Is there any reason in particular that headphones cannot accurately reproduce sound?
The only thing I can think of that a headphone would have trouble reproducing, is a deep, loud bass. That's only because it doesn't have the displacement to highly compress low frequency. Monitor speakers suffer the same problem though.
Still, because headphones sit right next to the ear, they're _much_ more efficient at delivering sound waves to the ear. This allows them to deliver sound at a comparable volume, with much less effort. As far as I can tell, there's no theoretical reason why a set of headphones can't match monitor speakers for accuracy.
You are being a tad cynical, but I do generally agree with you.
I've often thought about this issue. Each generation has generally been more prosperous than the last. This prosperity leads to levels of expectations that exceed the previous generation. We are, in a way, a victim of our own successes. Or, in other words, we're being spoilt.
Each generation of children have been given more, without much effort at all. It's only human nature that they learn to expect to be given what they want. This is just a natural consequence of having a high standard of living, and is very difficult to overcome. It takes conscious effort on the part of the parent, to teach children that life will not give them what they want. That they've got to work hard to achieve their goals, and even then it's no guarantee.
People, all people, not just children, generally appreciate what they had only after it's gone. This is the crux of the issue; the real difficulty of parenting. It's hard for a parent to deprive their child. You want to give your child every opportunity, want to make sure that they're well provided for, and that they have many choices in life. Problem is, if you give it to them, they cannot understand what they've been given. It has to be taken away before they can truly understand the value of it.
I do believe it's possible to appreciate what you have, without being deprived of it. It takes conscious effort, and continual reminders. Giving thanks before meals is a good example, although I guess most people don't really listen to the prayer, but just recite it by rote. Another good example is to wake up every morning and think "how lucky I am that I have a bed, a house, and food on my table". It's not something I'd expect of children though, as it takes considerable maturity to really appreciate that statement.
As far as children are concerned, it's a tough issue. Getting them to work for their basic needs can help. Education, in all forms, should also be able to increase their awareness. Not sure what else can be done, but whatever it is, I'm sure it'll involve hard work for parent and child..... and to drag this post, kicking and screaming, back on topic... I've already installed Linux on my PS3. Why? Because. No real reason, other than to experience it, to learn what it's capable of, and to have it as an option to solve a possible future need.
This is certainly a case which didn't need to go to court. Google will quite happily remove their pictures if they want. Any anguish suffered was brought on by their own actions. Barely anyone would have seen the pictures had it not been publicised by the court case.
Anyway, the Boorings will probably be slapped with a bill from their lawyer, thus teaching them a very valuable lesson.
I hear that the Large Hadron Collider is currently having problems. Maybe your students can build a replacement... except smaller. Call it the SHC, or even the VTHC.
What do you do when you can't prove your case? You discredit the opposition, of course!
Microsoft make a great opposition; they've got a wonderfully lacklustre history of security. You should be able to make your clients tremble in fear at the thought of replacing their flawlessly running systems.
Invite your customers to think for themselves, instead of relying on the say-so of others. With 6 years of faultless service, that's a big ace up your sleeve. Get them to consider that fact, and ask them if it really sounds like they're running an insecure system. Surely they can draw conclusions from that.
Lastly, you may want to bring up current Microsoft security bugs, how long it can take them to fix, and how often the fix causes other issues. Then dangle the carrot: with open source, you can fix the problem yourself, or hire someone to do it. No complete dependence on another party. You can change things as you want or need. That's a huge advantage to some people.
IIS7 is remarkably performant, even compared to Apache2, and I haven't seen a significant security update come down the pipe for it or ASP.NET in quite some time.
That's great to hear. I help to manage a couple of IIS6 servers, running some.NET applications, and security updates have always been a pain. Never mind that it often requires a server reboot. The IIS6 process also takes about a minute to restart, if I need to do so. That's a huge amount of time compared to the few seconds it takes Apache. It's not even taking into account the occasional IIS freeze when trying to restart. I have to use pskill to terminate the process properly, and then finally start up IIS. There goes 3 or 4 minutes of service downtime.
