They're garage cars that rich people can buy and tell their friends about over dinner.
They're expensive conversation pieces. If I owned five cars and was looking for a sixth, I might get a Tesla.
I don't blame the company. The engineering of the situation is impossible. But I feel like they're not even trying to make an affordable car. There are little companies all over making stripped down electric cars at a reasonable price. And Tesla apparently is catering to the "price is no object" market. That's fine... people simply need to realize these cars are about as practical as personal submarines.
Whatever... the shuttles had lots of heat issues with panels popping off that might not have been such a big deal with the original design specs.
My point was that it was foolish to put a tiny environmental concern over a major engineering problem that is so rare in our skies as to be irrelevant.
I'm all for environmental solutions if they don't create huge economic, logistical, or engineering problems in the process.
What makes me crazy is when we trade small environmental problems for absolutely impossible engineering or bank breaking economic problems.
It's like being given the choice of getting shot in the foot with a gun or shot in the face.
And some people keep putting the gun barrel in our collective mouths and pulling the trigger. I'm not discounting the environmental concerns at all. I'm merely saying that the solutions are typically much worse.
This reminds me of them REMOVING asbestos from the space shuttle. They replaced it with something else less effective... and who knows... maybe the challenger wouldn't have blown up if they had just left the shuttle as designed rather then making it more environmentally friendly.
In any case, if we start launching a LOT of rockets then I'll worry about this but given the piddly number of rockets we launch every year this is a non-issue when compared to the much bigger problem of it still costing waaay too much to launch things into orbit. And this environmental complaint is only going to make those costs go up instead of DOWN which is the only direction that is acceptable.
Thanks for the update... Still, assuming his claim is valid, and I'm pretty sure it isn't, I really think he had a responsibility to argue this case about a decade ago at least. Arguing it now is like the guy that invented the wheel showing up and demanding back pay with interest for the last 4000 years of ox carts, rickshaws, chariots, trains, and automobiles...
Los Angeles is full of them. They don't have big signs out front but they're all over the place. Tiny places packed with stuff haphazardly all over. They're really sort of bizarre outlets. I go to them when I need a "widget"... they always have it. They know what I mean the first time. And the prices while not competitive with online retailers are no more expensive then the big box stores.
I have no idea how they stay in business... they just do. They don't sell games. They don't sell TVs. They don't sell anything but computer junk. I think their primary business is IT service or something. But they've got lots of computer stuff and they're very happy to sell it.
So if and when bestbuy implodes and I need a widget faster then the online retailers can get it to me... I'm covered.
some will look at that as an easy way to raise test scores. Just pay the teachers more and automatically everything will improve.
Sadly you need to have standards WITH the pay. And as we've seen from the rubber rooms it's almost impossible to fire child molesters that are teachers. So getting rid of teachers that simply aren't good at their jobs is going to be entirely impossible.
What we need are standards for teachers. We need to hold teachers to some kind of standard and then be very comfortable with adjusting their pay based upon their performance and/or firing them if it's unacceptable.
that's the bare minimum. if we can't do that much then we should just try and invoke an across the board voucher system.
I mean... if you file your claim decades after everyone was violating your patient isn't that your fault at a certain point?
I know big companies are basically forced to defend their trademark and copyrights or else risk that other people can do it with impunity. There's some requirement that you protest when this sort of thing happens.
So... shouldn't he have protested like... forever ago?
For the sake of argument, if his claims are all valid, they should be void now because he didn't act on them until now.
Then I'm not crying for them if apple hurts them. They're being exploitative and should just sell sim cards. If they want to milk the cell phone sales business then they can suffer the bad side of that strategy.
As to wanting to keep aim bots off consoles. The instant you allowed games to download mods/patches and/or run games directly off the harddrive you lost that struggle.
You have fewer aimbots for the same reason macs had fewer viruses. It has nothing to do with the security of the machine and more to do with your incompatibility giving you some protection. You're not protected now and while it will get worse in future iterations you can fix that by having the server query the user. There are already lots of anti aimbot systems out there that are actually very effective.
