The case, monitor, keyboard, mouse etc don't have to be upgraded. I'm assuming this $500 gaming machine is in response to console players saying PC gaming is too expensive.
Adding the monitor etc to the price is like adding the TV and stereo to the price of the console. In 5 years when the newest stuff is out, you don't need to upgrade your case or mouse or keyboard to play the latest games.
H.264 plays under every OS now and it downloads cleanly to the iPod, so this sounds like a good solution.
Except that H.264 requires a pretty beefy CPU. My 600mhz ibook can't play the 320x240 stuff on iTMS. It just shows the first frame and plays the audio.. while taking up 100% cpu. No problems playing divx and mpegs at full frame rate.
The only thing I see wrong with Rein's original assumption is that GC/PS2 owners would buy a cross-platform game for PS2 instead of the GC.
Which is strange. I own all 3 consoles. If I want online play, I'll get the game for the xbox. If I don't care about online play, I'll get the GC version, because the graphics are indistinguisable from the xbox version and I love my wavebirds.
I don't own *any* crossplatform games for the PS2, or at least they weren't crossplatform when I bought them. They look like crap and the controller is awful. 4 shoulderbuttons make me constantly hit the wrong one, and I prefer triggers anyway.
In fact, I just picked up American Wasteland for the GC.
Nintendo also came up with things like Robby the Robot, Virtual Boy, and the Power Glove.
I'll give you ROB and the Virtual Boy, but the Power Glove was 3rd party. Nintendo had nothing to do with it.
The Virtual Boy would have done better but for 2 things: A. They called it Virtual Boy, so people thought it was portable... it wasn't. B. Red on Black makes my eyes bleed. But doing the same thing with a pair of LCDs would've been awesome! Too bad the technology wasn't there.
Because Apple didn't get found guilty of illegally using anticompetitive means to keep an existing monopoly and obtain monopoly power in a second market.
That's only becaues Apple neglected to actually obtain a monopoly before acting like one.
He's obviously never had a catnipped-up cat grab a hold of his forearm with the front claws and use it's back legs to scrape the everlovincrap out of him.
Everyone knows a cat's claw is Piercing+1, Slashing-5 sheesh
Seriously though. Look at the cat scratch, it's not a clean cut, it's similar to if you got scratched by a pointy stick, not a razor. If the claw went deeper it wouldn't move because only the point is sharp, not the edge.
However, I seriously doubt that with REGULAR USE (meaning under normal conditions) wear and tear is such that majority of these Nanos actually can't see the screen.
Mossberg disagrees.
"But, after just under a month of daily use, my own nano is badly scratched, and looks beat up when viewed at an angle. Worse, there are several large scratches across the screen that impede functionality by making text and photos slightly harder to see. I have never tested or owned any portable electronic device that picked up as many scratches as quickly as the iPod nano."
PDA users have had this problem for a long time, which is why there are brisk sales for PDA screen protectors.
No.. PDA screen protectors are used because you *write* on the screen.. with a stick of plastic. A little bit of sand gets under your stylus and you'll mash it into the screen.
My cellphone lives just fine in my pocket, and doesn't have any visible scratches even though it's 2 years old. My PDA is a few years old, and the only visible scratches are some stylus marks on the screen.
The Nano is poorly made.. that's all there is to it. I've seen display-model Nintendo DSs in better shape than the Nanos in the apple store.
This is good, but what *I* really want is a competitor for MakeMusic's Finale, which is a professional-grade program for music notation
I haven't used Finale since Finale98, so I don't know how far it has come in the past 7 years or so. However, I've been really happy with RoseGarden lately. Notation is very well done.
Please slashdot! Don't let that guy anywhere near your site!
You assume he had any say in regards to the ads. Most companies now have corporate ad grids. They're laid out by marketing and web designers have no power to change them. Instead they try their best to work around the ad grids.
Blame the onion for the ad mess that they now have, not the web designer. Or better yet, blame yourself, I'm sure the drop in hard copy sales is directly responsible for the adstravaganza on theonion.com
I'm even worse. I tend to leave the Software Update "The new software requires your computer to reboot now" window sitting in background for days. Sometimes it stays open until Apple releases a new update that also need a reboot.
It's also the biggest reason I hate Safari... a browser update shouldn't require a reboot. WebKit shouldn't be that tied to the OS.
Desperate Housewives commands $350,000 for a 30 second spot. There are 17 minutes of commercials in 1 episode, which means there are 34 commercials in each episode.
