Oblivion has been recently released and I have not heard of 5-10 min initial load times. I have heard of Dungeon load times are 50%-75% less thent he 360 due to HD caching. As for drive speeds the Xbox lists their peak speed (outside track) while the PS3 lists their average speed (inside/outside average). The average for both is not that far apart (x6.5 (DVD/Blu-ray) vs x~8.0(DVD)). Also there are many complaints of the noise level of the Xbox DVD. The HD negates any real effect on the game itself because there is a lot of opportunities to precache. Intelligently used you can have a minimial load time initially and a gradiual reduction during play to pulling everything from the HDD after a dozen minutes of play.
As for blu-ray. I appriciate the quality improvement on my 50' HDTV. I do in fact notice the difference between the two versions of casino royale I have. 1 I bought on blu ray, 1 bought for me by my GF who didn't know any better. The difference isn't slight and there are noticable upscaling artifacts in any of the dark scenes. If you don't notice a difference you are in fact blind.
Drive speed complaints are over played. The standardized HD completely negates any rational arguement about drivespeed. Even a direct comparrison of drive speeds shows a fairly slight difference. Also, disc space is a marginal advantage for the ps3. Built in blu-ray play back is a better advantage.
The ps3 is a expensive machine. For my money it was worth it. At some price point I'm sure it would be worthwhile for most gamers. I only hope it survives to hit that price point.
A pendantic note: The Xbox also uses PPC cores. Direct X API's make it easy to port but the hardware is not the same as a PC. Although 360 games tend to be PC style games, I can understand what you mean. The details however is that both the Ps3 and 360 and Wii use PPC cores. Likely due to their power efficiancy, thermal efficiancy, and size.
PS. I own a PS3 and I like it very much. Now if only FFXIII and MGS4 would come out tommorow.
The PS3 is very quiet, 780p videos and games demos are available on the store. You can queue downloads but they seem to pause when you play a game or go online. The video playback for DVD/BD/mpegs are top notch. They beat my standalone panasonic player for quality althought he standalone plays a few more formats (some avi, vcd).
I think the margin is slimmer then you think. A blogger is a jackass with a website. He knows at least how to post onto the net and get people to look at him. A Journalist is a jackass with an arts degree. He knows at least how to spell. The bar is pretty low in both professions/hobbies. A high profile blogger might one day be like a high profile journalist. The important people reads your dreck, the more likely you are to be important regaurdless of title.
1: The skill should be fun. 2: No trade skill should be not worthwhile. 3: Common skills must be useful almost all the time; rare skills must not overpower common skills.
1 is very hard 2 is nearly impossible 3 is doable with soem effort
remember even making a single player game fun is hard. doing so with a multiplayer game with mulitiple classes and several valid avenues of advancement/playing styles is very hard and only a few companies ever get it right. The rest just hack somethign out and promise updates.
I've had multiple BR discs from multiple studios work really well on my PS3. DVD's look good too. You may fault Sony for a lot but the PS3 BR/DVD playback is very good. It upconverts well. The controller also works well as a remote. fairly intuitive. The only fault I can find is there is no "rip movie" button. If there was I'd have filled this 60 gig hd.
I'd prefer major damage to vonage. They may be smaller but they are a malicious bunch of pricks. I wish Canada would just ban the whole organization. They aren't worth your sympathy.
If the order isn't stayed pending appeal, Vonage is dead; revenue drops to zero nearly overnight. So are all other independent VoIP providers, when Verizon gets around to crushing them.
A concrete manifestation of a patent system out of control.
I work for an incumbant telecom. Our strongest legitimate competitor plays nicer then Vonage when we have to do things like port a number back. From every interaction with Vonage or any of the small independant VOIPS like cyber surf, cyberkey, CIA.. etc I've noticed it seems liek these operations are 3 guys in a basement. They're aggresive with taking our customers (many SLAMS) and beligerent in giving them back (often taking 3 or more requests to get a number back, our biggest competitor ussually does it first try). They offer little or no customer service and often the infuration of dealing with their customer service drives the customer back to our incumbant prices and POTS. I will not shed a tear if they die. All of them. They aren't worth our sympathy.
