In Japan, much like Europe, there is a taxing scheme that taxes more heavily car owners that have cars with higher energy consumption. This taxing scheme is divided by engine capacity, while the system itself isn't perfect it does discourage large engines like those found in SUVs. There is also a "kei" car class, which are cars that are at or below 660cc. These cars aren't glamourous or fast but they are able to get you from point A to point B within the speedlimit while sipping fuel (gas prices are over $4/gallon in Japan). For most people that merely need a car for transportation kei cars are popular especially because they are dirt cheap to own, operate, have a high mpg, and are lightly taxed.
While this is a over simplification to a complex taxing system, it does siginificantly discourage the purchase of superflously oversized and overpowered vehicles by all but the affluent.
I'm unconvinced that 2005 launch will benefit MS as much as they think. This holiday season will already be mighty competive with PSP and Nintendo DS. Both handhelds will have a good selection of decent games by Nov 2005, and it will be the first holiday season for the PSP. Atop that, Sony will likely sell the PSP without the "Value Pack" option, which may bring down the price of the console to $199. Plus Grand Theft Auto and Grand Turismo (amoung others) will be out by then.
The Xbox 360 will also have to compete with people's willingness to wait for the PS3 and Nintendo Revolution. This may or may not be a factor depending on what Sony and Nintendo can deliver next week at E3. Remember, an early lauch didn't help Sega much with the Dreamcast (or the Saturn, which they forcefully lauched a few months early in the US to get a headstart on the PS).
If you also consider that the Xbox's life span was relatively very short compared to other consoles (launch 18 months after the PS2, and lauches ~12 months before the PS3). Many consumers that are not hardcore gamers, esp ones that have bought an XB in the last year or two, may feel perturbed that their recent purchase is already obsolete. To compound that, MS (as well as Sony/Nintendo) have to compete with other hot gadgets like the iPod that weren't around during previous console lauches that may appeal more to their core market(young-male adults) than gaming consoles.
Untrue. PM (particulate matter) emissions from diesels is still a major problem. It's true diesels have very low CO2 emmissions, but NOx, unburnt hydrocarbon/PM (soot) emmission are much higher than normal gasoline engines (much less hybrids). Remember, the majority of smog and soot are particulate matter (Co2 in odorless and invisible, we exhale it). In fact, one of the reasons that diesels have difficulty in the US is because it has trouble meeting CARB LEVII emmissions on PM and NOx (the Prius meets SULEV; super ultra low emmission vehicles standards). California being America's largest car market, most automakers find it difficult to invest in producing a diesel car without California as a market.
Another issue is that diesel fuel quality is terrible in the US. US diesel fuel contains 500-ppm of Sulfur, compare that with 30-ppm in Europe. The importance of sulfur content is that advanced catalytic-converter systems that remove PM and NOx get clogged by sulfur deposits. I don't know if anybody was paying attention but recently G.W. Bush's energy plan called for increased use of diesels in the US by introducing ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD).
However, the price of including these advanced catalytic converters and ULSD would be an additional cost that may deteriorate the price advantage that diesels get in better mileage. In fact, Germany is just implementing a new law to curb PM emmisions from diesel cars by promoting PM filters be retroactively fit on diesel cars. Promoting, diesels as an economically friendly alternative is fine, but it has yet to be truly enviromentally-friendly choice.
The PSP uses MPEG4 h.264 for video, which Apple and pretty much everybody else uses (except Microsoft with their own format).
So you won't *need* a PSP to get the movies to work, probably any player with support for the h.264 codec (which is most players).
Being that you can just download pretty much any movie and play it on the PSP already if you encode it properly the DRM should be no more strict than the iPod. Also, being that the PSP can play MP3s, Sony does seem to show signs that they do "Get it".
Atop that, the new firmware upgrade to the PSX allows users to record any show from TV unto their MS duo and play it on their PSP with no DRM attached. Hopefully, the PS3 will also have this feature.
