!"
I have lost count of all the pornography I have seen in the internet. Yet I never saw one single picture of a child engaged in sex!
You're lucky.
No, spammers don't send out unsolicited pictures of child rape via email. But they ARE out there, and I've accidentally come across them more than once, either while seeking out more legal forms of erotica, or while browsing through binary newsgroups with innocuous-sounding names. "I wonder what's in here... OH GOD"
Now, I don't know how widespread the problem is, but it's entirely conceivable that the Internet has fostered an increase in child porn production and distribution. They don't need access to a clandestine photo lab and printing press anymore; they just need a digital camera and an anonymous FTP server running on someone's r00ted Winbox. I can see why Gonzales would see it as a concern, although his proposed measures for addressing it leave something to be desired.
They should be referred to only by their number. Slapping a name on a bill is a dishonest labelling for the purpose of marketing.
I'd rather have that than to have our representatives, who often don't even READ the full text of the laws they pass, get confused about which bill is which and accidentally ratify H.R. 4966 (The Cute Puppy Genocide Act) while shooting down H.R. 4969 (The Free Candy For Everyone Act) because they got the numbers mixed up.
Look at Soul Calibur 2: the Gamecube version was the highest selling of the three (probably due to Link), but SC3 was PS2-only. WOuldn't you stick with what sold you the most copies?
No, you'd stick with what makes you the most money. There's a difference -- especially if a console manufacturer offers you incentives to make your next title a platform exclusive for them.
Let's not forget that even if Nintendo's grand experiment fails (the controller) everyone could always use the "classic" controller for the rest of the console's life-span (not unlike the NES Zapper was basically forgotten about).
The Zapper was at least bundled with (some) NES consoles. The Classic Controller will not be. If developers wouldn't even sustain an active library for a device that came with the system for free, what hope is there for an add-on device that players would have to pay extra for?
"You want the government to do everything and do not trust the individual."
You're extrapolating. That's not a fair conclusion to draw from a comment that opined that government should be more involved in technological and medical research.
"He was going on and on about how he wished the government would tax him more so that the government could do good and give his money to those in need."
I think you may have partially understood his point. It's not that he wished the government would take more of HIS money to do good, but that they would take more of EVERYBODY'S money to do good. Your point that private charity can be better targeted than taxation still stands, but you must acknowledge that by receiving funding from everyone, the government is able to provide support on a scale that private philanthropists simply cannot. Not only for the things that people WANT to support, but also for the things people NEED.
But the democrats were stupid enough to put a Northern Liberal Democrat against a South Western Republican.
Maybe it's just because I grew up in a state that hasn't produced a president since Woodrow Wilson, but I for one don't give much of a damn WHERE a presidential nominee hails from. And those that do care, I can only think of as fools.
If the democrats were more willing to get a more middle of the road candidate they could have one.
John Kerry was about as close to the "middle of the road" as the Democrats could have gone, given the group that was vying for the nomination. It's not like they ran Howard Dean. Get some perspective.
I bet you didn't say anything like that in public in 1996 when Clinton was reelected, reassuring us that any purported Democratic vote fraud was "nothing new, don't worry your pretty little head about it".
Clinton defeated Dole in 1996 by over 7 million popular votes, and took almost 3/4 of the Electoral College. In contrast, Bush defeated both Gore and Kerry by only the narrowest of margins. The closer the runner-up is to the prize, the fewer fraudulent votes need to be counted to accomplish it.
I'm not saying the outcome of any past election was tainted by fraud, and even if it did there's nothing we can do about it now. All we can do is continue working diligently to make sure that voting fraud happens as little as possible in future elections.
I really doubt the $50 price increase will hurt sales that bad.
It may reduce demand at launch -- I know I for one would have been a first adopter at $200 but am having second thoughts at $250 -- but in the long run I don't think Nintendo will be hurt by it. The first few production runs will sell out to the diehards at $250 easily. Maybe next year, once demand has begun to wane, Nintendo will be able to make a price cut or improve the bundle to make the system more attractive to non-acolytes.
