In your example, the Violin itself is a "work of art", and music played on it *might be* Art.
Likewise it could be my two year old tugging at the strings and making the dog, cringe under the sofa.
The Art of the object itself, while it also certainly provides an input into what is produced, is decoupled from the concept of the Art produced by the instrument in terms of a definition as Art.
I suppose the same could be said of MOST video games, in that the "Art" (Pictures/Video/Sound) that goes into the Video Game itself can be appreciated on its own, and certainly provides an input to the view of the Video Game itself as Art, but the definition of the Video Game as Art should be viewed as a different entity.
I suppose it largely comes down to the definition of Art itself. Personally I would qualify Art as "a created or arranged 'thing' which is able to evoke an emotion from the viewer/participant".
Viewed in that light, almost ANYTHING can be Art, although the real question is, does a particular Piece of Art effect enough people to become widely appreciated? (Shadow of the Colossus, flOwer, Final Fantasy ?? or Kingdom Hearts?, ) or is it merely appreciated by a small minority? (Psychonauts), or is it not really appreciated AS Art by its participant(s)? (most Multi-Player on-line games?)
Examples: Most people who've played a Final Fantasy game generally get drawn into the characters, and their development. Look how much angst and shock was felt when Aeris gets killed in FFVII. I would argue that the interaction with the character, both through the cut scenes, as well as the time spent developing her during gameplay, is what caused that connection and therefore allows the game as a whole to be classified as art (as opposed to just the cut scenes).
Likewise, the art, sound and visual direction of the Warhawk game on the PS3 is great. The multiplayer is fun. I would however never classify the game as Art because there is no ethos evoked directly by the game. There are rounds and goals, but there is no story to evoke those emotions. There is no "other mechanism" in the case of games like flOwer or flOw that replaces story, which allows for the emersion used to evoke those emotions.
The problem is that not only is he aware that he is not knowledgeable, but when presented with the opportunity, he balks and admits that he has better things to do than play video games. The blog post basically outlines a fellow Critic arranging with Sony to have a PS3, loaded with games, lent to him, if he would just pick it up, which he doesn't.
He further admits that he still feels Video Games are not "Art", and that he should not have made the comment without knowing more, but that he doesn't want to learn more.
The ONLY concession he makes is that he admits it is possible for a video game to be made in the future that might be art.
Its akin to Grandpa deciding that he'd rather read a book than go to the movies because those Nickelodeon things are okay, but they never really liked Organ music and, its just a a waste of time, and its not really Art.
Yes, but when they wanted to show a run-down Detroit, they used Dallas. I took a class in the high school they used as the police station, and I've been in the Dallas City Hall (the OCP headquarters) multiple times. So a run-down and crappy Detroit of the future was mid-80's Dallas.
So Dallas was Progressive and Leading the Curve?:)
Actually I wonder if there might be a "middle" ground.
Has anyone written an IRC client that decrypts chat based on a private key and encrypts chat based on a public key?
If not, just have it encrypt any outbound text via a public key (perhaps even let you select WHICH key so you can chat with multiple people over the same channel, and while everyone can "see" everyone else's text, they can only decode the stuff to them). Add a "to:" tag at the beginning of a message, or have it attempt to decode against multiple keys with some "head"/"tail" tag so it knows if it got the right key, and you're done.
Just use any standard IRC server and your communication is encrypted. Need more than one-on-one? Pass around a 'one-shot' key (or have a group of ready to go pre-shared ones), for the meeting.
On the upside, at least Move and Kinect will be well tuned and lessons will have been learnt by Microsoft, Sony, and 3rd party developers alike in time for them to be fully integrated components of the next gen consoles, the sort of thing that will then come as standard.
Actually, I expect that the next gen of consoles will be able to utilize the peripherals from this gen (just add a bump in Video/CPU).
For Sony at least, the interfaces have been standardized (Bluetooth, USB). The peripherals should all be compatible with the next version of hardware.
Eye, Move and PS3 controllers being compatible would be an even bigger incentive to their base to invest in the controllers now, and upgrade to a new console later.
