The PSP uses new special discs (I believe they are the same size as GCN discs and mini-cd's) that can only be read on the PSP.
What does this mean?
PSP is not just a video game system, it's an opportunity to sell music and movies on yet another physical media format. Way to go, Sony.
And the battery life will be teh short.
The delay to 2005 doesn't faze me at all, as I probably won't own one of these bad boys until 2006 at the earliest, unless Sony is planning on a much, much lower price point than I am expecting.
I should know better, but:
I'm not a FSF zealot. I don't really even _like_ the FSF. But I do understand what they mean when they talk about "freedom".
Freedom can be defined as control of your own destiny. Conversely, a lack of freedom is usually because of control exerted on one by external factors. Hence, control and freedom are clearly not antithetical concepts. One might even view freedom as a measurement or evaluation of a given level of control.
Yes, the GPL does not grant complete freedom to the licensee, but neither does any other license agreement. No contract is without conditions and rules; only source code released into the public domain is "truly free" in the way you seem to mean.
What the GPL does, and does well, is grant a limited set of freedoms to the licensee under certain conditions. This is not the "Free" in "Free Software". What the FSF means by "Free" is that they can release code for use in other, similarly licensed "Free" software, while maintaining full control over any other use of the software.
If you distribute code under the licenses you mention, you are still not providing "truly free" software. There are conditions that the licensee must meet to use the code. Also, you have less control over the future of your code. Parts of Microsoft Windows are in fact BSD code, legitimately licensed under the BSD license. No source code is provided to the end user, and the licensor never sees a nickel from this proprietary redistribution of their code.
On the other hand, a GPL licensor retains the freedom to dictate terms of closed-source, proprietary redistribution of his code. This means that he can sell ($) redistribution rights to anyone who wishes to distribute under terms other than the GPL.
GPL is not evil or bad, it is just a tool with its own unique set of advantages and deficiencies. Choose a license that suits your wants and needs, whether it be GPL, MIT, BSD, or one of your own devising.
And no one is allowed to complain about the license you choose. If they are complaining, it is because they want the software. Without the license, they have no access to the software at all.
Mush Luvv,
Arek
Actually, there is one rather good argument for using "English" measurement, at least when one is evaluating length.
It is far, far easier to split measurements in the English scale into fourths and thirds. The math is much simpler to do in your head. Halves work just as well as in Metric (Decimal). Fifths work better under Metric, but English can do sixths.
This is a simple consequence of their prime factors: 2*5=10 as opposed to 2*2*3=4*3=2*6=12.
Feet to yards brings us to 2*2*3*3=36, which is strange but functional, and then we come to miles which is where it all falls apart. But we can't afford to replace all the signs with kilometers per hour. I'm not sure I'd trust American drivers to make the transition safely, either.
Metric is a perfectly valid scheme to nearly all your measuring in. It is superior in several ways to English measurements, but there are valid reasons for not switching to it.
I believe that most people don't want to swap our convoluted babylonian time system for decimal time, and I consider this an example differing in degree but not type from the English/Metric debate.
You don't have any fucking clue how much money the asshole makes. He says 90, and he is the most reliable source for that information in the context of this discussion. It's certainly a lot easier to believe his assessment of his own income than your infantile, clumsy rebuttal, "You do not make 90k".
I can't belive I'm actually seeing this shit, even on the interweb. A statement that you doubted his word regarding his income would have been meaningless, immature, and impolite. I can't find a strong enough adjective to describe the absolute lack of civility shown by your outright denial of his statement.
I can type 60 words per minute. This may or may not be a true statement, but in either case, telling me that I can't makes you look like the liar.
Don't take it personally; you're just a worthless shitbiscuit without a single redemptive quality.
Recommendations:
Don't use "First off". Don't begin a sentence with a numeral. And if something "goes without saying", it is better left unsaid. Also, if you insist on being an asshole, you could at least be an entertaining one.
People who claim that 7-11 stores don't mind if you take an extra cup are wrong, wrong, wrong.
Caveat: This may be different for stores owned by Southland (the 7-11 corporation), but applies to all 7-11 franchises.
