I like the 360 because network play isn't ruined. Keep it that way. Punkbuster MS way. (and yes, if you can pirate the games people can do other things to them for there own advantages..)
Cliffy did give that game rave reviews, but he also said its two different styles of play - even though they're both "shooters" so it will be cool to see these two titles duke it out!
Watch the commercial i linked to, that will move some 360's. This game isn't the only game that will move units.
Gears of War - Exclusive Phantasy Star Online Call of Duty 3 Xbox 360 HD-DVD Addon Viva Pinata R6: Vegas
few more other games.. Remember the HD-DVD addon will be out, Windows vista with media center will push some 360 as an extender and general growth/demand from holiday sales which was 3+ million at luanch should still be there.
360 is the fastest selling console in many markets. 6 million sold was still on the heels of poor manufacturing performance and i actually believe MS year end for forecast is March not necessarily dec 31st so with holiday season come full swing, many of the "first tier" launches coming up this year and the other consoles being slim pickings i wouldn't be suprised if MS surupasses its figures.
If not for anything the 360 will sell as vista gets released to be a media center front end as well.
If GOW sells 2 million and current trends keep up it won't be hard to reach their goals.
Gears of war will help the 360 - Not sure what will sell the PS3s. Appears the Wii has Japan locked up - will 2 consoles be able to launch at the same time while the 360 is launching about 40+ local native titles as well (developed/launched native instead of us imports)??
market shrinking? i think not.. Just the Playstation domination haseth cometh to its endeth
The PS3 is going to sale in name alone.. i'm not going to play fangboy on any one side, but with recent light of events there are going to be a lot of upset kids this christmas if they're expecting a PS3 or a Wii and that may just help the 360 out.
PS3 luanch linup is a fantastic linup, but only 4 exclusives that won't be available on the 360 that i'm aware of. Wii has a fantastic linup but even if there are a million units the numbers shipped by christmas probably won't be enough to fill demand.
Another downside is after the 360 launch experience a majority of people buying these will only be buying them to resell on ebay - even if there is enough to fill demand people are going to do it because it worked so well for them last time.
So high prices, high demand, angry shoppers.. high cost across the board...
i'm not sure it will boost the 360 sales because of the microsoft stigma but i'm sure it will push sales to PC games, HD tv's, computers, laptops and mp3 players!
will be interesting.. Sucks to be Sony though.. i can't imagine how they messed up supply chain management considering they're king of most of what is in the ps3!
If you think today is "Web 2.0" then wait until vista launches. The Avalon, XAML, WinFX,.NET 3.0, Messenger, Live Anywhere and other frameworks being designed & implemented on this platform will blow you away and make the "web 2.0" look like web 1.1.
I'm not sure what vision you see, but the one i see unfolding in front of me seems rather healthy, visionary and exciting to be a part of.
I see it for linux as well, but lets not fool ourselves into thinking this "Web 2.0" is a new paradigm when we haven't even scratched the surface of what the web is about - yet alone how vista can "Extend and embrace" or "extend and assimilate" as slashdotters like to put it.
The OS is an enabler - not just an access point. Don't limit your limited views and opinions of vista just off a pretty gui and then say it doesn't match the future of computing while you blatently ignore the groundwork and foundations built within that will blow you away.
Just do a quick google/yahoo/live/a9 search for the above frameworks and see what is already coming about. Games that are lightweight, fast and visually appealing, applications that feel more native than flash/ajax could ever feel and integration and security tied in better then most people care to recognize. (application zones, phishing filters, signed applications). Sure there are tons of other technologies that can piecemill stuff together but Vista is an enabler for everything microsoft has tried to snap in and finally will be able to.
Statistically more theft happens from people within your ogranization than externally to it. It is easier to lock down a PC and teach people to understand security and implications of how they work and where they work and how that reflects upon them as an employee and upon the corporation than to stop those select few who will reak havoc no matter where they're working.
My laptop is encrypted, monitored, firewalled, virus scanned. I vpn to do everything, use an RSA token for my passwords, i have a forced 15 minute screen saver with login. I know the responsibility i have and i strive to respect that because of the trust i have been granted. I know big brother is watching and i have to live within the framework provided but that isn't much different than places where i was driving to and working from these days anymore. I used to always want to tweak and setup all my stuff on my own and always try things out and can't do that with a managed system but thats what my personal pc is for and what my personal time is for so the lockdown doesn't really bother me as much as i thought it would.