It should be noted that Sony has just released a 2GB Memorystick Duo (with 4GB approaching). Likelyhood is that by the time that the PSP and this service is at its maturity flash memory prices in GB capacity should be relatively affordable.
It was not too long ago when 64MB and 128MB flash memory was considered massive. I remember spending ~$150 for a 64MB SD just a couple of years ago. Now, 512MB SDs and MS Duos are going for less than half that. It's not unresonable to think that we could be seeing 1GB MS Duos at bargin prices by christmas, or affordable MS Duos that are significantly larger than UMDs in the near future.
And by the time the PSP is apporoaching the end of its life cycle cheap flash memory in the dozens of GBs should be out by then. And hopefully the PSP would be at a price point similar to a GBA SP. If you consider this as a buisness model that will be around at least as long as the PSP it starts making more sense.
People seem to forget that Sony has had a hand in many of the most prevalent formats around;
The first being the 3.5" Floppy Disk. Sony invented the "micro" floppy disk drive, releasing its first commercially available model called the OA-D30V in 1981 for Apple.
Not to mention the CD-ROM was created by a collabaration by Sony and Phillips. The same duo helped launch the compact-cassete in the 60s. The DVD-ROM was a compromise between Sony/Phillip's Multimedia MMCD and the Toshiba/Warner's SuperDisk.
As for Blu-ray, while Sony is the major backer it is not a Sony format. Main issue that will play a major role in this format battle is royality fees and how each format handles how content providers and manufacters pay each consortium. There is major discontent on the DVD consortium's royalites, which charges $10 per device, with massive competitive pressure manufacters that keep prices low, manufacter's have profit margins on DVD players are razor thin. There is also the 3C and 6C consortium's technical liceencing fees that also are a major headache. Unsuprisingly, Blu-ray is designed to avoid much of Toshiba's 6C technical licence that it has on DVD.
Blu-ray has several things going for it. . .
on
Apple Backs Blu-ray
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Blu-ray has several things going for it. ..
Playstation 3 inclusion of Blu-ray would prove to be a massive boost for the standard as it automatically gives an instant installed base in the tens of millions. As initial players will likely be relatively pricey, it's usually difficult to start the momentum to get enough installed base on the market so that studios would want to produce content for it, and more content usually then convinces more people to buy into the standard. However, by PS3 being Blu-ray compatible automatically creates a massive installed that studios can produce content for to start the ball rolling.
Secondly, Blu-ray seems to be more scalable then HD-DVD with comapanies planning 4-layer 100GB and 8-layer 200GB multilayered disks. Also, Blu-ray seems to be getting more hardware on the market then HD-DVD, especially since Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic, Technic, Fisher, etc) are backing it. Sony has just annouced Blu-ray drive for the PC that can write to write-once 50GB disks or rewritable-50GB disks.
There seems to be a general misconception regarding price. The players mentioned in this article are competively priced.
The EW-104(512MB) is $99 and EW-105(1GB) is $150. Atop that, these players offer a display and can use interchangable batteries (AAA).
The 512MB EW-405($130) and 1GB EW-505 ($180), cost $30 more than a comparative iPod Shuffle but offers OLED and better battery life (the FM cost $20 extra on each version).
Slashdot's Apple-bias approaches the illogical, these new players offer more key features for a comparable price. Imagine if Sony made the iPod Shuffle, people would be bashing them for not being able to know what song you're playing, and locking them into a single DRM-ridden service. People can show their product devotion without bashing other products (be it Sony, iRiver, or any other flash player); especially if the product offers healthy competition to the market segment.
Problem is sir, the SD is also proprietary. SD is controlled by Matsushita, Toshiba, and Sandisk. MMC isn't proprietary, but by default pretty much all new MMC slots pretty much needs SD compatibility since consumers don't know the diffrence and expect SDs to work.
Why would Sony dump one proprietary standard just to adopt another which they have to pay licencing fees for? Quite honestly, the Sony-bashing regarding memorysticks is garbage. It would be a valid argument if the alternative was an open standard, however most people seem to endorse SDs. Out of all the pletohra of the small flash multimedia standards that constantly pop up I'm not sure why people only attack Sony.
