"Some companies, like BP, aren't pure evil. Some, like Sony BMG, totally are."
Christ, you've been on Slashdot too long. As much as Sony fucks over their customers, they're not the ones employing guerrillas in Colombia, etc.
We've got corporations that, for example, turn a blind eye to child labor (Nike), unfree labor (Coca-Cola), or mass homicide by industrial accidents (Union Carbide). DRM and DMCA lawsuits really just don't belong on the same scale.
Exactly. There's no point in getting a PS3 until then, is there?
"More studios are producing Bluray content than HDDVD."
More studios are producing DVD content than BluRay and HD-DVD combined. Currently, they'd have a bigger market if intsead it played DVDs but only in French.
So we have a game system for games that don't exist and a movie player that caters to a niche market. What's the point?
"it's probably only a matter of time before Square-Enix gets antsy and starts to think about Final Fantasy 13 and other games appearing on the XBox 360 and Wii."
360, sure. But Final Fantasy has always been a showboat of pushing graphics and sound, which isn't the direction Wii is going. And with their focus continuing to be on Japan, the only thing that would make S-E shift FF from the PS3 to the 360 is if the 360 actually overtakes the PS3 in Japan.
DQX on the Wii? I'd put money on it. KH3? Maybe. But FFXIII? I wouldn't hold my breath.
"What I AM surprised about is to see the number of Z:TP copies sold for the NGC vs the number sold for the Wii."
People could find something to play the GCN version on. Sales of the Wii version were limited by the number of Wiis available to play it. Personally, I got the GCN version as soon as it came out rather than deal with the insanity of trying to get a Wii before Christmas (which fell into my lap on Wednesday).
Besides, there's also the "Link is a lefty and anything else is heresy!" camp.
"The biggest problem facing the U.S. isn't the wage gap, but the surge of regulations that prevent the poor from becoming rich"
Economic mobility is supposed to work both ways: stupid rich people are supposed to become poor when they are incompetent. But between outrageous executive salaries that couldn't possibly be spent in a single lifetime, along with benefits and golden parachutes, the rich are set for life, the lives of their children, and the lives of their grandchildren. This is money that is simply not up for the competition your touting.
One possibility for why Sony doesn't want it on their players is that they don't want the competition to their movies. Feature films nowadays have the same depth of plot as your average porn, relying instead on suggestiveness and innuendo to bring in their audiences. This on top of the celebrity news that sells so well by asking important questions like "Did she get a boob job?"
As porn has become more readily available (and not just on the internet), movie studios have had to come closer and closer to that ever-fuzzy line dividing porn and non-porn in order to get the Easy Buck (i. e. not relying on character driven stories, etc.). Sony's Basic Instinct simply does not have the same shock value it had 14 years ago, and a brief glimpse of a no-name actress kissing another woman and not wearing panties simply would not make as much money if the movie were released today.
Sony needs porn to be of lesser production values if their movie studios are to compete. "ZOMG, she's topless for three seconds!" in 1080p won't net you the same kind of revenues when you can see all the silicone-laden breasts you want at the same resolution on the same player. Sony needs porn to be grainey/low-resolution/etc. in order to maintain the profitablility of their shock value.
I can't see this as Sony taking the moral high ground any more than I could laud a stripper for not being a prostitute.
"Japan plays a large part in whether a system becomes successfull or not..."
Maybe 20 years ago, but nowadays Japan is really just another Europe. The market you want to score nowadays is the huge North American one. This is why we see things like the Nintendo DS being released on this side of the Pacific first (bundled with a Metroid demo... Metroid:North America::Dragon Quest:Japan).
Nintendo has kept their focus on North America since Donkey Kong (written to increase cabinet sales in North America), it was North America in which they instituded their draconian licensing scheme for the NES (because dominating this market was that important), and it was North Americans like the ones who bought an N64 to play Goldeneye on that kept Nintendo consoles afloat during the recent doldrums. Iwata came to the head of NCL from NOA (which he was given after he married Yamauchi's freakin' daughter), and even before that, it seemed more major decisions came from Redmond rather than Kyoto. Hell, they even spun off their Canadian operations to a new division, while the UK is still bundled with Europe.
Meanwhile, "global" Sony continues to focus on Japan with something approaching zealotry, with their domination in other markets seemingly more coincidental than deliberate. Their strategy with the PS3 seems to be to discount the Xbox 360 simply because it's doing poorly in Japan, ignoring that it's trouncing their offering in the one market that contains half the world's gamers.
