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User: interiot

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  1. Re:You're kidding, right? on PC Game Market 'Becoming A Niche'? · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I've got two friends who spend almost all their free time gaming. Both of them recently gave up PC gaming, citing HD, surround sound, and the ability to plop down on their couch while gaming as benefits of consoles, and having to spend $500+ every year to keep up with the latest games (and be competitive in multiplayer games) as downsides of PC gaming.

    Personally, I've moved my PC to my living room, and I think PC's will always be where the most innovative games come out, so I'm sticking with the PC. But I'm not really any good at multiplayer games either, so...

  2. Re:compelling (me not to buy) on Blu-ray vs. HD DVD Round Two · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I assume the firmware upgrade treadmill only exists because the market is so new, and the devices are so bleeding-edge. The reviewer talked about getting whole new features in a firmware upgrade. Does this ever happen for $50 DVD players? No. Once hardware becomes more commoditized, manufacturers would rather people buy another $50 unit to get new software features. It's just that right now, they're doing a lot of software work to beat the other guy, and there's only a couple of players released. The fastest way for them to get their code up to snuff is to get it into the hands of as many end-users as they can, but since people aren't buying lots of new players, they have to upgrade them in-place.

  3. Re:Little Suzy - Wrong! on Newest Job Qualification — A Good Credit History · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The vast majority of people in the world can't afford proper food or housing, let alone insurance. We've got enough systems in place to keep the poor stuck where they are, we don't need another one.

  4. Re:OSX on Harvard Concludes Linux Will Remain Second Best · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The report's main finding though is that Window's initial install base, along with the network effects that all OS's have, mean that Microsoft Windows will ALWAYS win. Basically, that whoever's OS has the most market share is most likely to stay firmly fixed there, just because employers don't want to train employees on an OS they don't already know, and end-users don't want to relearn a new system when they already know one.

    That may be a bit of a repugnant finding (that MS can perform really badly at this point, and still win). But I would think a meta-strategy would be for consumers to encourage OS's to standardize, to become more similar over time (and if it's possible to come up with an actual technical standard that mandates similarities where possible, that consumers would encourage that (though a proprietary entrenched winner would discourage that, of course)).

    Also, I don't know if the study takes into account things like AMD/Intel's virtualization support / VMware, etc. These allow end-users to have the best features of two or more operating systems at the same time. Might this diminish the first-mover advantage?

  5. Re:Whence this vapor? on Vaporizing Garbage to Create Electricity · · Score: 1

    What happens to all the carbon atoms then? The primary mass of water comes from oxygen.... and the trash we produce is not primarily made of oxygen.

  6. Re:Whence this vapor? on Vaporizing Garbage to Create Electricity · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Plasma arc" = incinerator. No fancy chemical or nuclear processes happen, they still dump out a huge amount of CO2, just like normal incinerators. Sure, they scrub the exhaust for really harmful chemicals and particles, but they still release a lot of CO2.

  7. Re:Kakkoii! on Xbox 360 Core System Going to Japan · · Score: 1

    There's a 360 in the middle of Akihabara for the japanese to play. It's free, but usually nobody is playing it.

    There's a two-player drum-beating game down the street that gets more play than the 360.

  8. Great timing there... on Space Shuttle Atlantis Delayed Again · · Score: 5, Informative

    Unfortunately the article is a day old... Countdown is continuuing for a launch this morning (Friday morning).

  9. Re:Very irresponsible journalism on Blu-Ray and HD-DVD Playback Under XP · · Score: 1

    Actually, copyright/patents/etc allow an author to include a license along with the work, and if a judge will uphold a license with a clause prohibiting inverted bean baths, then it's actually entirely possible for them to do so. eg. GPLv3 includes the no-DRM restriction, that's ostensibly legal... GPL v3 added the no military use restriction too...

  10. Re:No need to wait on Blu-Ray and HD-DVD Playback Under XP · · Score: 1

    Well, there are LOTS of ways to disable or ignore the UOPs in DVDs, so that's semi-modern. And presumably we'll have a number of easy ways to do that in BluRay/HD-DVD in a couple years.

  11. Only one last piece to the puzzle... on Blu-Ray and HD-DVD Playback Under XP · · Score: 1

    All we need now is either a drive that can read both HD-DVD and BluRay, or we need HD-DVD to be declared the winner of this silly war.

  12. False positives on 611 Defects, 71 Vulnerabilities Found In Firefox · · Score: 4, Informative

    Note that Klocwork, while definitely a good tool, does tend to produce a fair number of false positives, so it's not possible to try to compare an automated report of potential problems to a list of problems actually agreed to be a problem and actually fixed by an organization.