Haiti or another middle/south america could be the next one. Take Haiti for example- accessable by sea, near wage parity with china, cheaper shipping (IE materials from the americas, to destination markets in europe and americas. and it's also pretty close to panama. could even be worth it enough to withstand the hurricane season.
Does it have enough of a population base though compared to South America or Africa?
"A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."
Sometimes Pratchet and authors like him are so busying trying to make a joke that they don't even realize that they've stumbled onto an essential truth of our society.
Who says he didn't know what he wrote?
There is a quite a lot of rather biting social commentary in most of Pratchett's books. Granted its usually hidden among some very funny writing (to greater or lessor degrees hidden I'll admit), but its there for anyone who cares to notice, and those social issues/commentary are often the driving force of the book.
So if I read this correctly, the point of this article is we should get a time machine so we can go back to the 70's and impress people with our smartphones?
It's already happened. How do you think we got the tech in the first place?
Pffft. Stole it from an alternate Earth that had managed to achieve higher Scientific Advances than ours in some fields at the expense of a totalitarian regime and lost ground in some wacky "Fringe Science" research.
Not only that, but how many "gamers" don't already have the wii if not all 3 platforms?
I see this a lot, but am always amazed.
Why do some people seem to think that "gamers" (whoever they really are) MUST already have all three platforms?
Why?
I've only got one of the three (won't mention which one in this post since its irrelevant for this comment).
I've got access to a larger library of games than I can play regularly and enjoy ALREADY. Yeah, I miss out on some "exclusives" from the other consoles. Oh well, I miss out on some exclusives for the console I own also.
Its the same reason I got rid of cable. Between the Over-The-Air Television, Free (and legal) Internet Options, and the occasional Series on DVD/Blu-Ray, I save 100$ a month and still have more TV than I have time to watch (if I want).
Some Gamers only have 1 console. Wether they made "the right" or "the wrong" choice, its what they've got.
If there is a way to breath new life into it with other options (like Natal and Move), then that is a good thing. In fact they'll likely like that option more because they'll view it as a "value add" for their existing console.
Instead of concentrating on the next generation of consoles, MS and Sony are foolishly breaking the traditional 5-year console lifespan rule (sacrosanct since the Atari days) and have instead decided to go chase after the Wii motion controllers fad. Now, even as the Wii fad fades, they're stuck with controllers that no one is particularly excited by (everyone who wanted them already bought a Wii, and most have long since become bored with them). Meanwhile, they've got no next generation consoles in the pipeline, even as consoles show their age more and more every day and hit the very real limits of their 5-year-old technology. The 360 is already having to release games like Mass Effect 2 on multiple discs because they can't support blu-ray discs. And neither console is likely to be able to fully support the rapidly approaching 3-D fad, or MMORPG's, or full 1080p content (most games have to be covertly downsized to 720 to make up for limitations in the 360's and PS3's old CPU/GPU). This may prove a blessing for PC gaming, but is a mess for the console makers.
You start off talking about how both consoles have broken the "sacrosanct" 5 years rule.
First off, Sony broke it a while ago. They are still happily selling PS2s. You know what? Thats okay.
Nintendo also broke it by releasing a Cube+ system with a fancy controller instead of a "powerful new system". Seems to have worked okay so far.
As for your complaints at the end:
- Not supporting Blu-Ray is MS's problem, not Sony's. At this point, the only way forward is either to specifically use HD-DVD drives in the next gen console (which will be more expensive and likely have a single source/vendor) or license Blu-Ray (which MS are loath to do since it admits that Sony was right/won). - The PS3 already can support the forthcoming "3D craze" you mentioned. Sony debuted the tech at one of the conventions over the past year. - There are several MMORPGs that are due out for the PS3 this year. - More and more games are taking advantage of 1080p (on the PS3 at least).
I'm not sure its that much of a mess personally, unless you mean that the 360 is nearing the limits of its life (and since they made the Hard-Drive optional that was pretty much a given).
As for the "Natal" vs. "Move" debate.
