Watcom didn't really lose the compiler wars, it simply dropped out. Sybase bought Watcom years ago because they wanted Watcom SQL. They immediately stopped development of the Watcom compiler.
Did you not notice that Adobe isn't actively trying to prevent piracy? Someone else did the work, all they did was plugged into their code. It took very little effort on their part to do, so they felt it was worth doing.
Keyboard shortcuts are faster for the ones you use the most. They're not faster for the ones that make you pause to remember what the key is, even though it feels like its faster.
If you know exactly where in the menu an option is, but don't know the mouse is faster. If you don't know where something is and are scanning the menus for it, which is faster depends on your behavior. If you move the mouse thru the menu as you read the choices, the mouse will already be by the choice you need when you find it, making the mouse faster. This also means that if you looked thru the wrong menu on the first try, it'll take longer to go to the next menu. If you just click the menu then leave the mouse there as you scan, the keyboard keys will be faster (provided there is a unique letter to trigger each menu choice).
On the other hand, while almost everyone I know uses photoshop, almost no one I know has actually paid for it, or could afford it. Obviously their crime prevention abilities are somewhat limited:)
Do you think Adobe really cares? You download Photoshop at home and learn how to use it. You go in to work, and your company gets some new task which requires image editing. What are you going to tell your boss to buy?
Also, for the most part, an illegal copy of Photoshop usually does not mean one less copy of Photoshop sold, but rather one less copy sold of Paint Shop or something else in that price range. That helps Adobe's market share figures.
The reason the Pentium Pro (and also Pentium 2 and 3) weren't very good at 16 bit code was due to a bug in executing multiple instructions simulataneously. The Pentium Pro was the first x86 with that capability. The CPU would look at the next few instructions, and if they didn't use the same CPU registers, would execute them simulataneously. Before updating the CPU registers or memory, the CPU would verify that the simultaneous execution was ok. If it was wrong in its earlier assumption, it would redo the instructions individually, which would require clearing the pipeline.
The problem was if you weren't accessing the full 32 bits of a register, in the first step, the CPU would think it could do instructions simultaneously when it couldn't. It wouldn't detect this until later on, and the pipeline would be cleared and the instructions redone. A code block like this would trigger the problem:
mov al, bl ; put the low byte of bx into the low byte of ax mov cx, ax ; put ax into cx
Those instructions must be done in order but the Pentium Pro wouldn't realize it at first, because the initial detection stage didn't realize that changing al also changed ax.
I've heard much of the Donkey Kong Country team had left before MS's acquistion.
I hadn't heard about that, but most of the Goldeneye/Perfect Dark team left a few years ago and formed Free Radical, who made the TimeSplitters games.
Supposedly a decent number of people left when the company was sold to MS. There's also Zoonami, which consists of a lot of ex-Rare people. I'm not sure when those people left Rare.
How so? The bitrate implicitely fixes the size of the file. If it's 128kbps MP3 it will be 16000 bytes per second played. Same for WMA or whatever. If it's exactly the same playing time but different file size, then it's not the same bitrate*. Period.
But you're forgetting, there isn't just raw audio data in the file. I did some work on MP3 playback a few years ago, but it's been a while, so some of my details may be a little off, but it works like this. MP3 audio is broken down into frames, which are 1/75 seconds long. There's a little bit of header data on each frame. This extra data is what makes variable bitrate encoding possible.
WMA most likely has an equivalent to frames, which also have headers. WMA frame headers are probably smaller and/or less frequent than MP3 frame headers, which would explain why WMA files could be smaller than MP3 files at the same bitrate.
The Wonderswan probably would have sold for the Final Fantasy ports alone, and the GP32 really entices me as an older gamer, simply because of it's open development.
Final Fantasy alone wouldn't make it amount to much here. You're forgetting, Japan is where RPGs really sell, and even there, the WonderSwan's sales weren't that much better than the Xbox's. It would completely bomb outside of Japan.
Microsoft came to Bungie with a bucket of money and said "We'll give you this if you become one of our studios and make Halo an X-Box game." It doesn't seem unreasonable to me, and doesn't really seem to violate any principles that I'm aware of.
Most of Microsoft's money comes from illegal abuse of monopoly powers. See the recent anti-trust trial and the 1995 consent decree. Read the details of the consent decree - that's why Windows is around today. If Microsoft didn't do those things, then mentioning Windows to a casual computer user today would get you the same blank stare you'd get by mentioning, say, BeOS. We'd all be using OS/2, GEOS, GEM, Desqview, BeOS, or something else instead of Windows.