Maintaining an application written in.NET is a lot easier than doing the same in, say, Perl or PHP.
Arrgh, don't talk to me about maintaining.NET applications. A program is only as easy to maintain, as the programmer allows it to be. I've had some painful memories of fixing issues in our.NET applications.
Ease of maintenance may be better encouraged in some languages, but I've seen spaghetti code in pretty much every language I've come across. The only conclusion I can make is that language is irrelevant. Only the programmer is really important.
Funnily enough, I've never had so much of an issue with the perl programs I maintain. For all its reputation of obfuscation, I've never had a problem with tracking down issues with our perl code. Then again, that particular programmer did a nice job of laying out the structure neatly.
There are good reasons to pick something that isn't what you personally like, whether it's proprietary or not.
Bugger that for a joke. Give me something that I like, and I'll like coding in it, whether it's proprietary or not. Because I like it, you know that I will take pride in my work and do a great job.
But, you never know what you like until you try it. So far, I have to say I'm liking Linux much more than Windows.
Linux is doing something radically different from Windows. It provides source code. That is a huge difference! Sure, it only benefits highly technical users, but the onflow of that, benefits every Linux user.
Do you remember the bad old days of Windows 95? To get USB connectivity, you had to upgrade to Windows 98. Microsoft would not add USB functionality to 95; they wanted you to upgrade for it.
This does not happen with Linux. You can just pop in a new kernel, and any new devices that the kernel supports, are now yours to play with. No need to do a full operating system upgrade. The worst case is you have to install extra support tools. Device drivers are added because the Linux source code is freely available, and there's always a programmer somewhere in the world that wants that itch scratched.
You must have missed the change. It was a major feature for the Linux 2.6 kernel series. All linux processes now run in the foreground. Running a process in the foreground saves on overhead, thus resulting in a significant improvement in speed. Easily more than the 1-2% that the article mentions. I suspect the article downplayed the speed advantage, to cast Windows in a better light.
Linux achieves this ability by forking the process from the shell, and redirecting the inputs and outputs away, thus giving the illusion of a backgrounded process. The beauty of this is that it's all completely transparent to the end user. The system behaves just as before, apart from the speed increase.
Everyone knows that processes in the foreground run faster. Myself, I used to background a process only out of absolute necessity. These days though, a background process is actually a foreground process, so I don't worry at all about running multiple jobs at the one shell now. Linux is truly a state of the art operating system!
Actually, the teacher claims she used Linux in college. If she used the software, she surely must be aware that she downloaded it for free. Not unless she's completely bereft of sense, and thought she was downloading it illegally. Now that's a funny thought.
I strongly agree with your post, other than to say that it's still possible to be isolated on the internet. Closed groups and forums with selective membership can still be a breeding ground for antisocial tendencies. They can slowly absorb people with like minds, while simultaneously rejecting those people who may offer counter arguments to their ideals.
I do agree that the internet does make this harder to achieve than, say, compared to the environment of early 20th century Germany.
LBP is an interesting modern example of mashing 2D and 3D together. It's essentially a 2D platforming game implemented in a 3D environment with 3 2D planes which your character can move between.
The creators chose this design because they thought it was more enjoyable to play. A full 3D world was too complex, and detracted from the simple fun they were aiming at.
Having played the game, I think they made a good decision. It's got the simplicity of a 2D platformer, but the extra depth provided by the multilayered approach makes the gameplay more interesting.
It's nice that Windows 7 will be 256 core aware. I can just imagine the message in the event log:
We're aware that you have 256 cores, but you didn't pay enough money to use them all. Please contact Microsoft Support, and have your credit card ready.
I'm sure they'll allow you to use the first four cores for free. That's just to get you hooked.
Oh please. It's a side-scroller with a level editor.
Where have I heard that before? Oh, right, a DECADE AGO when such games were released on the PC.