That comes to $11.9 million per episode. That means 6 million people need to purchase each episode in order to match what ABC currently gets from advertisers.
Somehow I think the people talking about the death of broadcast TV are a bit pre-mature.
"Lost?" Come on. I don't even watch that stuff on TV let alone waste bits from my broadband connection to download it...
Produce something worth watching and I'll go back to watching TV.
23 million people watched last week's episode of Lost. The networks could give a shit about you. They know that you'd complain about the quality of TV regardless of what was on.
This isn't a *video* iPod. It's an iPod that just happens to play video. 99% of the use cases will be the same as before.
And you're saying this *isn't* a mistake? What happened to the whole "do one thing and do it well?"
iTunes is becoming quite unweildy and the iPod is following suite. Putting video content into "My Music" is good example of how Apple has abandoned that concept.
Probably not. Ad revenue far outpaces subscription revenue for pretty much all content out there. If Firefly was too expensive to be supported by ad revenue, there is no way for it to survive on $2/episode subscriptions.
the quality is about the same as the 350MB versions I get over BitTorrent.
If you say so.. I grabbed the second season premiere of Lost off bittorrent (power outage made us miss it), it was about 350megs, it was a 720x480 xvid.
If you say 320x240 is "about the same" as 720x480 you need to check the quality of that LCD you were watching on.
A friend bought the 3rd episode off itunes and watched it full screen on a 21" viewsonic and the quality was definately worse than analog TV.
Slashdot Mirror
But give me the opportunity to buy Get Smart episodes on the internet*, and I will take it.
Here
93 episodes for $99. Just a little more than a buck an episode.
The case, monitor, keyboard, mouse etc don't have to be upgraded. I'm assuming this $500 gaming machine is in response to console players saying PC gaming is too expensive.
Adding the monitor etc to the price is like adding the TV and stereo to the price of the console. In 5 years when the newest stuff is out, you don't need to upgrade your case or mouse or keyboard to play the latest games.
H.264 plays under every OS now and it downloads cleanly to the iPod, so this sounds like a good solution.
Except that H.264 requires a pretty beefy CPU. My 600mhz ibook can't play the 320x240 stuff on iTMS. It just shows the first frame and plays the audio.. while taking up 100% cpu. No problems playing divx and mpegs at full frame rate.
The only thing I see wrong with Rein's original assumption is that GC/PS2 owners would buy a cross-platform game for PS2 instead of the GC.
Which is strange. I own all 3 consoles. If I want online play, I'll get the game for the xbox. If I don't care about online play, I'll get the GC version, because the graphics are indistinguisable from the xbox version and I love my wavebirds.
I don't own *any* crossplatform games for the PS2, or at least they weren't crossplatform when I bought them. They look like crap and the controller is awful. 4 shoulderbuttons make me constantly hit the wrong one, and I prefer triggers anyway.
In fact, I just picked up American Wasteland for the GC.
Nintendo also came up with things like Robby the Robot, Virtual Boy, and the Power Glove.
I'll give you ROB and the Virtual Boy, but the Power Glove was 3rd party. Nintendo had nothing to do with it.
The Virtual Boy would have done better but for 2 things:
A. They called it Virtual Boy, so people thought it was portable... it wasn't.
B. Red on Black makes my eyes bleed. But doing the same thing with a pair of LCDs would've been awesome! Too bad the technology wasn't there.
Because Apple didn't get found guilty of illegally using anticompetitive means to keep an existing monopoly and obtain monopoly power in a second market.
That's only becaues Apple neglected to actually obtain a monopoly before acting like one.
The NDS main CPU is pretty slow- 66 MHz.
:)
Not that slow. The Palm III had a 16Mhz cpu. At the very least the NDS should be able to handle Grafiti
He's obviously never had a catnipped-up cat grab a hold of his forearm with the front claws and use it's back legs to scrape the everlovincrap out of him.
Everyone knows a cat's claw is Piercing+1, Slashing-5 sheesh
Seriously though. Look at the cat scratch, it's not a clean cut, it's similar to if you got scratched by a pointy stick, not a razor. If the claw went deeper it wouldn't move because only the point is sharp, not the edge.
However, I seriously doubt that with REGULAR USE (meaning under normal conditions) wear and tear is such that majority of these Nanos actually can't see the screen.
Mossberg disagrees.
