Well LBP is nothing technologically... Seriously I have seen it on the PS3 and I would not see a single reason why it could not be ported straightly to the 360 or the PC... this is all marketing mumbo jumbo... Glorified 2 1/2d jump and run thats it...
I agree here, and I have to admit I modded my PSP as well, there was a reason for it, and no it was not piracy, it was that the thing became an awesome pocket multimedia machine as soon as it was modded. Sony wanted to sell it as media device, it failed with its software, the modders did it! Problem is, once it is modded it really is wide open to piracy more than any PC... But on the other hand I would not want it closed due to all the things you mentioned above! Problem is it does not fit into Sonys world that people do not want to use the device as Sony intended but want to use it as Sony marketed it!
There are various problems, one being outsourcing which means the knowledge is exported (which in itself is not a bad thing if you can stay competitive), but I think the biggest problem is the patent law (which is seen as capitalistic enough probably), while china also has a patent law they simply do not care about it. Guess what how the USA became big, they ignored european patents. Same happens now in china which has a bigger embracement of knowledge sharing in society than the west! Guess what would happen if you would design hardware that way and try to market it. For every button you put on the device three patent trolls would sue you into oblivion! It just was a matter of time the patent law severely would impact the USA negatively, that happens exactly now!
Its javascript support is not that good either, compared to Netbeans with its excellent Debugger integration and to Intellij as overall package it is subpar, but still one of the better offerings in the Eclipse world. Why people still use the bug ridden monster Eclipse is somewhat beyound me. Eclipse used to be top notch but nowadys it is the worst of all!
Intellij.... Also Netbeans has a very good javascript support, Eclipse however, as usualy is absymal! I am not sure where you look for dev tools but definitely not on the java side of things, where you currently can find the best IDEs in existence!
Standards compliant maybe, bugridden, unfortunately as well... I had to drop down 2 hours yesterday into a workaround because setting window.location.hash (I know it is not a standard but vital for ajax bookmarking hence exactly in the area chrome should work) was not working as expected! There are other things, for instance as it seems the bayeux comet protocol has its fair share of problems with this browser as well. Most of the problems stem from the fact that chrome is on a rather old Webkit codebase!
Well MacOS is how Linux should be on the desktop! I also switched to OSX from Linux a while ago and I know many people did. Linux guys should really get slowly nightmares, unless they finally can put on a system which does a normal hibernate by closing the and does well all codecs and wifi, OSX erodes the Linux market share among developers. Hell I even know a load of people who switched from Windows due to the Unix nature of the System. From all people I know people developing on Windows either are a minority or are forced by their companies, most at least have privately fully switched, only keeping the Windows machine around for gaming!
Both Microsoft and Linux have a serious problem there! Linux even more than Microsoft!
Actually you are dead wrong here, I have seen so many developer starting to use Macs and most of them bother to use the command line seriously. I think one of the biggest user group the mac nowadays has are developers, thanks to the NextStep underneath!
In reality how often do you play split screens anyway, in two years I owned a wii I played once. I simply could not stand it despite having a big screen tv!
Actually if you are not on notebook computers only in most cases a graphics card does it. And a graphics card which does run the latest games currently is available for 150 dollars, half of a console price. As for the patches. I must say after a full year of abstinence on the PC side (I was playing mostly wii games in my few hours every week I really have) I was pleasantly surprised. That the games really nowadays are done for consoles first helped the quality on the PC side. I didnt have a single game this year which was a bug grave! It was not worse or better than on the consoles. I did buy about 10 games this year, and so far I am pretty happy that I stayed besides the Wii with its exclusive games on the PC side.
Ah yes another advantage, due to the fact that consoles nowadays dominate the hardware cycle on the PC side has slowed down, the next graphics card for me probably will be around 2012 - 2014 a time a new computer probably is probably due anyway! Until then most if not all games will run on my currently upgraded rig. It is that simple. But even if you start new you will probably get a gaming able machine for 300-500 bucks so the savings of a console are mostly relative after you have bought a handful of games! This is the razor model in full force here!
IE6 is 10 years I think. And yes it is a load of crap. I recently was in a project where the client wanted the neatest web2.0 dhtml mumbo jumbo, but they demanded that IE6 also was supported. Speaking of hell and wasted developer hours! It took 30-40% more time to support that pile of...
Well quickly falling prices is more an indicator of not selling well in the long run. This seems to me that the current prices are way to exaggerated. For me it was reason enough not to buy either an xbox nor a PS3 but giving my aging PC another nowadays cheap graphics card!
They cost more offically because the console maker gets 10-20 dollars of the price. Inofficially, if a pc game would cost more nobody would buy it and everybody would pirate it. Yes piracy can keep prices down to sane levels!
