I'm talking about microeconomics, which is much clearer in some cases. Clearly it's true... people generally like the fact that the Invisible Hand turns business owner's greed into a positive outcome for consumers. People think that greed usually results in lower prices and more efficient allocation of resources. It just turns out that people think the record industry is cheating at the game.
Right... there are different products, and so there are different profit curves for each different product. 99 cents may be too low for some, and too high for others. I was trying to say that just because Adam Smith's invisible hand is based on greed, that doesn't mean that consumers will always get screwed. But it looks like quite a number of people disagree with me, particularly in the case of the RIAA.:)
Not necessarily; profit is one of those microeconomics things that is a curve. If you're on the top half of the curve for a specific product, lowering the price of a product will increase profits because volume goes up faster than unit-profit goes down.
You don't need to. Read the other comments, and generally the official features of each console. XBox 360 will have a well-thought-out centralized online service. PS3 plans to provide no online service of its own. PS3 plans to have a separate friends list for every game you own. XBox 360 plans to have a single friends list that works across all games.
So the PS3 really is going that route, then? That seems preposterous. In 360, you have a single global friends list, and you can see if your friend is playing their 360, no matter what game they're playing. On the PS3, the friend has to be playing the same game for you to see them, AND you have a bunch of different friends lists (one for each game). It's kind of stunning to see only one console maker go with the centralized model.
So, in summary, your options are:
XBox 360: centralized network and HDTV support
PS3: HDTV support
Revolution: none of the above
Seriously though, I don't think that's completely true. Even if consoles are lacking in their network play in the current gen of consoles, is there any reason that consoles should ignore online play and leave that to PC's only? I think it would be great if consoles brought the LAN gaming feel to bigger TV screens, made the process easier, and allowed you to sync up with your real-life friends.
What's the point of this article? I'd like to RTFA, but as TFA notes, 1UP wasn't even able to get their hands on the report, so it's kind of hard to nit-pick at the details.
Anyway, the detail I'd like to nit-pick at is... how do they justify the huge difference in statements that "online play is becoming more significant" and "Sony will take the lead"? XBox 360's online play is VASTLY better than PS3 or Revolution. It's shocking how big of a difference there is. Is online play not going to be that significant after all, or are does PS3 have some significant strengths over the XBox that win out?
If a person has enough money to plunk down for an XBox 360, they almost certainly have enough money for a TV with composite input (or a used VGA monitor laying around). If someone only has enough money for an RF input, I think that clearly, they should be looking in the used market for an older Playstation, N64, Dreamcast, what-have-you.
Honestly, playing a violent videogame DOES NOT MAKE YOU A VIOLENT PERSON. If that were true, I'd probably be in jail at the moment.
I don't think anyone is honestly saying that playing a lot of violent video games will make you even like 20% more likely to kill/hurt someone. If that were true, we'd have an unbelievable number of shootings and cop murders by white upper-middle class males.
You clearly don't see that, so the proponents of legislation or other government intrusion must think that games increase homicides by ~1%, or some very low rate.
That's why it's contentious. It's difficult to prove such a low number. However, if it were proved to be true, then it might be on the level of seatbelts... eg. if there's a death that's likely preventable, then perhaps the government should work towards preventing some of the deaths.
The original XBox did quite poorly in sales in Japan, for a variety of reasons. Obviously MS is hoping to do better with the XBox 360 (eg. smaller footprint, launch in US and Japan at the same time, many more japanese publishers signed on), but one would naturally assume that backwards compatibility for the 360 isn't very valued by consumers in Japan, compared to the US. As such, it's only logical for MS to spend less money on that.
I can't find the quote, but Google had a comment about how Linux allows Google to customize and control ANYTHING in pursuit of higher performance means a great deal to them. Google shouldn't have to wait on Microsoft to implement performance tweaks for them in the kernel.
Or, even more likely, Vista's NGSCB will allow Sony to hide their code inside the secure computing base, where normal users won't be able to access it. And authors will absolutely have to violate the DMCA to look inside it.
It's kind of ironic that MS is wagging their finger at Sony now, because when Vista comes out, Microsoft is going to build that feature in standard (eg. in order to view a certain piece of enthralling media, you have to let some super-secret code run on your computer, with the OS doing everything it can to hide what it's doing from you).
Yeah, it was kind of cool to see people progress from the counter-strike mindset ("teamwork, that's one of those theoretical things that doesn't really matter, right?") to people who really would start cooperating from the very beginning of a round.
EULAs in general are still legally binding. Certain clauses of contracts can be declared invalid, eg. "by signing here, you agree to sell your children into slavery to me". Certain clauses are so far out of reasonable concept of justice that they're declared invalid.