If Japan were the alpha and omega of console gaming that it was in the 1980's, there'd be no Xbox 360. The reality is, if Sony doesn't give it's PS3 offering a major overhaul, their PS4 market will look about the same as the Bandai Playdia or the NEC PCEngine: modest-to-respectable in Japan, without a prayer beyond its shores.
"Microsoft is an american company, and it's no secret that american culture is both loved and hated in japan."
Japan is the biggest bunch of derranged Americophiles this side of Texas. I suspect the dismal reception of the Xbox has less to do with the "cultural feel" of the console and the feelings of the average Japanese consumer and more to do with the nature of business in Japan; the culture of the zaibatsu still persists.
Or had you not noticed the design similarities between the Wii and the iPod? Even the packaging is markedly similar.
"The loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter was blamed on an error converting between English units and metric units."
As I recall, the conflict came into play partly because NASA was using metric. The federal government is about the only customer of the US aerospace industry that insists on using metric for everything (civilian air traffic control, even in other countries, measures altitude in feet instead of meters).
So this announcement that NASA will keep on doing what they've been doing for decades really doesn't change things one way or another. The real question will be whether the contractors NASA deals with will be careful about avoiding future embarassment (and I'm not so sure, since the blame in the public view rests solely with NASA).
ZOMG! Stop the presses! I'm running Microsoft Linux XP!
On a more serious note, if you're going to implement a censorship regime on a large number of clients, why would you try to do it on the client end with a file easily reconfigurable by the user rather than intercepting and redirecting the DNS requests?
"It's not like Sony is chasing those third party developers away these days, is it? Given the amount of A-list development studios they own outright, they can hardly produce less content now than from the PS2 days."
Let's step into the Wayback Machine, Sherman, and take a look at 1995.
It's not like Nintedo is chasing those third party developers away these days, is it? Given the amount of A-list titles they develop outright, they can hardly produce less content now than from the SNES days.
"As for Final Fantasy, that probably won't happen. However, Square-Enix has made some vague noises about putting out an RPG of some sort for the 360."
I'm willing to bet that Sony got blindsided with the announcement that DQIX will be for the DS. It'll have little effect outside of Japan, but having VII and VIII as well as remakes of IV and V on Sony consoles wasn't exactly a bad thing for Sony sales. Final Fantasy is a mere consolation prize compared to Dragon Quest.
Final Fantasy XIII specifically, when will that come out again, 2008? A lot can happen between now and then, and S-E might move that to the 360 if, say, the 360 still has a considerably larger installed base. The PS3 may be the technologically superior platform, but so was the Sega Master System, and we all know what Final Fantasy was published for.
"I'll put $10 down on Microsoft releasing a "media center" edition of the 360, similar to their operating system version of Windows."
That would cut into Windows/PC sales, their bread-and-butter. They want to sell you an Xbox 360 that utilizes the spiffy Media Center features of Windows Vista (which it does, out of the box), not replaces it. Anything else would be cannibalism on their part, not to mention piss off PC vendors.
Slashdot Mirror
"I read somewhere that Microsoft teamed up with CIA to block myspace."
Finally, some good news about the War on Terror!
""Condoms don't belong in school(.)" said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven"
According to him, they apparently don't belong anywhere.
"Some companies, like BP, aren't pure evil. Some, like Sony BMG, totally are."
Christ, you've been on Slashdot too long. As much as Sony fucks over their customers, they're not the ones employing guerrillas in Colombia, etc.
We've got corporations that, for example, turn a blind eye to child labor (Nike), unfree labor (Coca-Cola), or mass homicide by industrial accidents (Union Carbide). DRM and DMCA lawsuits really just don't belong on the same scale.
"Heavenly Sword, MGS4 et al aren't even out yet."
Exactly. There's no point in getting a PS3 until then, is there?
"More studios are producing Bluray content than HDDVD."
More studios are producing DVD content than BluRay and HD-DVD combined. Currently, they'd have a bigger market if intsead it played DVDs but only in French.
So we have a game system for games that don't exist and a movie player that caters to a niche market. What's the point?
"it's probably only a matter of time before Square-Enix gets antsy and starts to think about Final Fantasy 13 and other games appearing on the XBox 360 and Wii."