The downside of consoles is that the games are 30-40% more expensive than on the PC side. The worst example currently is Bioshock. The PC version already is down to 10 Euros over here while the PS3 version still costs 70 Euros!!! (the PC version never was above 50 like most PC games) Piracy on the PC side really helps to keep prices down to saner levels! Console owners are ripped off. Especially nowadays that a graphics card which is faster than the console is around 80-150 dollars!
Well this depends, it is so so. For instance Nintendo got hit really hard a decade ago, when they tried to put region locks on single EU countries. For some strange kind of matter european PayTV companies and generally media companies seem to get away with it. Good luck trying to get BBC or Sky on continental europe the same goes for French or Dutch PayTV on the island!
Well if you live in contintenal europe you currently can save a shitload of money by buying the game from the island... thanks to the weak pound the prices of the games have dropped about 40%:-) Who needs Valve as long as the British fuck up their currency;-)
Forget about the PS3 in case of bioshock, the PC version nowadays sells for 10 euros the PS3 still for 70, that is the prime example on how screwed console owners get with the game prices!
I agree here, I live in austria and the switchover was absolutely painless. We also hat a coupon system where everyone got a 70 Euro coupon or so, you could get the cheapest receivers exactly at that price. Benefits, in many areas the reception now is way better and cheap DVB-T sticks are basically now available in every supermarket. Downside, I have yet to see one, except that the national television station lost a lot of viewers (mostly older people were still watching air only, and those are in a huge degree incompetent to tune in their tv) because suddenly they had more stations and could reach the private stations which they never had tuned in.
But the situation here is differently. Cable is way cheaper and 1/3rd of all households has already a satellite dish because we in the past had only two channels and people started to switch over to cable and satellite asap (in the 70s and 80s) to get out of this misery. The only ones left with a houshold antenna mostly were elderly people!
I guess it depends on many factors, but overally the situation here is quite good with DTV, the reception definitely is better. The picture quality is good but not that much of a huge jump since PAL never had the issues of NTSC!
I am really amazed how bad DTV in the USA seems to be. Over here in europe the switchover was a no brainer. The antennas you got basically with every box were very small nobody was experimenting with rabbit ears. The reception generally way better. And to the best you now can get cheap (20-30) dollars DTV usb sticks which you can plug into every computer. Since the antennas are that small, you can take it with you. And believe me the antennas are really small, about 3 inch or so in length! The funny thing is, that over here we had a lot of areas where there was no chance with rabbit ear designs (well we never had them mostly long single antennas) but those areas can be covered now almost perfectly with DTV! Dunno what the difference is, I assume the modulation and frequencies used and the signal strength combined. AFAIR the USA uses again different standards than the rest of the world!
If you mean with networks the BBC, well it is paid by the uk taxpayer, and outside of the uk it is the same situation, if you do not bypass the country restrictions, then you get the message sorry, you cannot watch it in your area. As usual you can bypass it, but I am not from the UK and I would love to watch the BBC "legally"... Same goes for the US tv stations which already stream. I know about the legal situation but it probably would be the right time to get things right now, otherwise they will be hit as hard as the music industry. It already is happening with people constantly loading shows from torrents, because they cannot watch it on tv here or awefully dubbed and if they can watch it mostly dubbed with a 2 years delay! Heck those are exactly also people who could live with commercials and would not even bother to download the episodes if there was another way!
Slashdot Mirror
Crayons Physics has that, but is more fun :-)
Well LBP is nothing technologically... Seriously I have seen it on the PS3 and I would not see a single reason why it could not be ported straightly to the 360 or the PC... this is all marketing mumbo jumbo...
Glorified 2 1/2d jump and run thats it...
I agree here, and I have to admit I modded my PSP as well, there was a reason for it, and no it was not piracy, it was that the thing became an awesome pocket multimedia machine as soon as it was modded.
Sony wanted to sell it as media device, it failed with its software, the modders did it!
Problem is, once it is modded it really is wide open to piracy more than any PC...
But on the other hand I would not want it closed due to all the things you mentioned above!
Problem is it does not fit into Sonys world that people do not want to use the device as Sony intended but want to use it as Sony marketed it!
There are various problems, one being outsourcing which means the knowledge is exported (which in itself is not a bad thing if you can stay competitive), but I think the biggest problem is the patent law (which is seen as capitalistic enough probably), while china also has a patent law they simply do not care about it.
Guess what how the USA became big, they ignored european patents. Same happens now in china which has a bigger embracement of knowledge sharing in society than the west!
Guess what would happen if you would design hardware that way and try to market it. For every button you put on the device three patent trolls would sue you into oblivion! It just was a matter of time the patent law severely would impact the USA negatively, that happens exactly now!