Clauses that are only borderline or are otherwise plainly a legal part of normal contracts though, ARE legal and ARE binding. For example, see the David Zamos case, and all the nitty-gritty of the EULA that he had to work around.
Is anyone else starting to get the feeling that an infinite number of drunk monkeys have taken over parts of Sony? Cripes, you keep thinking this is the worst that it can possibly get, and then they outdo themselves yet again on the same product!
Kentucky has announced a system whereby electronic voting machines will eject a toothpick into one of two piles, and afterwards, Rain Man will be hired to count the votes in each pile.
Conceptually, it's a pretty easy way to shrink many of the components. Yeah, it's all about size/weight. I think it was the US Army that originally figured out how to do this stuff, and obviously using smaller PSU's in mobile applications is a very good thing. These days, they're starting to get so commoditized, that you're starting to see them in cell phone chargers and some cheaper applications like that, just for convenience.
Also, regular old voltage regulators are incredibly inefficient (spewing off a ton of power as heat), so fixing those inefficiencies is another reason to go with SMPS. But older voltage regulators are also still the cheapest way to go, so you still see a lot of large wall-warts. Eventually those may go away though, if SMPS prices keep dropping.
The section that reads "These devices, a kind of switched-mode converter, generally perform the conversion by the following steps" is misleading. While it says "AC", if you click through the link, it actually says "The inverter stage converts DC... to AC by switching it on and off ('chopping') at a frequency of tens or hundreds of kilohertz (kHz)". In other words, it's nothing like the orignal AC (60Hz), and the kHz chopping is necessary even if you start off with AC. So it's not redundant at all.
Eg. the typical Switchmode PSU has four stages:
60Hz AC
half-wave rectified AC with a big capacitor (almost DC)
kHz chopped AC
final DC output
So, instead of hauling things around at stage 1, you haul them around at stage 2 instead.
And where did the last great scientific lab come from? A raging monopoly (AT&T), that's where. When did they do their best work? When they were funded by a raging monopoly. I think the comparison to Microsoft Research is quite apt.
There would be a savings in power, but you'd need huge wires in between each socket. See this chart. As voltage goes down, amps go up. Amps go up, and wire size goes up.
Granted, you may not need to carry a lot of amps at 2V. However, no matter what voltage/current you pick, it's much easier (in terms of wiring cost) to use higher voltage for electricity distribution.
I think what the main article was discussing is changing 120 AC into 120 DC centrally, but still having the 120 DC => 2v DC conversion done right where it's needed.
This is craziness. There are only two possibilities:
1. Quantum computing ends up destroying public-key encyrption, making online banking impossible.
In this case, what Congress is saying is that they want to shield US banks from having to switch back to physical security and authentication as soon as possible, and instead, want to allow banks a grace period, where determined criminals have an opportunity to steal citizen's money.
2. OR, online banking is still feasible
In which case, this was no big deal to begin with, and the lawmakers should have stayed out of it.
I mean, there is going to be some final technical clarity to this, and when we figure that out, we want the US industry to be the most advanced in the world. There's no reason to say that, in areas of safety, that the US should lag other countries.
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I'm talking about microeconomics, which is much clearer in some cases. Clearly it's true... people generally like the fact that the Invisible Hand turns business owner's greed into a positive outcome for consumers. People think that greed usually results in lower prices and more efficient allocation of resources. It just turns out that people think the record industry is cheating at the game.
Right... there are different products, and so there are different profit curves for each different product. 99 cents may be too low for some, and too high for others. I was trying to say that just because Adam Smith's invisible hand is based on greed, that doesn't mean that consumers will always get screwed. But it looks like quite a number of people disagree with me, particularly in the case of the RIAA. :)
Not necessarily; profit is one of those microeconomics things that is a curve. If you're on the top half of the curve for a specific product, lowering the price of a product will increase profits because volume goes up faster than unit-profit goes down.
You don't need to. Read the other comments, and generally the official features of each console. XBox 360 will have a well-thought-out centralized online service. PS3 plans to provide no online service of its own. PS3 plans to have a separate friends list for every game you own. XBox 360 plans to have a single friends list that works across all games.
So, in summary, your options are:
XBox 360: centralized network and HDTV support
PS3: HDTV support
Revolution: none of the above
And the obligatory review links: one, two
Seriously though, I don't think that's completely true. Even if consoles are lacking in their network play in the current gen of consoles, is there any reason that consoles should ignore online play and leave that to PC's only? I think it would be great if consoles brought the LAN gaming feel to bigger TV screens, made the process easier, and allowed you to sync up with your real-life friends.