MS earned their money by illegal means. As far as I'm concerned, it's unethical to take that money.
Basically, if you get your card to where it gives no errors, and are able to keep it around the same temperature, it won't have any troubles.
Nope, not true. Back when the latest craze on Slashdot was to buy yourself a dual Celeron 366 setup and overclock it to ~500mhz, I knew several people that did that. They all had no problems for about a year, and then the system abruptly stopped turning on.
This isn't true. I've finished the game twice now, and I completed the Earth Shrine first in the first game, and the Wind Shrine first in the second game. Nothing in the Earth Shrine requires you to use the Hookshot, and nothing in the Wind Shrine requires you to use the Mirror Shield. The fact that you didn't see the "guy" (I assume you mean the tree sprite) probably just meant that you already had the Rito with you - Once you've picked up one, you have to go with that one to completion. Can't have them both on the boat, nope nope nope.
Interesting. When I played it I got the Rito girl first. When a friend played it, he wanted to get the tree sprite first, but he simply wasn't there. I'm almost positive that he didn't talk to the Rito girl beforehand, but maybe he did. I haven't bothered to play thru the game again; maybe I will soon.
Play Zelda 1. There's very little forced linearity to it.
You have to get the raft from level 3 to get to 4, and you have to get the ladder from level 4 to make it through the levels after it. And you have to get the flute from level 5 to get to level 7. You also have to beat 1 thru 8 before you can enter 9. That's all that's forced. For example, I just beat Zelda 1 again last week. I did the levels in the order 1, 3, 2, 4, 5, 8, 7, 6, 9.
Wind Waker was clearly designed to be non-linear. When you are told about the last 2 dungeons, you are given no indication you have to do them in order. And when you play through them, you'll realize that nothing in the levels requires them to be beat in order. But the guy who lets you into the second level won't show up until you beat the first. It could've been even better if they continued with the non-linearity - there were originally supposed to be more levels in the game, but they were cut due to time constraints. The most obvious cut is the level before talking to Jabun.
I'm not sure how linear Zelda 3 is; the only thing I'm certain of is that you can beat the level where you get the staff that creates blocks before you beat the ice level.
In Majora's Mask, the real game is the side quests, not the dungeons, and that stuff is very largely non-linear.
Let's not even get into why Nintendo would want to cut into the well established, well running market of the Gameboy.
GameBoy Advance games sell for $35. Of that, $8 goes to the production of the cartridges. Well, 3rd parties pay Nintendo $8 per cartridge, so Nintendo makes more than that.
GameCube games sell for $50, and cost significantly less to produce. Wouldn't you much rather sell GameCube games than GameBoy Advance games?
Also, if they included GBA compatibility into the portable, it would greatly increase its attractiveness.
On the other hand, the success of the PS2 can probably be traced to GT3, GTA, Square, Metal Gear Solid 2, Onimusha, and a host of must-have games that were released before the Xbox hit its stride.
The PS2's success didn't have to do with big games. There really weren't any big games for the PS2 until about a year after the PS2's launch - about the same time as the GameCube and Xbox launched. By then, PS2 sales were already about what current Xbox and GameCube sales combined are.
Other than Halo, the Xbox has had very few games to really drive the system sales. Yes, it has some good games, but not standout games. You can get things like good racers for every system.
The GameCube's failure is due to Nintendo waiting until a year after launch to start bringing out their big names - Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. While Metroid came out far better than anyone expected, Mario and Zelda greatly underachieved. Mario Sunshine was very good, but it's rather short if you don't count the very tedious finding blue coins portion of the game. Zelda had the difficulty toned down way too much, and was also very linear (the non-linearity of past Zelda games was a huge factor in what made them so good).
You're forgetting that AMD has a variety of different speed chips out on the market. Some people just want the fastest chip they can buy, and will pay whatever it costs to get it. Those people are the reason chips cost as much as they do when they come out.
Most people however simply have a rough estimate of what they want to spend on a computer, and buy the best they can afford for that price. They're just as happy with a 3000 or 3200 instead of a 3400.
The current pricing scheme works fine - get big money from the people willing to pay anything for the best there is and let everyone else pay a lot less for a processor not that much slower.
Soul Calibur 2's soundtrack was very forgettable. It's been about 2-3 months since I last played it, and about all I can remember is the first few seconds of 1 of the songs. Oh, and the Zelda music too from the GameCube version.
I only played F-Zero GX for about an hour, so maybe I need more time, but the only thing that stood out at all was the remix of the Mute City music. The Mute City music from F-Zero X was much better though.