I find your VC anology pretty accurate. Music / entertainment is a high risk venture. Incredible failure rate, low success rate. I find other similiarities also. VC's are pretty much sharks as well. A company that has VC investors are beholden to them. The VC has no interest beyond the IPO to make their money back. They don't care if it's a real product, or if they scam those who they dump the stock to after. There are good VC's and bad VC's, regaurdless they're still sharks. There are good and bad Labels, regaurdless they're still sharks.
I'm in several bands and writing, recording and performing art in addition to your day job is lots and lots of work. Work that is immensely enjoyable and rewarding, I'm not complaining about it, but my bands would be absolutely thrilled to connect with someone who could help us promote ourselves, book tours and get heard. We'll happily cut that skillset into the meagre existing revenues. Not everyone in the business side of music is out to get you. Some of them genuinely care about the artists and the art and they're damn good at what they do.
I am aware that the labels do serve a purpose. they do promotion well whent hey want to. There are more then just sharks. But the industry has a pretty lopside ratio. So far I've only met the slime. In my fair berg of Edmonton in canada. The industry is rife with sharks. In fact I used to work for a small time EMI rep. He was a crooked sleaze ball who use his affiliation to sleep with young impressionable girls and various other slimy things. My affiliation with him was brief btu definately jaded me.
Yup, no rhetoric here. That explains why so few people show up to compete for major label contracts on American Idol and so few bands want that major label deal. Oh, wait...
Rhetoric? Remember linkin park, the majority of their break out albumn is complaining about how they were screwed by their last manager. Canvas the bands you know. Any band thats been around will tell you horror stories of contracts they've been offered. Many will tell you about the ones they signed. Bands are often comprised of young, uneducated, and legalese illiterate guys who have to make decisions. They aren't thinking "hey why should I sign this predatory contract." They are thinking "I'm goign to be fuckign famous!!!!". The number of people persuing a recording contract and "contests" liek american idol do not mean that the industry isn't predatory. Perhaps my particular town is chalk full of corner cases that don't happen everywhere. And all the jaded, bitter mucisians here are odddities. Somewhat unlikely.
PS. Your post was pretty racists. Aside from US pop most of US/Ca/UK music rarely gets out of their own country. Rap does not do well in asia. Country either. While the Us music scene does export more then others it has many genres and artists that do not get exported. There are a few who make a small dent into the US markets. Like Faye wong.
The entire music industry is set up to abuse recording artists. Exorbinant marketting fees, a advanced based signing model, shady producers and a lot of very bad accounting that affects briteney spears as much as it does from . I had friends who had record promoters run up a 17,000 charges to book them in dive bars (within our own town). They never notified them of what was owed or outstanding until my friends demanded to know where they stood financially and the promoters handed them a 17,000 invoice for work and a bit of merch(a few dozen t-shirts, a few dozen logo'd props)... Most of the industry is crooked and sleazy and I won't cry a single tear if every studio that comprises the RIAA went banrupt and all the artists had to fend for themselves. It means the wolves have died and the lambs need to figure out how to get eaten without them.
Sometimes you do something small and watch it snow ball. The ad itself was fluffy and very mild for an attack ad. his company acted within their own policy and terminated him. He seems to be taking it in stride. He reecognized his mistake and is moving on. The publicity will likely net him a job somewhere with as good or better pay. So even if he is a knob, he's porblably a knob with prospects.
It's a pretty obvious "satire" or protected derrivative work. they may not win that lawsuit and in even pressing a lawsuit against the guy, they would seem "partisan" to a lot of their consumers.
You actually had to patch the game with a user mod to "unlock" it. It wasn't a controller code you put in but a software patch that flipped a few bits. Oddly no one had any problems with a similiar mini game in gods of war but most likely it was just not brought to the attention of the overly sensitive, irrational group that normally makes so much noise over it.
As for the data, it's common practice to be fairly lazy about stuff in most industries. KOTOR2 has models and dialogue never used that was pressed on disc. Planescape had a rash of audio files that were never used. Castlevania SOTN had several incomplete levels included that could be accessed with a glitch. the NES metroid had a whole bunch of unfinished levels. At a certain point in developement it's easier just to disable in code and press then to do a data audit. These days excess data doesn't cost any more to press but dev do cost money to comb through binaries and remove un-needed content.