Here's how it breaks down. The franchisee doesn't pay much for the cups, but whenever they purchase a cup, they are expected to sell it at full retail value. The franchisee's financial obligations to 7-11 corporate are not based on that franchisee's profit, but their retail sales. If they give away cups, they lose the money used to buy the cups as well as a portion of the retail value of the cups, which they must pay to Southland.
In a sense, the cup, and only the cup, is what you are actually purchasing when you buy a big gulp. The soda syrup isn't part of merchandise inventory, and isn't technically "sold". It's actually a miscellaneous selling expense. ~$0.85 will buy you access to the soda fountain as a "refill", and this is about as pure as profit gets.
As a test: Go into a 7-11, and look near the cups and trashcans. There should be several signs that say "Cups are inventory. Please do not discard unused cups." Taking an extra cup is technically shoplifting (and illegal!), unless you bring it to the clerk's attention. If the clerk allows you to leave with the extra cup, perhaps the owner of the store needs to hire a different clerk.
Of course, it was probably enough of a struggle finding someone both willing to work for a clerk's wages and reliable enough to do a clerk's job.
Utter bullshit is a little strong.
While your creditors don't get to make managerial decisions, they do "own" part of your business in the very real sense that they own a portion of your assets exactly equal to the amount they are owed. Creditor is a synonym for owner, just as debtor means "ower".
So while the bank shouldn't be said to own your business (unless they have capital), they may very well own your inventory, equipment, cash, accounts receivable, etc. Not usually a good place to be.
Actually, there is at least one general rule of thumb I find very useful in any circumstance: Pay Attention. There may be more, YMMV.
Even if your country uses the metric system, you weren't raised in a base-10 world. Yes, it is true that almost all integral arithmetic is represented in base 10. But dominant does not mean exclusive.
Of course, that's entirely beside the point. This is why you really have no clue:
The distinction between decimal and sexagesimal representation has no connection whatsoever with the difference between an analog visual representation and a digital numeric display.
You're doing the sexagesimal math in your head every time you look at your digital watch, or you wouldn't have any clue how much time had elapsed between 2:35 and 3:10. However, on an analog display, it's easy to see that there are seven groups of five marks between the two points, or 35 minutes. In fact, unless your digital watch is using 24 hour time, you have to use duodecimal (base 12) arithmetic to find the difference between 9:00 and 2:00. On most analog displays, there are five clearly delineated hour segments between the numbers in question.
If I neaded to measure times below 500ms, I'd invest in a quality stopwatch. But I wouldn't want to wear it on my wrist.
Don't mistake your lamentable inability to read an analog display as a weakness of the concept. You're just to lazy to learn something that takes all of a few day's casual practice (i.e., wearing an analog watch and looking at it when you want to know the time) to become second nature.
Think about it: Which is a better representation, a diagram of a right angle, or the numeral 90? That numeral being associated with the right angle is just another example of the many facets of this 'base-10' world you were raised in that is not, in fact, decimal. Trecentesexagesimal, perhaps, in this instance.
Also, a classy analog watch has approximately thirteen thousand times the sex appeal of wearing uglyfont numbers on your arm.
Fool. The x86 architecture is the highest art created by man. Its apparent inelegance belies a sophistication of design beyond your ken.
By not being particularly good at anything, x86 has evolved into a near ideal consumer desktop CPU. Whatever excuses you may make for your favorite alternate desktop chip dying the hard death are meaningless. The simple fact is that nothing else was ever as good.
Whiny know-nothings have been complaining about the x86's supposed inferiority for more than two decades, and the architecture is more dominant than ever before. Why? Simple.
In comparison, a very conservative example for the speed of the bus between the DS processors:
32 bit system bus at 50 Mhz
Mhz is millions of cycles per second, so 32 bits, or 4 bytes, get transferred 50 million times per second. This is peak performance, but the numbers are useful for comparison purposes.
4 bytes * 50 million cycles/second is 200 million bytes/second.
256/200,000,000 = 1/781,250
The DS's specs will probably exceed this. So, to be specific, an internal bus is approximately seven hundred eighty-one thousand, two hundred fifty times that of the sorry ass GBA link cable.