As to pc gaming, it has much higher revenue if you include mmorpgs which it would be unfair not to... since they happen on a pc. The sales figures you're familiar with are exclusive to store sales. They don't even include sales on Amazon let alone steam or direct to drive.
As to wanting an appliance, that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a PC configured to be an appliance. From the ground up. Redesigned OS GUI to suit it's role. Redesigned process and program priorities to take into consideration that the machine should NOT multi task while playing games. Simplified hardware roll out to make driver issues a thing of the past for 95 percent of users.
I said all of this in my initial post and none of you guys actually read it. It's very frustrating having a conversation when people won't actually pay attention.
Carriers shouldn't have any control over which phones work on their network. They should stop selling cell phones altogether.
Sell sim cards. Period. Offer some cheapo phones you don't really care about in your store. But make it obvious that users should really get the actual phone somewhere else especially if it's a smart phone.
AT&T used to sell or even rent land line phones in the early days. If you wanted a phone you had to buy one from the phone company. Today, if you want a landline phone you pick one up at practically anywhere for between 10 dollars for the cheap ones to 200 for the really fancy ones. That's what the wireless carriers need to do.
When they do that apple can't charge a fee anymore. It's just selling a phone. A bit of hardware. And the carriers aren't selling a phone. They're selling a data plan. Because I imagine that "minutes" are going to be a thing of the past at some point. At what point does it become more practical to just skype everything? Does skype cost the carriers more money then a regular phone connection? I wonder. They're obviously turning it all into data anyway. In any case, once all phones have internet the typical phone/voice connection becomes redundant. Just give everyone a data plan. People will stick to email and text most of the time to save on connection charges and that has to use much less bandwidth then a voice conversation.
Just sever the relationship entirely between phone and carrier. Sell sim cards. Then the carriers can anti trust apple or something if apple gets snippy about letting some carrier's sim cards work and others not.
The console replacement would have a modified OS streamlined for gaming.
The machine would be built by one company. MS. Just like the xbox. So drivers won't be an issue since they'll be default drivers. And the xbox has drivers too so the issue is moot.
Firewalls? Why? Do you need one on the xbox? One of the first things I said was that when games are running all other system operations should be suppressed. So what exactly is going to get compromised?
As to virus software etc... the system would come default locked down much like an xbox so viruses would be no more an issue on it then on an xbox. If you unlock it then maybe you need virus scanners. Or maybe you unlock it just to make changes and then lock it again.
There are many software packages on the market right now that protect against viruses by disallowing any change to the system or it's applications. Especially within the registry. Or they allow any change what so ever but reset the system to the default configuration on every reboot. So a virus could only infect a system until the next reboot at which point it would be cleared.
Play a little devil's advocate with your arguments please. It's called offering CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. You're just gainsaying everything without bothering to read what I said properly or thinking about your own comments in any detail.
In any event, I'm going to assume you're going to start flaming me now... so anticipating that... think we should end this discussion here. There's nothing to be gained by calling each other asshats.
For the last time, this is a PC you put in your living room. This is not the machine you do your taxes on. Could you do your taxes on it? Yes. Because unlike current generation consoles it would be more flexible. But it's default role would be a game and media center.
Anyway, you're not reading what I'm saying. Having read your last two posts you're not actually responding to my posts.
For example, when you say "90 percent effective being good enouh when I've spent money." is out of context. When I said 90 percent, I was clearly referring to the effectiveness of the DRM to stop pirates. I was specifically not saying 90 percent reliability at being able to play the game. In fact, I took pains to say that trying to go beyond 90 percent effectiveness would likely reduce reliability of the game and that was not acceptable.
So you're not reading what I'm saying and are just ranting to yourself.
This is not productive.
Please read my last two comments all over again... slowly.
And then respond.
Take. Your. Time.