No security badge to get into my house, no people taking a smelly dump next to me while i use the restroom, no smelling someone eat some nasty old food at there disk, no boss talking to me about how he hates his wife and can't wait to go hunting again, no walking 1 mile to the back of the parking lot to find my car..
Salary isn't for suckers when they take care of you.
6 figures, pension plan, insurance, 401k (matching), 15k year for training & education, 3 weeks vacation.. you don't get that stuff when working hourly!
I have a detached garage and above it i have a 600 square foot room that used to be a toy-train shop that has slowly been remodelled to my "dude room" and now my office. Its great. I have my own private bathroom and everything! i wired the room before i fixed up the walls. I put in a kitchenette with a microwave, fridge, stove, sink, COFFEE MACHINE! and other nice"ities". Its a place i'm fully functional in without having to distract myself but yet a place i can be in for those days when we have upgrades and i need to push the clock to work odd hours. (i'm a database administrator..)
I've got comcast, upgraded to the "pro" account for 8mbit/768k, i've got a Vonage voice line, Vonage fax line, my Cell phone, a company laptop, an extra monitor and plenty of space to work, stretch out and be myself.
I bought a nice speakerphone, got a headset for when i simply want to use Skype and layback during a call (hey its still free for the rest of the year!). Headset can travel with me if want to work from Panera, Barnes in Noble, Borders or other local joints with wifi.
I couldn't ask for more! I drop my daughter off at school, pick her up, make it to her activities, i get to see my wife during lunch and for more than 2 hours in the evening. My car went from seeing 25,000 miles a year to seeing about 4,000.
I find myself closer to my friends, i find myself closer to my community, i find myself more invigorated to do more, achieve more and get more work done. I find myself doing more training, i find myself working on furthering my education, i find myself INTERESTED again.
It takes the right company to know your potential and let you live up to it. Believe me they take security measures that can be annoying but after pushing time at a bank sitting around because i was paid to do one thing and nothing else to busting my balls at places i thought were fun but were just beating me into the ground with work an excuses and getting poor results because of it i'm glad to be here.
My life isn't work, its what i do. Now i do it really well because my work is part of MY Life!
I started a new job after being laid off for a bit working from home - aka telecommuting full time. Infact my employer isn't even in the same state i'm at nor within driving distance for a days work!
The secret to telecommuting is community. The people i work with are very friendly and technically savy people - in the community way. They know how to pickup the phone and call, drop me a sametime request and schedule meetings and conference calls to get that person to person chat going.
You have to be organized and willing to work to make it "Work" but it is well worth it. I find myself relaxed, invigorated and the days flying by like no tomorrow.
It does take some getting used to of not having "cube mates" but honestly after working at banks, small shops, development houses, BIG shops and such the small talk isn't exactly worth the hassle of going to work and the real talk i had with people i would consider myself as friends usually ended up getting me in trouble and distracting myself from "working".
I've got a laptop, cable modem, desk, home office (above detached garage) so i even have a place to go to work to and come home from - even though its only 25 feet from the house that can make a difference.
I went from driving an hour each way to walking out my front door and i couldn't be happier. If i want interaction i go hang out at Barnes and Noble, Panera or the local coffee shop and use the wifi to login and get some work done and sip a hot coffee and talk to people often on something that isn't work and the healthy type of distraction that can keep you thinking and out of the day to day drone type work that most of my previous 12 years in IT has been like.
Most importantly, if you work from home or out of the office find a place that respects you for that. Don't accept less money, don't accept less benefits, don't let them treat you like your not part of the team. Places that do that, just don't understand telecommuting, never will and you will hate it.
Your confusing two different issues. Outsourcing is the "outside providing" of services that your business provides. For example if your a developer and you higher outsourced help your hirring developers outside of your business as if they were part of your business.
If i run an app server to build a b2b system on, my business is the b2b system not the actual coding of the app server. I will hire people who KNOW the app server, i will hire developers that know the framework and can build apps within the app server but i'm not going to hire people who wrote the app server.