Anyway, the detail I'd like to nit-pick at is... how do they justify the huge difference in statements that "online play is becoming more significant" and "Sony will take the lead"? XBox 360's online play is VASTLY better than PS3 or Revolution. It's shocking how big of a difference there is. Is online play not going to be that significant after all, or are does PS3 have some significant strengths over the XBox that win out?
If a person has enough money to plunk down for an XBox 360, they almost certainly have enough money for a TV with composite input (or a used VGA monitor laying around). If someone only has enough money for an RF input, I think that clearly, they should be looking in the used market for an older Playstation, N64, Dreamcast, what-have-you.
You clearly don't see that, so the proponents of legislation or other government intrusion must think that games increase homicides by ~1%, or some very low rate.
That's why it's contentious. It's difficult to prove such a low number. However, if it were proved to be true, then it might be on the level of seatbelts... eg. if there's a death that's likely preventable, then perhaps the government should work towards preventing some of the deaths.
Seriously, the more you sell your reader's eyeballs, the more those eyeballs will go someplace else.
The original XBox did quite poorly in sales in Japan, for a variety of reasons. Obviously MS is hoping to do better with the XBox 360 (eg. smaller footprint, launch in US and Japan at the same time, many more japanese publishers signed on), but one would naturally assume that backwards compatibility for the 360 isn't very valued by consumers in Japan, compared to the US. As such, it's only logical for MS to spend less money on that.
I can't find the quote, but Google had a comment about how Linux allows Google to customize and control ANYTHING in pursuit of higher performance means a great deal to them. Google shouldn't have to wait on Microsoft to implement performance tweaks for them in the kernel.
It's kind of ironic that MS is wagging their finger at Sony now, because when Vista comes out, Microsoft is going to build that feature in standard (eg. in order to view a certain piece of enthralling media, you have to let some super-secret code run on your computer, with the OS doing everything it can to hide what it's doing from you).
Yeah, it was kind of cool to see people progress from the counter-strike mindset ("teamwork, that's one of those theoretical things that doesn't really matter, right?") to people who really would start cooperating from the very beginning of a round.
Patching the kernel != copyright infingement.
Clauses that are only borderline or are otherwise plainly a legal part of normal contracts though, ARE legal and ARE binding. For example, see the David Zamos case, and all the nitty-gritty of the EULA that he had to work around.
Is anyone else starting to get the feeling that an infinite number of drunk monkeys have taken over parts of Sony? Cripes, you keep thinking this is the worst that it can possibly get, and then they outdo themselves yet again on the same product!
To be fair, Zonk posts the huge majority of the articles, so certainly there will be some bad and some good.
Kentucky has announced a system whereby electronic voting machines will eject a toothpick into one of two piles, and afterwards, Rain Man will be hired to count the votes in each pile.
Also, regular old voltage regulators are incredibly inefficient (spewing off a ton of power as heat), so fixing those inefficiencies is another reason to go with SMPS. But older voltage regulators are also still the cheapest way to go, so you still see a lot of large wall-warts. Eventually those may go away though, if SMPS prices keep dropping.
The section that reads "These devices, a kind of switched-mode converter, generally perform the conversion by the following steps" is misleading. While it says "AC", if you click through the link, it actually says "The inverter stage converts DC ... to AC by switching it on and off ('chopping') at a frequency of tens or hundreds of kilohertz (kHz)". In other words, it's nothing like the orignal AC (60Hz), and the kHz chopping is necessary even if you start off with AC. So it's not redundant at all.
Eg. the typical Switchmode PSU has four stages:
- 60Hz AC
- half-wave rectified AC with a big capacitor (almost DC)
- kHz chopped AC
- final DC output
So, instead of hauling things around at stage 1, you haul them around at stage 2 instead.And where did the last great scientific lab come from? A raging monopoly (AT&T), that's where. When did they do their best work? When they were funded by a raging monopoly. I think the comparison to Microsoft Research is quite apt.
Granted, you may not need to carry a lot of amps at 2V. However, no matter what voltage/current you pick, it's much easier (in terms of wiring cost) to use higher voltage for electricity distribution.
I think what the main article was discussing is changing 120 AC into 120 DC centrally, but still having the 120 DC => 2v DC conversion done right where it's needed.
1. Quantum computing ends up destroying public-key encyrption, making online banking impossible.
In this case, what Congress is saying is that they want to shield US banks from having to switch back to physical security and authentication as soon as possible, and instead, want to allow banks a grace period, where determined criminals have an opportunity to steal citizen's money.
2. OR, online banking is still feasible
In which case, this was no big deal to begin with, and the lawmakers should have stayed out of it.
I mean, there is going to be some final technical clarity to this, and when we figure that out, we want the US industry to be the most advanced in the world. There's no reason to say that, in areas of safety, that the US should lag other countries.