Spoken like someone who hasn't actually played the game. Well done for speaking so knowledgeably about something you've had no experience with.
There has been no sidescroller game that has had 3 levels of depth. None have had such realistic 2D physics (it's 2D, because objects cannot fall toward or away from the screen). None have had such realistic material behaviour. Well, ignoring the dark matter material.;)
Sure, LBP is a sidescroller, but it's a fair few generations ahead of the games back in 1984. Sure, Abuse allows you to create new objects, but you have to be a programmer to do so. LBP allows anyone to create levels, without having any programming experience. LBP allows you to create things and test them right away. LBP will soon allow you to have multiplayer editing sessions on the same console. Soon, it will allow that via the network. That's just amazing stuff. Never seen before, as far as I know.
It is called Capillary Action my friend. That surface tension you were talking about, actually causes the water to be sucked into small gaps like this. It only works if the attraction between water molecules is less than the attraction between water and external material.
Thanks for that. I thought it'd be unlikely that a modern Linux window manager was missing virtual desktops. It's good to know that fluxbox has it.
I don't necessarily use the pager to move between virtual desktops. I generally use it to see what windows are located on what desktop. I also use the pager to move windows between different desktops, when I need to reshuffle things.
Nice. I've never seen fluxbox before. Had a read of the features, and it looks very nifty. I love the concept of tabs and the keys-file.
I can't seem to find any reference to virtual desktops or a pager though. It's a shame, because that's a major feature for me, along with the ability to set zero edge resistance.
I'm running E17 on my desktop right now. Been running it both at home and work for the last few years. It's by far my favourite window manager, for a variety of reasons:
* It's fast. Very fast. * It feels clean and simple. * Looks very good. * Very customisable. * Keyboard shortcuts for just about anything! * Just about everything can be controlled or configured from the command prompt.
With E17, I can configure my desktop to be just a background picture. No start menus, strips, clocks, nothing. Then I can add whatever I want, starting with a simple left click on the background to bring up the Enlightenment configuration menu. From there, you can build it to your taste. Sure, it has it's own way of doing things, but it never forces a display feature onto you. It's all your choice to show.
Given, I run the development version, so it's not the easiest to get running. There's a nice script I use to download via CVS, compile up the source, and package it into deb files. I keep a copy of the deb packages for the last version I liked, and revert to that if the latest version is buggy. It's worked well for me so far.
As such, I wouldn't recommend E17 to your average user. For the more technically inclined, though, it beats anything I've ever used. I've tweaked E17 to behave exactly how I want it. Now I feel like I'm working with my computer, instead of struggling against it. Truly, I have been enlightened.
Eden and Echochrome have demos available. There's also plenty of youtube videos of Eden; it has a feature to upload directly to youtube. Check out wikipedia too. I'm sure the games have a writeup there.
Nice find! The wikipedia article actually says that Computrace use the Host Protected Area, so if we believe that, then the mystery is solved.
Makes me wonder what they do if they come across a fully partitioned drive with the last partition being non-windows. Surely they wouldn't resize that partition, and therefore they could not create a HPA.
Also makes me wonder how they expect a computer to be protected if the system partition is reformatted and reinstalled. Surely Windows does not automatically load software stored in the HPA.
Well, I don't know precisely how it works, but the bootloader is the only possible way it could survive a repartition. The code is definitely stored on the hard drive, as the FAQ mentions.
Interesting assessment. I'm not too familiar with the US housing market, but from what you've said, I'm not sure that US house prices are extremely over inflated. Somewhat inflated, yes, but not extreme.
Why are house prices above 3x median income unsustainable? It seems to me that it can be sustained, even at 5x. At least, that's my experience in my country, where a house at 5x the average salary is actually cheap.
It sounds to me that you're assuming house prices will go back to historical levels. That may be a bad assumption.
Let's assume your culture of 80% mortgage payment is correct, paying roughly 35% tax on salary, on a house worth 5x median salary, at 8% interest. Plugging those figures into a loan mortgage formula, the loan will be paid in about 18 years.