"But, after just under a month of daily use, my own nano is badly scratched, and looks beat up when viewed at an angle. Worse, there are several large scratches across the screen that impede functionality by making text and photos slightly harder to see. I have never tested or owned any portable electronic device that picked up as many scratches as quickly as the iPod nano."
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/mailbox-20051006.htm
PDA users have had this problem for a long time, which is why there are brisk sales for PDA screen protectors.
No.. PDA screen protectors are used because you *write* on the screen.. with a stick of plastic. A little bit of sand gets under your stylus and you'll mash it into the screen.
My cellphone lives just fine in my pocket, and doesn't have any visible scratches even though it's 2 years old. My PDA is a few years old, and the only visible scratches are some stylus marks on the screen.
The Nano is poorly made.. that's all there is to it. I've seen display-model Nintendo DSs in better shape than the Nanos in the apple store.
Because they run it on a million servers?
And it's still slow as sludge.
This is good, but what *I* really want is a competitor for MakeMusic's Finale, which is a professional-grade program for music notation
I haven't used Finale since Finale98, so I don't know how far it has come in the past 7 years or so. However, I've been really happy with RoseGarden lately. Notation is very well done.
Please slashdot! Don't let that guy anywhere near your site!
You assume he had any say in regards to the ads. Most companies now have corporate ad grids. They're laid out by marketing and web designers have no power to change them. Instead they try their best to work around the ad grids.
Blame the onion for the ad mess that they now have, not the web designer. Or better yet, blame yourself, I'm sure the drop in hard copy sales is directly responsible for the adstravaganza on theonion.com
That's why I only reboot after updates.
I'm even worse. I tend to leave the Software Update "The new software requires your computer to reboot now" window sitting in background for days. Sometimes it stays open until Apple releases a new update that also need a reboot.
It's also the biggest reason I hate Safari... a browser update shouldn't require a reboot. WebKit shouldn't be that tied to the OS.
I signed up for $50 a month basic cable that became $60 a month after taxes.
Is that canadian dollars or something? Cox's basic cable (just the network channels) is $13/mo. Extended Basic (that's 72 channels) is $39/mo.
Desperate Housewives commands $350,000 for a 30 second spot. There are 17 minutes of commercials in 1 episode, which means there are 34 commercials in each episode.
That comes to $11.9 million per episode. That means 6 million people need to purchase each episode in order to match what ABC currently gets from advertisers.
Somehow I think the people talking about the death of broadcast TV are a bit pre-mature.
"Lost?" Come on. I don't even watch that stuff on TV let alone waste bits from my broadband connection to download it...
Produce something worth watching and I'll go back to watching TV.
23 million people watched last week's episode of Lost. The networks could give a shit about you. They know that you'd complain about the quality of TV regardless of what was on.
This isn't a *video* iPod. It's an iPod that just happens to play video. 99% of the use cases will be the same as before.
And you're saying this *isn't* a mistake? What happened to the whole "do one thing and do it well?"
iTunes is becoming quite unweildy and the iPod is following suite. Putting video content into "My Music" is good example of how Apple has abandoned that concept.
If I'm paying to get this episode off of iTunes, why should they stuff advertisements in there as well?
Because advertisers are willing to pay *way* more than you.
I pay for a newspaper subscription, there are still ads. Same goes for magazines. Subscriptions make up less than 10% of newspaper revenue.
Probably not. Ad revenue far outpaces subscription revenue for pretty much all content out there. If Firefly was too expensive to be supported by ad revenue, there is no way for it to survive on $2/episode subscriptions.
Is there some reason why FOSS audio tools will not work in Windows?
Nope.. in fact at work we use Audacity on OSX. It's one of the best wave editors we've used.
The only problem we've run into is that LAME on OSX can't seem to handle a 3 hour file.
MySQL Still doesn't have nested queries
Yes it does. It has for 2 years now.
How can an organization like the RIAA justify wanting more than 99 cents per song when you can purchase 44 minutes of audio and video for two dollars?
How about the fact that those 44 minutes of audio and video were broadcast OTA last week for free? Plus the free version was better quality.
the quality is about the same as the 350MB versions I get over BitTorrent.
If you say so.. I grabbed the second season premiere of Lost off bittorrent (power outage made us miss it), it was about 350megs, it was a 720x480 xvid.
If you say 320x240 is "about the same" as 720x480 you need to check the quality of that LCD you were watching on.
A friend bought the 3rd episode off itunes and watched it full screen on a 21" viewsonic and the quality was definately worse than analog TV.