I think each solution has limitations. MS's solution is cheaper (if you're going for multiple players maybe?). I am also skeptical at how well it will work after having played with some of the PS EYE games. Yes, some of them work ok, but the lack of a definitive control interface is not always a good thing. Sony's solution is closer to a Wii on steroids (replacing the IR-bar with the EYE and including the proposed "nunchuck-like" extension). It seems like a more robust system (in terms of being able to track what it is supposed to), and more flexible. The minuses, it will probably cost more overall. The plusses, it should allow more possibilities, including leveraging developers experience with Wii-like gestures and actions.
Exactly. The people who are usually surprised by this are the ones who've never thought about it or are just going through the cycle for the first time or so (not necessarily "young", but certainly "inexperienced").
Am I amazed that my cell phone now has 30,000x as much storage capacity as my first computer (32GB vs 1.4MB), 360x as much RAM (180MB vs. 512KB... even after the getting the A1000 RAM expander) and who knows how much more "computing power" (not to mention the whole "WiFi", "Cell Phone", "Touch Screen", etc. pieces)?
Heck yeah. Its very neat that technology has advanced to the point where the old "Star Trek" Tricorder, or "The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy" are more a matter of custom hardware/software than evolution of design.
That doesn't mean that this was unexpected though, especially after I watched the comparison to the first computer I had in college (which only had 4MB RAM, 40MB HD and a 486SX proc... thanks Gateway and Dad).
Flash forward to an coming out of college and building my first tower and you can really see a trend. (I refrain from going back to debugging programs via submitted jobs and print-outs merely because its outside the experience of most SlashDotters, and because I was doing it in the single-digit ages, the Program was the important thing, I wasn't even conscious of the hardware, so I have no clue what it was running on.:D )
The only real limitations to computers in general (and portable computers) are:
1) Input - you have to be able to tell the computer what to do, short of mind-machine interfaces, TouchScreen/Voice Response/Keyboard/Mouse, etc are the best choices. 2) Output - it has to be able to tell you things, again, short of mind-machine interfaces, Monitor/Displays (of whatever sort) are one of the biggest limiting factors. 3) Power/Cooling - if it can't run for long, or overheats when you run it, its worthless.
After that, computing ability, storage and connectivity will keep improving beyond our imaginations, with new features and abilities being added to Whatever the platform is, as soon as new "excess capacity" is unlocked (case in point would be touch screens, GPS and the explosion of games/utilities in current generation SmartPhones).
Time flies. I remember getting Chicken pox and being over-joyed because I got to stay home from school and watch all the coverage of the first Columbia mission, and then I was out at the cape (for most of the week), till Challenger went up (and blew up). Wish I could find the Kodak Disc Film (oooo trendy).
Here's hoping the next launch vehicle (Government or Commercial) helps gets us that much closer to a permanent place in space.
If you're a parent with 2+ kids, which would you rather do?
Buy a DS, along with a copy of a game cart for each kid (or a download for each DS, not just now but in the future also), or purchase an iPod Touch + 1 copy of the game to sync with all of them?
Add in Nintendos HUGE lack of ability to replace hardware (go search for people needing to replace Wiis and DSs and trying to keep their purchased DLC... here's a hint at the conclusion "Good Luck!").
Seems like Nintendo SHOULD be concerned. Heck, SquareSoft is even releasing titles on the AppStore. If Apple added a button or two, it would be that much easier, but they still have dual stick shooters (that are personally "okay", but not great), and a HUGE potential for game developers.
If a few major developers jump on board and accept it as a First Class gaming platform (which they MIGHT since they don't have to worry about used carts being resold and the install base is huge), then Nintendo could be in for a huge awakening.
My response was addressing the particular idea of Ebert's that because Video Games are not a Passive Experience, they are not art (which I agree is ridiculous),
Due to his own bias, his definition has no problem including Films in the scope of Art.
Using HIS definition, even if you disagree with it, I felt that in the case of Video Games, if you removed the "Active" portion of the game, there are still a large number of Passive elements that are artistic in their own right (Story, Writing, Art, Audio, Video) and that also can be taken as a whole that encompasses a new Artwork (wether its trash, or the Video Game equivalent of "Citizen Kane" is a different issue).
Then I would argue that while a Video Game itself is probably not a piece of Art, the story and expression of it very well might be.