No offense, there is a reading comprehension issue here. I am not insulting you. I am saying we have a communication problem. Please read my comments over slowly before responding. You have misunderstood practically everything I was trying to say either in detail or in general.
If you don't do that, then I might as well just ask you to give back my walrus and stop shrinking the atmosphere... and other such nonsense. Do you want a discussion or an Alice in Wonderland LSD trip? Because those are your options.
there's no material difference between the DRM on the xbox and PC besides the PC being less standardized.
There's dozens of different DRM systems on the PC and really just one on the xbox.
Apples to apples you're holding the PC to one standard and the xbox to another. Seems somewhat biased.
Please explain why its justified to hold the two systems to different standards when I'm arguing for them to serve the same role.
Logically, both systems should be held to the same standard if we're considering them for the same role.
I am not saying BAD DRM isn't bad. It clearly is... I've seen a lot of games ruined by badly implemented DRM software. Remember Starforce? Horrible software that screwed up computers by interfering with low level drivers.
But the xbox has the same thing on it. The only difference is that its designed properly so it doesn't screw the machine up.
That should then be your requirement. A standardized DRM system maintained and supported by Microsoft for the purpose of ensuring software is not pirated. It won't be 100 percent effective but then xbox games are pirated all the time. You can upload an xbox game to it's internal harddrive and play it right off the drive with the right bootloaders.
So the content creators are going to have to be content with a system that is 90 percent effective because 100 percent is impossible and much beyond 90 percent causes false positives that can ruin a system.
Take it or leave it. You're not hearing a live broadcast. I don't understand why you don't understand why that's unacceptable.
with a delayed stream you could still catch the police in lies. You could still audit police activity. You would still have a record open to public scrutiny.
That's all you deserve. The police band is not a public broadcast system designed to inform citizens of ongoing criminal activity. It is an internal radio band for and by the police.
1. nearly all console games... 99.999 percent include very strong DRM. It's just well designed and hidden.
2. we're talking about a dedicated gaming system that will sit in your living room. So it's not going to be your work computer unless you want to do your taxes on your big screen tv.
They don't want criminals to know what police are doing right now. That's reasonable.
Perhaps a compromise would be to set up a shoutcast server that broadcasts police traffic on a 24 hour delay.
That way everyone can hear what was said but not right when something is happening.
Open that up to everyone... media, public, everyone.
Total cost to the department would be a fairly cheap pc and a little bandwidth. If the department is cash strapped then have a pay service where the media can get a more current broadcast. I'd say anyone but that might get us back to the situation with robbers using iphones with 3-4G to listen to the police shoutcast server.
You don't need to support multiple hardware if you have universal abstraction layer. You can just have a universal driver that interfaces through abstraction with various sets of hardware. It is then upon the hardware and driver makers to comply with that architecture.
In any event, it's not that much harder. Indy PC games are made all the time that use some pretty sophisticated drivers and effects. if they can handle it then the AAA people have no excuse. And that's excluding any special tricks to make it easier.
The real issue with PCs is that drivers need to be detected, downloaded, and installed automatically.
If someone has to go to a website, find their hardware, download it, install it, and reboot... you've failed.
MS has flirted with the idea of hosting drivers on their system for years but it's never been well implemented. Fix that function so it's reliable and comprehensive and we won't have such a problem with it.
Look, the console is going to get turned into a PC eventually. You guys can argue against it all you like. Every iteration of the console is more like a PC. Eventually there will be a convergence point. If not now then soon.
1. I can use an aim bot or a texture hack on an xbox or playstation it's just harder. The instant you put a harddrive in the console you became more like the PC then not. You can't go back.
2. PC gaming is very strong. Most reports of it being weak ignore online sales, digital downloads, and MMORPGs. If calculated properly PC gaming is if anything more robust.
3. As to the xbox being a media center, it still has format limitations that the PC doesn't. Commonly used and free media players on the PC have vastly more flexibility of what they will play then the xbox without hacking or modding.