Two screens is not for multiplayer. One of the functions of having two screens is to have one big screen (comparable to if not larger than PSP!) for cheap. Also, it will probably fold. It will cost Nintendo extra to have the secondary CPU for the secondary screen, but this opens up possibilities for rendering different things on the screens.
Consider the following game idea:
FPS on the main screen, with a third person view on the secondary screen? This system will be more powerful than GBA, so 3D should be actually pretty nice. With a well thought out camera angle, this would give a player the equivalent of 360 degree vision.
Master Chief doesn't have 360 degree vision[1].
Why is this important for a handheld console? Nintendo isn't going to let you know all of its features before E3, you know. One of the revelations I predict to be wireless multiplay.
Sadly though, probably the best potential use is for sports games, one of the few genres I have no love for.
Team sports games for GBA suck in comparison to their console equivalents largely due to being unable to present enough information to the player at once. With two screens an elegant way to accomplish this would be to have the main screen showing the 3D action focusing an the selected player, and the second screen displaying a real-time, birds-eye view of the playfield with useful gewgaws such as statistics and running play overlays.
You say, "Nintendo is not famous for making brilliant hardware decisions, just brilliant games."
I say, Nintendo is not famous for making brilliant hardware decisions, but they should be famous for making consistently profitable financial decisions year after fucking year. If you meant to say, 'Nintendo is infamous for making really bloody awful hardware decisions', then you are probably right, but for the wrong reasons. Or possibly thinking of Sega.
Nintendo's really bloody awful failures to date:
The Virtual Boy
The 64DD
Radarscope[2]
E-Reader
Virtual Boy was a silly experiment, but caused no harm to Nintendo. None whatever. They made money that year, so VB amounted to frivolous squandering of profit - not a great idea, but they pulled the plug so fast it made Gunpei Yokoi's head spin. It was his own fault for making such an offbeat machine, but had it not failed so abysmally, he might be working at Nintendo still and not dead. When one fecklessly belittles the VB, one disturbs the sleep of a great man, the creator of Metroid and the GameBoy. Please don't.
The 64DD saw no US release, and was phased out rather quickly in Japan. Again, Nintendo suffered no ill effects other than a reduction of profit.
E-Reader? As long as Nintendo gives me my extra Mario levels I don't give a damn.
Nintendo's reputation for poor hardware decisions is grossly exaggerated.
In case you're still wondering what the 'Third Pillar' business is all about, my best guess is that Nintendo has taken Sony's 'conquer the handheld market from the extreme high end' manoeuvre as an excuse to triple-tier GameBoy. You see, they don't want to stop selling SP units, or for that matter, GBA units, any time soon. But they can't let PSP go unanswered, so they have this 'third pillar'.
Okay, you're not approving. But you're talking about the device. You're interested in the device. When pictures are available on the web, you're going to goddamn well download them so you can see what this thing actually looks like. Whatever your opinion now, you've officially been engaged[1] by the ur-hype.
Like I said, before you start doubting Nintendo's wisdom (courage, or strength[2]), look at their track record. Twice, if you need to.
BTW, in answer to:
This portable console might be cool, but, I mean, come on, TWO SCREENS?! There is no game play you could create on two side by side screens that could not also be created on one double split screen.
Two screens, with one CPU controlling each screen, is considerably cheaper than one big screen with a CPU powerful enough to render split-screen play in real time. Also, you can't fold one big screen, unless you want to talk about rudiculously expensive flex displays that have no place in such a handheld unit.
what can this new dual screen feature do that two seperate units linked together, which has been possible with Gameboy for all eternity, cannot do better?
I don't know about you, but I have a hard time picturing this. I guess you could attach the face of the control pad half of one SP to the back of the screen half of the other SP. One connector cable flopping about, and BOOM! Nintendo DS. Of course, this requires a $210 investment and looks really silly.
Of course, the real DS will have a much, much, much, (much, much...) faster connection between its CPUs, and probably won't look quite as silly. Also, it will almost certainly be cheaper than $210.
So, in total:
Nintendo DS - 3!
Two GBA SPs attached with electrical tape - 0
The Nintendo DS: Better than two GBA SPs strapped together with tape
Nintendo confirmed to Famitsu magazine that they will present a new game system at E3 2004 in May. The machine is not a successor to GameCube or GameBoy Advance, this product can play back existing game titles.