Case in point, Final Fantasy XIII.
Separate and apart from wining the game, the world of the game, and the story that takes place over the course of the game, (in the form of written descriptions and backstory in the Datapad, and in the cut-scenes, both pre-compiled and in-game) most certainly IS a work of art.
The ability to "finish or win" a game disqualifying it as a work of art though is as absurd as saying that the act of wanting to read a book "till the end" disqualifies written works from being art.
Certainly there are those who play games without caring about the story, but there are people who go to see works of art for no reason than to say that "they saw X", without any regard for the work of art itself.
I know this topic is about SSDs, but I remember back in the day we had full height 5.25" drives that sounded like jet engines and had several platters. Why hasn't anyone made bigger platters- are we really constrained to the 3.5" form factor? I'd think they could make big platters with some extra ECC, have several platters, or even have internal platter mirroring or something l like hardware raid6 at the platter level?
Putting RAID inside the drive doesn't buy as much (from a Redundancy perspective) as putting multiple drives into the same space does.
With multiple drives you can: - use different manufacturers - replace each independently
With RAID in a drive, you are probably using the same circuitry for those whole enclosure (comparable to the Disk Controller now), and you do not have the option of replacing a failed platter (without a new HDD architecture of some sort).
Add to that the limited number of environments willing to spend the extra money on RAID, and the non-techie obsession with "smaller is better tech" being seen in NetBooks, and NetTops, leaving less room for this sort of thing, and you're left with a limited market that could alternatively be served by existing RAID controllers/setups, using "standardized" components (3.5" drives), that can be mass produced due to the large demand for them in non-RAID applications.
So, you are saying that Tivo needs $650 to cover the cost and make a profit on a DVR that has less than 750 GB of storage space? I don't see it.
Then don't buy it (which I assume you haven't).
I guess TiVo disagrees with you though, or they would be selling them for less. You're probably not the only one who "doesn't see it" or they would be selling more of them.
The $650 is supposed to cover: - The cost of the hardware (including not only "standard" parts like 750GB of storage, "non-standard" parts like the dual tuners, CableCard slots, etc.), along with some cost "because they can" (i.e. its not an OEM price) - The cost of the software, both DVR functionality and UI (R&D cost which is a huge part of it I imagine, bug fixes, new feature updates) - The cost of the licensing Patents/Royalties (both theirs, to file and protect, and others, to license and use) - The cost of the program guides information - The cost of the TiVo backend infrastructure to support the remote updates of appliance (software and program guide information) - The cost of them integrating all the above pieces into one "appliance"
If you think its overpriced, do it cheaper and better and the world will beat a path to your door. MythTV has tried to, but has met with even less success than TiVo.
Slashdot Mirror
In your example, the Violin itself is a "work of art", and music played on it *might be* Art.
Likewise it could be my two year old tugging at the strings and making the dog, cringe under the sofa.
The Art of the object itself, while it also certainly provides an input into what is produced, is decoupled from the concept of the Art produced by the instrument in terms of a definition as Art.
I suppose the same could be said of MOST video games, in that the "Art" (Pictures/Video/Sound) that goes into the Video Game itself can be appreciated on its own, and certainly provides an input to the view of the Video Game itself as Art, but the definition of the Video Game as Art should be viewed as a different entity.
I suppose it largely comes down to the definition of Art itself. Personally I would qualify Art as "a created or arranged 'thing' which is able to evoke an emotion from the viewer/participant".
Viewed in that light, almost ANYTHING can be Art, although the real question is, does a particular Piece of Art effect enough people to become widely appreciated? (Shadow of the Colossus, flOwer, Final Fantasy ?? or Kingdom Hearts?, ) or is it merely appreciated by a small minority? (Psychonauts), or is it not really appreciated AS Art by its participant(s)? (most Multi-Player on-line games?)
Examples:
Most people who've played a Final Fantasy game generally get drawn into the characters, and their development. Look how much angst and shock was felt when Aeris gets killed in FFVII. I would argue that the interaction with the character, both through the cut scenes, as well as the time spent developing her during gameplay, is what caused that connection and therefore allows the game as a whole to be classified as art (as opposed to just the cut scenes).