My biggest concern with the launch package is that there is no "classic"-style controller bundled. This is akin to if they had released the DS with a touchscreen, but without a D-pad or ABXY buttons. They're betting everything on the new interface with little consideration for the old.
It's a console truism that if a controller is not bundled with the base console system, developers will not support it. R.O.B. was only packaged with a fraction of NES's sold, and there was only one game beyond the pack-in that it was ever compatible with. Even the Zapper, more ubiquitous but still not standard-issue, only ever worked with a handful of games. The PowerPad, the SNES Mouse, the PSX Flight Stick, the GBA/GC link cable... the story repeats itself over and over again.
What is a publisher to do when they want to create a game for the Wii that does not lend itself to waving a remote control? Do they hope there's enough gamers out there that have already sprung an extra $15-20 for a custom controller to make such a game profitable? Do they bundle a controller in with the title itself, causing large increases in production and distribution costs?
This concern is relevant to the Virtual Console service, too. Are players going to be expected to map all the stick and buttons of an SNES or N64 gamepad onto the wiimote/nunchuk layout? How is that going to be anything close to an authentic experience?
if they're moving from 8-core 3.2 GHz targets to 9-core 3.2 GHz targets.
I think it's more likely a misstatement in the article than an actual change in what's being produced.
The Cells being produced for the PS3 have one primary processor (PPE) and eight secondary processors (SPE's)--only seven of which need to be functional at 2.8GHz for it to meet Sony's specs--for a total of 9 (or 8 for PS3) 'processors'. Not quite the same thing as 'cores' in the traditional sense of the word.
It's possible that these chips for these new servers are identical on silicon to the PS3 chips, only IBM will not pass them unless all 8 SPE's are functional at the full 3.2GHz clock rate.
Kind of like 386DX vs. 386SX -- instead of throwing away the DX chips that had defective math coprocessors, Intel simply burned out the traces, screened a different label on them, and sold them at discount prices.
The PS3 is a cheap BluRay drive, but I'm not sure I want a BR drive.
Agreed, and furthermore I worry that cheap-as-in-price may also turn out to mean cheap-as-in-quality. Assuming I DID want a BR drive, I'd rather pay $X for one that's likely to keep working forever than to pay $X/2 for one of dubious reliability.
Them: Not really in their control due to patent issues
It has always been in Sony's control. If they really wanted to keep controller rumble, they would have paid for a license of the patent or found a new non-infringing way of producing the effect. They opted to take the inexpensive way out, to the player's detriment; to what extent that detriment exists is certainly debatable.
'Easy to code' is NEVER a bad thing
No, it never is. It's not like an easy-to-use devkit prevents talented developers from doing more impressive things with the hardware; you're not going to see many AAA title for 360 developed entirely with the $49 XNA Express kit. Easier tools are better because they let developers get the tedious stuff out of the way (like building menus) and let them concentrate on the interesting stuff (like physics simulations).
Re:But if you've been "blessed by the hi-def gods"
on
PS3 Problems Parried
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· Score: 1
The new 40" HDTV generation costs pretty much exactly as much as the 32" widescreen SDTV generation it replaces used to cost a few years ago, and those TVs in turn cost pretty much exactly as much as the 28" fullscreen SDTV generation it replaced used to cost a few years before that.
Point taken, and then thrown in the wastebin because it's irrelevant.
The pricepoint for the TV models mentioned above is substantially above $0.00. If I don't have or don't want to spend that kind of money, then no amount of rationalization about what value for cost is going to convince me to buy one.
If they are going to expect an interview candidate to write a web server in a few hours, then what will they want when you work there?
Nail on the head.
Three to four hours might be enough time to do the very first steps in developing a tiny-web-server: reviewing the specification docs, compiling a few external resources to reference, maybe sketching out a rough high-level block diagram or two. It is not enough time to plan, write, debug, and package working code.