That is where "support" comes in. When you buy an app server that is selling 10,000 widgets a minute can you afford to staff yourself with people who sit idle until you reach that 10 minutes a year where your system is down and costing you millions or should you take the more affordable route and hire the people that wrote the app server and actually have more consistent, thorough and broad range of experiences within that product?
Your obviously not going to hit every scenerio or have the knowledgebase of the people who write the app server and being that my business is the b2b process and not the darn server code why should i pay to suppor that internally (more than hirring competant administrative staff and even then you would be retarded to not supplement that with people whos focus and business is to support you and deliver a service to begin with)???
You completely missed the point of the question. The question is why does running "supportef" FOSS systems cost more than "supported" commercial systems. Its not about offshoring your core business but supporting your core business with vendors you can rely upon at a cost you can afford.
Hate to break it to you but small business licensing and volume licensing is much different than OEM Licensing. If you have a good sales person, a good vendor, you will not only get hardware, software, licensing and support all wrapped up in one easy to administer and use package but it will be hassle free and seemless.
For example we bought a company, replaced 5000 pcs running windows 2000 with newer pcs running windows xp and software didn't cost us a dime because we bought software assurance which is still cheaper per PC than the licensing of Redhat alone (which has time limited support and expensive enterprise support as well).
FOSS systems usually don't have the time, material and resources to do assurance programs where people are guaranteed uprgadeability, compatibility and support on the systems they have simply because they don't think in that paradigm.
Large corporations don't buy OEM licenses, they buy site licenses and support contracts based on that or they buy direct through vendors and buy the support through vendors. It is cheaper to buy Wintel on Dell or HP and have Hardware support out of the box than it is to do the same with Linux/Redhat/Intel. They get 2-4 hour repair service, warranty replacement and no hassle spares. (if you deal with HP that is.. experience with dell may vary haha)
So without knowing if Redhat does site licensing and how they have built up there relationship with dell (redhat looks expensive on the dells even compared to server 2003 just using the small business configurator/self service checkout).
Software systems are more complex than the components that they just run upon that it is usually cheaper to buy support than to staff up for every potential issue you may run across.
You obviously haven't worked for large environments that support 10s of thousands of internal customers before it even reaches the millions or billions of external customers. There is no way you could staff yet alone augment your knowledge base by hirring a bunch of know it alls. You need process, you need documentation, you need vendor support and you need relationships you can depend upon so you can focus on running your business rather than pushing some OSS or even off the shelf product that your vendor should be doing for its own well being.
They're not hitting the limits of the hardware by any means just not coding to the hardware because the maturity of the developers, sdk and frameworks haven't been there. That is why "2nd/3rd" gen games always rock and first gen games have the symptoms you notice.
Another poster filled in the other groups that profit nicely and as far as Microsoft goes you are still ignoring what they have changed.
I've been beta testing everything from Chicago on up and the Vista beta is the only one that has ever been publicly available as a release candidate in such a large fashion. Its the only one where product managers actually work with public testers, its the only one where voting on a bug actually gets it fixed, its the only one where many issues long standing of all the previous betas were actually heared.
Corporations love microsoft because microsoft listens. Consumers love microsoft because microsoft listens.. everyone in betweenloves what they have found. To blindly sum up a half trillian dollar industry because YOU don't like it is pretty short sighted.
If you don't think MS has changed then you simply haven't followed them. Vista as a release, product and beta program is vastly different and superior to any other Microsoft OS. I mean public builds, public scrutiny, nearly a quarter million beta testers and release and release of consistent updates. You can't really beat that and that is lessons learned from listening and observing.
Same goes for the Xbox side of the house. THey listen, they get on blogs and they deliver. Checkout Majornelson.com for some great 360 evangelism and see how he does what he can to pass along everything to MS to deliver.
Your blind if you don't think microsoft has changed.
Slashdot Mirror
I like the 360 because network play isn't ruined. Keep it that way. Punkbuster MS way. (and yes, if you can pirate the games people can do other things to them for there own advantages..)
PS3 is going to sell, but not as well as you think. Smoking? whatever..
Cliffy did give that game rave reviews, but he also said its two different styles of play - even though they're both "shooters" so it will be cool to see these two titles duke it out!
