I can see using the 2.5" drive though. Microsoft thinks you're going to carry the drive to your friends house because it has all of your saves on it and you don't have a memory card.
He also talked about ripping stuff to MP3, so you could bring your music over to a friends place.
To be honest, I think having a fixed drive inside of the box (every box!) is a lot more valuable than making the drive removable and expensive. I bet game developers are going to be looking at the sales numbers closely, if the majority of the customers don't go for the $400 option right off the bat you'll see fewer and fewer game developers bother with it at all.
Of course most people will get the cheaper option. $400 is a lot of money.
It is interesting to see the PR guy squirm at some of the questions though. Look at his response to the wifi question. It winged him, but he managed to get through anyway.
I also like his reply of "The harddrive has an 800% markup because it's hot-swappable".
An open peer-reviewed system is far less likely to contain retarded bugs that allow us to bypass the DRM restrictions and use the media in ways unforseen by the distributors (like running an e-text through a text-to-speech converter for a blind relative). I say keep letting the companies make their own broken DRM schemes that rely on users not noticing the key under the doormat, that way our rights to fair use don't end up completely abridged.
79% is a terrible score for something like Gamespot. Even extremely lousy games rarely get below 60% on those sites, and the fans opinion boxes are always stuffed.
In other words: 6,000 people shocked to discover porn on the internet.
Actually, I suspect this was the work of a small number of individuals (quite possible less than ten people) who are basically letterbombing the government. The FCC has to deal with this sort of thing all of the time now.
City of Heroes had at least 2 free trials. They handed out a key to every single active player and told them to give it to their friends. All the friend had to do was download the game data (which is HUGE, 1.2GB huge IIRC) and they would get 15 free days with their key. I think they handed out free trial keys at Gencon and Comicon too.
If you wanted to keep playing all you have to do is go on their website and buy a "full key". Granted, that is basically the same a buying the box, but you can't expect to get the full game for free.
If it's any consolation, I hated those early MP3 players too. I mean what's not to like about 8MB of fixed non-upgradable storage on your music player? Especially when 2.5MB of that is taken up by the OS.
On the other hand I've always hated MD players. Closed proprietary formats suck.
That depends a lot on what you're hosting your servers on. CPU time is expensive on Tandems and to a lesser extent Suns. On PCs the CPU is cheap, especially since most PC installations are clusters and even 1U boxes tend to come with overpowered processors.
One thing is for certain though, for many users bandwidth is NOT cheap.
The big complaint I had with them is that they're loud, as in get rude comments from your co-workers loud. You can't use them in dorm rooms because it would limit you to daytime coding only.
On the other hand, I'm one of those guys who just loves his MS Natural v.1 keyboard, so maybe I shouldn't be commenting about keyboard elitists.
The downside of a large cache on the drive is that you lose more data when the power goes out. You can't use nifty features like CTQ unless your drive is caching writes either. It's a tradeoff.
The big problem is that a great many PC case manufactuers provide for no active cooling on the drive bays at all. This is one big reason why people have so much trouble with their drives, especially when they add a second one (usually crammed right next to the old drive).
The only reason the unlicensed spectrum is of any use at all is because of the tiny output power allowed for devices on those frequncies. It's not due to some magic of interoperability. The fact that 802.11 radios usually only take a third of the spectrum helps too, but in reality only 3 non-overlapping channels is a major nusance when you start increasing the hotspot density.
I've sworn off of BFG cards. It may just be me but it seems like they use the crappiest fans possible on their cards. None of my friends (nor I) have had one last longer than 9 months, and they always glue the damn things on with thermal epoxy!
I would mind, because it would mean I'd be back to ordering every little switch and connector online. Radioshack overcharges for their stuff, but at least they don't charge shipping and make me wait a couple of days to get it.
Those were in common use in the States back in the 386/486 era, but thankfully people got tired of straining their pinkies when reaching way over to hit the enter key and they're pretty much gone now.
Of course stuff that is hardcoded with the old DST dates is going to have trouble. Yeah, that's a lot of gadgets. What can we do about it though? Most of those gadgets are not upgradable, so you're going to have to change the time on them twice a year now (once they figure out how to turn off the automatic DST updates).
I wish the president would have had the gumption to just extend Daylight Savings Time to all year long and ditch the date changes entirely. Nearly every device can be configured to ignore DST changes and it would have saved the world a lot of confusion each year.
Oh good lord! You're using one of those keyboards that stick the backslash next to ' so they can make the enter key double high! I'd always assumed they had all been burned by now in an effort to get the evil out.
I like the idea of the Happy Hacker keyboards, but they're seriously overpriced online. I'm not paying $200 on a keyboard with no numeric keypad or arrow keys just to have control and caps lock swapped.
Also, it takes awhile to get used to having the backtick key on the right side. I also think it's weird that they offer a keyboard with no printing on the keys apparently to make sure nobody else can use your keyboard. It's not like silkscreening letters on the keys significantly changes the way they feel or anything.
How do bacteria get the energy to break H and O apart? It's a difficult chemical reaction (the atoms are tightly bound). All of that energy has to come from somewhere (the sun?).
One of the big problems is that every time the local news talks about a video game what screenshots do they show? GTA of course. There are tons of games out there that are no more violent than Chess but they get no airtime on the news when some loner goth kid shoots another kid. As a result people get the impression that all video games are violent bloodfests.
There's nothing new here either. The same thing happened with Comic books, Cartoons, Books, TV, D&D, and whatever the trendy scapegoat happens to be at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
I can see using the 2.5" drive though. Microsoft thinks you're going to carry the drive to your friends house because it has all of your saves on it and you don't have a memory card.
He also talked about ripping stuff to MP3, so you could bring your music over to a friends place.
