This would be economic suicide for the XBOX division of MS. One of the reasons MS are taking such losses on their current console is to build up a following for any future consoles that they release. Alienating their current supporters by not providing backwards compatibility would make a lot of people seriously reconsider upgrading when the new XBOX comes out.
Surely it would be simple enough for MS to follow the Sony route on this one and create an "XBOX on a chip". Lets face it, the XBox technology was hardly state of the art to start with (P3 / GeForce) and even if they would not go the addon chip route, I can't imagine that providing on board emulation supporting hardware would be beyond the designers of the XBox 2, in terms of complexity or cost.
As the subject states, I'm probably missing the point here - But surely AOL could block this server side? It really can't be that difficult (My router seems to manage it automatically).
I've always really wondered what the point of 1/2 + 1/3 mathematics was. I mean really, I have 1/2 an apple + 1/3 of an apple, how many apples do I have?
You have no apples, you have half an apple and a slice... where's the fruit juice, orange and cherries when you need them?
(On a more serious note, any time you get into important mathematics for science / engineering I would always advise double checking your results with a calculator. You may mistakenly think you have discovered cold fusion otherwise.
Actually, as a totally not well off computer geek (20k GBP / Yr) I usually give around 2-3% of my salary to charity a year.
But then I have no problem at all seeing that there are a load of people a lot worse off than I am. Nevertheless, Kudos to the foundation... There are a lot of very very rich people doing nothing worthwhile with their money.
Sorry... this is gonna sound like flamebait but what does American having the best quality TV / tv channels say to you about america?
Mmm... Home of the big mac and tv dinners. lol
Pretty good?!?! You have obviously never been to London. I moved here recently and have taken to asking people if they would like a slice of water or a chunk of coffee. It really is that bad (At least compared to my home in Wales).
Even my water filter seems to be having trouble with it (I wont touch it straight from the tap). Nasty, nasty stuff.
I work for a large soft drink making company that through a third party contractor ended up with Fujitsu hard drives in all of the equipment that we use to control the blending and dosing (Putting in bottles) of our drinks. About 6 months ago we started noticing failures of these machines in large numbers but could not work out what was causing them.
We initially put it down to heat (Surely these drives can't all be naturally broken) and fitted expensive cooling gear. They kept failing.
We then thought that it was the contractor messing with the machines that caused the failures so we put in better access control (Simple key to allow dial in). This didn't fix it either.
It was only when I ordered 80 western digital hard drives and started replacing the Fuji's once they broke that we started noticing that the WD drives were not breaking. We are currently scheduling downtime of the plant to replace the rest (Not easy given it all runs 24x7 and we are always behind schedule).
Needless to say we are not happy at all. I would hate to think how much money all that downtime has cost the company, and how much lost sleep the IT team has had to endure from the endless call-outs.
At this stage, if it looks like a major change is about to go on wouldn't it make more sense for everyone to switch to 2D barcodes?
Admittedly there would be a greater cost incurred, but you have almost no chance of running out of digits because you basically get rows and rows of them (I don't know exactly how many, I just know they can hold lots of information.)
Anyone got a link to a company that manufacturs them?
Heheh... I wonder how many people here will get the reference to the sybian. Or should that be the S.O.M.
Hehe, I had a hard time with some dilbert esque users today (600mb Powerpoint files, 400mb spreadsheets) and I thought I wasn't gonna smile once. You changed that.:-)
I have to seriously disagree on this point. Having watched pretty much all of the "robot" shows from all over the world I find that I cannot bear to watch "battlebots". Maybe it is that it has the WWF feeling that the short attention spanned Americans enjoy, but I'm more interested in the technology than some drooling & past it sports correspondant working alongside a dumb blonde that couldn't tell the difference between a cafe latte and a capacitor.
However, I agree about the need for more interesting weapons. Then again, when you think that these robots are paid for by the people who build them, how many of them do you think would be happy to have them torn to pieces?
Then again, my favourite bot so far has been one called hypnodisc (Check the UK robot wars website).
I must say that I am moderately dissapointed not to see Iain M Banks there... having read most of the authors on the list, I would say that his work is at least equal if not better than the others.