Terribly inspecific, I know. I'm looking for a better web quote (something from Iwata directly would be good) but I fear that it wouldn't have any greater precision.
I haven't seen this asked yet. I see shock and confusion, and speculations of Nintendo's demise. It would be good to remember that Nintendo has had only one unprofitable quarter in the last 30 years. Microsoft has pissed $2bns down the drain to become a viable competitor in the home console arena. Sony is upset that the biggest threat to their games division is GBA, and wants to compete on that front with their PSP.
Nintendo knows what it's doing better than you do. Let it do what it does best, and reap the happy gaming benefit that is your due as a fan. Or not.
But if you're one of Iwata's 'Ten percent', make it known.
If you'd paid attention, you'd have noticed that he talked about 'work for hire'. The fact that recording artists must bear the costs of recording and thus creating their product is precisely why it should not be considered work for hire. In this light, the standard arrangement of transferring copyright of the material to the record label seems extremely unethical. You have better things to do than quibble about statistics, and you haven't seen part two yet, so shush.
By the way, Children of the Mind sucked ass. Big hairy donkey ass. I'd rather have a Tabasco enema than read it again. Mod this up so Card sees it.
Card, Children of the Mind was a piece of crap.
That having been said, Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon were pretty good.
Why is this the first I've heard of this? Has this been hushed as well as you say?
Crazy. Who says socialism and capitalism don't mix. I'm certain that all of the US media companies who license their copyrighted material through ROMS (and they almost unanimously do) feel that the royalties they receive from ROMS justify ceding distribution control of that content to ROMS. This appears to be the only practical way to market any sort of music, film, or multimedia content to Russia. Logic tells us that the MPAA and RIAA member companies wanted or needed the Russian market badly enough that they were willing to participate in the ROMS distribution model, unknowing of or despite the fact that US consumers have legal, high speed access to the ROMS distribution network.
I can see why they don't want to talk about it.
It's such a goddamn shame that these same companies own most of the hardcopy media as well. It doesn't take a [Cliched analogies fail me. Please insert one to your liking here.] to see why I haven't seen this in Maxim or Newsweek.
But why not elsewhere? We've got to make a stink about this, and better yet, start using it. People have to know.
Because the US government needs one of these kicking around, or it's going to be severely disadvantaged in the key area of digital media distribution. This is not just about music and movies. This is about IP control. Remember that information is the successor to money. The economics of data flow will be the keys to the kingdom for longer than you or I are likely to live.
Re:ynlo gcramblins eht tirsf dna tasl setterl
on
Can You Raed Tihs?
·
· Score: 1
This is redundant, but I fell for the 'yompletelc sackwardb' illusion as well. This appears to be a common phenomenon.
I don't think that it's directly tied to word length. "relud" threw me, where "dnnssiiarcehfe" did not. "cnntttlliiusaooy" was pretty hard, though. And the words are really hard to understand out of context. This is child's play compared to reading the horrid cursive scrawls of lazy handwriters.
Yeah, I knew that if I flattened the comments and searched for "smart", I would end up right here. Anyone remember the episode with the portable cone of silence? Pure comedic gold.
I've got no sympathy whatsoever regarding whatever levies get imposed on either iPod or iTMS, or for that matter any other music products Apple Computer decides to market. Perhaps it can be argued that the infringement on Apple Corps' rights to the trade name "Apple" is rather frivolous, but Apple Computer bound itself to an agreement not to trade in music under the name "Apple". They have repeatedly violated this agreement, and have paid for doing so, which is at least a tactit admission that they were in violation. They should (and will) pay again for their most recent transgressions.
Presumably, an increase in the data set of articles and links as a result of an increasing trend towards blog content can be optimized for in Google's search algorithms to expand the utility of the search engine. Word of Blog and Word of Link would serve as online analogues of Word of Mouth and Word on the Street.
Also, don't worry about the Google-bombing effect of blogs: This will recede as a broader pool of blog data is indexed, as individuals or even organized groups would have an increasingly harder time creating anomalous "spikes" in the search results. The more data you have, the less a datum means.
What would create spikes are the same things that do now: multiple authors discussing the same topic and linking to the same article. This would simply begin to happen at a faster pace.