  13. Re:no AGP :( on NVIDIA GeForce 7900GS Benchmarked · · Score: 1

    But then you're stuck using slower memory, the board doesn't support DDR2...

  14. Re:no AGP :( on NVIDIA GeForce 7900GS Benchmarked · · Score: 1

    I'm in the other boat... I'm upgrading my very old motherboard, but I've got a decent AGP video card, and I'd rather keep using it until DX10 is out (even if it's 12 months), but no decent motherboards support AGP anymore. :(

  15. Re:What the heck is with Sony? on European PS3 Launch Delayed to 2007 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's not just hype, they actually believe it. Did they really plan to release a next-gen console 1.5 years after Microsoft did? They seemed to have believed that including a BluRay with every PS3 wasn't going to be too expensive of a loss leader, yet here they are, stopping shipments of blue lasers to everyone else until, what, mid 2007? just to be able to include a BluRay drive in every PS3 sold, even though the vast majority of people don't have HDTV's. That's got to be a huge opportunity cost right there. And they're trying to force another pet proprietary format on the market, when they have a large obvious history of failing those attempts.

    It's one thing to hype yourself to the press, it's another to drink your own koolaid.

  16. Re:Its been done on Global Text Project – Wiki Textbooks · · Score: 2, Funny

    That's right. Wikimedia foundation also tried to start up a wikiproject to increase gas mileage in cars, but the auto industry quietly put the kebash on that too.

  17. Wikibooks? Wikiversity? on Global Text Project – Wiki Textbooks · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why not join forces with Wikibooks or Wikiversity? Though as long as GlobalText is licensed in GFDL (they don't seem to say anywhere on their site?), then the projects will help each other out anyway.

  18. Re:'Cuz a cable costs $100... on $600 PS3 Ships Without HDMI Cable · · Score: 1

    Link and link to HDMI port pictures. Thanks for the info.

  19. Re:'Cuz a cable costs $100... on $600 PS3 Ships Without HDMI Cable · · Score: 1

    The main article says that "additional equipment may be required to use the HDMI connector" on the PS3. Where do you read that there's a standard PS3 connector on the back? I'd be really surprised at this frankly, it seems like the market lets console makers get away with it, and it's free money for Sony if they use a proprietary connector...

  20. Re:'Cuz a cable costs $100... on $600 PS3 Ships Without HDMI Cable · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Do any of those $20 cables plug into a PS3? No. Do all current and last-gen consoles require you to buy special cables with a proprietary connector on one end? Yes.

  21. Re:Same as USB devices on $600 PS3 Ships Without HDMI Cable · · Score: 1

    Not to mention that USB perhipherals use standard connectors, and don't require you to buy a separate proprietary cable from the manufacturer.

  22. Proprietary connector? on $600 PS3 Ships Without HDMI Cable · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Several people have mentioned that you might be able to use a standard HDMI cable to connect the PS3? Is that really true? No console I'm aware of has ever had standard connections on the back.... they've always used a single proprietary connector, and forced you to buy a more expensive cable specific to the conections you wanted. eg. it's not going to be cheap.

  23. Re:not quite like a real encyclopedia ... on Who (Really) Writes Wikipedia · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, there are also lots of policies about what should stay and what may be deleted, and newcommers don't always know those either. Optimally, existing contributors may be able to detail exactly what sort of content might be better, or where your content might be better suited (eg. your aunt's favorite recipe doesn't belong on Wikipedia, but it does belong on wikibooks), but often you'll just get a link to a general policy or a mention of it. If you're contributing articles about something not directly related to you (eg. not about your band, your company, or your favorite blog), then don't get discouraged, try to spend a more time reading existing articles and try to model new articles after those (though ignore the pokemon articles, all of wikipedia isn't totally enamoured with them).

  24. Re:Can't see it... on The Beautiful Chaos of 1,000 Trackmania Racers · · Score: 4, Informative

    Some other links of the same video.... YouTube, Gametrailers hosted on another site

  25. Re:Editcountitis on Who (Really) Writes Wikipedia · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Even if edit counters didn't exist though, I think more established editors would still spend a lot of their time keeping things organized and consistent. Sure, the edits you mentioned are nitpicky things that aren't worth adding a line of history for, but there is non-nitpicky cleanup that needs to be done, and it'll be the experienced people that do those. Even just counting things like spelling checks, it's => its, fixing links to disambiguation pages.... those are relatively minor, but they still definitely need to be done.