Does anyone know if Microsoft has any plans for Windows Mobile? It's old and slow, but I actually prefer the UI to the iPhone's. If they made a decent web browser they could be back in the game! I prefer the precision of the style to the fatfingered approach of the iPhone and Pre.
Valve is too cheap to devote resources to PS3, so Gabe Newell badmouths the system. It's self-serving bluster and it says more about Valve than the PS3. Console ports aren't really their expertise-the in-house ports of Orange Box and Left4Dead for 360 are clearly inferior to the Windows versions
Or hell, take Ghostbusters and see the annoying PS3 artifacting.
They fixed that with a patch. Again, lazy coding doesn't really reflect on the overall quality of the system. (Although you can argue that it doesn't really matter that it looks worse, it just does and you'd rather buy the one that looks better. I respect that.)
Is this the reason that new games cost $60 or more? Without the marketing costs, new games could cost a more reasonable $15-20. This would encourage people like me to buy new games rather than waiting to buy them used.
What evidence do you have that games would cost $20 with no marketing? There are plenty of games released with little or no marketing, and they cost more or less the same as a standard game.
I managed the business end of a Snoopy snow cone push cart once, and let me tell you...it was like Hell on Earth. I'd never wish that upon anyone. Never.
Would that be CableCARD 1 or 2? With or without the commonly used SDV, which was not in the spec?
Motorola and Qualcomm both have no problem with CableCARD.
Motorola and Qualcomm are the manufacturers of the official cable boxes used by Comcast/Time Warner/etc. They have inside information on how to deal with the particular (read: non-compliant) quirks of the cable networks. TiVO doesn't.
The FCC has done a horrible job with standards lately. The analog/digital switchover was a mess. 8VSB modulations sucks compared to COFDM-and they're hacking in "mobile ATSC" to deal with the limitations after-the-fact. I doubt anything will come out of that. They also mandated Firewire on cable boxes-but didn't mandate Firewire on TVs or satellite boxes. The whole thing is a huge mess that could have been easily avoided.
Teddy Roosevelt was "anti-capitalist" and "anti-achievement?" Clearly you know nothing of the man. May I recommend "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" and "Theodore Rex," if you care to raise the shades of ignorance around your mind?
Also, "supporting regulation" is a very immature way to look at political stances. You have obviously confused the late-20th-century Republican rhetoric of being "for deregulation" with an actual philosophy of governance. Do you really oppose child labor laws? Or pure food laws that kept rat parts out of the meat? Those were the type of regulations Roosevelt supported.
So yes, I think it's fair for the previous poster to call you a right-wing conservative, albeit the idiotic, Rush Limbaugh-type that is quick to label and very short on facts.
The pads are because people were dying in football. Many, many people. President Theodore Roosevelt mandated the pads. Rugby allows interlocking formations and does not allow the forward pass. This makes it much less likely for rugby players to be involved in high speed collisions of the type in American football.
.... you can sit on your ass, hire some lawyers, and soak up millions via your government granted monopoly.
That's what the cable companies do.
Or you can roll up your sleeves and work your ass off innovating, servicing customers, and building up a customer base
That's what TiVO did.
Sadly, it looks like they're quickly going out of business. The government should have mandated a universal standard for Satellite and Cable boxes so that TiVO (and any other manufacturer) could easily interface. Instead, we have a slapdash mix of ever-changing technologies like ATSC, QAM, SDV, etc and it's very difficult to design to a moving target (as anyone who has attempted to use a TiVO with CableCard knows).
A lobotomy never makes things better. And as for antidepressants, they help a lot more people than they harm, although you are right about modern medicine not really knowing how they work, exactly. Of course, to put things into perspective, this is true for most medicine. Also, electroshock therapy works very well for depression, but there's a huge taboo on using it now.
France, Germany and the UK all have very high obesity rates as well. I think Germany's is actually worse than the US. It's easy to say "stupid, fat Americans" but those countries have their share of problems too. Not to justify obesity-it needs to be dealt with-but it's not just the Americans.
I keep getting hungrier and hungrier, and my brain keeps gettting dimmer and dimmer! I was once a sex symbol; now, I am obese-demented superstar. I love stwawbewwy ice kweam and rubbing egg whites in my arm pits. Who am I?