Super Smash Bros. Melee had a great soundtrack. They just took the best music (ignore the DK rap) from Nintendo's best games and put it all into one game. Hard to top.
One of the best things they did in Metroid Prime was early game Talon Overworld music. It's a very slow remix of the Brinstar music from the original Metroid. You start playing, and suddenly you realize it sounds familiar. Then you sit and listen and realize what it is, and it just sounds perfect for the situation.
I know the Magmoor Caverns music is the lower Norfair music from Super Metroid, and the fight with Ridley music is the music from the fight with Ridley in Super Metroid, but other than those 3 I don't remember anything else resembling the old Metroid music. (Of course the "you got an item" and "continue from save" sound effects are direct from Super Metroid).
The music from older games holds up so well because it tended to be simple, catchy stuff. Most modern games go for more ambient music, so you don't really remember it afterwards. You can't forget the music from Mario 1 or Zelda 1, but I can't remember any music from Mario Sunshine or The Wind Waker (other than the remixes of the old music).
I can remember lots of music from 2D games, but music from 3D games tends to not leave a lasting impression. I can remember some music from the two N64 Zeldas, but really only the repeating stuff you were supposed to remember (i.e. Saria's song).
I'm very thankful though that I managed to forget the music to Final Fantasy 7. I'm not an RPG fan, but my college roommate was. I remember trying to do homework with some friends while he was playing FF7. The music in that game is so repetitive that it really gets on your nerves in under 5 minutes. Particuarlly the Chocobo racing music...
But seriously, in the original 8bit game, if you finished it 3 times (keeping the same password legacy) you got to see her without her armor (green hair, brown bathingsuit...she keeps the gun arm), and then you get to play with her like that.
That was just based on time. Beat the game fast enough and you get the ending with Samus in a one piece swimsuit. Then start a new game and you'll play as Samus in the swimsuit. Beat the game again, and you see Samus in a bikini. The bikini ending may be time dependent also.
The best ending in the SNES version is beat the game in under 3 hours. For the GBA one, under 2 hours with 100%.
We can estimate how long a day was in the past based on current trends. But as this article shows, that may not be accurate. The article says the discovery of leap seconds is a side effect of the invention of the atomic clock in 1955. That means we've had not quite 50 years to observe trends. For the last 5 the trend has been different than in the past, and we have no clue why. That's over 10% of the sample data that breaks the trend, which isn't a small amount.
I'd say we can't even make a remotely close guess at how long a day was 900 million years ago.
Like all Nintendo controllers, it was designed for the games Miyamoto had in mind.
The only problem with it is it tends to be either great or terrible for a game, whereas the PS2 controller tends to be general purpose, neither great nor terrible for almost all games.
Although it looks odd, the button layout works very well. It's near impossible to hit the wrong button, as they all have a unique shape. The large A button is nice, as games tend to center their controls around it. When you play a game designed with that controller in mind, you'll absolutely love it.
That said, games designed for other controllers don't play as nicely. For LOTR: The Two Towers, EA oddly decided that Y should cancel out of menus, whereas the GameCube convention is B. It's an odd choice, since it just feels right to use B to cancel - you'll naturally try use A to pick and B to cancel in menus without being told, so when something differs, you'll hit the wrong button a lot.
Fighting games like Soul Calibur 2 definately suffer with the GameCube controller, but not to the point that it's unplayable. You get used to it fairly quickly.
Online console gaming won't hurt online PC gaming. PC gaming is really good for two types of games: FPS and RTS. FPS controls a lot better with a keyboard and mouse than with a controller, and RTS would be practically impossible with a controller (yeah yeah there was StarCraft 64, but it sucked).
Consoles used more for games that play better with a controller than with keyboard & mouse. Online racing & fighting games will be a lot better on a console.
As for the online voice chat, I actually think that's a disadvantage. Anyone play WarCraft 3 online? A large part of the chat during games is some guy who sucks cursing out someone else trying to pass the blame for the team losing. You don't want to hear the majority of the chat; most of it is mindless bickering.
I wouldn't say most games play best on the Xbox. *Very* few people find the controller comfortable. Even the Controller S is awkward.
Jumping from the PS2 to the GameCube or Xbox will give you a huge increase in graphics and a large decrease in load times. The jump from GameCube to Xbox is very small.
Slashdot Mirror
Watcom didn't really lose the compiler wars, it simply dropped out. Sybase bought Watcom years ago because they wanted Watcom SQL. They immediately stopped development of the Watcom compiler.