You, my friend, are no noble Canadian, but a backbiting slanderer. While the relative aesthetic of our respective currencies is not a matter I feel the inclination to debate on this or any other day, I attest that the sheer lack of class in your libelous and immature assault on the pulchritude of my fine new Jackson is incivil and unwarranted. To wit, you deserve no more and no less than this utterly frivolous waste of bandwith I like to call a
S.M.A.C.K.D.O.W.N!!!!![1]
Consider yourself served. Ten yard penalty, automatic first down, universe no longer a grape.
I win because I say so.[2]
[1] Five exclamation marks,"!", are one of the classical signs of a truly deranged mind.
[2] You can argue if you want to, but you'd simply be perpetuating nonsense and silliness, which I simply can't allow myself to get involved with.
Slashdot Mirror
The PSP uses new special discs (I believe they are the same size as GCN discs and mini-cd's) that can only be read on the PSP.
What does this mean?
PSP is not just a video game system, it's an opportunity to sell music and movies on yet another physical media format. Way to go, Sony.
And the battery life will be teh short.
The delay to 2005 doesn't faze me at all, as I probably won't own one of these bad boys until 2006 at the earliest, unless Sony is planning on a much, much lower price point than I am expecting.
Much Love,
Arek
Not surprising, as MS Paint has been dead, dead, dead for many years now.
I should know better, but: I'm not a FSF zealot. I don't really even _like_ the FSF. But I do understand what they mean when they talk about "freedom". Freedom can be defined as control of your own destiny. Conversely, a lack of freedom is usually because of control exerted on one by external factors. Hence, control and freedom are clearly not antithetical concepts. One might even view freedom as a measurement or evaluation of a given level of control. Yes, the GPL does not grant complete freedom to the licensee, but neither does any other license agreement. No contract is without conditions and rules; only source code released into the public domain is "truly free" in the way you seem to mean. What the GPL does, and does well, is grant a limited set of freedoms to the licensee under certain conditions. This is not the "Free" in "Free Software". What the FSF means by "Free" is that they can release code for use in other, similarly licensed "Free" software, while maintaining full control over any other use of the software. If you distribute code under the licenses you mention, you are still not providing "truly free" software. There are conditions that the licensee must meet to use the code. Also, you have less control over the future of your code. Parts of Microsoft Windows are in fact BSD code, legitimately licensed under the BSD license. No source code is provided to the end user, and the licensor never sees a nickel from this proprietary redistribution of their code. On the other hand, a GPL licensor retains the freedom to dictate terms of closed-source, proprietary redistribution of his code. This means that he can sell ($) redistribution rights to anyone who wishes to distribute under terms other than the GPL. GPL is not evil or bad, it is just a tool with its own unique set of advantages and deficiencies. Choose a license that suits your wants and needs, whether it be GPL, MIT, BSD, or one of your own devising. And no one is allowed to complain about the license you choose. If they are complaining, it is because they want the software. Without the license, they have no access to the software at all. Mush Luvv, Arek
Actually, there is one rather good argument for using "English" measurement, at least when one is evaluating length.
It is far, far easier to split measurements in the English scale into fourths and thirds. The math is much simpler to do in your head. Halves work just as well as in Metric (Decimal). Fifths work better under Metric, but English can do sixths.
This is a simple consequence of their prime factors: 2*5=10 as opposed to 2*2*3=4*3=2*6=12.
Feet to yards brings us to 2*2*3*3=36, which is strange but functional, and then we come to miles which is where it all falls apart. But we can't afford to replace all the signs with kilometers per hour. I'm not sure I'd trust American drivers to make the transition safely, either.
Metric is a perfectly valid scheme to nearly all your measuring in. It is superior in several ways to English measurements, but there are valid reasons for not switching to it.
I believe that most people don't want to swap our convoluted babylonian time system for decimal time, and I consider this an example differing in degree but not type from the English/Metric debate.
Much Love,
ArekRashan
I'm sorry, I don't have any idea what you're talking about. [ Insert obvious babelfish joke here ]. Care to communicate a little less briefly?
Sam Rockwell seems like a particularly good choice for Mr. Beeblebrox. I just wonder who will get the tap to be Mr. Prefect.