What would happen without the recording industry? A: They'd become popular by internet vote and word-of-mouth, someone would claim to have "made them famous" on their website and demand some of their earnings from concerts, videos, commercials.
And the artists would respond, "I created this, not you. Go to hell."
Or, alternately, those artists that WANTED to pay other people to do their promotions for them could do so, and would be free to negotiate whatever terms they feel mutually appropriate.
The point is taking control of the music industry and giving it back to the musicians.
I have a 27" 4:3 HDTV CRT -- equivalent to about a 25" 16:9 in widescreen mode. I typically sit about 6' away, and I'll be damned if there isn't a marked difference between 480i and 1080i content from that vantage point (Conan O'Brien's face is much more frightening in HD).
I'll concede that there is a lower limit below which it doesn't make any sense to have a HD display; no one needs to have 300 pixels per inch on their cell phone's LCD screen. But at screen sizes of 21" to 25" diagonal, I believe that HD resolution has value.
True, but where in the past multi-CPU commodity computers were rare, now they are becoming more and more ubiquitous. The chip manufacturers are adding cores to their designs now instead of just ramping up clock speed to improve performance. Software designers will have to follow suit.
Not every software problem has a solution that makes good use of multiple cores. But there are many that COULD, but simply haven't yet because of a lack of marketplace support. Soon they will.
it is quite maddening and ironic that we put software pirates away for longer than we do child rapists.
I know you chose "child rapists" for your comparison to provoke a specific emotional response, but let's think about what happens to those people when they're caught.
Convicted felons might not have much honor, but the unwritten prison code deals pretty harsh justice onto people who hurt children. A molestor is much more likely to be killed my another inmate than a software pirate. And even one does survive prison, he has a lifetime of mandatory registrations, surveillance, and harassment from neighbors to look forward to.
No, I don't feel like we're coddling child abusers in the current system.
I've had this discussion with my father-in-law many times. I've even used the straw/pipe analogy: Your Internet is a 2" pipe, and your wireless is a 12" pipe. Doesn't matter how big you make the wireless pipe, it will always have more than enough room to slide the Internet pipe through it.
What's it like being married to Sen. Ted Stevens' child?
kflex tried to rush to market.. but i personaly think it was USR that made v.90 stick
Ironic, when only a couple generations of modems prior, it was US Robotics that rushed their proprietary HST modems to market rather than wait for the v.32 (and up) standards to be formalized.
If I were a kid lucky enough to win that lottery, I'd be happy to have the opportunity to go to a one of a kind, modern school. I'd feel like someone actually gave a damn about my education.
What if you're among the tens of thousands of kids NOT lucky enough to win a spot there? Would you be feeling resentful that someone gave a damn about other kids' educations but not yours, as you fetch your 20-year-old textbooks out of your rusty locker?
code written for the PS3 or 360 is very likely to require substantial reworking to function on the Wii. It's not so much a port as a rewrite.
Given the architectural differences between the PS3's Core and the 360's Xenon, I wouldn't surprised if a similar type eof situation exists bringing a PS3 game to the 360 or vice versa.
Another solution could be for the developers to come up with a cross-platform kind of "least common denominator" API to code against, but such a thing would be unlikely to take advantage of the full potential of either platform. Developers using this approach could end up making games that don't look or play any better than a Wii game optimized specifically for that platform.
Slashdot Mirror
You release albums as individual cartridges for portable players... it gives you a tactile "thing" with a label, contains mp3's in a generic format, is in a durable case [...] The ultimate packaging.
And we shall call it... MiniDisc!
Most people with good eyesight would probably notice a marked difference in detail between a 480i and 1080i signal, or even a 480p and 720p signal. The transition from standard-def to hi-def, while somewhat sluggish, is underway because people can appreciate its benefits.
But is anyone actually going to notice a difference between 1080i and 1080p? Or will it be a simply psychological effect found in those that pay $100/ft for special speaker cable where the "electrons are properly aligned" or what have you? "I paid a premium for this hardware, therefore it MUST be better!"
these are AV gear racks, NOT computer/network/phone racks.