4. As to netflix etc, that was on the PC first and didn't need to be added as special feature. You only are listing really popular services. The PC has everything you listed plus about a hundred others you've never heard of before. Some of them because they're not very good and others because they're new or didn't get MS's seal of approval. You live in a walled garden. It's very pretty but the walls are high and you have no idea what is beyond them.
In any case, try to play devil's advocate with your arguments a little before making comments. It will filter out all the obvious problems and make discussions more rewarding for both parties.
My PC has eight USB ports. I have in the past plugged in two game pads into it and each worked independently on games that supported them. Using a USB splitter I might be able to squeeze as many as 32 gamepads on EACH USB port assuming they are each an individual controller. Point being... the PC natively at a hardware level can support far more controllers then any console ever made. Furthermore, it had a wider range of hardware, is more backward compatible with past titles, and is far more upgradable.
your comment has less to do with the platform then the game. That's just software.
Local multiplayer used to be a common feature on PC games before the internet was commonly used. Typically one side of the keyboard was player 1 and the other or the mouse was player 2. That easily could be mapped to a gamepad and sometimes was mapped.
I have a few emulators on my laptop that I use with two controllers plugged into my big screen tv. I play NeoGeo games on it with my brother.
Point being, while I agree with you the comment is effectively redundant. If console games become PC games and remain largely the same... then local multiplayer will remain a consistent feature. Only now you might have multi monitor support in addition to split screen.
Play devil's advocate with your rebuttal... PCs are very adaptable... with little more then a software patch or an emphasis to game makers to provide certain features pretty much anything could be made standard.
The Next Gen console is an inexpensive PC capable of playing the newest games with reasonable quality.
The whole console paradigm is based on two qualities.
1. Price. Consoles cut corners and lack certain qualities that PCs have and as a result have great game performance at a reduced price. This is entirely possible with PC hardware today. If MS builds their own PC from the ground up to be a gaming machine then there's no reason why it can't support windows and have superior game performance.
2. Ease of use. PCs have been hobbled for years by being too complicated for their own good when it comes to games. More sophisticated gamers have no problem with this but it can be an issue with many. Take a cue from Apple and lock down these console replacement PCs by default so the casual users doesn't mess them up. For one thing, restrict multitasking by default as that harms game performance. If people want to have lots of background processes running while they play their game then give them a setting that lets them disable the feature. But by default, just as with typical consoles, have them devote all their attention to the game when it's running. Everything else is suppressed. Also as MS would be releasing these machines there would be no driver confusion since all the systems would come with the exact same hardware installed in them.
This would also break down the barrier between Xbox users and PC users. This barrier is not in MS's interests. If the Xbox and the PC play the exact same games then no other console is going to be able to compete with them. Exclusive titles just for the xbox that don't get released on the PC don't help the xbox... they hurt the PC.
As an additional aside, the consoles and MS especially need to get serious about producing a REAL media center. Something like XMBC only better. XMBC is pretty impressive for an open source community built project but MS, Sony, Nintendo, or Apple can do better. Stop dicking around. Stop trying to restrict what people can and cannot play on the machine. This only hobbles the utility of the system and ensures it won't catch on. Who gives a damn about windows media center edition? Who ever cared? It was a flop right out the door because it was half baked. Produce a complete product and release it. We want it.
Oh, and MS... consider dropping a version of windows on a phone that can run desktop applications. These smart phones are vastly more powerful then the machines that ran windows 3.1 . I think some have to be faster then those that initially ran windows XP. If you can't squeeze a version of windows 8 on one of those phones with a custom touch UI... then you're fools. A system that had that sort of capability would be vastly more useful then any other device on the market.
Slashdot Mirror
They're garage cars that rich people can buy and tell their friends about over dinner.
They're expensive conversation pieces. If I owned five cars and was looking for a sixth, I might get a Tesla.
I don't blame the company. The engineering of the situation is impossible. But I feel like they're not even trying to make an affordable car. There are little companies all over making stripped down electric cars at a reasonable price. And Tesla apparently is catering to the "price is no object" market. That's fine... people simply need to realize these cars are about as practical as personal submarines.