Did you not notice that Adobe isn't actively trying to prevent piracy? Someone else did the work, all they did was plugged into their code. It took very little effort on their part to do, so they felt it was worth doing.
Keyboard shortcuts are faster for the ones you use the most. They're not faster for the ones that make you pause to remember what the key is, even though it feels like its faster.
If you know exactly where in the menu an option is, but don't know the mouse is faster. If you don't know where something is and are scanning the menus for it, which is faster depends on your behavior. If you move the mouse thru the menu as you read the choices, the mouse will already be by the choice you need when you find it, making the mouse faster. This also means that if you looked thru the wrong menu on the first try, it'll take longer to go to the next menu. If you just click the menu then leave the mouse there as you scan, the keyboard keys will be faster (provided there is a unique letter to trigger each menu choice).
On the other hand, while almost everyone I know uses photoshop, almost no one I know has actually paid for it, or could afford it. Obviously their crime prevention abilities are somewhat limited :)
Do you think Adobe really cares? You download Photoshop at home and learn how to use it. You go in to work, and your company gets some new task which requires image editing. What are you going to tell your boss to buy?
Also, for the most part, an illegal copy of Photoshop usually does not mean one less copy of Photoshop sold, but rather one less copy sold of Paint Shop or something else in that price range. That helps Adobe's market share figures.
The reason the Pentium Pro (and also Pentium 2 and 3) weren't very good at 16 bit code was due to a bug in executing multiple instructions simulataneously. The Pentium Pro was the first x86 with that capability. The CPU would look at the next few instructions, and if they didn't use the same CPU registers, would execute them simulataneously. Before updating the CPU registers or memory, the CPU would verify that the simultaneous execution was ok. If it was wrong in its earlier assumption, it would redo the instructions individually, which would require clearing the pipeline.
The problem was if you weren't accessing the full 32 bits of a register, in the first step, the CPU would think it could do instructions simultaneously when it couldn't. It wouldn't detect this until later on, and the pipeline would be cleared and the instructions redone. A code block like this would trigger the problem:
mov al, bl ; put the low byte of bx into the low byte of ax
mov cx, ax ; put ax into cx
Those instructions must be done in order but the Pentium Pro wouldn't realize it at first, because the initial detection stage didn't realize that changing al also changed ax.
I've heard much of the Donkey Kong Country team had left before MS's acquistion.
I hadn't heard about that, but most of the Goldeneye/Perfect Dark team left a few years ago and formed Free Radical, who made the TimeSplitters games.
Supposedly a decent number of people left when the company was sold to MS. There's also Zoonami, which consists of a lot of ex-Rare people. I'm not sure when those people left Rare.
How so? The bitrate implicitely fixes the size of the file. If it's 128kbps MP3 it will be 16000 bytes per second played. Same for WMA or whatever. If it's exactly the same playing time but different file size, then it's not the same bitrate*. Period.
But you're forgetting, there isn't just raw audio data in the file. I did some work on MP3 playback a few years ago, but it's been a while, so some of my details may be a little off, but it works like this. MP3 audio is broken down into frames, which are 1/75 seconds long. There's a little bit of header data on each frame. This extra data is what makes variable bitrate encoding possible.
WMA most likely has an equivalent to frames, which also have headers. WMA frame headers are probably smaller and/or less frequent than MP3 frame headers, which would explain why WMA files could be smaller than MP3 files at the same bitrate.
The Wonderswan probably would have sold for the Final Fantasy ports alone, and the GP32 really entices me as an older gamer, simply because of it's open development.
Final Fantasy alone wouldn't make it amount to much here. You're forgetting, Japan is where RPGs really sell, and even there, the WonderSwan's sales weren't that much better than the Xbox's. It would completely bomb outside of Japan.
Microsoft came to Bungie with a bucket of money and said "We'll give you this if you become one of our studios and make Halo an X-Box game." It doesn't seem unreasonable to me, and doesn't really seem to violate any principles that I'm aware of.
Most of Microsoft's money comes from illegal abuse of monopoly powers. See the recent anti-trust trial and the 1995 consent decree. Read the details of the consent decree - that's why Windows is around today. If Microsoft didn't do those things, then mentioning Windows to a casual computer user today would get you the same blank stare you'd get by mentioning, say, BeOS. We'd all be using OS/2, GEOS, GEM, Desqview, BeOS, or something else instead of Windows.
MS earned their money by illegal means. As far as I'm concerned, it's unethical to take that money.