As far as DRM goes, all other players also have DRM. plus it supports MP3s, so there's a way around it. Also, the phone is GSM/GPRS triband so it will likely work with other GSM services in the future.
Sad considering this year was one of the most competitive years in football video games with Sega/Take-two releasing ESPN NFL 2K-series at $19.99.
Guess EA would rather spend the extra cash in getting an exclusive license (which I'm sure they paid an arm and a leg for) rather than spending all that money improving Madden in a competive market, or reducing the price of the Madden series to fend off well-made-$20 football games.
Cell will be a 4.6Ghz eight-core chip initially
on
Cell Workstations in 2005
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Here is a powerpoint and article describing more information on the Cell chip that will be shown at the ISSCC (International Solid-State Circuits Conference) conference next Feburary at San Francisco.
Technological Features for "first-generation" Cell chips:
4.6Ghz Clock Speed
1.3V operation
85 degree C operation with heatsink
6.4Gb/s off chip communication
from the article:
eight cores on a single chip
90nm SOI process
You've cited an editorial, and Detroit auto news is clearly heavily biased towards, well, Detriot.
Ford is not using "Toyota parts", however they are using the same suppliers that Toyota uses, more importantly they are using Toyota's algorithim and software for their hybrid control system which determines when gas and when electric are being used, not to mention the Atkinson cycle engine in this hybrid Escape.
However, it's really not important who gets credit for developing the details of the technology (Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. and Continental Teves should also get credit); Ford should given credit for actually puting a vehicle on the market that not only saves a limited resources but offers an enviromentally freindly alternative. Kudos to them.
The issue in question is not if Mpeg2-only support is a good thing or a bad thing, the point is the HD-DVD relies more heavily on proprietary codecs such as MSs VC-9 than does Blu-ray.
Remember, due to this specification, all HD-DVD players made must pay a royalty to MS in addition to the MPEG consortium.
It is likely that Blu-ray to will adopt another format beyond Mpeg2, however it would likely be an Mpeg4-based codec rather than a WMV codec that nobody expect MS has any control over.
Blu-ray isn't any less a proprietary format than HD-DVD. Nor is it a Sony format.
Sony is only one of many companies that are involved with Blu-Ray, ppl mistake it for their format because they were the first to market the blu-ray. Here are the players:
Hitachi, Ltd. LG Electronics Inc. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. Mitsubishi Electric Corporation Pioneer Corporation Royal Philips Electronics Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Sharp Corporation Sony Corporation TDK Corporation Thomson Multimedia Dell HP
In fact, the only real backers for HD-DVD are: Microsoft Toshiba NEC
And, arguably, HD-DVD is more proprietary than Blu-ray being that they require the player be able to play Miscrosoft's VC-9 codec, while Blu-ray is required to play only MPEG2.
When the PS2 came out with DVD support, Sony didn't make the PS2 incompatible with PSone games and CD just because they decided to support DVDs. There is not reason to believe back-wards compatibility would be dropped from the PS3 likewise.
In fact. Sony has developed a laser head that can read/write Bluray/DVD+/-rw/CD-RW. http://www.sony.net/SonyIn fo/News/Press/200405/04- 026E/
Ken Kutargi himself already confirmed backwards compatibility. http://www.ps3insider.com/modules. php?name=News&fi le=article&sid=64
If you're worried about quality why would you bother with the OQO? Cheap Sony-basing aside, Sony is a company that at least has shipped a product.
OQO has made years of promises, has no reputation for quality (good or bad), and has specs that are already outdated before its released. We can make a fair comparison of between the Sony U50/U70 and the OQO if and when the OQO hits the market.
It's a basically a ultra-compact PC, it has four USB 2.0 ports as well
as a Firewire port. You can obviously just connect an external
CD, HDD, or DVD+/-RW, ipod, whatever, to it.
For multimedia, it should also run any app or codec that is available
for WinXP, if they could get the price below $1,000 I'm sold.