To be honest, I think having a fixed drive inside of the box (every box!) is a lot more valuable than making the drive removable and expensive. I bet game developers are going to be looking at the sales numbers closely, if the majority of the customers don't go for the $400 option right off the bat you'll see fewer and fewer game developers bother with it at all.
Of course most people will get the cheaper option. $400 is a lot of money.
It is interesting to see the PR guy squirm at some of the questions though. Look at his response to the wifi question. It winged him, but he managed to get through anyway.
I also like his reply of "The harddrive has an 800% markup because it's hot-swappable".
What? You mean those weren't from the Voyager episode where they were attacked by a bunch of Starfuries?
An open peer-reviewed system is far less likely to contain retarded bugs that allow us to bypass the DRM restrictions and use the media in ways unforseen by the distributors (like running an e-text through a text-to-speech converter for a blind relative). I say keep letting the companies make their own broken DRM schemes that rely on users not noticing the key under the doormat, that way our rights to fair use don't end up completely abridged.
79% is a terrible score for something like Gamespot. Even extremely lousy games rarely get below 60% on those sites, and the fans opinion boxes are always stuffed.
In other words: 6,000 people shocked to discover porn on the internet.
Actually, I suspect this was the work of a small number of individuals (quite possible less than ten people) who are basically letterbombing the government. The FCC has to deal with this sort of thing all of the time now.
City of Heroes had at least 2 free trials. They handed out a key to every single active player and told them to give it to their friends. All the friend had to do was download the game data (which is HUGE, 1.2GB huge IIRC) and they would get 15 free days with their key. I think they handed out free trial keys at Gencon and Comicon too.
If you wanted to keep playing all you have to do is go on their website and buy a "full key". Granted, that is basically the same a buying the box, but you can't expect to get the full game for free.
If it's any consolation, I hated those early MP3 players too. I mean what's not to like about 8MB of fixed non-upgradable storage on your music player? Especially when 2.5MB of that is taken up by the OS.
On the other hand I've always hated MD players. Closed proprietary formats suck.
That depends a lot on what you're hosting your servers on. CPU time is expensive on Tandems and to a lesser extent Suns. On PCs the CPU is cheap, especially since most PC installations are clusters and even 1U boxes tend to come with overpowered processors.
One thing is for certain though, for many users bandwidth is NOT cheap.
The big complaint I had with them is that they're loud, as in get rude comments from your co-workers loud. You can't use them in dorm rooms because it would limit you to daytime coding only.
On the other hand, I'm one of those guys who just loves his MS Natural v.1 keyboard, so maybe I shouldn't be commenting about keyboard elitists.
The downside of a large cache on the drive is that you lose more data when the power goes out. You can't use nifty features like CTQ unless your drive is caching writes either. It's a tradeoff.
The big problem is that a great many PC case manufactuers provide for no active cooling on the drive bays at all. This is one big reason why people have so much trouble with their drives, especially when they add a second one (usually crammed right next to the old drive).
The original was in the games section, it never made it to the front page. That's probably why you have never read it.
The only reason the unlicensed spectrum is of any use at all is because of the tiny output power allowed for devices on those frequncies. It's not due to some magic of interoperability. The fact that 802.11 radios usually only take a third of the spectrum helps too, but in reality only 3 non-overlapping channels is a major nusance when you start increasing the hotspot density.
I've sworn off of BFG cards. It may just be me but it seems like they use the crappiest fans possible on their cards. None of my friends (nor I) have had one last longer than 9 months, and they always glue the damn things on with thermal epoxy!
I would mind, because it would mean I'd be back to ordering every little switch and connector online. Radioshack overcharges for their stuff, but at least they don't charge shipping and make me wait a couple of days to get it.
Are you saying CDs are of inferior quality to audiotapes?
Those were in common use in the States back in the 386/486 era, but thankfully people got tired of straining their pinkies when reaching way over to hit the enter key and they're pretty much gone now.
Of course stuff that is hardcoded with the old DST dates is going to have trouble. Yeah, that's a lot of gadgets. What can we do about it though? Most of those gadgets are not upgradable, so you're going to have to change the time on them twice a year now (once they figure out how to turn off the automatic DST updates).
I wish the president would have had the gumption to just extend Daylight Savings Time to all year long and ditch the date changes entirely. Nearly every device can be configured to ignore DST changes and it would have saved the world a lot of confusion each year.
Oh good lord! You're using one of those keyboards that stick the backslash next to ' so they can make the enter key double high! I'd always assumed they had all been burned by now in an effort to get the evil out.
I like the idea of the Happy Hacker keyboards, but they're seriously overpriced online. I'm not paying $200 on a keyboard with no numeric keypad or arrow keys just to have control and caps lock swapped.
Also, it takes awhile to get used to having the backtick key on the right side. I also think it's weird that they offer a keyboard with no printing on the keys apparently to make sure nobody else can use your keyboard. It's not like silkscreening letters on the keys significantly changes the way they feel or anything.
Life started once, I guess it could start again.
How do bacteria get the energy to break H and O apart? It's a difficult chemical reaction (the atoms are tightly bound). All of that energy has to come from somewhere (the sun?).
The phrasing is very important, half of the people who read that survay saw:
Would you blah blah blah to prevent terrorist attacks?
Try looking at games other than GTA.
One of the big problems is that every time the local news talks about a video game what screenshots do they show? GTA of course. There are tons of games out there that are no more violent than Chess but they get no airtime on the news when some loner goth kid shoots another kid. As a result people get the impression that all video games are violent bloodfests.
There's nothing new here either. The same thing happened with Comic books, Cartoons, Books, TV, D&D, and whatever the trendy scapegoat happens to be at the time.