Offline co-op is handled on a single Xbox. One copy of the AI states, one playing of the cutscenes (if a player hits a cutscene barrier, the game "ends" for the other and the both watch).
Notice they didn't say there was any kind of co-op across linked Xboxes. Only splitscreen. Hell of a lot easier that way.
I think what he's saying, and I agree, is that a lot of people will think since the iPod has copies of the music, that justifies a "backup". I mean, it's the exact same data, why shouldn't it?
I've had that "feature" bite more than a few of my friends in the ass, though (erasing the iPod to "match" a blank library). I've seen people plug iPods into friends' computers, not thinking, and have their entire library removed (and replaced with their friends). These are the same people that don't read the warning message, but it's happened so often I wonder if the warning is clear enough.
There's a big difference between being successful and being a "hit".
The current iPods (black and white 20 GB and the iPod Mini) are a hit as much for the price as the interface and ease of use. Apple found that magic number of $250-300 to be acceptable. A lot of people (myself included) thought that would be too high, but it worked. Good for them.
However, a $500-600 device that just shows photos and has a color screen is not going to cut it when a vast number of video devices are flooding the market. Once again, Apple is setting their sights too high (the original iPod was only bought by the most diehard Apple fans). They'll need to lower the price, quickly, to keep up with the likes of my gMini400 and all those MS portable media centers that are starting to pop up.
For only a hundred bucks more. Other similar devices have built-in compact flash slots, same or better battery life and better price. I'll pass on this, Apple.
To be honest, I'm extremely disppointed in the iPod Photo offering. Before I get marked down as a troll, I have many legitimate reasons:
I own an Archos gMini400. It plays DivX/XviD videos (full movies -- got Lord of the Rings and about a dozen MST3K episodes on this thing right now), views photos on screen and on TV (just like iPod Photo), plays music with album art (just like iPod Photo) and has 10 hours claimed battery life playing music, 5 hours video (although I've had it run closer to 7 hours). I also got mine for $340 by using CNet's pricewatcher feature.
Aside from the bigger hard drive, there's absolutely nothing to sway me to the iPod Photo from my gMini. The price is right, the interface is good (not as great as iPod's but few are) but an interface isn't worth $140 to me. The Archos works on both Mac and PC flawlessly, and even has a built-in CF slot (something photo sites have already frowned the iPod upon).
Unfortunately, I thought Apple's first color would have a lot more revolutionary features. Instead, they're playing catchup to other companies, with an expensive and not-so-worthy introduction into colored screens (I mean come on... they don't even win on battery life anymore). I'm personally very glad I jumped Apple's iPod ship a few months ago.
"Mark my words - they will release a pay-for addon for this... it was all in the plan."
Wow. I mean, wow. That's amazingly ass-backwards. That's like you have your head in your ass in someway that actually makes it look forward, but is still wrong.
Think about what needs to be done to maintain states. In multiplayer, you have a nice, small set of rules on a tiny map. All you need to note is where players go, whether or not X Warthog rolling over Y player will be valid given the physics, etc.
Contrast that with single player. Bunch of AIs running around doing their own thing. Cutscenes (How do you handle this? Play a movie while the other player is running around?) Scripted moments (what happens when the warthog driven by AI drives off with one player, while the other is left standing. Is he to just chase the original?) There's a lot going on, bub.
Not only is it a dupe, and it's at the same time on the front page, but it's within half a dozen articles on my screen. Is that a record? This must've been resubmitted as a joke to test the editors.
You're comparing apples and bananas. Pikmin 2 didn't sell well because the original Pikmin was extremely disappointing (interesting premise flawly executed). Pikmin 2 is much better (I own it) but it's still a relatively repetitive game with a lot of polish. How well it sold had nothing to do with Fable.
"Great - now I can crash my car even after I've already crashed it."
Congratulations! You are the [100,000th] person to make the [same damn joke about Windows], [nmg196]! Surely, you must be [proud] of your [ability to karma whore]! Please [tell your mom I said hi] and [take a lesson in comedic originality]. Sincerely, [Slashdot].
That's precisely the reason why the original was so successful: it stood out in crowds. You go on a subway, you know who has iPods. Every consumer device in the world is black (or silver).
"Those who are fad-driven, since this will be the 'latest cool thing'"
U2 are hardly in their "fad" stage. In fact, I'm surprised Apple thought U2 was a good idea at all. They haven't had good music in over a decade. It's like that Garfield movie that came out 20 years after it should've.
"Those pondering an iPod purchase, but who were undecided might see extra value in the preloaded songs, and be pushed to buy"
People are stupid, but not that stupid. A lot of people I know who bought iPods (including my brother) already had vast MP3 collections. The music is not "added value". They can get it free of Soulseek.
"U2 fan{boy|girl}s: they will buy because the black iPod screams "I'm a U2 fan"."
To be honest, not sure anyone would want to scream that nowadays.;) Their early stuff was excellent. They went downhill after Joshua Tree.