Also check out the thourough job the canadians did to the natives here. Although it's hard to feel sympathy for such a "priviliged on paper" minority. If they realized how the rules favored them and played by the rule, Canada would 50% native owned by 2100.
There is no way in hell those batteries will last that long. You'll be lucky to get 100,000 on the battery. That's another $3000 each replacement, at 2.5 that's $7500 more over your lifetime.
You left out other significant wear parts too, like brakes.
100,000 is the garenteed lifetime. They almost always exceed 100,000.
I live in the UK, I haven't even seen a PS3 yet, my "vitriol" as you put it (I call it annoyance), is not directed at the product itself, but rather at Sony for thinking they can take a large dump on it's consumers. We get the product last with worse backwards compatibility, but have to pay the most(£425\~$825); how does that add up?
Not to be flippant but the UK gets short end of the stick a lot. In fact the EU in general gets things last, gets things at a 100% mark up, and You get thing in quantities that are lower then most states. Partly it's because EU/UK governments are much more protectionist with their trade then US/CA. I don't know how much of that £425 pricetag is sony being arrogant or hidden tarrifs and VAT. The more limited BC is likely for the same reasons. They need to bring the price down as much as possible and still not lose their shirts in hardware. Sony will not take losses like MS does on hardware.
I don't think Sony did the Ps3 right. They should have launched this cheaper, earlier, and with better games if they hoped to repeat their last gen success. But it's nto as bad as others make it out to be. I own one and it serves me well. I basically bought a cheap linux boxen with some blu ray player capability and happens to play my PS2 games well. I have a HD TV, I know linux well enough to install the yellow dog, and I have enough spending cash to need little rationalization for the cost. Canada has very low cost of living.
If this generation hasn't amply shown it: Past platform results do nto dictate future performance.Wii might dominate 10:1 like the Ps2 did to have the Wii2 come in 2nd or third liek the Ps3 is currently.
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Oblivion has been recently released and I have not heard of 5-10 min initial load times. I have heard of Dungeon load times are 50%-75% less thent he 360 due to HD caching. As for drive speeds the Xbox lists their peak speed (outside track) while the PS3 lists their average speed (inside/outside average). The average for both is not that far apart (x6.5 (DVD/Blu-ray) vs x~8.0(DVD)). Also there are many complaints of the noise level of the Xbox DVD. The HD negates any real effect on the game itself because there is a lot of opportunities to precache. Intelligently used you can have a minimial load time initially and a gradiual reduction during play to pulling everything from the HDD after a dozen minutes of play.
As for blu-ray. I appriciate the quality improvement on my 50' HDTV. I do in fact notice the difference between the two versions of casino royale I have. 1 I bought on blu ray, 1 bought for me by my GF who didn't know any better. The difference isn't slight and there are noticable upscaling artifacts in any of the dark scenes. If you don't notice a difference you are in fact blind.
Drive speed complaints are over played. The standardized HD completely negates any rational arguement about drivespeed. Even a direct comparrison of drive speeds shows a fairly slight difference. Also, disc space is a marginal advantage for the ps3. Built in blu-ray play back is a better advantage.
The ps3 is a expensive machine. For my money it was worth it. At some price point I'm sure it would be worthwhile for most gamers. I only hope it survives to hit that price point.
A pendantic note:
The Xbox also uses PPC cores. Direct X API's make it easy to port but the hardware is not the same as a PC. Although 360 games tend to be PC style games, I can understand what you mean. The details however is that both the Ps3 and 360 and Wii use PPC cores. Likely due to their power efficiancy, thermal efficiancy, and size.
PS. I own a PS3 and I like it very much. Now if only FFXIII and MGS4 would come out tommorow.
The PS3 is very quiet, 780p videos and games demos are available on the store. You can queue downloads but they seem to pause when you play a game or go online. The video playback for DVD/BD/mpegs are top notch. They beat my standalone panasonic player for quality althought he standalone plays a few more formats (some avi, vcd).
I think the margin is slimmer then you think. A blogger is a jackass with a website. He knows at least how to post onto the net and get people to look at him. A Journalist is a jackass with an arts degree. He knows at least how to spell. The bar is pretty low in both professions/hobbies. A high profile blogger might one day be like a high profile journalist. The important people reads your dreck, the more likely you are to be important regaurdless of title.