Watch the commercial i linked to, that will move some 360's. This game isn't the only game that will move units.
Gears of War - Exclusive
Phantasy Star Online
Call of Duty 3
Xbox 360 HD-DVD Addon
Viva Pinata
R6: Vegas
few more other games.. Remember the HD-DVD addon will be out, Windows vista with media center will push some 360 as an extender and general growth/demand from holiday sales which was 3+ million at luanch should still be there.
Yeah, marvel is on all of the systems practically but for "next gen" the 360 will be the easiest to buy and cheapest.
360 is the fastest selling console in many markets. 6 million sold was still on the heels of poor manufacturing performance and i actually believe MS year end for forecast is March not necessarily dec 31st so with holiday season come full swing, many of the "first tier" launches coming up this year and the other consoles being slim pickings i wouldn't be suprised if MS surupasses its figures.
If not for anything the 360 will sell as vista gets released to be a media center front end as well.
If GOW sells 2 million and current trends keep up it won't be hard to reach their goals.
Gears of war will help the 360 - Not sure what will sell the PS3s. Appears the Wii has Japan locked up - will 2 consoles be able to launch at the same time while the 360 is launching about 40+ local native titles as well (developed/launched native instead of us imports)??
market shrinking? i think not.. Just the Playstation domination haseth cometh to its endeth
The PS3 is going to sale in name alone.. i'm not going to play fangboy on any one side, but with recent light of events there are going to be a lot of upset kids this christmas if they're expecting a PS3 or a Wii and that may just help the 360 out.
PS3 luanch linup is a fantastic linup, but only 4 exclusives that won't be available on the 360 that i'm aware of. Wii has a fantastic linup but even if there are a million units the numbers shipped by christmas probably won't be enough to fill demand.
Another downside is after the 360 launch experience a majority of people buying these will only be buying them to resell on ebay - even if there is enough to fill demand people are going to do it because it worked so well for them last time.
So high prices, high demand, angry shoppers.. high cost across the board...
i'm not sure it will boost the 360 sales because of the microsoft stigma but i'm sure it will push sales to PC games, HD tv's, computers, laptops and mp3 players!
will be interesting.. Sucks to be Sony though.. i can't imagine how they messed up supply chain management considering they're king of most of what is in the ps3!
just normal "business" in the movie industry...
If you think today is "Web 2.0" then wait until vista launches. The Avalon, XAML, WinFX, .NET 3.0, Messenger, Live Anywhere and other frameworks being designed & implemented on this platform will blow you away and make the "web 2.0" look like web 1.1.
I'm not sure what vision you see, but the one i see unfolding in front of me seems rather healthy, visionary and exciting to be a part of.
I see it for linux as well, but lets not fool ourselves into thinking this "Web 2.0" is a new paradigm when we haven't even scratched the surface of what the web is about - yet alone how vista can "Extend and embrace" or "extend and assimilate" as slashdotters like to put it.
The OS is an enabler - not just an access point. Don't limit your limited views and opinions of vista just off a pretty gui and then say it doesn't match the future of computing while you blatently ignore the groundwork and foundations built within that will blow you away.
Just do a quick google/yahoo/live/a9 search for the above frameworks and see what is already coming about. Games that are lightweight, fast and visually appealing, applications that feel more native than flash/ajax could ever feel and integration and security tied in better then most people care to recognize. (application zones, phishing filters, signed applications). Sure there are tons of other technologies that can piecemill stuff together but Vista is an enabler for everything microsoft has tried to snap in and finally will be able to.
RC = Frozen API
RTM = Release
Release candidate means "You can build your release software against this version as the API is frozen and we are just working out the kinks"
First build that i've installed with 0 issues on 3 pcs and one of them being my frankenPC that always gave me hell.
Statistically more theft happens from people within your ogranization than externally to it. It is easier to lock down a PC and teach people to understand security and implications of how they work and where they work and how that reflects upon them as an employee and upon the corporation than to stop those select few who will reak havoc no matter where they're working.