But the U50 and U70 aren't available in the US, these
guys sell them here, but they charge $1999 for the U50 and $2599
for
the U70. Yikes.
Smater Front Page: Making use of the first thing that the user sees when starting up.
How about creating an interface for the default page for Firebird. Instead of pointing to the Mozilla.org homepage creating a default Front page designed to evolve to the habits of the user. Whatever way you want to utilize machine learning, you will need a centralized location to acess the results, why not use "Home". That being, creating a simple interface (XUL, not html) that points the user to their most visted bookmarks, or a catagorised and searchable list of their bookmarks(or internet), or updating the user if their most visted sites are updated, aggregating information from sites from their own browsing habits in a single interface when the browser starts up.
Also, if the user uses Thunderbird or Sunbird updating the user of new E-mails and new appointments on the front page. A front page that is customizable to the needs of the user, and avoiding the clutter and ads of commerical sites, and that is local on the users computer and not centralized on a website. And most importantly makes the individual users own data most intuitively accesible to themselves, and evolves to fit the individual user.
All reviews are sujective, however most GOOD reviews support their arguments with actual physical data.
The Roberto Amorim review is entirely vague in that it neither specifies how many ppl are listening, who these ppl are(audiophiles, the avg joe, randomly selected, or ppl with pre-determined listening biases), or if they are the same ppl that listened to all 18 tests; rather we are pointed to arbutriary numbers that are suppose to indicate ppls opinons that we have no clue on how these opinions were derived or how authentic the opinons are.
Regardless, the Amorim review is irrelevent to this article, being that it doesn't even use the same codec as this device in question.
On the subject of Atrac3plus: Atrac3 was designed primarily for MD players, Atrac3Plus was designed for wide range of media devices. In fact, the Atrac3plus was compared to Atrac3 in WatchImpress comparion cited, their conclusion was that there was a noticable difference in sound quality between the two codecs as the bitrate increased.
This player uses Atrac3Plus as its primary format, with support for other Atrac formats. It's default format isn't the one used in this comparison
So the comparison isn't really valid, or up to date.
In fact, Watch Impress a respectable Japanese news site reviewed the Atrac3Plus recently, a more technical review and less subjective than blind listening test. The review was largely positive, with the 256kbps Atrac3plus competiting favorably against WAV (CD-Quality).
There's a reason why we see PS1 games still on the shelfs at stores like Bestbuy, while we don't see Dreamcast, Saturn, etc. There are a legion of casual gamers out there that are happy with PS1 games. PS2 backwards compability increased the shlef-life of PS1 games immensely, just the same way PS3 should increase the shelflife of PS2 games. That benefits both the developer and consumer.
Personally, when I have to decide to buy a cross-platform game that is on all three systems, I always choose the PS2 even though the XB or GC may have better graphics. The reason is quite simple, that's because I know that if I invest in this game that I will be able to play it 5+ years later on the PS3(maybe even PS4).
Having backwards compatibiliy may not help the Xbox Next immensly, however it should be incredibily important to the original Xbox's games. There are so many people that still buy and play Halo, and Halo2 will only be out ~1year before the XB Next is out and I'm sure ppl will continue to play that game for years to come. But perhaps to MS, XB games won't be very important, nor worth the investment, when XB Next comes out.
Game companies make money from Software not Hardware(in the case of the XB, they lose money on hardware). When ppl stop buying software that's when they need to be concerned, hardware sales will drop over time simply because ppl already have consoles. Article is even optomistic about sales, which is contradictory to SIGALRM's assertion of poor sales/titles:
From Gamespot article: "Sales of console games and accessories continued to be strong despite the decrease in hardware sales, showing increases of 7 and 10 percent respectively. "What will keep consumers coming back for more is the continued development of top-notch software titles, as well as accessories designed to enhance gameplay," added Ow. "This, combined with advancements in the industry such as online gameplay, will help drive sales well into the future."