I don't see how that makes any difference. Are A/V cables any less prone to failure than data cables?
I have lost count of all the pornography I have seen in the internet. Yet I never saw one single picture of a child engaged in sex!
You're lucky.
No, spammers don't send out unsolicited pictures of child rape via email. But they ARE out there, and I've accidentally come across them more than once, either while seeking out more legal forms of erotica, or while browsing through binary newsgroups with innocuous-sounding names. "I wonder what's in here... OH GOD"
Now, I don't know how widespread the problem is, but it's entirely conceivable that the Internet has fostered an increase in child porn production and distribution. They don't need access to a clandestine photo lab and printing press anymore; they just need a digital camera and an anonymous FTP server running on someone's r00ted Winbox. I can see why Gonzales would see it as a concern, although his proposed measures for addressing it leave something to be desired.
They should be referred to only by their number. Slapping a name on a bill is a dishonest labelling for the purpose of marketing.
I'd rather have that than to have our representatives, who often don't even READ the full text of the laws they pass, get confused about which bill is which and accidentally ratify H.R. 4966 (The Cute Puppy Genocide Act) while shooting down H.R. 4969 (The Free Candy For Everyone Act) because they got the numbers mixed up.
Look at Soul Calibur 2: the Gamecube version was the highest selling of the three (probably due to Link), but SC3 was PS2-only. WOuldn't you stick with what sold you the most copies?
No, you'd stick with what makes you the most money. There's a difference -- especially if a console manufacturer offers you incentives to make your next title a platform exclusive for them.
Let's not forget that even if Nintendo's grand experiment fails (the controller) everyone could always use the "classic" controller for the rest of the console's life-span (not unlike the NES Zapper was basically forgotten about).
The Zapper was at least bundled with (some) NES consoles. The Classic Controller will not be. If developers wouldn't even sustain an active library for a device that came with the system for free, what hope is there for an add-on device that players would have to pay extra for?
"You want the government to do everything and do not trust the individual."
You're extrapolating. That's not a fair conclusion to draw from a comment that opined that government should be more involved in technological and medical research.
"He was going on and on about how he wished the government would tax him more so that the government could do good and give his money to those in need."
I think you may have partially understood his point. It's not that he wished the government would take more of HIS money to do good, but that they would take more of EVERYBODY'S money to do good. Your point that private charity can be better targeted than taxation still stands, but you must acknowledge that by receiving funding from everyone, the government is able to provide support on a scale that private philanthropists simply cannot. Not only for the things that people WANT to support, but also for the things people NEED.
But the democrats were stupid enough to put a Northern Liberal Democrat against a South Western Republican.
Maybe it's just because I grew up in a state that hasn't produced a president since Woodrow Wilson, but I for one don't give much of a damn WHERE a presidential nominee hails from. And those that do care, I can only think of as fools.
If the democrats were more willing to get a more middle of the road candidate they could have one.
John Kerry was about as close to the "middle of the road" as the Democrats could have gone, given the group that was vying for the nomination. It's not like they ran Howard Dean. Get some perspective.
I bet you didn't say anything like that in public in 1996 when Clinton was reelected, reassuring us that any purported Democratic vote fraud was "nothing new, don't worry your pretty little head about it".
Clinton defeated Dole in 1996 by over 7 million popular votes, and took almost 3/4 of the Electoral College. In contrast, Bush defeated both Gore and Kerry by only the narrowest of margins. The closer the runner-up is to the prize, the fewer fraudulent votes need to be counted to accomplish it.
I'm not saying the outcome of any past election was tainted by fraud, and even if it did there's nothing we can do about it now. All we can do is continue working diligently to make sure that voting fraud happens as little as possible in future elections.
I really doubt the $50 price increase will hurt sales that bad.