Says the troll?
Careful with those stones, slackjaw.
Whatever... the shuttles had lots of heat issues with panels popping off that might not have been such a big deal with the original design specs.
My point was that it was foolish to put a tiny environmental concern over a major engineering problem that is so rare in our skies as to be irrelevant.
I'm all for environmental solutions if they don't create huge economic, logistical, or engineering problems in the process.
What makes me crazy is when we trade small environmental problems for absolutely impossible engineering or bank breaking economic problems.
It's like being given the choice of getting shot in the foot with a gun or shot in the face.
And some people keep putting the gun barrel in our collective mouths and pulling the trigger. I'm not discounting the environmental concerns at all. I'm merely saying that the solutions are typically much worse.
This reminds me of them REMOVING asbestos from the space shuttle. They replaced it with something else less effective... and who knows... maybe the challenger wouldn't have blown up if they had just left the shuttle as designed rather then making it more environmentally friendly.
In any case, if we start launching a LOT of rockets then I'll worry about this but given the piddly number of rockets we launch every year this is a non-issue when compared to the much bigger problem of it still costing waaay too much to launch things into orbit. And this environmental complaint is only going to make those costs go up instead of DOWN which is the only direction that is acceptable.
Thanks for the update... Still, assuming his claim is valid, and I'm pretty sure it isn't, I really think he had a responsibility to argue this case about a decade ago at least. Arguing it now is like the guy that invented the wheel showing up and demanding back pay with interest for the last 4000 years of ox carts, rickshaws, chariots, trains, and automobiles...
Los Angeles is full of them. They don't have big signs out front but they're all over the place. Tiny places packed with stuff haphazardly all over. They're really sort of bizarre outlets. I go to them when I need a "widget"... they always have it. They know what I mean the first time. And the prices while not competitive with online retailers are no more expensive then the big box stores.
I have no idea how they stay in business... they just do. They don't sell games. They don't sell TVs. They don't sell anything but computer junk. I think their primary business is IT service or something. But they've got lots of computer stuff and they're very happy to sell it.
So if and when bestbuy implodes and I need a widget faster then the online retailers can get it to me... I'm covered.
I want an AC3 file (or whatever) with all the sound tracks split. Vocals, back up vocals, each instrument, etc on it's own track.
some will look at that as an easy way to raise test scores. Just pay the teachers more and automatically everything will improve.
Sadly you need to have standards WITH the pay. And as we've seen from the rubber rooms it's almost impossible to fire child molesters that are teachers. So getting rid of teachers that simply aren't good at their jobs is going to be entirely impossible.
What we need are standards for teachers. We need to hold teachers to some kind of standard and then be very comfortable with adjusting their pay based upon their performance and/or firing them if it's unacceptable.
that's the bare minimum. if we can't do that much then we should just try and invoke an across the board voucher system.
I mean... if you file your claim decades after everyone was violating your patient isn't that your fault at a certain point?
I know big companies are basically forced to defend their trademark and copyrights or else risk that other people can do it with impunity. There's some requirement that you protest when this sort of thing happens.
So... shouldn't he have protested like... forever ago?
For the sake of argument, if his claims are all valid, they should be void now because he didn't act on them until now.
Then I'm not crying for them if apple hurts them. They're being exploitative and should just sell sim cards. If they want to milk the cell phone sales business then they can suffer the bad side of that strategy.
As to wanting to keep aim bots off consoles. The instant you allowed games to download mods/patches and/or run games directly off the harddrive you lost that struggle.
You have fewer aimbots for the same reason macs had fewer viruses. It has nothing to do with the security of the machine and more to do with your incompatibility giving you some protection. You're not protected now and while it will get worse in future iterations you can fix that by having the server query the user. There are already lots of anti aimbot systems out there that are actually very effective.
As to pc gaming, it has much higher revenue if you include mmorpgs which it would be unfair not to... since they happen on a pc. The sales figures you're familiar with are exclusive to store sales. They don't even include sales on Amazon let alone steam or direct to drive.