Slashdot Mirror
In Japan, much like Europe, there is a taxing scheme that taxes more heavily car owners that have cars with higher energy consumption. This taxing scheme is divided by engine capacity, while the system itself isn't perfect it does discourage large engines like those found in SUVs. There is also a "kei" car class, which are cars that are at or below 660cc. These cars aren't glamourous or fast but they are able to get you from point A to point B within the speedlimit while sipping fuel (gas prices are over $4/gallon in Japan). For most people that merely need a car for transportation kei cars are popular especially because they are dirt cheap to own, operate, have a high mpg, and are lightly taxed.
While this is a over simplification to a complex taxing system, it does siginificantly discourage the purchase of superflously oversized and overpowered vehicles by all but the affluent.
Here are screenshots from E3 of various games./ scea.htm
/ ps3.htm
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20050517
Also, here are some slides from the conference, while the article is in Japanese the slides are in english.
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/game/docs/20050517
You can decide for yourself if you think the PS3 can render the Killzone in real-time.
I'm unconvinced that 2005 launch will benefit MS as much as they think. This holiday season will already be mighty competive with PSP and Nintendo DS. Both handhelds will have a good selection of decent games by Nov 2005, and it will be the first holiday season for the PSP. Atop that, Sony will likely sell the PSP without the "Value Pack" option, which may bring down the price of the console to $199. Plus Grand Theft Auto and Grand Turismo (amoung others) will be out by then.
The Xbox 360 will also have to compete with people's willingness to wait for the PS3 and Nintendo Revolution. This may or may not be a factor depending on what Sony and Nintendo can deliver next week at E3. Remember, an early lauch didn't help Sega much with the Dreamcast (or the Saturn, which they forcefully lauched a few months early in the US to get a headstart on the PS).
If you also consider that the Xbox's life span was relatively very short compared to other consoles (launch 18 months after the PS2, and lauches ~12 months before the PS3). Many consumers that are not hardcore gamers, esp ones that have bought an XB in the last year or two, may feel perturbed that their recent purchase is already obsolete. To compound that, MS (as well as Sony/Nintendo) have to compete with other hot gadgets like the iPod that weren't around during previous console lauches that may appeal more to their core market(young-male adults) than gaming consoles.
Untrue. PM (particulate matter) emissions from diesels is still a major problem. It's true diesels have very low CO2 emmissions, but NOx, unburnt hydrocarbon/PM (soot) emmission are much higher than normal gasoline engines (much less hybrids). Remember, the majority of smog and soot are particulate matter (Co2 in odorless and invisible, we exhale it). In fact, one of the reasons that diesels have difficulty in the US is because it has trouble meeting CARB LEVII emmissions on PM and NOx (the Prius meets SULEV; super ultra low emmission vehicles standards). California being America's largest car market, most automakers find it difficult to invest in producing a diesel car without California as a market.
Another issue is that diesel fuel quality is terrible in the US. US diesel fuel contains 500-ppm of Sulfur, compare that with 30-ppm in Europe. The importance of sulfur content is that advanced catalytic-converter systems that remove PM and NOx get clogged by sulfur deposits. I don't know if anybody was paying attention but recently G.W. Bush's energy plan called for increased use of diesels in the US by introducing ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD).
However, the price of including these advanced catalytic converters and ULSD would be an additional cost that may deteriorate the price advantage that diesels get in better mileage. In fact, Germany is just implementing a new law to curb PM emmisions from diesel cars by promoting PM filters be retroactively fit on diesel cars. Promoting, diesels as an economically friendly alternative is fine, but it has yet to be truly enviromentally-friendly choice.
The Xbox360 looks a lot like a white version of the Dell Optiplex GX PCs that can be found in office cubicles everywhere.
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 3
The PSP uses MPEG4 h.264 for video, which Apple and pretty much everybody else uses (except Microsoft with their own format).
So you won't *need* a PSP to get the movies to work, probably any player with support for the h.264 codec (which is most players).
Being that you can just download pretty much any movie and play it on the PSP already if you encode it properly the DRM should be no more strict than the iPod. Also, being that the PSP can play MP3s, Sony does seem to show signs that they do "Get it".