Give up? I'm MARLON BRANDO! (Yes, I know I'm dead, but being dead gives one the amount of time to learn about technology, and then become interested in sites such as Slashdot. So what I'm saying is entirely plausible and you cannot dismiss it).
The same goes for all last-line safety systems. They should be 100% mechanical, uninfluenced by these unreliable, capricious devices we call computers.
Totally agree...and I think most people who work IT for a living would agree with you.
Yeah, only for about the last 10 years, bro. Way to keep up.
She managed to find that, install it and learn how to use it on her own but didn't have a clue as to how to move pictures from her old Windows machine to her MacBook.
Precompiled binaries...they're a hoot. You should learn about them sometime.
I knew she would be better off with a mac but your statement of "anybody who uses a Mac knows" makes me cringe.
Wake me up when someone creates Mac malware able to propagate through security flaws in Mail (a la Outlook Express) or via remote root execution (Nimda/Slammer type). Until that is possible, pwning Macs isn't really worth the trouble.
Where the hell have you been? Microsoft has broken Mac compatibility with Exchange many, many times...most notably when they quit releasing Outlook (which had true MAPI support) and replaced it with Entourage, which in many ways is less functional than Outlook Web Access. Microsoft is king of purposely breaking compatibility (although to be fair, they have been a lot nicer lately). Apple is small potatoes compared to what MS has pulled over the years.
So...you're happier not playing all those games that "failed to cater to you" on the Xbox on an Xbox 360, rather than not playing the games might've "catered to you" on PS3?
Brilliant logic! Of course, you could just get a PS2 and spend a lot less money overall on games that you might enjoy, but that would require that you have a functioning brain stem. After reading your post I'm not so sure you do.
They do not lock down the Cell, they lock down the graphics card. This is to discourage people from using PS3 Linux as a cheap development environment. And now you can understand why they did that, as Linux is no longer an option (at least not without hacking-which I'm sure we'll see in a few months).
If you really want to know about the 360's design quality, here's a story my friend told me. Purely anecdotal, so take it as you may.
My friend works at Google, one of his fellow hardware engineers used to work at Microsoft on the 360 team-specifically, doing thermal engineering. When this guy got word from his managers that the 360 was going to come out in time for Christmas 2005, no matter what, he quit and said "don't put my name on this thing." Everyone who designed knew that it was a crappy rush job of a console, but they didn't care because they wanted to get a jump on Sony (Nintendo was not even considered a competitor at this point). Now Microsoft has dumped billions of dollars into replacing consoles, and for what? A very unprofitable 2nd place...and with the PS3 price drop, they could be in 3rd place by this time next year.
I'm not sure rushing the console was worth it, if they could have had 6 more months to design a better console they would probably still have the same market share, but with much less cash spent on replacing existing customers' consoles.
Considering that when your PS3 breaks you simply need to buy a new one...ya I'd consider this a good thing.
PS3s don't break like 360s. In fact, no console in history has broken as much. Amazing that people will accept such shoddy workmanship for a small difference in up-front costs.
My friend works with one of the guys who was in charge of thermal engineering on the Xbox 360 team. When his manager told him they were going to release in time for Christmas 2005, no matter what, he quit his job and said "don't put my name on this." Face it, the 360 is a shitty rush job that has cost Microsoft billions in exchange for what...2nd place in the market, barely ahead of the PS3? If I were an MS shareholder I wouldn't be too happy with this.
Never underestimate the ability of a gamer with coding skills. If we want to play Shadow Of The Colossus on a PC or a modified Xbox, we will, and Up Your Arse, Mr. Lawyer.
A "gamer with coding skills" probably has enough money to buy a $65 PS2. Plus, there are already PS2 emulators for Windows, and they have very steep system requirements (dual-core 3.0 Ghz is the absolute MINIMUM) . The current generation consoles (360 and PS3) are far too powerful to be emulated by off-the-shelf PC components. At this point, it would be pointless to try. If you really want to play games that badly, plunk down the $299 or wait 5 years for computers to get fast enough to reliably emulate a 360. It has nothing to do with lawyers.
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Does anyone know if Microsoft has any plans for Windows Mobile? It's old and slow, but I actually prefer the UI to the iPhone's. If they made a decent web browser they could be back in the game! I prefer the precision of the style to the fatfingered approach of the iPhone and Pre.
It stunk so badly Valve has given up on the PS3.