Basically, if you get your card to where it gives no errors, and are able to keep it around the same temperature, it won't have any troubles.
Nope, not true. Back when the latest craze on Slashdot was to buy yourself a dual Celeron 366 setup and overclock it to ~500mhz, I knew several people that did that. They all had no problems for about a year, and then the system abruptly stopped turning on.
This isn't true. I've finished the game twice now, and I completed the Earth Shrine first in the first game, and the Wind Shrine first in the second game. Nothing in the Earth Shrine requires you to use the Hookshot, and nothing in the Wind Shrine requires you to use the Mirror Shield. The fact that you didn't see the "guy" (I assume you mean the tree sprite) probably just meant that you already had the Rito with you - Once you've picked up one, you have to go with that one to completion. Can't have them both on the boat, nope nope nope.
Interesting. When I played it I got the Rito girl first. When a friend played it, he wanted to get the tree sprite first, but he simply wasn't there. I'm almost positive that he didn't talk to the Rito girl beforehand, but maybe he did. I haven't bothered to play thru the game again; maybe I will soon.
Play Zelda 1. There's very little forced linearity to it.
You have to get the raft from level 3 to get to 4, and you have to get the ladder from level 4 to make it through the levels after it. And you have to get the flute from level 5 to get to level 7. You also have to beat 1 thru 8 before you can enter 9. That's all that's forced. For example, I just beat Zelda 1 again last week. I did the levels in the order 1, 3, 2, 4, 5, 8, 7, 6, 9.
Wind Waker was clearly designed to be non-linear. When you are told about the last 2 dungeons, you are given no indication you have to do them in order. And when you play through them, you'll realize that nothing in the levels requires them to be beat in order. But the guy who lets you into the second level won't show up until you beat the first. It could've been even better if they continued with the non-linearity - there were originally supposed to be more levels in the game, but they were cut due to time constraints. The most obvious cut is the level before talking to Jabun.
I'm not sure how linear Zelda 3 is; the only thing I'm certain of is that you can beat the level where you get the staff that creates blocks before you beat the ice level.
In Majora's Mask, the real game is the side quests, not the dungeons, and that stuff is very largely non-linear.
Let's not even get into why Nintendo would want to cut into the well established, well running market of the Gameboy.
GameBoy Advance games sell for $35. Of that, $8 goes to the production of the cartridges. Well, 3rd parties pay Nintendo $8 per cartridge, so Nintendo makes more than that.
GameCube games sell for $50, and cost significantly less to produce. Wouldn't you much rather sell GameCube games than GameBoy Advance games?
Also, if they included GBA compatibility into the portable, it would greatly increase its attractiveness.
On the other hand, the success of the PS2 can probably be traced to GT3, GTA, Square, Metal Gear Solid 2, Onimusha, and a host of must-have games that were released before the Xbox hit its stride.
The PS2's success didn't have to do with big games. There really weren't any big games for the PS2 until about a year after the PS2's launch - about the same time as the GameCube and Xbox launched. By then, PS2 sales were already about what current Xbox and GameCube sales combined are.
Other than Halo, the Xbox has had very few games to really drive the system sales. Yes, it has some good games, but not standout games. You can get things like good racers for every system.
The GameCube's failure is due to Nintendo waiting until a year after launch to start bringing out their big names - Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. While Metroid came out far better than anyone expected, Mario and Zelda greatly underachieved. Mario Sunshine was very good, but it's rather short if you don't count the very tedious finding blue coins portion of the game. Zelda had the difficulty toned down way too much, and was also very linear (the non-linearity of past Zelda games was a huge factor in what made them so good).
You're forgetting that AMD has a variety of different speed chips out on the market. Some people just want the fastest chip they can buy, and will pay whatever it costs to get it. Those people are the reason chips cost as much as they do when they come out.
Most people however simply have a rough estimate of what they want to spend on a computer, and buy the best they can afford for that price. They're just as happy with a 3000 or 3200 instead of a 3400.
The current pricing scheme works fine - get big money from the people willing to pay anything for the best there is and let everyone else pay a lot less for a processor not that much slower.
Soul Calibur 2's soundtrack was very forgettable. It's been about 2-3 months since I last played it, and about all I can remember is the first few seconds of 1 of the songs. Oh, and the Zelda music too from the GameCube version.
I only played F-Zero GX for about an hour, so maybe I need more time, but the only thing that stood out at all was the remix of the Mute City music. The Mute City music from F-Zero X was much better though.
Super Smash Bros. Melee had a great soundtrack. They just took the best music (ignore the DK rap) from Nintendo's best games and put it all into one game. Hard to top.