Atop that, the new firmware upgrade to the PSX allows users to record any show from TV unto their MS duo and play it on their PSP with no DRM attached. Hopefully, the PS3 will also have this feature.
It should be noted that Sony has just released a 2GB Memorystick Duo (with 4GB approaching). Likelyhood is that by the time that the PSP and this service is at its maturity flash memory prices in GB capacity should be relatively affordable.
It was not too long ago when 64MB and 128MB flash memory was considered massive. I remember spending ~$150 for a 64MB SD just a couple of years ago. Now, 512MB SDs and MS Duos are going for less than half that. It's not unresonable to think that we could be seeing 1GB MS Duos at bargin prices by christmas, or affordable MS Duos that are significantly larger than UMDs in the near future.
And by the time the PSP is apporoaching the end of its life cycle cheap flash memory in the dozens of GBs should be out by then. And hopefully the PSP would be at a price point similar to a GBA SP. If you consider this as a buisness model that will be around at least as long as the PSP it starts making more sense.
People seem to forget that Sony has had a hand in many of the most prevalent formats around;
The first being the 3.5" Floppy Disk. Sony invented the "micro" floppy disk drive, releasing its first commercially available model called the OA-D30V in 1981 for Apple.
Not to mention the CD-ROM was created by a collabaration by Sony and Phillips. The same duo helped launch the compact-cassete in the 60s. The DVD-ROM was a compromise between Sony/Phillip's Multimedia MMCD and the Toshiba/Warner's SuperDisk.
As for Blu-ray, while Sony is the major backer it is not a Sony format. Main issue that will play a major role in this format battle is royality fees and how each format handles how content providers and manufacters pay each consortium. There is major discontent on the DVD consortium's royalites, which charges $10 per device, with massive competitive pressure manufacters that keep prices low, manufacter's have profit margins on DVD players are razor thin. There is also the 3C and 6C consortium's technical liceencing fees that also are a major headache. Unsuprisingly, Blu-ray is designed to avoid much of Toshiba's 6C technical licence that it has on DVD.
Blu-ray has several things going for it. . .
Playstation 3 inclusion of Blu-ray would prove to be a massive boost for the standard as it automatically gives an instant installed base in the tens of millions. As initial players will likely be relatively pricey, it's usually difficult to start the momentum to get enough installed base on the market so that studios would want to produce content for it, and more content usually then convinces more people to buy into the standard. However, by PS3 being Blu-ray compatible automatically creates a massive installed that studios can produce content for to start the ball rolling.
Secondly, Blu-ray seems to be more scalable then HD-DVD with comapanies planning 4-layer 100GB and 8-layer 200GB multilayered disks. Also, Blu-ray seems to be getting more hardware on the market then HD-DVD, especially since Sony and Matsushita (Panasonic, Technic, Fisher, etc) are backing it. Sony has just annouced Blu-ray drive for the PC that can write to write-once 50GB disks or rewritable-50GB disks.
BLu-ray drive for PC
There seems to be a general misconception regarding price. The players mentioned in this article are competively priced.
The EW-104(512MB) is $99 and EW-105(1GB) is $150. Atop that, these players offer a display and can use interchangable batteries (AAA).
The 512MB EW-405($130) and 1GB EW-505 ($180), cost $30 more than a comparative iPod Shuffle but offers OLED and better battery life (the FM cost $20 extra on each version).
Slashdot's Apple-bias approaches the illogical, these new players offer more key features for a comparable price. Imagine if Sony made the iPod Shuffle, people would be bashing them for not being able to know what song you're playing, and locking them into a single DRM-ridden service. People can show their product devotion without bashing other products (be it Sony, iRiver, or any other flash player); especially if the product offers healthy competition to the market segment.
Problem is sir, the SD is also proprietary. SD is controlled by Matsushita, Toshiba, and Sandisk. MMC isn't proprietary, but by default pretty much all new MMC slots pretty much needs SD compatibility since consumers don't know the diffrence and expect SDs to work.