As to wanting an appliance, that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a PC configured to be an appliance. From the ground up. Redesigned OS GUI to suit it's role. Redesigned process and program priorities to take into consideration that the machine should NOT multi task while playing games. Simplified hardware roll out to make driver issues a thing of the past for 95 percent of users.
I said all of this in my initial post and none of you guys actually read it. It's very frustrating having a conversation when people won't actually pay attention.
Carriers shouldn't have any control over which phones work on their network. They should stop selling cell phones altogether.
Sell sim cards. Period. Offer some cheapo phones you don't really care about in your store. But make it obvious that users should really get the actual phone somewhere else especially if it's a smart phone.
AT&T used to sell or even rent land line phones in the early days. If you wanted a phone you had to buy one from the phone company. Today, if you want a landline phone you pick one up at practically anywhere for between 10 dollars for the cheap ones to 200 for the really fancy ones. That's what the wireless carriers need to do.
When they do that apple can't charge a fee anymore. It's just selling a phone. A bit of hardware. And the carriers aren't selling a phone. They're selling a data plan. Because I imagine that "minutes" are going to be a thing of the past at some point. At what point does it become more practical to just skype everything? Does skype cost the carriers more money then a regular phone connection? I wonder. They're obviously turning it all into data anyway. In any case, once all phones have internet the typical phone/voice connection becomes redundant. Just give everyone a data plan. People will stick to email and text most of the time to save on connection charges and that has to use much less bandwidth then a voice conversation.
Just sever the relationship entirely between phone and carrier. Sell sim cards. Then the carriers can anti trust apple or something if apple gets snippy about letting some carrier's sim cards work and others not.
Xbox has an OS.
The console replacement would have a modified OS streamlined for gaming.
The machine would be built by one company. MS. Just like the xbox. So drivers won't be an issue since they'll be default drivers. And the xbox has drivers too so the issue is moot.
Firewalls? Why? Do you need one on the xbox? One of the first things I said was that when games are running all other system operations should be suppressed. So what exactly is going to get compromised?
As to virus software etc... the system would come default locked down much like an xbox so viruses would be no more an issue on it then on an xbox. If you unlock it then maybe you need virus scanners. Or maybe you unlock it just to make changes and then lock it again.
There are many software packages on the market right now that protect against viruses by disallowing any change to the system or it's applications. Especially within the registry. Or they allow any change what so ever but reset the system to the default configuration on every reboot. So a virus could only infect a system until the next reboot at which point it would be cleared.
Play a little devil's advocate with your arguments please. It's called offering CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. You're just gainsaying everything without bothering to read what I said properly or thinking about your own comments in any detail.
In any event, I'm going to assume you're going to start flaming me now... so anticipating that... think we should end this discussion here. There's nothing to be gained by calling each other asshats.
For the last time, this is a PC you put in your living room. This is not the machine you do your taxes on. Could you do your taxes on it? Yes. Because unlike current generation consoles it would be more flexible. But it's default role would be a game and media center.
Anyway, you're not reading what I'm saying. Having read your last two posts you're not actually responding to my posts.
For example, when you say "90 percent effective being good enouh when I've spent money." is out of context. When I said 90 percent, I was clearly referring to the effectiveness of the DRM to stop pirates. I was specifically not saying 90 percent reliability at being able to play the game. In fact, I took pains to say that trying to go beyond 90 percent effectiveness would likely reduce reliability of the game and that was not acceptable.
So you're not reading what I'm saying and are just ranting to yourself.
This is not productive.
Please read my last two comments all over again... slowly.
And then respond.
Take. Your. Time.
No offense, there is a reading comprehension issue here. I am not insulting you. I am saying we have a communication problem. Please read my comments over slowly before responding. You have misunderstood practically everything I was trying to say either in detail or in general.