Likewise, the art, sound and visual direction of the Warhawk game on the PS3 is great. The multiplayer is fun. I would however never classify the game as Art because there is no ethos evoked directly by the game. There are rounds and goals, but there is no story to evoke those emotions. There is no "other mechanism" in the case of games like flOwer or flOw that replaces story, which allows for the emersion used to evoke those emotions.
The problem is that not only is he aware that he is not knowledgeable, but when presented with the opportunity, he balks and admits that he has better things to do than play video games.
The blog post basically outlines a fellow Critic arranging with Sony to have a PS3, loaded with games, lent to him, if he would just pick it up, which he doesn't.
He further admits that he still feels Video Games are not "Art", and that he should not have made the comment without knowing more, but that he doesn't want to learn more.
The ONLY concession he makes is that he admits it is possible for a video game to be made in the future that might be art.
Its akin to Grandpa deciding that he'd rather read a book than go to the movies because those Nickelodeon things are okay, but they never really liked Organ music and, its just a a waste of time, and its not really Art.
So Dallas was Progressive and Leading the Curve? :)
Perhaps the good city of Detroit could just outsource the city government to some well meaning Corporation?
I'm sure I've seen some thoughts on this somewhere ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093870/ ).
Actually I wonder if there might be a "middle" ground.
Has anyone written an IRC client that decrypts chat based on a private key and encrypts chat based on a public key?
If not, just have it encrypt any outbound text via a public key (perhaps even let you select WHICH key so you can chat with multiple people over the same channel, and while everyone can "see" everyone else's text, they can only decode the stuff to them).
Add a "to:" tag at the beginning of a message, or have it attempt to decode against multiple keys with some "head"/"tail" tag so it knows if it got the right key, and you're done.
Just use any standard IRC server and your communication is encrypted. Need more than one-on-one? Pass around a 'one-shot' key (or have a group of ready to go pre-shared ones), for the meeting.
You make it sound like some of us haven't started researching that already also.
Not so much anymore: http://xkcd.com/751/
Actually, I expect that the next gen of consoles will be able to utilize the peripherals from this gen (just add a bump in Video/CPU).
For Sony at least, the interfaces have been standardized (Bluetooth, USB). The peripherals should all be compatible with the next version of hardware.
Eye, Move and PS3 controllers being compatible would be an even bigger incentive to their base to invest in the controllers now, and upgrade to a new console later.
Does it have enough of a population base though compared to South America or Africa?
Who says he didn't know what he wrote?
There is a quite a lot of rather biting social commentary in most of Pratchett's books. Granted its usually hidden among some very funny writing (to greater or lessor degrees hidden I'll admit), but its there for anyone who cares to notice, and those social issues/commentary are often the driving force of the book.
Pffft. Stole it from an alternate Earth that had managed to achieve higher Scientific Advances than ours in some fields at the expense of a totalitarian regime and lost ground in some wacky "Fringe Science" research.
I see this a lot, but am always amazed.
Why do some people seem to think that "gamers" (whoever they really are) MUST already have all three platforms?
Why?
I've only got one of the three (won't mention which one in this post since its irrelevant for this comment).
I've got access to a larger library of games than I can play regularly and enjoy ALREADY. Yeah, I miss out on some "exclusives" from the other consoles. Oh well, I miss out on some exclusives for the console I own also.
Its the same reason I got rid of cable. Between the Over-The-Air Television, Free (and legal) Internet Options, and the occasional Series on DVD/Blu-Ray, I save 100$ a month and still have more TV than I have time to watch (if I want).
Some Gamers only have 1 console. Wether they made "the right" or "the wrong" choice, its what they've got.
If there is a way to breath new life into it with other options (like Natal and Move), then that is a good thing. In fact they'll likely like that option more because they'll view it as a "value add" for their existing console.
You start off talking about how both consoles have broken the "sacrosanct" 5 years rule.
First off, Sony broke it a while ago. They are still happily selling PS2s. You know what? Thats okay.
Nintendo also broke it by releasing a Cube+ system with a fancy controller instead of a "powerful new system". Seems to have worked okay so far.