Maybe it's because he isn't American? Are his books popular over there?
Yesm Yes, Yes! I was truly starting to believe that I was the only person that belived in this sort of thing, however - I believe in taking it just that one step further...
We need licences to shoot, drive, practice medicine etc, so why is it that two of the least responsible people on the planet are allowed to create children with no tests before hand? Your example of using benefits to discourage over population could also be used as a means of discouraging people who are not suitable from having children.
The theory is simple, the couple is tested in a number of fields (Not intelligence related.) and then their results are panel judged. If they fail the tests (Re-testing is possible) and then go on to have children anyway; they lose massive amount in benefits / have their taxes increased up until the point when they have enough money to get along on, but no more.
A pretty hardcore opinion obviously, but if you look at the things children are being put through by incompetant / abusive parents, then I believe it would be worth it. Any life saved would be worth it.
Now this wont neccesarily apply to any of you guys in the US, but in the UK most of the credit information is handled by two companies - Equifax and Experian.
What I generally do is to obtain all information that they hold on me every six months (Under the data protection act.) and sort any problems out before I get screwed over.
If I am going to an interview for a big job, I use a reference check agency to make sure that no-body is saying anything bad about me, and nothing has been made up about me... It's not even that expensive.
You see, when it all comes down to it, there ARE things that you can do to even things up. Just make sure that you know what those things are.
You are right on that, BT are very, very much in big time debt (10's of Billions last time I checked.), also they are being forced to hand over their monopoly in the UK so they are really being put through the mill.
Slashdot Mirror
Lo and behold.... Google
Ummm... I might be mistaken here, but that list of names at the top looks like it has been populated with columbian drug barons.
Hmm.
This would be economic suicide for the XBOX division of MS. One of the reasons MS are taking such losses on their current console is to build up a following for any future consoles that they release. Alienating their current supporters by not providing backwards compatibility would make a lot of people seriously reconsider upgrading when the new XBOX comes out.
Surely it would be simple enough for MS to follow the Sony route on this one and create an "XBOX on a chip". Lets face it, the XBox technology was hardly state of the art to start with (P3 / GeForce) and even if they would not go the addon chip route, I can't imagine that providing on board emulation supporting hardware would be beyond the designers of the XBox 2, in terms of complexity or cost.
As the subject states, I'm probably missing the point here - But surely AOL could block this server side? It really can't be that difficult (My router seems to manage it automatically).
If you want to know more about the lawsuit and UD there is a pretty good thread on the UD Forums
I've always really wondered what the point of 1/2 + 1/3 mathematics was. I mean really, I have 1/2 an apple + 1/3 of an apple, how many apples do I have?
You have no apples, you have half an apple and a slice... where's the fruit juice, orange and cherries when you need them?
(On a more serious note, any time you get into important mathematics for science / engineering I would always advise double checking your results with a calculator. You may mistakenly think you have discovered cold fusion otherwise.
I can totally agree with that statement, and anyone that has watched hard talk can tell you that strong interviewers are still alive and well.
Just not in the US.
Actually, as a totally not well off computer geek (20k GBP / Yr) I usually give around 2-3% of my salary to charity a year.
But then I have no problem at all seeing that there are a load of people a lot worse off than I am. Nevertheless, Kudos to the foundation... There are a lot of very very rich people doing nothing worthwhile with their money.
Very clever poster, very clever. :-)
Sorry... this is gonna sound like flamebait but what does American having the best quality TV / tv channels say to you about america? Mmm... Home of the big mac and tv dinners. lol
Pretty good?!?! You have obviously never been to London. I moved here recently and have taken to asking people if they would like a slice of water or a chunk of coffee. It really is that bad (At least compared to my home in Wales).
Even my water filter seems to be having trouble with it (I wont touch it straight from the tap). Nasty, nasty stuff.
I work for a large soft drink making company that through a third party contractor ended up with Fujitsu hard drives in all of the equipment that we use to control the blending and dosing (Putting in bottles) of our drinks. About 6 months ago we started noticing failures of these machines in large numbers but could not work out what was causing them.