Valve is too cheap to devote resources to PS3, so Gabe Newell badmouths the system. It's self-serving bluster and it says more about Valve than the PS3. Console ports aren't really their expertise-the in-house ports of Orange Box and Left4Dead for 360 are clearly inferior to the Windows versions
Or hell, take Ghostbusters and see the annoying PS3 artifacting.
They fixed that with a patch. Again, lazy coding doesn't really reflect on the overall quality of the system. (Although you can argue that it doesn't really matter that it looks worse, it just does and you'd rather buy the one that looks better. I respect that.)
Is this the reason that new games cost $60 or more? Without the marketing costs, new games could cost a more reasonable $15-20. This would encourage people like me to buy new games rather than waiting to buy them used.
What evidence do you have that games would cost $20 with no marketing? There are plenty of games released with little or no marketing, and they cost more or less the same as a standard game.
I managed the business end of a Snoopy snow cone push cart once, and let me tell you...it was like Hell on Earth. I'd never wish that upon anyone. Never.
Sort of like they did with CableCARD?
Would that be CableCARD 1 or 2? With or without the commonly used SDV, which was not in the spec?
Motorola and Qualcomm both have no problem with CableCARD.
Motorola and Qualcomm are the manufacturers of the official cable boxes used by Comcast/Time Warner/etc. They have inside information on how to deal with the particular (read: non-compliant) quirks of the cable networks. TiVO doesn't.
The FCC has done a horrible job with standards lately. The analog/digital switchover was a mess. 8VSB modulations sucks compared to COFDM-and they're hacking in "mobile ATSC" to deal with the limitations after-the-fact. I doubt anything will come out of that. They also mandated Firewire on cable boxes-but didn't mandate Firewire on TVs or satellite boxes. The whole thing is a huge mess that could have been easily avoided.
Teddy Roosevelt was "anti-capitalist" and "anti-achievement?" Clearly you know nothing of the man. May I recommend "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" and "Theodore Rex," if you care to raise the shades of ignorance around your mind?
Also, "supporting regulation" is a very immature way to look at political stances. You have obviously confused the late-20th-century Republican rhetoric of being "for deregulation" with an actual philosophy of governance. Do you really oppose child labor laws? Or pure food laws that kept rat parts out of the meat? Those were the type of regulations Roosevelt supported.
So yes, I think it's fair for the previous poster to call you a right-wing conservative, albeit the idiotic, Rush Limbaugh-type that is quick to label and very short on facts.
They'd remember pretty quickly if I started waterboarding them!
The pads are because people were dying in football. Many, many people. President Theodore Roosevelt mandated the pads. Rugby allows interlocking formations and does not allow the forward pass. This makes it much less likely for rugby players to be involved in high speed collisions of the type in American football.
.... you can sit on your ass, hire some lawyers, and soak up millions via your government granted monopoly.
That's what the cable companies do.
Or you can roll up your sleeves and work your ass off innovating, servicing customers, and building up a customer base
That's what TiVO did.
Sadly, it looks like they're quickly going out of business. The government should have mandated a universal standard for Satellite and Cable boxes so that TiVO (and any other manufacturer) could easily interface. Instead, we have a slapdash mix of ever-changing technologies like ATSC, QAM, SDV, etc and it's very difficult to design to a moving target (as anyone who has attempted to use a TiVO with CableCard knows).
A lobotomy never makes things better. And as for antidepressants, they help a lot more people than they harm, although you are right about modern medicine not really knowing how they work, exactly. Of course, to put things into perspective, this is true for most medicine. Also, electroshock therapy works very well for depression, but there's a huge taboo on using it now.
Ah, Worthington's law. More money than = better than!
France, Germany and the UK all have very high obesity rates as well. I think Germany's is actually worse than the US. It's easy to say "stupid, fat Americans" but those countries have their share of problems too. Not to justify obesity-it needs to be dealt with-but it's not just the Americans.
I keep getting hungrier and hungrier, and my brain keeps gettting dimmer and dimmer! I was once a sex symbol; now, I am obese-demented superstar. I love stwawbewwy ice kweam and rubbing egg whites in my arm pits. Who am I?
Give up? I'm MARLON BRANDO! (Yes, I know I'm dead, but being dead gives one the amount of time to learn about technology, and then become interested in sites such as Slashdot. So what I'm saying is entirely plausible and you cannot dismiss it).