That seems to be a fairly decent house loan period, and I've assumed a much higher interest rate to boot.
LBP seems to be the kind of game that is no fuss, simple to play, and doesn't need an investment of large amounts of continuous time. That seems to match my definition for casual gaming.
You could probably pick it up and start playing from any level. Also, all level can likely be finished in less than 20 mins. The level creation aspect could suck up the time, I have no doubt. Otherwise, she looks to be pure casual goodness.
This game sounds absolutely perfect for the Wii. You've got an editor, which the Wii excels at with Wiimote pointing, and a platformer, which the Wii excels at with the Wiimote held sideways. This game is obviously catering to the Wii crowd.
And yet they're releasing it on the PS3?! WTF?!!
Have you seen the HD screenshots for the game? It looks fantastic! I'd certainly prefer to play this game in HD, which the Wii cannot do.
Do you know what the game is about? It's basically a platformer with a real-time physics engine, and tools to create objects in the world. It's calculating physical interactions between all in-game objects, and there are a good selection of materials to work with. The PS3 processor is perfect for this type of workload. There's also custom textures (aka stickers) that you can apply everywhere. That takes up precious RAM. For resources, the PS3 soundly beats the Wii. You just can't make the same game on another console.
But the main purpose of the game is content creation, right? So obviously you'd want a console with great online community support, which the Wii doesn't quite have. So that aspect is perfect for the Xbox 360 then!
They're trying to make LBP a community driven game. The PSN is perfect for this because it's free. People don't have to pay to participate, other than the initial game cost of course. You seriously think the Xbox360 is more perfect than this?!
But no, they went with the PS3. It has the wrong controls. It has the wrong online support. And I'm not about to burn $560 for one game.
The PS3 controls are pretty decent. They're certainly better than holding the Wiimote sideways. Online support is great.
You can buy a brand new PS3 for $400, if you're in America. Less if you buy it used. I think they may even make a LBP bundle.
You don't have to buy a PS3 just for one game. There's many other PS3 exclusives which are great, both on Bluray and PSN. I'm currently playing Uncharted, and I'm having a ball with it. It's the first time in a long time, that I've stayed up playing a game until 5am, not realising what the time was.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there any reason in particular that headphones cannot accurately reproduce sound?
The only thing I can think of that a headphone would have trouble reproducing, is a deep, loud bass. That's only because it doesn't have the displacement to highly compress low frequency. Monitor speakers suffer the same problem though.
Still, because headphones sit right next to the ear, they're _much_ more efficient at delivering sound waves to the ear. This allows them to deliver sound at a comparable volume, with much less effort. As far as I can tell, there's no theoretical reason why a set of headphones can't match monitor speakers for accuracy.
You are being a tad cynical, but I do generally agree with you.
I've often thought about this issue. Each generation has generally been more prosperous than the last. This prosperity leads to levels of expectations that exceed the previous generation. We are, in a way, a victim of our own successes. Or, in other words, we're being spoilt.
Each generation of children have been given more, without much effort at all. It's only human nature that they learn to expect to be given what they want. This is just a natural consequence of having a high standard of living, and is very difficult to overcome. It takes conscious effort on the part of the parent, to teach children that life will not give them what they want. That they've got to work hard to achieve their goals, and even then it's no guarantee.
People, all people, not just children, generally appreciate what they had only after it's gone. This is the crux of the issue; the real difficulty of parenting. It's hard for a parent to deprive their child. You want to give your child every opportunity, want to make sure that they're well provided for, and that they have many choices in life. Problem is, if you give it to them, they cannot understand what they've been given. It has to be taken away before they can truly understand the value of it.
I do believe it's possible to appreciate what you have, without being deprived of it. It takes conscious effort, and continual reminders. Giving thanks before meals is a good example, although I guess most people don't really listen to the prayer, but just recite it by rote. Another good example is to wake up every morning and think "how lucky I am that I have a bed, a house, and food on my table". It's not something I'd expect of children though, as it takes considerable maturity to really appreciate that statement.