360, sure. But Final Fantasy has always been a showboat of pushing graphics and sound, which isn't the direction Wii is going. And with their focus continuing to be on Japan, the only thing that would make S-E shift FF from the PS3 to the 360 is if the 360 actually overtakes the PS3 in Japan.
DQX on the Wii? I'd put money on it. KH3? Maybe. But FFXIII? I wouldn't hold my breath.
"What I AM surprised about is to see the number of Z:TP copies sold for the NGC vs the number sold for the Wii."
People could find something to play the GCN version on. Sales of the Wii version were limited by the number of Wiis available to play it. Personally, I got the GCN version as soon as it came out rather than deal with the insanity of trying to get a Wii before Christmas (which fell into my lap on Wednesday).
Besides, there's also the "Link is a lefty and anything else is heresy!" camp.
"The biggest problem facing the U.S. isn't the wage gap, but the surge of regulations that prevent the poor from becoming rich"
Economic mobility is supposed to work both ways: stupid rich people are supposed to become poor when they are incompetent. But between outrageous executive salaries that couldn't possibly be spent in a single lifetime, along with benefits and golden parachutes, the rich are set for life, the lives of their children, and the lives of their grandchildren. This is money that is simply not up for the competition your touting.
"But as long as some people are desperare and feel they are being screwed, and they can find an easy target in a rich person, there will be crime."
Except that most violent crime in this country has the poor targeting each other.
One possibility for why Sony doesn't want it on their players is that they don't want the competition to their movies. Feature films nowadays have the same depth of plot as your average porn, relying instead on suggestiveness and innuendo to bring in their audiences. This on top of the celebrity news that sells so well by asking important questions like "Did she get a boob job?"
As porn has become more readily available (and not just on the internet), movie studios have had to come closer and closer to that ever-fuzzy line dividing porn and non-porn in order to get the Easy Buck (i. e. not relying on character driven stories, etc.). Sony's Basic Instinct simply does not have the same shock value it had 14 years ago, and a brief glimpse of a no-name actress kissing another woman and not wearing panties simply would not make as much money if the movie were released today.
Sony needs porn to be of lesser production values if their movie studios are to compete. "ZOMG, she's topless for three seconds!" in 1080p won't net you the same kind of revenues when you can see all the silicone-laden breasts you want at the same resolution on the same player. Sony needs porn to be grainey/low-resolution/etc. in order to maintain the profitablility of their shock value.
I can't see this as Sony taking the moral high ground any more than I could laud a stripper for not being a prostitute.
"She's there, she's naked, presumably she wants to fuck you"
You must be new here.
Why else do you think pr0n technology makes headlines around here?
shutdown -h now
Fuck the users! They exist solely to bemuse the sysadmin! Odds are they've been getting uppity lately and need to be taught a lesson, anyway.
Who paid for it:
"a survey by the Software & Information Industry Association"
"I have to say it in english, because you yankees are too stupid to learn another language."
While it's far more noble to learn a different language for the sole purpose of flaming native speakers in their own tongue?
Besides, down here in los Estados Unidos, we're finding that English and Spanish is far more useful than English and French.
"And, last time I checked, "limey"'s use is not restricted to yankees."
Your queen is a limey! Neener!
I think the yen:turnip exchange rate peaked around the release of Super Mario Bros. 2.
"Japan plays a large part in whether a system becomes successfull or not..."
Maybe 20 years ago, but nowadays Japan is really just another Europe. The market you want to score nowadays is the huge North American one. This is why we see things like the Nintendo DS being released on this side of the Pacific first (bundled with a Metroid demo... Metroid:North America::Dragon Quest:Japan).
Nintendo has kept their focus on North America since Donkey Kong (written to increase cabinet sales in North America), it was North America in which they instituded their draconian licensing scheme for the NES (because dominating this market was that important), and it was North Americans like the ones who bought an N64 to play Goldeneye on that kept Nintendo consoles afloat during the recent doldrums. Iwata came to the head of NCL from NOA (which he was given after he married Yamauchi's freakin' daughter), and even before that, it seemed more major decisions came from Redmond rather than Kyoto. Hell, they even spun off their Canadian operations to a new division, while the UK is still bundled with Europe.