We initially put it down to heat (Surely these drives can't all be naturally broken) and fitted expensive cooling gear. They kept failing.
We then thought that it was the contractor messing with the machines that caused the failures so we put in better access control (Simple key to allow dial in). This didn't fix it either.
It was only when I ordered 80 western digital hard drives and started replacing the Fuji's once they broke that we started noticing that the WD drives were not breaking. We are currently scheduling downtime of the plant to replace the rest (Not easy given it all runs 24x7 and we are always behind schedule).
Needless to say we are not happy at all. I would hate to think how much money all that downtime has cost the company, and how much lost sleep the IT team has had to endure from the endless call-outs.
At this stage, if it looks like a major change is about to go on wouldn't it make more sense for everyone to switch to 2D barcodes?
Admittedly there would be a greater cost incurred, but you have almost no chance of running out of digits because you basically get rows and rows of them (I don't know exactly how many, I just know they can hold lots of information.)
Anyone got a link to a company that manufacturs them?
I work for Glaxo... and in IT (What a surprise.). Who says I should try it? ;-)
Heheh... I wonder how many people here will get the reference to the sybian. Or should that be the S.O.M.
:-)
Hehe, I had a hard time with some dilbert esque users today (600mb Powerpoint files, 400mb spreadsheets) and I thought I wasn't gonna smile once. You changed that.
I have to seriously disagree on this point. Having watched pretty much all of the "robot" shows from all over the world I find that I cannot bear to watch "battlebots". Maybe it is that it has the WWF feeling that the short attention spanned Americans enjoy, but I'm more interested in the technology than some drooling & past it sports correspondant working alongside a dumb blonde that couldn't tell the difference between a cafe latte and a capacitor.
However, I agree about the need for more interesting weapons. Then again, when you think that these robots are paid for by the people who build them, how many of them do you think would be happy to have them torn to pieces?
Then again, my favourite bot so far has been one called hypnodisc (Check the UK robot wars website).
That's a real shame... He was recently voted as the most influential science fiction author ever in the uk.
:-)
Maybe I should get on his pr team and help him break into the US properly.
I must say that I am moderately dissapointed not to see Iain M Banks there... having read most of the authors on the list, I would say that his work is at least equal if not better than the others.
Maybe it's because he isn't American? Are his books popular over there?
Really? BT never screwed up the place? So explain to me all of the telegraph poles everywhere with their hundreds of wires crisscrossing the sky.
Yesm Yes, Yes! I was truly starting to believe that I was the only person that belived in this sort of thing, however - I believe in taking it just that one step further...
We need licences to shoot, drive, practice medicine etc, so why is it that two of the least responsible people on the planet are allowed to create children with no tests before hand? Your example of using benefits to discourage over population could also be used as a means of discouraging people who are not suitable from having children.
The theory is simple, the couple is tested in a number of fields (Not intelligence related.) and then their results are panel judged. If they fail the tests (Re-testing is possible) and then go on to have children anyway; they lose massive amount in benefits / have their taxes increased up until the point when they have enough money to get along on, but no more.
A pretty hardcore opinion obviously, but if you look at the things children are being put through by incompetant / abusive parents, then I believe it would be worth it. Any life saved would be worth it.
Now this wont neccesarily apply to any of you guys in the US, but in the UK most of the credit information is handled by two companies - Equifax and Experian. What I generally do is to obtain all information that they hold on me every six months (Under the data protection act.) and sort any problems out before I get screwed over. If I am going to an interview for a big job, I use a reference check agency to make sure that no-body is saying anything bad about me, and nothing has been made up about me... It's not even that expensive. You see, when it all comes down to it, there ARE things that you can do to even things up. Just make sure that you know what those things are.
Everywhere... Did you ever see Sliver?
Tanning salon? Privacy? You haven't seem some of the hidden camera footage that I have mate! :)
You are right on that, BT are very, very much in big time debt (10's of Billions last time I checked.), also they are being forced to hand over their monopoly in the UK so they are really being put through the mill.
Oh dear, you can tell someone is married... :P