As far as children are concerned, it's a tough issue. Getting them to work for their basic needs can help. Education, in all forms, should also be able to increase their awareness. Not sure what else can be done, but whatever it is, I'm sure it'll involve hard work for parent and child. .... and to drag this post, kicking and screaming, back on topic ... I've already installed Linux on my PS3. Why? Because. No real reason, other than to experience it, to learn what it's capable of, and to have it as an option to solve a possible future need.
"Strike one" or "Score one"?
This is certainly a case which didn't need to go to court. Google will quite happily remove their pictures if they want. Any anguish suffered was brought on by their own actions. Barely anyone would have seen the pictures had it not been publicised by the court case.
Anyway, the Boorings will probably be slapped with a bill from their lawyer, thus teaching them a very valuable lesson.
I hear that the Large Hadron Collider is currently having problems. Maybe your students can build a replacement ... except smaller. Call it the SHC, or even the VTHC.
"Real men don't do backups, they just upload and let the world mirror their data."
What do you do when you can't prove your case? You discredit the opposition, of course!
Microsoft make a great opposition; they've got a wonderfully lacklustre history of security. You should be able to make your clients tremble in fear at the thought of replacing their flawlessly running systems.
Invite your customers to think for themselves, instead of relying on the say-so of others. With 6 years of faultless service, that's a big ace up your sleeve. Get them to consider that fact, and ask them if it really sounds like they're running an insecure system. Surely they can draw conclusions from that.
Lastly, you may want to bring up current Microsoft security bugs, how long it can take them to fix, and how often the fix causes other issues. Then dangle the carrot: with open source, you can fix the problem yourself, or hire someone to do it. No complete dependence on another party. You can change things as you want or need. That's a huge advantage to some people.
That's great to hear. I help to manage a couple of IIS6 servers, running some .NET applications, and security updates have always been a pain. Never mind that it often requires a server reboot. The IIS6 process also takes about a minute to restart, if I need to do so. That's a huge amount of time compared to the few seconds it takes Apache. It's not even taking into account the occasional IIS freeze when trying to restart. I have to use pskill to terminate the process properly, and then finally start up IIS. There goes 3 or 4 minutes of service downtime.
Arrgh, don't talk to me about maintaining .NET applications. A program is only as easy to maintain, as the programmer allows it to be. I've had some painful memories of fixing issues in our .NET applications.
Ease of maintenance may be better encouraged in some languages, but I've seen spaghetti code in pretty much every language I've come across. The only conclusion I can make is that language is irrelevant. Only the programmer is really important.
Funnily enough, I've never had so much of an issue with the perl programs I maintain. For all its reputation of obfuscation, I've never had a problem with tracking down issues with our perl code. Then again, that particular programmer did a nice job of laying out the structure neatly.
Bugger that for a joke. Give me something that I like, and I'll like coding in it, whether it's proprietary or not. Because I like it, you know that I will take pride in my work and do a great job.
But, you never know what you like until you try it. So far, I have to say I'm liking Linux much more than Windows.
Think Different, eh?
Linux is doing something radically different from Windows. It provides source code. That is a huge difference! Sure, it only benefits highly technical users, but the onflow of that, benefits every Linux user.
Do you remember the bad old days of Windows 95? To get USB connectivity, you had to upgrade to Windows 98. Microsoft would not add USB functionality to 95; they wanted you to upgrade for it.
This does not happen with Linux. You can just pop in a new kernel, and any new devices that the kernel supports, are now yours to play with. No need to do a full operating system upgrade. The worst case is you have to install extra support tools. Device drivers are added because the Linux source code is freely available, and there's always a programmer somewhere in the world that wants that itch scratched.