I've got something even better: a procedure they can get for free. Simply place hand in front of face, curl into fist and run forward as fast as possible. No more TV. Hell, no more anything for that matter (and it'll help you go to sleep!)
So do I. However, since building machines directly increases my knowledge (and hence my time's cost at my job) I think it's a very fair trade-off.
"Modern OSs hardly ever crash. "Never" is just denial on your part."
Actually, no. Mine don't crash. Ever. I'll get the occasional GUI going out of whack, but I haven't rebooted my machines for the past couple years (outside of updates).
And yet, we care more about it. Why? Because it's privacy. If someone could link social security numbers to entertainment and pump it out on P2Ps, we'd be all over it.
Actually, most enterprise people (like myself) are looking for something a little more economical. We like to spend in the range of $1500 per desktop. The tower is $1500 alone, without a monitor, and with only 256 MB of RAM. If they shipped with at least a monitor at that price, we'd talk.
I build my own machines. I support them myself. They never crash. They rarely ever break down (I think I've had to replace one individual part in the last 5 years). And I can do stuff like RAID for cheaper, which saves my TCO. What's your argument for getting an Apple or Dell versus me?
"Can't this be solved by setting a company wide policy for the default homepage?"
We decided to give the users that freedom. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to "allow user to change home page" while "don't allow site to change home page through IE".
"Without that, there probably wouldn't be as much demand."
Why on earth does a Kinko's user need permissions to install programs? Just put the common ones on (Flash, AIM, etc), lock the machine down, and there would be absolutely no complaints.
"political requirements (like CEO "needs" admin rights) often trump security requirements"
Do what we did. Calmly explain to the CEO to look at the past few years, look at no spyware or viruses, and look at 0.0% downtime on the workstations. If that doesn't make enough sense to them bottom-line wise, nothing will.
We ran into an issue where users wanted to change their homepages. Ultimately, we weren't so draconian that we disallowed this. Occcasionally it leads to a homepage changing to a pop-up fest, but very rarely.
"whereas *recovering* from the situation and responding with an *error message* is *GOOD*"
Actually, I prefer "bailing out with an exception" best. That's the.NET model (you can bail and recover, but the default is to bail and throw the debug code). Same as Java to a certain extent.
Slashdot Mirror
Offline co-op is handled on a single Xbox. One copy of the AI states, one playing of the cutscenes (if a player hits a cutscene barrier, the game "ends" for the other and the both watch).
Notice they didn't say there was any kind of co-op across linked Xboxes. Only splitscreen. Hell of a lot easier that way.
I think what he's saying, and I agree, is that a lot of people will think since the iPod has copies of the music, that justifies a "backup". I mean, it's the exact same data, why shouldn't it?
I've had that "feature" bite more than a few of my friends in the ass, though (erasing the iPod to "match" a blank library). I've seen people plug iPods into friends' computers, not thinking, and have their entire library removed (and replaced with their friends). These are the same people that don't read the warning message, but it's happened so often I wonder if the warning is clear enough.
There's a big difference between being successful and being a "hit".
The current iPods (black and white 20 GB and the iPod Mini) are a hit as much for the price as the interface and ease of use. Apple found that magic number of $250-300 to be acceptable. A lot of people (myself included) thought that would be too high, but it worked. Good for them.
However, a $500-600 device that just shows photos and has a color screen is not going to cut it when a vast number of video devices are flooding the market. Once again, Apple is setting their sights too high (the original iPod was only bought by the most diehard Apple fans). They'll need to lower the price, quickly, to keep up with the likes of my gMini400 and all those MS portable media centers that are starting to pop up.
Man, where are my mod points when I need them? Take a look at just about everything from Archos.
For only a hundred bucks more. Other similar devices have built-in compact flash slots, same or better battery life and better price. I'll pass on this, Apple.
To be honest, I'm extremely disppointed in the iPod Photo offering. Before I get marked down as a troll, I have many legitimate reasons:
I own an Archos gMini400. It plays DivX/XviD videos (full movies -- got Lord of the Rings and about a dozen MST3K episodes on this thing right now), views photos on screen and on TV (just like iPod Photo), plays music with album art (just like iPod Photo) and has 10 hours claimed battery life playing music, 5 hours video (although I've had it run closer to 7 hours). I also got mine for $340 by using CNet's pricewatcher feature.
Aside from the bigger hard drive, there's absolutely nothing to sway me to the iPod Photo from my gMini. The price is right, the interface is good (not as great as iPod's but few are) but an interface isn't worth $140 to me. The Archos works on both Mac and PC flawlessly, and even has a built-in CF slot (something photo sites have already frowned the iPod upon).
Unfortunately, I thought Apple's first color would have a lot more revolutionary features. Instead, they're playing catchup to other companies, with an expensive and not-so-worthy introduction into colored screens (I mean come on... they don't even win on battery life anymore). I'm personally very glad I jumped Apple's iPod ship a few months ago.
"Mark my words - they will release a pay-for addon for this... it was all in the plan."
Wow. I mean, wow. That's amazingly ass-backwards. That's like you have your head in your ass in someway that actually makes it look forward, but is still wrong.