1: The skill should be fun.
2: No trade skill should be not worthwhile.
3: Common skills must be useful almost all the time; rare skills must not overpower common skills.
1 is very hard
2 is nearly impossible
3 is doable with soem effort
remember even making a single player game fun is hard. doing so with a multiplayer game with mulitiple classes and several valid avenues of advancement/playing styles is very hard and only a few companies ever get it right. The rest just hack somethign out and promise updates.
I've had multiple BR discs from multiple studios work really well on my PS3. DVD's look good too. You may fault Sony for a lot but the PS3 BR/DVD playback is very good. It upconverts well. The controller also works well as a remote. fairly intuitive. The only fault I can find is there is no "rip movie" button. If there was I'd have filled this 60 gig hd.
The PS3 is actually a very good DVD/Blu-ray player. It's a better DVD player then my upconverting Progressive scan Panasonic.
My PS3 did nto come with a blue ray movie Or a voucher for one. Not all packages sold had a free movie or a voucher.
I'd prefer major damage to vonage. They may be smaller but they are a malicious bunch of pricks. I wish Canada would just ban the whole organization. They aren't worth your sympathy.
If the order isn't stayed pending appeal, Vonage is dead; revenue drops to zero nearly overnight. So are all other independent VoIP providers, when Verizon gets around to crushing them.
A concrete manifestation of a patent system out of control.
I work for an incumbant telecom. Our strongest legitimate competitor plays nicer then Vonage when we have to do things like port a number back. From every interaction with Vonage or any of the small independant VOIPS like cyber surf, cyberkey, CIA.. etc I've noticed it seems liek these operations are 3 guys in a basement. They're aggresive with taking our customers (many SLAMS) and beligerent in giving them back (often taking 3 or more requests to get a number back, our biggest competitor ussually does it first try). They offer little or no customer service and often the infuration of dealing with their customer service drives the customer back to our incumbant prices and POTS. I will not shed a tear if they die. All of them. They aren't worth our sympathy.
I find your VC anology pretty accurate. Music / entertainment is a high risk venture. Incredible failure rate, low success rate. I find other similiarities also. VC's are pretty much sharks as well. A company that has VC investors are beholden to them. The VC has no interest beyond the IPO to make their money back. They don't care if it's a real product, or if they scam those who they dump the stock to after. There are good VC's and bad VC's, regaurdless they're still sharks. There are good and bad Labels, regaurdless they're still sharks.
I'm in several bands and writing, recording and performing art in addition to your day job is lots and lots of work. Work that is immensely enjoyable and rewarding, I'm not complaining about it, but my bands would be absolutely thrilled to connect with someone who could help us promote ourselves, book tours and get heard. We'll happily cut that skillset into the meagre existing revenues. Not everyone in the business side of music is out to get you. Some of them genuinely care about the artists and the art and they're damn good at what they do.
I am aware that the labels do serve a purpose. they do promotion well whent hey want to. There are more then just sharks. But the industry has a pretty lopside ratio. So far I've only met the slime. In my fair berg of Edmonton in canada. The industry is rife with sharks. In fact I used to work for a small time EMI rep. He was a crooked sleaze ball who use his affiliation to sleep with young impressionable girls and various other slimy things. My affiliation with him was brief btu definately jaded me.
Yup, no rhetoric here. That explains why so few people show up to compete for major label contracts on American Idol and so few bands want that major label deal. Oh, wait...
Rhetoric? Remember linkin park, the majority of their break out albumn is complaining about how they were screwed by their last manager. Canvas the bands you know. Any band thats been around will tell you horror stories of contracts they've been offered. Many will tell you about the ones they signed. Bands are often comprised of young, uneducated, and legalese illiterate guys who have to make decisions. They aren't thinking "hey why should I sign this predatory contract." They are thinking "I'm goign to be fuckign famous!!!!". The number of people persuing a recording contract and "contests" liek american idol do not mean that the industry isn't predatory. Perhaps my particular town is chalk full of corner cases that don't happen everywhere. And all the jaded, bitter mucisians here are odddities. Somewhat unlikely.