You must have missed the change. It was a major feature for the Linux 2.6 kernel series. All linux processes now run in the foreground. Running a process in the foreground saves on overhead, thus resulting in a significant improvement in speed. Easily more than the 1-2% that the article mentions. I suspect the article downplayed the speed advantage, to cast Windows in a better light.
Linux achieves this ability by forking the process from the shell, and redirecting the inputs and outputs away, thus giving the illusion of a backgrounded process. The beauty of this is that it's all completely transparent to the end user. The system behaves just as before, apart from the speed increase.
Everyone knows that processes in the foreground run faster. Myself, I used to background a process only out of absolute necessity. These days though, a background process is actually a foreground process, so I don't worry at all about running multiple jobs at the one shell now. Linux is truly a state of the art operating system!
Actually, the teacher claims she used Linux in college. If she used the software, she surely must be aware that she downloaded it for free. Not unless she's completely bereft of sense, and thought she was downloading it illegally. Now that's a funny thought.
I strongly agree with your post, other than to say that it's still possible to be isolated on the internet. Closed groups and forums with selective membership can still be a breeding ground for antisocial tendencies. They can slowly absorb people with like minds, while simultaneously rejecting those people who may offer counter arguments to their ideals.
I do agree that the internet does make this harder to achieve than, say, compared to the environment of early 20th century Germany.
LBP is an interesting modern example of mashing 2D and 3D together. It's essentially a 2D platforming game implemented in a 3D environment with 3 2D planes which your character can move between.
The creators chose this design because they thought it was more enjoyable to play. A full 3D world was too complex, and detracted from the simple fun they were aiming at.
Having played the game, I think they made a good decision. It's got the simplicity of a 2D platformer, but the extra depth provided by the multilayered approach makes the gameplay more interesting.
It's nice that Windows 7 will be 256 core aware. I can just imagine the message in the event log:
We're aware that you have 256 cores, but you didn't pay enough money to use them all. Please contact Microsoft Support, and have your credit card ready.
I'm sure they'll allow you to use the first four cores for free. That's just to get you hooked.
Spoken like someone who hasn't actually played the game. Well done for speaking so knowledgeably about something you've had no experience with.
There has been no sidescroller game that has had 3 levels of depth. None have had such realistic 2D physics (it's 2D, because objects cannot fall toward or away from the screen). None have had such realistic material behaviour. Well, ignoring the dark matter material. ;)
Sure, LBP is a sidescroller, but it's a fair few generations ahead of the games back in 1984. Sure, Abuse allows you to create new objects, but you have to be a programmer to do so. LBP allows anyone to create levels, without having any programming experience. LBP allows you to create things and test them right away. LBP will soon allow you to have multiplayer editing sessions on the same console. Soon, it will allow that via the network. That's just amazing stuff. Never seen before, as far as I know.
It is called Capillary Action my friend. That surface tension you were talking about, actually causes the water to be sucked into small gaps like this. It only works if the attraction between water molecules is less than the attraction between water and external material.
Thanks for that. I thought it'd be unlikely that a modern Linux window manager was missing virtual desktops. It's good to know that fluxbox has it.
I don't necessarily use the pager to move between virtual desktops. I generally use it to see what windows are located on what desktop. I also use the pager to move windows between different desktops, when I need to reshuffle things.
Nice. I've never seen fluxbox before. Had a read of the features, and it looks very nifty. I love the concept of tabs and the keys-file.
I can't seem to find any reference to virtual desktops or a pager though. It's a shame, because that's a major feature for me, along with the ability to set zero edge resistance.
I'm running E17 on my desktop right now. Been running it both at home and work for the last few years. It's by far my favourite window manager, for a variety of reasons:
* It's fast. Very fast.
* It feels clean and simple.
* Looks very good.
* Very customisable.
* Keyboard shortcuts for just about anything!
* Just about everything can be controlled or configured from the command prompt.
With E17, I can configure my desktop to be just a background picture. No start menus, strips, clocks, nothing. Then I can add whatever I want, starting with a simple left click on the background to bring up the Enlightenment configuration menu. From there, you can build it to your taste. Sure, it has it's own way of doing things, but it never forces a display feature onto you. It's all your choice to show.