Why would Sony dump one proprietary standard just to adopt another which they have to pay licencing fees for? Quite honestly, the Sony-bashing regarding memorysticks is garbage. It would be a valid argument if the alternative was an open standard, however most people seem to endorse SDs. Out of all the pletohra of the small flash multimedia standards that constantly pop up I'm not sure why people only attack Sony.
As far as DRM goes, all other players also have DRM. plus it supports MP3s, so there's a way around it. Also, the phone is GSM/GPRS triband so it will likely work with other GSM services in the future.
Sad considering this year was one of the most competitive years in football video games with Sega/Take-two releasing ESPN NFL 2K-series at $19.99.
Guess EA would rather spend the extra cash in getting an exclusive license (which I'm sure they paid an arm and a leg for) rather than spending all that money improving Madden in a competive market, or reducing the price of the Madden series to fend off well-made-$20 football games.
Technological Features for "first-generation" Cell chips:
4.6Ghz Clock Speed
1.3V operation
85 degree C operation with heatsink
6.4Gb/s off chip communication
from the article:
eight cores on a single chip
90nm SOI process
Link to Powerpoint
Link to Original Article in Japanese
Here is a CNN article w/ a picturee t.ap/
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/10/05/explorers.rock
You've cited an editorial, and Detroit auto news is clearly heavily biased towards, well, Detriot.
Ford is not using "Toyota parts", however they are using the same suppliers that Toyota uses, more importantly they are using Toyota's algorithim and software for their hybrid control system which determines when gas and when electric are being used, not to mention the Atkinson cycle engine in this hybrid Escape.
However, it's really not important who gets credit for developing the details of the technology (Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. and Continental Teves should also get credit); Ford should given credit for actually puting a vehicle on the market that not only saves a limited resources but offers an enviromentally freindly alternative. Kudos to them.
The issue in question is not if Mpeg2-only support is a good thing or a bad thing, the point is the HD-DVD relies more heavily on proprietary codecs such as MSs VC-9 than does Blu-ray.
Remember, due to this specification, all HD-DVD players made must pay a royalty to MS in addition to the MPEG consortium.
It is likely that Blu-ray to will adopt another format beyond Mpeg2, however it would likely be an Mpeg4-based codec rather than a WMV codec that nobody expect MS has any control over.
Blu-ray isn't any less a proprietary format than HD-DVD. Nor is it a Sony format.
Sony is only one of many companies that are involved with Blu-Ray, ppl mistake it for their format because they were the first to market the blu-ray. Here are the players:
Hitachi, Ltd.
LG Electronics Inc.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Pioneer Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
TDK Corporation
Thomson Multimedia
Dell
HP
In fact, the only real backers for HD-DVD are:
Microsoft
Toshiba
NEC
And, arguably, HD-DVD is more proprietary than Blu-ray being that they require the player be able to play Miscrosoft's VC-9 codec, while Blu-ray is required to play only MPEG2.
When the PS2 came out with DVD support, Sony didn't make the PS2 incompatible with PSone games and CD just because they decided to support DVDs. There is not reason to believe back-wards compatibility would be dropped from the PS3 likewise.
n fo/News/Press/200405/04- 026E/
. php?name=News&fi le=article&sid=64
In fact. Sony has developed a laser head that can read/write Bluray/DVD+/-rw/CD-RW.
http://www.sony.net/SonyI
Ken Kutargi himself already confirmed backwards compatibility.
http://www.ps3insider.com/modules
If you're worried about quality why would you bother with the OQO? Cheap Sony-basing aside, Sony is a company that at least has shipped a product.
OQO has made years of promises, has no reputation for quality (good or bad), and has specs that are already outdated before its released. We can make a fair comparison of between the Sony U50/U70 and the OQO if and when the OQO hits the market.
It's a basically a ultra-compact PC, it has four USB 2.0 ports as well as a Firewire port. You can obviously just connect an external CD, HDD, or DVD+/-RW, ipod, whatever, to it.
For multimedia, it should also run any app or codec that is available for WinXP, if they could get the price below $1,000 I'm sold.