My laptop is encrypted, monitored, firewalled, virus scanned. I vpn to do everything, use an RSA token for my passwords, i have a forced 15 minute screen saver with login. I know the responsibility i have and i strive to respect that because of the trust i have been granted. I know big brother is watching and i have to live within the framework provided but that isn't much different than places where i was driving to and working from these days anymore. I used to always want to tweak and setup all my stuff on my own and always try things out and can't do that with a managed system but thats what my personal pc is for and what my personal time is for so the lockdown doesn't really bother me as much as i thought it would.
No security badge to get into my house, no people taking a smelly dump next to me while i use the restroom, no smelling someone eat some nasty old food at there disk, no boss talking to me about how he hates his wife and can't wait to go hunting again, no walking 1 mile to the back of the parking lot to find my car..
Salary isn't for suckers when they take care of you.
6 figures, pension plan, insurance, 401k (matching), 15k year for training & education, 3 weeks vacation.. you don't get that stuff when working hourly!
I have a detached garage and above it i have a 600 square foot room that used to be a toy-train shop that has slowly been remodelled to my "dude room" and now my office. Its great. I have my own private bathroom and everything! i wired the room before i fixed up the walls. I put in a kitchenette with a microwave, fridge, stove, sink, COFFEE MACHINE! and other nice"ities". Its a place i'm fully functional in without having to distract myself but yet a place i can be in for those days when we have upgrades and i need to push the clock to work odd hours. (i'm a database administrator..)
I've got comcast, upgraded to the "pro" account for 8mbit/768k, i've got a Vonage voice line, Vonage fax line, my Cell phone, a company laptop, an extra monitor and plenty of space to work, stretch out and be myself.
I bought a nice speakerphone, got a headset for when i simply want to use Skype and layback during a call (hey its still free for the rest of the year!). Headset can travel with me if want to work from Panera, Barnes in Noble, Borders or other local joints with wifi.
I couldn't ask for more! I drop my daughter off at school, pick her up, make it to her activities, i get to see my wife during lunch and for more than 2 hours in the evening. My car went from seeing 25,000 miles a year to seeing about 4,000.
I find myself closer to my friends, i find myself closer to my community, i find myself more invigorated to do more, achieve more and get more work done. I find myself doing more training, i find myself working on furthering my education, i find myself INTERESTED again.
It takes the right company to know your potential and let you live up to it. Believe me they take security measures that can be annoying but after pushing time at a bank sitting around because i was paid to do one thing and nothing else to busting my balls at places i thought were fun but were just beating me into the ground with work an excuses and getting poor results because of it i'm glad to be here.
My life isn't work, its what i do. Now i do it really well because my work is part of MY Life!
I started a new job after being laid off for a bit working from home - aka telecommuting full time. Infact my employer isn't even in the same state i'm at nor within driving distance for a days work!
The secret to telecommuting is community. The people i work with are very friendly and technically savy people - in the community way. They know how to pickup the phone and call, drop me a sametime request and schedule meetings and conference calls to get that person to person chat going.
You have to be organized and willing to work to make it "Work" but it is well worth it. I find myself relaxed, invigorated and the days flying by like no tomorrow.
It does take some getting used to of not having "cube mates" but honestly after working at banks, small shops, development houses, BIG shops and such the small talk isn't exactly worth the hassle of going to work and the real talk i had with people i would consider myself as friends usually ended up getting me in trouble and distracting myself from "working".
I've got a laptop, cable modem, desk, home office (above detached garage) so i even have a place to go to work to and come home from - even though its only 25 feet from the house that can make a difference.
I went from driving an hour each way to walking out my front door and i couldn't be happier. If i want interaction i go hang out at Barnes and Noble, Panera or the local coffee shop and use the wifi to login and get some work done and sip a hot coffee and talk to people often on something that isn't work and the healthy type of distraction that can keep you thinking and out of the day to day drone type work that most of my previous 12 years in IT has been like.
Most importantly, if you work from home or out of the office find a place that respects you for that. Don't accept less money, don't accept less benefits, don't let them treat you like your not part of the team. Places that do that, just don't understand telecommuting, never will and you will hate it.
The only platforms i felt screwed on were Sega but i still bought them platform after platform.
32x.. Cd, saturn, DC.
No regrets in the long run.
I still play my Xbox even though i have the 360 so its not like its life is over.
When will Asterisk build a distributed system that is easier to scale or is its sole purpose now small to media sized businesses?