As for your complaints at the end:
- Not supporting Blu-Ray is MS's problem, not Sony's. At this point, the only way forward is either to specifically use HD-DVD drives in the next gen console (which will be more expensive and likely have a single source/vendor) or license Blu-Ray (which MS are loath to do since it admits that Sony was right/won).
- The PS3 already can support the forthcoming "3D craze" you mentioned. Sony debuted the tech at one of the conventions over the past year.
- There are several MMORPGs that are due out for the PS3 this year.
- More and more games are taking advantage of 1080p (on the PS3 at least).
I'm not sure its that much of a mess personally, unless you mean that the 360 is nearing the limits of its life (and since they made the Hard-Drive optional that was pretty much a given).
As for the "Natal" vs. "Move" debate.
I think each solution has limitations.
MS's solution is cheaper (if you're going for multiple players maybe?). I am also skeptical at how well it will work after having played with some of the PS EYE games. Yes, some of them work ok, but the lack of a definitive control interface is not always a good thing.
Sony's solution is closer to a Wii on steroids (replacing the IR-bar with the EYE and including the proposed "nunchuck-like" extension). It seems like a more robust system (in terms of being able to track what it is supposed to), and more flexible. The minuses, it will probably cost more overall. The plusses, it should allow more possibilities, including leveraging developers experience with Wii-like gestures and actions.
Exactly. The people who are usually surprised by this are the ones who've never thought about it or are just going through the cycle for the first time or so (not necessarily "young", but certainly "inexperienced").
Am I amazed that my cell phone now has 30,000x as much storage capacity as my first computer (32GB vs 1.4MB), 360x as much RAM (180MB vs. 512KB ... even after the getting the A1000 RAM expander) and who knows how much more "computing power" (not to mention the whole "WiFi", "Cell Phone", "Touch Screen", etc. pieces)?
Heck yeah. Its very neat that technology has advanced to the point where the old "Star Trek" Tricorder, or "The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy" are more a matter of custom hardware/software than evolution of design.
That doesn't mean that this was unexpected though, especially after I watched the comparison to the first computer I had in college (which only had 4MB RAM, 40MB HD and a 486SX proc ... thanks Gateway and Dad).
Flash forward to an coming out of college and building my first tower and you can really see a trend. :D )
(I refrain from going back to debugging programs via submitted jobs and print-outs merely because its outside the experience of most SlashDotters, and because I was doing it in the single-digit ages, the Program was the important thing, I wasn't even conscious of the hardware, so I have no clue what it was running on.
The only real limitations to computers in general (and portable computers) are:
1) Input - you have to be able to tell the computer what to do, short of mind-machine interfaces, TouchScreen/Voice Response/Keyboard/Mouse, etc are the best choices.
2) Output - it has to be able to tell you things, again, short of mind-machine interfaces, Monitor/Displays (of whatever sort) are one of the biggest limiting factors.
3) Power/Cooling - if it can't run for long, or overheats when you run it, its worthless.
After that, computing ability, storage and connectivity will keep improving beyond our imaginations, with new features and abilities being added to Whatever the platform is, as soon as new "excess capacity" is unlocked (case in point would be touch screens, GPS and the explosion of games/utilities in current generation SmartPhones).
Time flies. I remember getting Chicken pox and being over-joyed because I got to stay home from school and watch all the coverage of the first Columbia mission, and then I was out at the cape (for most of the week), till Challenger went up (and blew up). Wish I could find the Kodak Disc Film (oooo trendy).
Here's hoping the next launch vehicle (Government or Commercial) helps gets us that much closer to a permanent place in space.
If you're a parent with 2+ kids, which would you rather do?
Buy a DS, along with a copy of a game cart for each kid (or a download for each DS, not just now but in the future also), or purchase an iPod Touch + 1 copy of the game to sync with all of them?
Add in Nintendos HUGE lack of ability to replace hardware (go search for people needing to replace Wiis and DSs and trying to keep their purchased DLC ... here's a hint at the conclusion "Good Luck!").