You don't have any fucking clue how much money the asshole makes. He says 90, and he is the most reliable source for that information in the context of this discussion. It's certainly a lot easier to believe his assessment of his own income than your infantile, clumsy rebuttal, "You do not make 90k".
I can't belive I'm actually seeing this shit, even on the interweb. A statement that you doubted his word regarding his income would have been meaningless, immature, and impolite. I can't find a strong enough adjective to describe the absolute lack of civility shown by your outright denial of his statement.
I can type 60 words per minute. This may or may not be a true statement, but in either case, telling me that I can't makes you look like the liar.
Don't take it personally; you're just a worthless shitbiscuit without a single redemptive quality.
Recommendations:
Don't use "First off". Don't begin a sentence with a numeral. And if something "goes without saying", it is better left unsaid. Also, if you insist on being an asshole, you could at least be an entertaining one.
People who claim that 7-11 stores don't mind if you take an extra cup are wrong, wrong, wrong. Caveat: This may be different for stores owned by Southland (the 7-11 corporation), but applies to all 7-11 franchises. Here's how it breaks down. The franchisee doesn't pay much for the cups, but whenever they purchase a cup, they are expected to sell it at full retail value. The franchisee's financial obligations to 7-11 corporate are not based on that franchisee's profit, but their retail sales. If they give away cups, they lose the money used to buy the cups as well as a portion of the retail value of the cups, which they must pay to Southland. In a sense, the cup, and only the cup, is what you are actually purchasing when you buy a big gulp. The soda syrup isn't part of merchandise inventory, and isn't technically "sold". It's actually a miscellaneous selling expense. ~$0.85 will buy you access to the soda fountain as a "refill", and this is about as pure as profit gets. As a test: Go into a 7-11, and look near the cups and trashcans. There should be several signs that say "Cups are inventory. Please do not discard unused cups." Taking an extra cup is technically shoplifting (and illegal!), unless you bring it to the clerk's attention. If the clerk allows you to leave with the extra cup, perhaps the owner of the store needs to hire a different clerk. Of course, it was probably enough of a struggle finding someone both willing to work for a clerk's wages and reliable enough to do a clerk's job.
Utter bullshit is a little strong. While your creditors don't get to make managerial decisions, they do "own" part of your business in the very real sense that they own a portion of your assets exactly equal to the amount they are owed. Creditor is a synonym for owner, just as debtor means "ower". So while the bank shouldn't be said to own your business (unless they have capital), they may very well own your inventory, equipment, cash, accounts receivable, etc. Not usually a good place to be. Actually, there is at least one general rule of thumb I find very useful in any circumstance: Pay Attention. There may be more, YMMV.
Fool.
Even if your country uses the metric system, you weren't raised in a base-10 world. Yes, it is true that almost all integral arithmetic is represented in base 10. But dominant does not mean exclusive.
Of course, that's entirely beside the point. This is why you really have no clue:
The distinction between decimal and sexagesimal representation has no connection whatsoever with the difference between an analog visual representation and a digital numeric display.
You're doing the sexagesimal math in your head every time you look at your digital watch, or you wouldn't have any clue how much time had elapsed between 2:35 and 3:10. However, on an analog display, it's easy to see that there are seven groups of five marks between the two points, or 35 minutes. In fact, unless your digital watch is using 24 hour time, you have to use duodecimal (base 12) arithmetic to find the difference between 9:00 and 2:00. On most analog displays, there are five clearly delineated hour segments between the numbers in question.
If I neaded to measure times below 500ms, I'd invest in a quality stopwatch. But I wouldn't want to wear it on my wrist.
Don't mistake your lamentable inability to read an analog display as a weakness of the concept. You're just to lazy to learn something that takes all of a few day's casual practice (i.e., wearing an analog watch and looking at it when you want to know the time) to become second nature.
Think about it: Which is a better representation, a diagram of a right angle, or the numeral 90? That numeral being associated with the right angle is just another example of the many facets of this 'base-10' world you were raised in that is not, in fact, decimal. Trecentesexagesimal, perhaps, in this instance.
Also, a classy analog watch has approximately thirteen thousand times the sex appeal of wearing uglyfont numbers on your arm.