But the U50 and U70 aren't available in the US, these guys sell them here, but they charge $1999 for the U50 and $2599 for the U70. Yikes.
Smater Front Page: Making use of the first thing that the user sees when starting up.
How about creating an interface for the default page for Firebird. Instead of pointing to the Mozilla.org homepage creating a default Front page designed to evolve to the habits of the user. Whatever way you want to utilize machine learning, you will need a centralized location to acess the results, why not use "Home". That being, creating a simple interface (XUL, not html) that points the user to their most visted bookmarks, or a catagorised and searchable list of their bookmarks(or internet), or updating the user if their most visted sites are updated, aggregating information from sites from their own browsing habits in a single interface when the browser starts up.
Also, if the user uses Thunderbird or Sunbird updating the user of new E-mails and new appointments on the front page. A front page that is customizable to the needs of the user, and avoiding the clutter and ads of commerical sites, and that is local on the users computer and not centralized on a website. And most importantly makes the individual users own data most intuitively accesible to themselves, and evolves to fit the individual user.
All reviews are sujective, however most GOOD reviews support their arguments with actual physical data.
The Roberto Amorim review is entirely vague in that it neither specifies how many ppl are listening, who these ppl are(audiophiles, the avg joe, randomly selected, or ppl with pre-determined listening biases), or if they are the same ppl that listened to all 18 tests; rather we are pointed to arbutriary numbers that are suppose to indicate ppls opinons that we have no clue on how these opinions were derived or how authentic the opinons are.
Regardless, the Amorim review is irrelevent to this article, being that it doesn't even use the same codec as this device in question.
On the subject of Atrac3plus:
Atrac3 was designed primarily for MD players, Atrac3Plus was designed for wide range of media devices. In fact, the Atrac3plus was compared to Atrac3 in WatchImpress comparion cited, their conclusion was that there was a noticable difference in sound quality between the two codecs as the bitrate increased.
This player uses Atrac3Plus as its primary format, with support for other Atrac formats. It's default format isn't the one used in this comparison
So the comparison isn't really valid, or up to date.
In fact, Watch Impress a respectable Japanese news site reviewed the Atrac3Plus recently, a more technical review and less subjective than blind listening test. The review was largely positive, with the 256kbps Atrac3plus competiting favorably against WAV (CD-Quality).
Watchimpress Atrac3Plus Comparison in Japanese
They also have an article with pictures of the this walkman device;
There's a reason why we see PS1 games still on the shelfs at stores like Bestbuy, while we don't see Dreamcast, Saturn, etc. There are a legion of casual gamers out there that are happy with PS1 games. PS2 backwards compability increased the shlef-life of PS1 games immensely, just the same way PS3 should increase the shelflife of PS2 games. That benefits both the developer and consumer.
Personally, when I have to decide to buy a cross-platform game that is on all three systems, I always choose the PS2 even though the XB or GC may have better graphics. The reason is quite simple, that's because I know that if I invest in this game that I will be able to play it 5+ years later on the PS3(maybe even PS4).
Having backwards compatibiliy may not help the Xbox Next immensly, however it should be incredibily important to the original Xbox's games. There are so many people that still buy and play Halo, and Halo2 will only be out ~1year before the XB Next is out and I'm sure ppl will continue to play that game for years to come. But perhaps to MS, XB games won't be very important, nor worth the investment, when XB Next comes out.
Game companies make money from Software not Hardware(in the case of the XB, they lose money on hardware). When ppl stop buying software that's when they need to be concerned, hardware sales will drop over time simply because ppl already have consoles. Article is even optomistic about sales, which is contradictory to SIGALRM's assertion of poor sales/titles:
From Gamespot article:
"Sales of console games and accessories continued to be strong despite the decrease in hardware sales, showing increases of 7 and 10 percent respectively. "What will keep consumers coming back for more is the continued development of top-notch software titles, as well as accessories designed to enhance gameplay," added Ow. "This, combined with advancements in the industry such as online gameplay, will help drive sales well into the future."