Seems like Nintendo SHOULD be concerned. Heck, SquareSoft is even releasing titles on the AppStore. If Apple added a button or two, it would be that much easier, but they still have dual stick shooters (that are personally "okay", but not great), and a HUGE potential for game developers.
If a few major developers jump on board and accept it as a First Class gaming platform (which they MIGHT since they don't have to worry about used carts being resold and the install base is huge), then Nintendo could be in for a huge awakening.
Considering this IS Microsoft and Windows we're talking about, I prefer:
MicroSoft Defenstrates XP SP2 from From Support. Users told to take a flying leap.
Yes, and either you didn't catch that the "his" in this case refers to Osiris, Egyptian mythology is foreign to you, or you just like to nitpick.
(I'm leaning toward the second choice myself)
Nah, the Wife gets motion sickness from driving games. :)
On the other hand, I've used "Super Rub-a-Dub" as a party game, or when little kids are over.
There may not seem like a lot of casual games out for the PS3, but the on-line PSN store is chock full of them, often costing only $5-$10 each.
My response was addressing the particular idea of Ebert's that because Video Games are not a Passive Experience, they are not art (which I agree is ridiculous),
Due to his own bias, his definition has no problem including Films in the scope of Art.
Using HIS definition, even if you disagree with it, I felt that in the case of Video Games, if you removed the "Active" portion of the game, there are still a large number of Passive elements that are artistic in their own right (Story, Writing, Art, Audio, Video) and that also can be taken as a whole that encompasses a new Artwork (wether its trash, or the Video Game equivalent of "Citizen Kane" is a different issue).
Ah, thanks. I always get those backwards. :)
Then I would argue that while a Video Game itself is probably not a piece of Art, the story and expression of it very well might be.
Case in point, Final Fantasy XIII.
Separate and apart from wining the game, the world of the game, and the story that takes place over the course of the game, (in the form of written descriptions and backstory in the Datapad, and in the cut-scenes, both pre-compiled and in-game) most certainly IS a work of art.
The ability to "finish or win" a game disqualifying it as a work of art though is as absurd as saying that the act of wanting to read a book "till the end" disqualifies written works from being art.
Certainly there are those who play games without caring about the story, but there are people who go to see works of art for no reason than to say that "they saw X", without any regard for the work of art itself.
Putting RAID inside the drive doesn't buy as much (from a Redundancy perspective) as putting multiple drives into the same space does.
With multiple drives you can:
- use different manufacturers
- replace each independently
With RAID in a drive, you are probably using the same circuitry for those whole enclosure (comparable to the Disk Controller now), and you do not have the option of replacing a failed platter (without a new HDD architecture of some sort).
Add to that the limited number of environments willing to spend the extra money on RAID, and the non-techie obsession with "smaller is better tech" being seen in NetBooks, and NetTops, leaving less room for this sort of thing, and you're left with a limited market that could alternatively be served by existing RAID controllers/setups, using "standardized" components (3.5" drives), that can be mass produced due to the large demand for them in non-RAID applications.
Nah, SPSS isn't that bad.
I've worked with SAS for about 15 years, and had a chance to work with SPSS a bit ~7 years ago.
Each program just has its own way of doing things.
If you're going to mention R though, don't forget to mention S (the open source version of R).
Then don't buy it (which I assume you haven't).
I guess TiVo disagrees with you though, or they would be selling them for less.
You're probably not the only one who "doesn't see it" or they would be selling more of them.
The $650 is supposed to cover:
- The cost of the hardware (including not only "standard" parts like 750GB of storage, "non-standard" parts like the dual tuners, CableCard slots, etc.), along with some cost "because they can" (i.e. its not an OEM price)
- The cost of the software, both DVR functionality and UI (R&D cost which is a huge part of it I imagine, bug fixes, new feature updates)
- The cost of the licensing Patents/Royalties (both theirs, to file and protect, and others, to license and use)
- The cost of the program guides information
- The cost of the TiVo backend infrastructure to support the remote updates of appliance (software and program guide information)
- The cost of them integrating all the above pieces into one "appliance"
If you think its overpriced, do it cheaper and better and the world will beat a path to your door.
MythTV has tried to, but has met with even less success than TiVo.