Your confusing two different issues. Outsourcing is the "outside providing" of services that your business provides. For example if your a developer and you higher outsourced help your hirring developers outside of your business as if they were part of your business.
If i run an app server to build a b2b system on, my business is the b2b system not the actual coding of the app server. I will hire people who KNOW the app server, i will hire developers that know the framework and can build apps within the app server but i'm not going to hire people who wrote the app server.
That is where "support" comes in. When you buy an app server that is selling 10,000 widgets a minute can you afford to staff yourself with people who sit idle until you reach that 10 minutes a year where your system is down and costing you millions or should you take the more affordable route and hire the people that wrote the app server and actually have more consistent, thorough and broad range of experiences within that product?
Your obviously not going to hit every scenerio or have the knowledgebase of the people who write the app server and being that my business is the b2b process and not the darn server code why should i pay to suppor that internally (more than hirring competant administrative staff and even then you would be retarded to not supplement that with people whos focus and business is to support you and deliver a service to begin with)???
You completely missed the point of the question. The question is why does running "supportef" FOSS systems cost more than "supported" commercial systems. Its not about offshoring your core business but supporting your core business with vendors you can rely upon at a cost you can afford.
Hate to break it to you but small business licensing and volume licensing is much different than OEM Licensing. If you have a good sales person, a good vendor, you will not only get hardware, software, licensing and support all wrapped up in one easy to administer and use package but it will be hassle free and seemless.
For example we bought a company, replaced 5000 pcs running windows 2000 with newer pcs running windows xp and software didn't cost us a dime because we bought software assurance which is still cheaper per PC than the licensing of Redhat alone (which has time limited support and expensive enterprise support as well).
FOSS systems usually don't have the time, material and resources to do assurance programs where people are guaranteed uprgadeability, compatibility and support on the systems they have simply because they don't think in that paradigm.
Large corporations don't buy OEM licenses, they buy site licenses and support contracts based on that or they buy direct through vendors and buy the support through vendors. It is cheaper to buy Wintel on Dell or HP and have Hardware support out of the box than it is to do the same with Linux/Redhat/Intel. They get 2-4 hour repair service, warranty replacement and no hassle spares. (if you deal with HP that is.. experience with dell may vary haha)
So without knowing if Redhat does site licensing and how they have built up there relationship with dell (redhat looks expensive on the dells even compared to server 2003 just using the small business configurator/self service checkout).
Software systems are more complex than the components that they just run upon that it is usually cheaper to buy support than to staff up for every potential issue you may run across.
You obviously haven't worked for large environments that support 10s of thousands of internal customers before it even reaches the millions or billions of external customers. There is no way you could staff yet alone augment your knowledge base by hirring a bunch of know it alls. You need process, you need documentation, you need vendor support and you need relationships you can depend upon so you can focus on running your business rather than pushing some OSS or even off the shelf product that your vendor should be doing for its own well being.
Business are here to make money.
They're not hitting the limits of the hardware by any means just not coding to the hardware because the maturity of the developers, sdk and frameworks haven't been there. That is why "2nd/3rd" gen games always rock and first gen games have the symptoms you notice.
Another poster filled in the other groups that profit nicely and as far as Microsoft goes you are still ignoring what they have changed.
I've been beta testing everything from Chicago on up and the Vista beta is the only one that has ever been publicly available as a release candidate in such a large fashion. Its the only one where product managers actually work with public testers, its the only one where voting on a bug actually gets it fixed, its the only one where many issues long standing of all the previous betas were actually heared.
Corporations love microsoft because microsoft listens. Consumers love microsoft because microsoft listens.. everyone in betweenloves what they have found. To blindly sum up a half trillian dollar industry because YOU don't like it is pretty short sighted.
If you don't think MS has changed then you simply haven't followed them. Vista as a release, product and beta program is vastly different and superior to any other Microsoft OS. I mean public builds, public scrutiny, nearly a quarter million beta testers and release and release of consistent updates. You can't really beat that and that is lessons learned from listening and observing.
Same goes for the Xbox side of the house. THey listen, they get on blogs and they deliver. Checkout Majornelson.com for some great 360 evangelism and see how he does what he can to pass along everything to MS to deliver.
Your blind if you don't think microsoft has changed.