Think about what needs to be done to maintain states. In multiplayer, you have a nice, small set of rules on a tiny map. All you need to note is where players go, whether or not X Warthog rolling over Y player will be valid given the physics, etc.
Contrast that with single player. Bunch of AIs running around doing their own thing. Cutscenes (How do you handle this? Play a movie while the other player is running around?) Scripted moments (what happens when the warthog driven by AI drives off with one player, while the other is left standing. Is he to just chase the original?) There's a lot going on, bub.
Not only is it a dupe, and it's at the same time on the front page, but it's within half a dozen articles on my screen. Is that a record? This must've been resubmitted as a joke to test the editors.
You're comparing apples and bananas. Pikmin 2 didn't sell well because the original Pikmin was extremely disappointing (interesting premise flawly executed). Pikmin 2 is much better (I own it) but it's still a relatively repetitive game with a lot of polish. How well it sold had nothing to do with Fable.
"Great - now I can crash my car even after I've already crashed it."
Congratulations! You are the [100,000th] person to make the [same damn joke about Windows], [nmg196]! Surely, you must be [proud] of your [ability to karma whore]! Please [tell your mom I said hi] and [take a lesson in comedic originality]. Sincerely, [Slashdot].
"Strange, I thought that was to see Jobs best Ballmer in a naked, sweaty cage match."
How do you think Ballmer got to be CEO in the first place? Cage match with Gates. Think about it. All he had to do was sit on him.
Sorry, but you're out of your mind.
;) Their early stuff was excellent. They went downhill after Joshua Tree.
"Those who don't like the whiteness"
That's precisely the reason why the original was so successful: it stood out in crowds. You go on a subway, you know who has iPods. Every consumer device in the world is black (or silver).
"Those who are fad-driven, since this will be the 'latest cool thing'"
U2 are hardly in their "fad" stage. In fact, I'm surprised Apple thought U2 was a good idea at all. They haven't had good music in over a decade. It's like that Garfield movie that came out 20 years after it should've.
"Those pondering an iPod purchase, but who were undecided might see extra value in the preloaded songs, and be pushed to buy"
People are stupid, but not that stupid. A lot of people I know who bought iPods (including my brother) already had vast MP3 collections. The music is not "added value". They can get it free of Soulseek.
"U2 fan{boy|girl}s: they will buy because the black iPod screams "I'm a U2 fan"."
To be honest, not sure anyone would want to scream that nowadays.
I've got something even better: a procedure they can get for free. Simply place hand in front of face, curl into fist and run forward as fast as possible. No more TV. Hell, no more anything for that matter (and it'll help you go to sleep!)
"We don't hit the back button, we use mouse gestures."
Not in Lynx I don't, you insensitive clod!
"I have a job. My TCO includes my time."
So do I. However, since building machines directly increases my knowledge (and hence my time's cost at my job) I think it's a very fair trade-off.
"Modern OSs hardly ever crash. "Never" is just denial on your part."
Actually, no. Mine don't crash. Ever. I'll get the occasional GUI going out of whack, but I haven't rebooted my machines for the past couple years (outside of updates).
"It's "copyright infringement".
And yet, we care more about it. Why? Because it's privacy. If someone could link social security numbers to entertainment and pump it out on P2Ps, we'd be all over it.
But little expandibility. We have machines we've extended by 1-2 years through upgrades.
Actually, most enterprise people (like myself) are looking for something a little more economical. We like to spend in the range of $1500 per desktop. The tower is $1500 alone, without a monitor, and with only 256 MB of RAM. If they shipped with at least a monitor at that price, we'd talk.
I build my own machines. I support them myself. They never crash. They rarely ever break down (I think I've had to replace one individual part in the last 5 years). And I can do stuff like RAID for cheaper, which saves my TCO. What's your argument for getting an Apple or Dell versus me?
"Can't this be solved by setting a company wide policy for the default homepage?"
We decided to give the users that freedom. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to "allow user to change home page" while "don't allow site to change home page through IE".
"Without that, there probably wouldn't be as much demand."
Why on earth does a Kinko's user need permissions to install programs? Just put the common ones on (Flash, AIM, etc), lock the machine down, and there would be absolutely no complaints.
"political requirements (like CEO "needs" admin rights) often trump security requirements"
Do what we did. Calmly explain to the CEO to look at the past few years, look at no spyware or viruses, and look at 0.0% downtime on the workstations. If that doesn't make enough sense to them bottom-line wise, nothing will.
"Being the good little MCSE that you are you probably jepordize your network by using IE on your own machine."
Lol. I'm not an MSCE at all (I think that's what you meant to say, not MCSE).
We ran into an issue where users wanted to change their homepages. Ultimately, we weren't so draconian that we disallowed this. Occcasionally it leads to a homepage changing to a pop-up fest, but very rarely.
"whereas *recovering* from the situation and responding with an *error message* is *GOOD*"
.NET model (you can bail and recover, but the default is to bail and throw the debug code). Same as Java to a certain extent.
Actually, I prefer "bailing out with an exception" best. That's the