The same goes for all last-line safety systems. They should be 100% mechanical, uninfluenced by these unreliable, capricious devices we call computers.
Totally agree...and I think most people who work IT for a living would agree with you.
Did you know they have LimeWire on Macs now?
Yeah, only for about the last 10 years, bro. Way to keep up.
She managed to find that, install it and learn how to use it on her own but didn't have a clue as to how to move pictures from her old Windows machine to her MacBook.
Precompiled binaries...they're a hoot. You should learn about them sometime.
I knew she would be better off with a mac but your statement of "anybody who uses a Mac knows" makes me cringe.
Wake me up when someone creates Mac malware able to propagate through security flaws in Mail (a la Outlook Express) or via remote root execution (Nimda/Slammer type). Until that is possible, pwning Macs isn't really worth the trouble.
You're too lazy to get a login and yet you expect us to value your comment? Stuff it up your bunghole!
Where the hell have you been? Microsoft has broken Mac compatibility with Exchange many, many times...most notably when they quit releasing Outlook (which had true MAPI support) and replaced it with Entourage, which in many ways is less functional than Outlook Web Access. Microsoft is king of purposely breaking compatibility (although to be fair, they have been a lot nicer lately). Apple is small potatoes compared to what MS has pulled over the years.
So...you're happier not playing all those games that "failed to cater to you" on the Xbox on an Xbox 360, rather than not playing the games might've "catered to you" on PS3?
Brilliant logic! Of course, you could just get a PS2 and spend a lot less money overall on games that you might enjoy, but that would require that you have a functioning brain stem. After reading your post I'm not so sure you do.
They do not lock down the Cell, they lock down the graphics card. This is to discourage people from using PS3 Linux as a cheap development environment. And now you can understand why they did that, as Linux is no longer an option (at least not without hacking-which I'm sure we'll see in a few months).
DNA...we all have it. Of course, no one likes to talk about it...but I'm glad someone finally has the guts to do something about it. Fuck DNA!
emotionally uncommitted, self-focused, single 30-year-olds who spend all of their money on self-gratification.
Why, that's me to a "T"! You are a mind-reading sorceror!
If you really want to know about the 360's design quality, here's a story my friend told me. Purely anecdotal, so take it as you may.
My friend works at Google, one of his fellow hardware engineers used to work at Microsoft on the 360 team-specifically, doing thermal engineering. When this guy got word from his managers that the 360 was going to come out in time for Christmas 2005, no matter what, he quit and said "don't put my name on this thing." Everyone who designed knew that it was a crappy rush job of a console, but they didn't care because they wanted to get a jump on Sony (Nintendo was not even considered a competitor at this point). Now Microsoft has dumped billions of dollars into replacing consoles, and for what? A very unprofitable 2nd place...and with the PS3 price drop, they could be in 3rd place by this time next year.
I'm not sure rushing the console was worth it, if they could have had 6 more months to design a better console they would probably still have the same market share, but with much less cash spent on replacing existing customers' consoles.
Considering that when your PS3 breaks you simply need to buy a new one...ya I'd consider this a good thing.
PS3s don't break like 360s. In fact, no console in history has broken as much. Amazing that people will accept such shoddy workmanship for a small difference in up-front costs.
My friend works with one of the guys who was in charge of thermal engineering on the Xbox 360 team. When his manager told him they were going to release in time for Christmas 2005, no matter what, he quit his job and said "don't put my name on this." Face it, the 360 is a shitty rush job that has cost Microsoft billions in exchange for what...2nd place in the market, barely ahead of the PS3? If I were an MS shareholder I wouldn't be too happy with this.
Never underestimate the ability of a gamer with coding skills. If we want to play Shadow Of The Colossus on a PC or a modified Xbox, we will, and Up Your Arse, Mr. Lawyer.
A "gamer with coding skills" probably has enough money to buy a $65 PS2. Plus, there are already PS2 emulators for Windows, and they have very steep system requirements (dual-core 3.0 Ghz is the absolute MINIMUM) . The current generation consoles (360 and PS3) are far too powerful to be emulated by off-the-shelf PC components. At this point, it would be pointless to try. If you really want to play games that badly, plunk down the $299 or wait 5 years for computers to get fast enough to reliably emulate a 360. It has nothing to do with lawyers.
No secrets in a free market? Since when was that a requirement?