It may reduce demand at launch -- I know I for one would have been a first adopter at $200 but am having second thoughts at $250 -- but in the long run I don't think Nintendo will be hurt by it. The first few production runs will sell out to the diehards at $250 easily. Maybe next year, once demand has begun to wane, Nintendo will be able to make a price cut or improve the bundle to make the system more attractive to non-acolytes.
My biggest concern with the launch package is that there is no "classic"-style controller bundled. This is akin to if they had released the DS with a touchscreen, but without a D-pad or ABXY buttons. They're betting everything on the new interface with little consideration for the old.
It's a console truism that if a controller is not bundled with the base console system, developers will not support it. R.O.B. was only packaged with a fraction of NES's sold, and there was only one game beyond the pack-in that it was ever compatible with. Even the Zapper, more ubiquitous but still not standard-issue, only ever worked with a handful of games. The PowerPad, the SNES Mouse, the PSX Flight Stick, the GBA/GC link cable... the story repeats itself over and over again.
What is a publisher to do when they want to create a game for the Wii that does not lend itself to waving a remote control? Do they hope there's enough gamers out there that have already sprung an extra $15-20 for a custom controller to make such a game profitable? Do they bundle a controller in with the title itself, causing large increases in production and distribution costs?
This concern is relevant to the Virtual Console service, too. Are players going to be expected to map all the stick and buttons of an SNES or N64 gamepad onto the wiimote/nunchuk layout? How is that going to be anything close to an authentic experience?
Who is complaining?
I am -- though not very loudly.
All they need to do is advertise how much cool WiiStuff you can get for the price of the PS3.
But I never wanted to spend the price of the P$3. I just wanted to spend $200 on something new and diverting. Doesn't look like I'm going to.
if they're moving from 8-core 3.2 GHz targets to 9-core 3.2 GHz targets.
I think it's more likely a misstatement in the article than an actual change in what's being produced.
The Cells being produced for the PS3 have one primary processor (PPE) and eight secondary processors (SPE's)--only seven of which need to be functional at 2.8GHz for it to meet Sony's specs--for a total of 9 (or 8 for PS3) 'processors'. Not quite the same thing as 'cores' in the traditional sense of the word.
It's possible that these chips for these new servers are identical on silicon to the PS3 chips, only IBM will not pass them unless all 8 SPE's are functional at the full 3.2GHz clock rate.
Kind of like 386DX vs. 386SX -- instead of throwing away the DX chips that had defective math coprocessors, Intel simply burned out the traces, screened a different label on them, and sold them at discount prices.
The PS3 is a cheap BluRay drive, but I'm not sure I want a BR drive.
Agreed, and furthermore I worry that cheap-as-in-price may also turn out to mean cheap-as-in-quality. Assuming I DID want a BR drive, I'd rather pay $X for one that's likely to keep working forever than to pay $X/2 for one of dubious reliability.
Them: Not really in their control due to patent issues
It has always been in Sony's control. If they really wanted to keep controller rumble, they would have paid for a license of the patent or found a new non-infringing way of producing the effect. They opted to take the inexpensive way out, to the player's detriment; to what extent that detriment exists is certainly debatable.
'Easy to code' is NEVER a bad thing
No, it never is. It's not like an easy-to-use devkit prevents talented developers from doing more impressive things with the hardware; you're not going to see many AAA title for 360 developed entirely with the $49 XNA Express kit. Easier tools are better because they let developers get the tedious stuff out of the way (like building menus) and let them concentrate on the interesting stuff (like physics simulations).
The new 40" HDTV generation costs pretty much exactly as much as the 32" widescreen SDTV generation it replaces used to cost a few years ago, and those TVs in turn cost pretty much exactly as much as the 28" fullscreen SDTV generation it replaced used to cost a few years before that.
Point taken, and then thrown in the wastebin because it's irrelevant.
The pricepoint for the TV models mentioned above is substantially above $0.00. If I don't have or don't want to spend that kind of money, then no amount of rationalization about what value for cost is going to convince me to buy one.