Meanwhile, "global" Sony continues to focus on Japan with something approaching zealotry, with their domination in other markets seemingly more coincidental than deliberate. Their strategy with the PS3 seems to be to discount the Xbox 360 simply because it's doing poorly in Japan, ignoring that it's trouncing their offering in the one market that contains half the world's gamers.
If Japan were the alpha and omega of console gaming that it was in the 1980's, there'd be no Xbox 360. The reality is, if Sony doesn't give it's PS3 offering a major overhaul, their PS4 market will look about the same as the Bandai Playdia or the NEC PCEngine: modest-to-respectable in Japan, without a prayer beyond its shores.
"Microsoft is an american company, and it's no secret that american culture is both loved and hated in japan."
Japan is the biggest bunch of derranged Americophiles this side of Texas. I suspect the dismal reception of the Xbox has less to do with the "cultural feel" of the console and the feelings of the average Japanese consumer and more to do with the nature of business in Japan; the culture of the zaibatsu still persists.
Or had you not noticed the design similarities between the Wii and the iPod? Even the packaging is markedly similar.
"(We know: we've had to deal with limey cluelessness for a quarter millenium here in Québec)"
I don't know what's funnier: a Quebecois giving us this rant in English, or a Canadian using the term "limey."
You little Canadians are so adorable!
"I had a paypal account handler on the phone within a minute of ringing their (UK) number,"
I note that you didn't mention how long it took you to find said phone number.
"The loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter was blamed on an error converting between English units and metric units."
As I recall, the conflict came into play partly because NASA was using metric. The federal government is about the only customer of the US aerospace industry that insists on using metric for everything (civilian air traffic control, even in other countries, measures altitude in feet instead of meters).
So this announcement that NASA will keep on doing what they've been doing for decades really doesn't change things one way or another. The real question will be whether the contractors NASA deals with will be careful about avoiding future embarassment (and I'm not so sure, since the blame in the public view rests solely with NASA).
Non-Dutch music shoppers still up a creek!
(or, alternatively...)
Continues to fund RIAA lawsuits!
"if it had a HOSTS file (its linux)"
So if it has a hosts file, it's Linux? Hmm...
C:/windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts
ZOMG! Stop the presses! I'm running Microsoft Linux XP!
On a more serious note, if you're going to implement a censorship regime on a large number of clients, why would you try to do it on the client end with a file easily reconfigurable by the user rather than intercepting and redirecting the DNS requests?
But the PS3 downloads have been shipped!
"Parrot back with the nouns changed, stunningly novel strategy there."
Since when must one devise some new and novel debating strategy whenever one wishes to demonstrate a point? At least I'm not propping up a straw man.
"Problem is, NES was notoriously abusive to third party devs for almost its entire lifetime til now."
I was referring to the introduction of the Nintendo 64 (hence the year 1995 and the reference to the SNES, not the NES).
"Many are still taking a wait-and-see attitude."
If third-party developers are so skittish about Nintendo, why are they still flocking to the DS?
"It's not like Sony is chasing those third party developers away these days, is it? Given the amount of A-list development studios they own outright, they can hardly produce less content now than from the PS2 days."
Let's step into the Wayback Machine, Sherman, and take a look at 1995.
It's not like Nintedo is chasing those third party developers away these days, is it? Given the amount of A-list titles they develop outright, they can hardly produce less content now than from the SNES days.
"As for Final Fantasy, that probably won't happen. However, Square-Enix has made some vague noises about putting out an RPG of some sort for the 360."
I'm willing to bet that Sony got blindsided with the announcement that DQIX will be for the DS. It'll have little effect outside of Japan, but having VII and VIII as well as remakes of IV and V on Sony consoles wasn't exactly a bad thing for Sony sales. Final Fantasy is a mere consolation prize compared to Dragon Quest.
Final Fantasy XIII specifically, when will that come out again, 2008? A lot can happen between now and then, and S-E might move that to the 360 if, say, the 360 still has a considerably larger installed base. The PS3 may be the technologically superior platform, but so was the Sega Master System, and we all know what Final Fantasy was published for.
"I'll put $10 down on Microsoft releasing a "media center" edition of the 360, similar to their operating system version of Windows."
That would cut into Windows/PC sales, their bread-and-butter. They want to sell you an Xbox 360 that utilizes the spiffy Media Center features of Windows Vista (which it does, out of the box), not replaces it. Anything else would be cannibalism on their part, not to mention piss off PC vendors.