If you don't do that, then I might as well just ask you to give back my walrus and stop shrinking the atmosphere... and other such nonsense. Do you want a discussion or an Alice in Wonderland LSD trip? Because those are your options.
there's no material difference between the DRM on the xbox and PC besides the PC being less standardized.
There's dozens of different DRM systems on the PC and really just one on the xbox.
Apples to apples you're holding the PC to one standard and the xbox to another. Seems somewhat biased.
Please explain why its justified to hold the two systems to different standards when I'm arguing for them to serve the same role.
Logically, both systems should be held to the same standard if we're considering them for the same role.
I am not saying BAD DRM isn't bad. It clearly is... I've seen a lot of games ruined by badly implemented DRM software. Remember Starforce? Horrible software that screwed up computers by interfering with low level drivers.
But the xbox has the same thing on it. The only difference is that its designed properly so it doesn't screw the machine up.
That should then be your requirement. A standardized DRM system maintained and supported by Microsoft for the purpose of ensuring software is not pirated. It won't be 100 percent effective but then xbox games are pirated all the time. You can upload an xbox game to it's internal harddrive and play it right off the drive with the right bootloaders.
So the content creators are going to have to be content with a system that is 90 percent effective because 100 percent is impossible and much beyond 90 percent causes false positives that can ruin a system.
Take it or leave it. You're not hearing a live broadcast. I don't understand why you don't understand why that's unacceptable.
with a delayed stream you could still catch the police in lies. You could still audit police activity. You would still have a record open to public scrutiny.
That's all you deserve. The police band is not a public broadcast system designed to inform citizens of ongoing criminal activity. It is an internal radio band for and by the police.
the police have made it pretty clear that they'd rather keep their communications secret.
No mystery there.
I think the shoutcast idea is a good compromise.
Well, again... the police have a legitimate concern about criminals listening to their radio chatter.
So that little dream of yours is going to die.
I'm trying to come up with compromises here. But you're not going to listen to their radio chatter in real time unencrypted.
two things.
1. nearly all console games... 99.999 percent include very strong DRM. It's just well designed and hidden.
2. we're talking about a dedicated gaming system that will sit in your living room. So it's not going to be your work computer unless you want to do your taxes on your big screen tv.
They don't want criminals to know what police are doing right now. That's reasonable.
Perhaps a compromise would be to set up a shoutcast server that broadcasts police traffic on a 24 hour delay.
That way everyone can hear what was said but not right when something is happening.
Open that up to everyone... media, public, everyone.
Total cost to the department would be a fairly cheap pc and a little bandwidth. If the department is cash strapped then have a pay service where the media can get a more current broadcast. I'd say anyone but that might get us back to the situation with robbers using iphones with 3-4G to listen to the police shoutcast server.
You don't need to support multiple hardware if you have universal abstraction layer. You can just have a universal driver that interfaces through abstraction with various sets of hardware. It is then upon the hardware and driver makers to comply with that architecture.
In any event, it's not that much harder. Indy PC games are made all the time that use some pretty sophisticated drivers and effects. if they can handle it then the AAA people have no excuse. And that's excluding any special tricks to make it easier.
The real issue with PCs is that drivers need to be detected, downloaded, and installed automatically.
If someone has to go to a website, find their hardware, download it, install it, and reboot... you've failed.
MS has flirted with the idea of hosting drivers on their system for years but it's never been well implemented. Fix that function so it's reliable and comprehensive and we won't have such a problem with it.
Look, the console is going to get turned into a PC eventually. You guys can argue against it all you like. Every iteration of the console is more like a PC. Eventually there will be a convergence point. If not now then soon.
As to not enough PC games having a feature, if the PC moves from the office to the living room then that will change.
So the very act of MS making this decision will nullify your complaint as it will automatically give developers an incentive to have that feature.
Mission accomplished.
*takes a bow*
Your bias is showing too, sport.
1. I can use an aim bot or a texture hack on an xbox or playstation it's just harder. The instant you put a harddrive in the console you became more like the PC then not. You can't go back.