Given, I run the development version, so it's not the easiest to get running. There's a nice script I use to download via CVS, compile up the source, and package it into deb files. I keep a copy of the deb packages for the last version I liked, and revert to that if the latest version is buggy. It's worked well for me so far.
As such, I wouldn't recommend E17 to your average user. For the more technically inclined, though, it beats anything I've ever used. I've tweaked E17 to behave exactly how I want it. Now I feel like I'm working with my computer, instead of struggling against it. Truly, I have been enlightened.
Eden and Echochrome have demos available. There's also plenty of youtube videos of Eden; it has a feature to upload directly to youtube. Check out wikipedia too. I'm sure the games have a writeup there.
Some of the most creative games on the PS3 are only available for download from the Playstation Network.
Have a look into the following:
Pixeljunk Eden
flOw
Everyday Shooter
Echochrome
They're my favourites, anyway. I'm also looking forward to Flower, made by the same group as flOw.
Nice find! The wikipedia article actually says that Computrace use the Host Protected Area, so if we believe that, then the mystery is solved.
Makes me wonder what they do if they come across a fully partitioned drive with the last partition being non-windows. Surely they wouldn't resize that partition, and therefore they could not create a HPA.
Also makes me wonder how they expect a computer to be protected if the system partition is reformatted and reinstalled. Surely Windows does not automatically load software stored in the HPA.
Well, I don't know precisely how it works, but the bootloader is the only possible way it could survive a repartition. The code is definitely stored on the hard drive, as the FAQ mentions.
Interesting assessment. I'm not too familiar with the US housing market, but from what you've said, I'm not sure that US house prices are extremely over inflated. Somewhat inflated, yes, but not extreme.
Why are house prices above 3x median income unsustainable? It seems to me that it can be sustained, even at 5x. At least, that's my experience in my country, where a house at 5x the average salary is actually cheap.
It sounds to me that you're assuming house prices will go back to historical levels. That may be a bad assumption.
Let's assume your culture of 80% mortgage payment is correct, paying roughly 35% tax on salary, on a house worth 5x median salary, at 8% interest. Plugging those figures into a loan mortgage formula, the loan will be paid in about 18 years.
That seems to be a fairly decent house loan period, and I've assumed a much higher interest rate to boot.
LBP seems to be the kind of game that is no fuss, simple to play, and doesn't need an investment of large amounts of continuous time. That seems to match my definition for casual gaming.
You could probably pick it up and start playing from any level. Also, all level can likely be finished in less than 20 mins. The level creation aspect could suck up the time, I have no doubt. Otherwise, she looks to be pure casual goodness.
Have you seen the HD screenshots for the game? It looks fantastic! I'd certainly prefer to play this game in HD, which the Wii cannot do.
Do you know what the game is about? It's basically a platformer with a real-time physics engine, and tools to create objects in the world. It's calculating physical interactions between all in-game objects, and there are a good selection of materials to work with. The PS3 processor is perfect for this type of workload. There's also custom textures (aka stickers) that you can apply everywhere. That takes up precious RAM. For resources, the PS3 soundly beats the Wii. You just can't make the same game on another console.
They're trying to make LBP a community driven game. The PSN is perfect for this because it's free. People don't have to pay to participate, other than the initial game cost of course. You seriously think the Xbox360 is more perfect than this?!
The PS3 controls are pretty decent. They're certainly better than holding the Wiimote sideways. Online support is great.
You can buy a brand new PS3 for $400, if you're in America. Less if you buy it used. I think they may even make a LBP bundle.
You don't have to buy a PS3 just for one game. There's many other PS3 exclusives which are great, both on Bluray and PSN. I'm currently playing Uncharted, and I'm having a ball with it. It's the first time in a long time, that I've stayed up playing a game until 5am, not realising what the time was.