One of the best things they did in Metroid Prime was early game Talon Overworld music. It's a very slow remix of the Brinstar music from the original Metroid. You start playing, and suddenly you realize it sounds familiar. Then you sit and listen and realize what it is, and it just sounds perfect for the situation.
I know the Magmoor Caverns music is the lower Norfair music from Super Metroid, and the fight with Ridley music is the music from the fight with Ridley in Super Metroid, but other than those 3 I don't remember anything else resembling the old Metroid music. (Of course the "you got an item" and "continue from save" sound effects are direct from Super Metroid).
The music from older games holds up so well because it tended to be simple, catchy stuff. Most modern games go for more ambient music, so you don't really remember it afterwards. You can't forget the music from Mario 1 or Zelda 1, but I can't remember any music from Mario Sunshine or The Wind Waker (other than the remixes of the old music).
I can remember lots of music from 2D games, but music from 3D games tends to not leave a lasting impression. I can remember some music from the two N64 Zeldas, but really only the repeating stuff you were supposed to remember (i.e. Saria's song).
I'm very thankful though that I managed to forget the music to Final Fantasy 7. I'm not an RPG fan, but my college roommate was. I remember trying to do homework with some friends while he was playing FF7. The music in that game is so repetitive that it really gets on your nerves in under 5 minutes. Particuarlly the Chocobo racing music...
But seriously, in the original 8bit game, if you finished it 3 times (keeping the same password legacy) you got to see her without her armor (green hair, brown bathingsuit...she keeps the gun arm), and then you get to play with her like that.
That was just based on time. Beat the game fast enough and you get the ending with Samus in a one piece swimsuit. Then start a new game and you'll play as Samus in the swimsuit. Beat the game again, and you see Samus in a bikini. The bikini ending may be time dependent also.
The best ending in the SNES version is beat the game in under 3 hours. For the GBA one, under 2 hours with 100%.
I don't think you can really say that.
We can estimate how long a day was in the past based on current trends. But as this article shows, that may not be accurate. The article says the discovery of leap seconds is a side effect of the invention of the atomic clock in 1955. That means we've had not quite 50 years to observe trends. For the last 5 the trend has been different than in the past, and we have no clue why. That's over 10% of the sample data that breaks the trend, which isn't a small amount.
I'd say we can't even make a remotely close guess at how long a day was 900 million years ago.
Like all Nintendo controllers, it was designed for the games Miyamoto had in mind.
The only problem with it is it tends to be either great or terrible for a game, whereas the PS2 controller tends to be general purpose, neither great nor terrible for almost all games.
Although it looks odd, the button layout works very well. It's near impossible to hit the wrong button, as they all have a unique shape. The large A button is nice, as games tend to center their controls around it. When you play a game designed with that controller in mind, you'll absolutely love it.
That said, games designed for other controllers don't play as nicely. For LOTR: The Two Towers, EA oddly decided that Y should cancel out of menus, whereas the GameCube convention is B. It's an odd choice, since it just feels right to use B to cancel - you'll naturally try use A to pick and B to cancel in menus without being told, so when something differs, you'll hit the wrong button a lot.
Fighting games like Soul Calibur 2 definately suffer with the GameCube controller, but not to the point that it's unplayable. You get used to it fairly quickly.
The PS2 controller is a little smaller than the GameCube controller, but more importantly, it's got awkward grips on it. That's why it feels weird.
Online console gaming won't hurt online PC gaming. PC gaming is really good for two types of games: FPS and RTS. FPS controls a lot better with a keyboard and mouse than with a controller, and RTS would be practically impossible with a controller (yeah yeah there was StarCraft 64, but it sucked).
Consoles used more for games that play better with a controller than with keyboard & mouse. Online racing & fighting games will be a lot better on a console.
As for the online voice chat, I actually think that's a disadvantage. Anyone play WarCraft 3 online? A large part of the chat during games is some guy who sucks cursing out someone else trying to pass the blame for the team losing. You don't want to hear the majority of the chat; most of it is mindless bickering.
What if they're in debt and need the money? If my options were work for SCO or don't have a place to live, I'd work for SCO.
What if you have a sick family member, and need the health insurance the company provides you?
I wouldn't say most games play best on the Xbox. *Very* few people find the controller comfortable. Even the Controller S is awkward.
Jumping from the PS2 to the GameCube or Xbox will give you a huge increase in graphics and a large decrease in load times. The jump from GameCube to Xbox is very small.