2. PC gaming is very strong. Most reports of it being weak ignore online sales, digital downloads, and MMORPGs. If calculated properly PC gaming is if anything more robust.
3. As to the xbox being a media center, it still has format limitations that the PC doesn't. Commonly used and free media players on the PC have vastly more flexibility of what they will play then the xbox without hacking or modding.
4. As to netflix etc, that was on the PC first and didn't need to be added as special feature. You only are listing really popular services. The PC has everything you listed plus about a hundred others you've never heard of before. Some of them because they're not very good and others because they're new or didn't get MS's seal of approval. You live in a walled garden. It's very pretty but the walls are high and you have no idea what is beyond them.
In any case, try to play devil's advocate with your arguments a little before making comments. It will filter out all the obvious problems and make discussions more rewarding for both parties.
My PC has eight USB ports. I have in the past plugged in two game pads into it and each worked independently on games that supported them. Using a USB splitter I might be able to squeeze as many as 32 gamepads on EACH USB port assuming they are each an individual controller. Point being... the PC natively at a hardware level can support far more controllers then any console ever made. Furthermore, it had a wider range of hardware, is more backward compatible with past titles, and is far more upgradable.
your comment has less to do with the platform then the game. That's just software.
Local multiplayer used to be a common feature on PC games before the internet was commonly used. Typically one side of the keyboard was player 1 and the other or the mouse was player 2. That easily could be mapped to a gamepad and sometimes was mapped.
I have a few emulators on my laptop that I use with two controllers plugged into my big screen tv. I play NeoGeo games on it with my brother.
Point being, while I agree with you the comment is effectively redundant. If console games become PC games and remain largely the same... then local multiplayer will remain a consistent feature. Only now you might have multi monitor support in addition to split screen.
Play devil's advocate with your rebuttal... PCs are very adaptable... with little more then a software patch or an emphasis to game makers to provide certain features pretty much anything could be made standard.
The Next Gen console is an inexpensive PC capable of playing the newest games with reasonable quality.
The whole console paradigm is based on two qualities.
1. Price. Consoles cut corners and lack certain qualities that PCs have and as a result have great game performance at a reduced price. This is entirely possible with PC hardware today. If MS builds their own PC from the ground up to be a gaming machine then there's no reason why it can't support windows and have superior game performance.
2. Ease of use. PCs have been hobbled for years by being too complicated for their own good when it comes to games. More sophisticated gamers have no problem with this but it can be an issue with many. Take a cue from Apple and lock down these console replacement PCs by default so the casual users doesn't mess them up. For one thing, restrict multitasking by default as that harms game performance. If people want to have lots of background processes running while they play their game then give them a setting that lets them disable the feature. But by default, just as with typical consoles, have them devote all their attention to the game when it's running. Everything else is suppressed. Also as MS would be releasing these machines there would be no driver confusion since all the systems would come with the exact same hardware installed in them.
This would also break down the barrier between Xbox users and PC users. This barrier is not in MS's interests. If the Xbox and the PC play the exact same games then no other console is going to be able to compete with them. Exclusive titles just for the xbox that don't get released on the PC don't help the xbox... they hurt the PC.
As an additional aside, the consoles and MS especially need to get serious about producing a REAL media center. Something like XMBC only better. XMBC is pretty impressive for an open source community built project but MS, Sony, Nintendo, or Apple can do better. Stop dicking around. Stop trying to restrict what people can and cannot play on the machine. This only hobbles the utility of the system and ensures it won't catch on. Who gives a damn about windows media center edition? Who ever cared? It was a flop right out the door because it was half baked. Produce a complete product and release it. We want it.
Oh, and MS... consider dropping a version of windows on a phone that can run desktop applications. These smart phones are vastly more powerful then the machines that ran windows 3.1 . I think some have to be faster then those that initially ran windows XP. If you can't squeeze a version of windows 8 on one of those phones with a custom touch UI... then you're fools. A system that had that sort of capability would be vastly more useful then any other device on the market.