PS. Your post was pretty racists. Aside from US pop most of US/Ca/UK music rarely gets out of their own country. Rap does not do well in asia. Country either. While the Us music scene does export more then others it has many genres and artists that do not get exported. There are a few who make a small dent into the US markets. Like Faye wong.
Pop rules in Asia. A few niche bands do well too. Asian music does include China, Hong Kong, and many other nations as well.
Artists revenue derives from concerts and merch. They still make money. They just write off the cost of recording as promo material.
The entire music industry is set up to abuse recording artists. Exorbinant marketting fees, a advanced based signing model, shady producers and a lot of very bad accounting that affects briteney spears as much as it does from . I had friends who had record promoters run up a 17,000 charges to book them in dive bars (within our own town). They never notified them of what was owed or outstanding until my friends demanded to know where they stood financially and the promoters handed them a 17,000 invoice for work and a bit of merch(a few dozen t-shirts, a few dozen logo'd props)... Most of the industry is crooked and sleazy and I won't cry a single tear if every studio that comprises the RIAA went banrupt and all the artists had to fend for themselves. It means the wolves have died and the lambs need to figure out how to get eaten without them.
Sometimes you do something small and watch it snow ball. The ad itself was fluffy and very mild for an attack ad. his company acted within their own policy and terminated him. He seems to be taking it in stride. He reecognized his mistake and is moving on. The publicity will likely net him a job somewhere with as good or better pay. So even if he is a knob, he's porblably a knob with prospects.
It's a pretty obvious "satire" or protected derrivative work. they may not win that lawsuit and in even pressing a lawsuit against the guy, they would seem "partisan" to a lot of their consumers.
You actually had to patch the game with a user mod to "unlock" it. It wasn't a controller code you put in but a software patch that flipped a few bits. Oddly no one had any problems with a similiar mini game in gods of war but most likely it was just not brought to the attention of the overly sensitive, irrational group that normally makes so much noise over it.
As for the data, it's common practice to be fairly lazy about stuff in most industries. KOTOR2 has models and dialogue never used that was pressed on disc. Planescape had a rash of audio files that were never used. Castlevania SOTN had several incomplete levels included that could be accessed with a glitch. the NES metroid had a whole bunch of unfinished levels. At a certain point in developement it's easier just to disable in code and press then to do a data audit. These days excess data doesn't cost any more to press but dev do cost money to comb through binaries and remove un-needed content.
The point is her original action did not violate any laws. The NFL failed to follow the letter of the law.
Also check out the thourough job the canadians did to the natives here. Although it's hard to feel sympathy for such a "priviliged on paper" minority. If they realized how the rules favored them and played by the rule, Canada would 50% native owned by 2100.
There is no way in hell those batteries will last that long. You'll be lucky to get 100,000 on the battery. That's another $3000 each replacement, at 2.5 that's $7500 more over your lifetime.
You left out other significant wear parts too, like brakes.
100,000 is the garenteed lifetime. They almost always exceed 100,000.
I live in the UK, I haven't even seen a PS3 yet, my "vitriol" as you put it (I call it annoyance), is not directed at the product itself, but rather at Sony for thinking they can take a large dump on it's consumers. We get the product last with worse backwards compatibility, but have to pay the most(£425\~$825); how does that add up?
Not to be flippant but the UK gets short end of the stick a lot. In fact the EU in general gets things last, gets things at a 100% mark up, and You get thing in quantities that are lower then most states. Partly it's because EU/UK governments are much more protectionist with their trade then US/CA. I don't know how much of that £425 pricetag is sony being arrogant or hidden tarrifs and VAT. The more limited BC is likely for the same reasons. They need to bring the price down as much as possible and still not lose their shirts in hardware. Sony will not take losses like MS does on hardware.
I don't think Sony did the Ps3 right. They should have launched this cheaper, earlier, and with better games if they hoped to repeat their last gen success. But it's nto as bad as others make it out to be. I own one and it serves me well. I basically bought a cheap linux boxen with some blu ray player capability and happens to play my PS2 games well. I have a HD TV, I know linux well enough to install the yellow dog, and I have enough spending cash to need little rationalization for the cost. Canada has very low cost of living.
If this generation hasn't amply shown it: Past platform results do nto dictate future performance.Wii might dominate 10:1 like the Ps2 did to have the Wii2 come in 2nd or third liek the Ps3 is currently.