Fool. The x86 architecture is the highest art created by man. Its apparent inelegance belies a sophistication of design beyond your ken.
By not being particularly good at anything, x86 has evolved into a near ideal consumer desktop CPU. Whatever excuses you may make for your favorite alternate desktop chip dying the hard death are meaningless. The simple fact is that nothing else was ever as good.
Whiny know-nothings have been complaining about the x86's supposed inferiority for more than two decades, and the architecture is more dominant than ever before. Why? Simple.
Everything else < x86
In comparison, a very conservative example for the speed of the bus between the DS processors:
32 bit system bus at 50 Mhz
Mhz is millions of cycles per second, so 32 bits, or 4 bytes, get transferred 50 million times per second. This is peak performance, but the numbers are useful for comparison purposes.
4 bytes * 50 million cycles/second is 200 million bytes/second.
256/200,000,000 = 1/781,250
The DS's specs will probably exceed this. So, to be specific, an internal bus is approximately seven hundred eighty-one thousand, two hundred fifty times that of the sorry ass GBA link cable.
Two screens is not for multiplayer. One of the functions of having two screens is to have one big screen (comparable to if not larger than PSP!) for cheap. Also, it will probably fold. It will cost Nintendo extra to have the secondary CPU for the secondary screen, but this opens up possibilities for rendering different things on the screens.
Consider the following game idea:
FPS on the main screen, with a third person view on the secondary screen? This system will be more powerful than GBA, so 3D should be actually pretty nice. With a well thought out camera angle, this would give a player the equivalent of 360 degree vision.
Master Chief doesn't have 360 degree vision[1].
Why is this important for a handheld console? Nintendo isn't going to let you know all of its features before E3, you know. One of the revelations I predict to be wireless multiplay.
Sadly though, probably the best potential use is for sports games, one of the few genres I have no love for.
Team sports games for GBA suck in comparison to their console equivalents largely due to being unable to present enough information to the player at once. With two screens an elegant way to accomplish this would be to have the main screen showing the 3D action focusing an the selected player, and the second screen displaying a real-time, birds-eye view of the playfield with useful gewgaws such as statistics and running play overlays.
You say, "Nintendo is not famous for making brilliant hardware decisions, just brilliant games."
I say, Nintendo is not famous for making brilliant hardware decisions, but they should be famous for making consistently profitable financial decisions year after fucking year. If you meant to say, 'Nintendo is infamous for making really bloody awful hardware decisions', then you are probably right, but for the wrong reasons. Or possibly thinking of Sega.
Nintendo's really bloody awful failures to date:
The Virtual Boy
The 64DD
Radarscope[2]
E-Reader
Virtual Boy was a silly experiment, but caused no harm to Nintendo. None whatever. They made money that year, so VB amounted to frivolous squandering of profit - not a great idea, but they pulled the plug so fast it made Gunpei Yokoi's head spin. It was his own fault for making such an offbeat machine, but had it not failed so abysmally, he might be working at Nintendo still and not dead. When one fecklessly belittles the VB, one disturbs the sleep of a great man, the creator of Metroid and the GameBoy. Please don't.
The 64DD saw no US release, and was phased out rather quickly in Japan. Again, Nintendo suffered no ill effects other than a reduction of profit.
E-Reader? As long as Nintendo gives me my extra Mario levels I don't give a damn.
In case you're still wondering what the 'Third Pillar' business is all about, my best guess is that Nintendo has taken Sony's 'conquer the handheld market from the extreme high end' manoeuvre as an excuse to triple-tier GameBoy. You see, they don't want to stop selling SP units, or for that matter, GBA units, any time soon. But they can't let PSP go unanswered, so they have this 'third pillar'.
The reas
Oops. [1] Not N-Gaged. Important distinction. [2] Cheap Zelda joke was, in fact, obligatory.
Like I said, before you start doubting Nintendo's wisdom (courage, or strength[2]), look at their track record. Twice, if you need to.
BTW, in answer to:
This portable console might be cool, but, I mean, come on, TWO SCREENS?! There is no game play you could create on two side by side screens that could not also be created on one double split screen.