If they are going to expect an interview candidate to write a web server in a few hours, then what will they want when you work there?
Nail on the head.
Three to four hours might be enough time to do the very first steps in developing a tiny-web-server: reviewing the specification docs, compiling a few external resources to reference, maybe sketching out a rough high-level block diagram or two. It is not enough time to plan, write, debug, and package working code.
What would happen without the recording industry? A: They'd become popular by internet vote and word-of-mouth, someone would claim to have "made them famous" on their website and demand some of their earnings from concerts, videos, commercials.
And the artists would respond, "I created this, not you. Go to hell."
Or, alternately, those artists that WANTED to pay other people to do their promotions for them could do so, and would be free to negotiate whatever terms they feel mutually appropriate.
The point is taking control of the music industry and giving it back to the musicians.
I have a 27" 4:3 HDTV CRT -- equivalent to about a 25" 16:9 in widescreen mode. I typically sit about 6' away, and I'll be damned if there isn't a marked difference between 480i and 1080i content from that vantage point (Conan O'Brien's face is much more frightening in HD).
I'll concede that there is a lower limit below which it doesn't make any sense to have a HD display; no one needs to have 300 pixels per inch on their cell phone's LCD screen. But at screen sizes of 21" to 25" diagonal, I believe that HD resolution has value.
Microsoft's monopoly is fighting against itself [...] This is the end of the monopoly.
Yes, based on market trends I would have to say Microsoft is at risk to lose their dominant position to their nearest competitor: Microsoft.
More cores is pretty much the same as more CPUs.
True, but where in the past multi-CPU commodity computers were rare, now they are becoming more and more ubiquitous. The chip manufacturers are adding cores to their designs now instead of just ramping up clock speed to improve performance. Software designers will have to follow suit.
Not every software problem has a solution that makes good use of multiple cores. But there are many that COULD, but simply haven't yet because of a lack of marketplace support. Soon they will.
it is quite maddening and ironic that we put software pirates away for longer than we do child rapists.
I know you chose "child rapists" for your comparison to provoke a specific emotional response, but let's think about what happens to those people when they're caught.
Convicted felons might not have much honor, but the unwritten prison code deals pretty harsh justice onto people who hurt children. A molestor is much more likely to be killed my another inmate than a software pirate. And even one does survive prison, he has a lifetime of mandatory registrations, surveillance, and harassment from neighbors to look forward to.
No, I don't feel like we're coddling child abusers in the current system.
I've had this discussion with my father-in-law many times. I've even used the straw/pipe analogy: Your Internet is a 2" pipe, and your wireless is a 12" pipe. Doesn't matter how big you make the wireless pipe, it will always have more than enough room to slide the Internet pipe through it.
What's it like being married to Sen. Ted Stevens' child?
kflex tried to rush to market.. but i personaly think it was USR that made v.90 stick
Ironic, when only a couple generations of modems prior, it was US Robotics that rushed their proprietary HST modems to market rather than wait for the v.32 (and up) standards to be formalized.
If I were a kid lucky enough to win that lottery, I'd be happy to have the opportunity to go to a one of a kind, modern school. I'd feel like someone actually gave a damn about my education.
What if you're among the tens of thousands of kids NOT lucky enough to win a spot there? Would you be feeling resentful that someone gave a damn about other kids' educations but not yours, as you fetch your 20-year-old textbooks out of your rusty locker?
code written for the PS3 or 360 is very likely to require substantial reworking to function on the Wii. It's not so much a port as a rewrite.
Given the architectural differences between the PS3's Core and the 360's Xenon, I wouldn't surprised if a similar type eof situation exists bringing a PS3 game to the 360 or vice versa.
Another solution could be for the developers to come up with a cross-platform kind of "least common denominator" API to code against, but such a thing would be unlikely to take advantage of the full potential of either platform. Developers using this approach could end up making games that don't look or play any better than a Wii game optimized specifically for that platform.