Two screens, with one CPU controlling each screen, is considerably cheaper than one big screen with a CPU powerful enough to render split-screen play in real time. Also, you can't fold one big screen, unless you want to talk about rudiculously expensive flex displays that have no place in such a handheld unit.
Cheers.
I don't know about you, but I have a hard time picturing this. I guess you could attach the face of the control pad half of one SP to the back of the screen half of the other SP. One connector cable flopping about, and BOOM! Nintendo DS. Of course, this requires a $210 investment and looks really silly.
Of course, the real DS will have a much, much, much, (much, much...) faster connection between its CPUs, and probably won't look quite as silly. Also, it will almost certainly be cheaper than $210.
So, in total:
Nintendo DS - 3!
Two GBA SPs attached with electrical tape - 0
The Nintendo DS: Better than two GBA SPs strapped together with tape
I'm glad I could clear this up for you.
Terribly inspecific, I know. I'm looking for a better web quote (something from Iwata directly would be good) but I fear that it wouldn't have any greater precision.
I haven't seen this asked yet. I see shock and confusion, and speculations of Nintendo's demise. It would be good to remember that Nintendo has had only one unprofitable quarter in the last 30 years. Microsoft has pissed $2bns down the drain to become a viable competitor in the home console arena. Sony is upset that the biggest threat to their games division is GBA, and wants to compete on that front with their PSP. Nintendo knows what it's doing better than you do. Let it do what it does best, and reap the happy gaming benefit that is your due as a fan. Or not. But if you're one of Iwata's 'Ten percent', make it known.
By the way, Children of the Mind sucked ass. Big hairy donkey ass. I'd rather have a Tabasco enema than read it again. Mod this up so Card sees it.
Card, Children of the Mind was a piece of crap.
That having been said, Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon were pretty good.
Crazy. Who says socialism and capitalism don't mix. I'm certain that all of the US media companies who license their copyrighted material through ROMS (and they almost unanimously do) feel that the royalties they receive from ROMS justify ceding distribution control of that content to ROMS. This appears to be the only practical way to market any sort of music, film, or multimedia content to Russia. Logic tells us that the MPAA and RIAA member companies wanted or needed the Russian market badly enough that they were willing to participate in the ROMS distribution model, unknowing of or despite the fact that US consumers have legal, high speed access to the ROMS distribution network.
I can see why they don't want to talk about it.
It's such a goddamn shame that these same companies own most of the hardcopy media as well. It doesn't take a [Cliched analogies fail me. Please insert one to your liking here.] to see why I haven't seen this in Maxim or Newsweek.
But why not elsewhere? We've got to make a stink about this, and better yet, start using it. People have to know.
Because the US government needs one of these kicking around, or it's going to be severely disadvantaged in the key area of digital media distribution. This is not just about music and movies. This is about IP control. Remember that information is the successor to money. The economics of data flow will be the keys to the kingdom for longer than you or I are likely to live.
This is redundant, but I fell for the 'yompletelc sackwardb' illusion as well. This appears to be a common phenomenon.
I don't think that it's directly tied to word length. "relud" threw me, where "dnnssiiarcehfe" did not. "cnntttlliiusaooy" was pretty hard, though. And the words are really hard to understand out of context. This is child's play compared to reading the horrid cursive scrawls of lazy handwriters.
Yeah, I knew that if I flattened the comments and searched for "smart", I would end up right here. Anyone remember the episode with the portable cone of silence? Pure comedic gold.
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No patience for oathbreakers.
Also, don't worry about the Google-bombing effect of blogs: This will recede as a broader pool of blog data is indexed, as individuals or even organized groups would have an increasingly harder time creating anomalous "spikes" in the search results. The more data you have, the less a datum means.
What would create spikes are the same things that do now: multiple authors discussing the same topic and linking to the same article. This would simply begin to happen at a faster pace.
S.M.A.C.K.D.O.W.N!!!!![1]
Consider yourself served. Ten yard penalty, automatic first down, universe no longer a grape.
I win because I say so.[2]
[1] Five exclamation marks,"!", are one of the classical signs of a truly deranged mind.
[2] You can argue if you want to, but you'd simply be perpetuating nonsense and silliness, which I simply can't allow myself to get involved with.
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Because I Can.