Its javascript support is not that good either, compared to Netbeans with its excellent Debugger integration and to Intellij as overall package it is subpar, but still one of the better offerings in the Eclipse world. Why people still use the bug ridden monster Eclipse is somewhat beyound me. Eclipse used to be top notch but nowadys it is the worst of all!
Intellij....
Also Netbeans has a very good javascript support, Eclipse however, as usualy is absymal!
I am not sure where you look for dev tools but definitely not on the java side of things, where you currently can find the best IDEs in existence!
Standards compliant maybe, bugridden, unfortunately as well... I had to drop down 2 hours yesterday into a workaround because setting window.location.hash (I know it is not a standard but vital for ajax bookmarking hence exactly in the area chrome should work) was not working as expected!
There are other things, for instance as it seems the bayeux comet protocol has its fair share of problems with this browser as well. Most of the problems stem from the fact that chrome is on a rather old Webkit codebase!
Well MacOS is how Linux should be on the desktop!
I also switched to OSX from Linux a while ago and I know many people did. Linux guys should really get slowly nightmares, unless they finally can put on a system which does a normal hibernate by closing the and does well all codecs and wifi, OSX erodes the Linux market share among developers. Hell I even know a load of people who switched from Windows due to the Unix nature of the System. From all people I know people developing on Windows either are a minority or are forced by their companies, most at least have privately fully switched, only keeping the Windows machine around for gaming!
Both Microsoft and Linux have a serious problem there! Linux even more than Microsoft!
Actually you are dead wrong here, I have seen so many developer starting to use Macs and most of them bother to use the command line seriously.
I think one of the biggest user group the mac nowadays has are developers, thanks to the NextStep underneath!
In reality how often do you play split screens anyway, in two years I owned a wii I played once. I simply could not stand it despite having a big screen tv!
Actually if you are not on notebook computers only in most cases a graphics card does it. And a graphics card which does run the latest games currently is available for 150 dollars, half of a console price.
As for the patches. I must say after a full year of abstinence on the PC side (I was playing mostly wii games in my few hours every week I really have) I was pleasantly surprised. That the games really nowadays are done for consoles first helped the quality on the PC side. I didnt have a single game this year which was a bug grave! It was not worse or better than on the consoles.
I did buy about 10 games this year, and so far I am pretty happy that I stayed besides the Wii with its exclusive games on the PC side.
Ah yes another advantage, due to the fact that consoles nowadays dominate the hardware cycle on the PC side has slowed down, the next graphics card for me probably will be around 2012 - 2014 a time a new computer probably is probably due anyway! Until then most if not all games will run on my currently upgraded rig.
It is that simple. But even if you start new you will probably get a gaming able machine for 300-500 bucks so the savings of a console are mostly relative after you have bought a handful of games!
This is the razor model in full force here!
IE6 is 10 years I think. And yes it is a load of crap. I recently was in a project where the client wanted the neatest web2.0 dhtml mumbo jumbo, but they demanded that IE6 also was supported. Speaking of hell and wasted developer hours! ...
It took 30-40% more time to support that pile of
Well quickly falling prices is more an indicator of not selling well in the long run. This seems to me that the current prices are way to exaggerated. For me it was reason enough not to buy either an xbox nor a PS3 but giving my aging PC another nowadays cheap graphics card!
They cost more offically because the console maker gets 10-20 dollars of the price. Inofficially, if a pc game would cost more nobody would buy it and everybody would pirate it. Yes piracy can keep prices down to sane levels!
The downside of consoles is that the games are 30-40% more expensive than on the PC side.
The worst example currently is Bioshock. The PC version already is down to 10 Euros over here while the PS3 version still costs 70 Euros!!!
(the PC version never was above 50 like most PC games)
Piracy on the PC side really helps to keep prices down to saner levels!
Console owners are ripped off. Especially nowadays that a graphics card which is faster than the console is around 80-150 dollars!
Well the original system shock was not that unlinear either, you had to go from level to level with a huge fight at most level ends...
About restricting access to the British store from non-British customers, well I kind of doubt that's illegal
The EU is a single free-trade zone. You are not allowed to operate within it if you prevent customers from elsewhere in the zone from purchasing.
Myth... Sky and other local TV stations seem to get away with it, I dont know how. Probably bribe money!
Well this depends, it is so so. For instance Nintendo got hit really hard a decade ago, when they tried to put region locks on single EU countries. For some strange kind of matter european PayTV companies and generally media companies seem to get away with it. Good luck trying to get BBC or Sky on continental europe the same goes for French or Dutch PayTV on the island!
Well if you live in contintenal europe you currently can save a shitload of money by buying the game from the island... thanks to the weak pound the prices of the games have dropped about 40% :-) ;-)
Who needs Valve as long as the British fuck up their currency
After all a trip to Europe is cheaper than a trip to the moon ;-)
Forget about the PS3 in case of bioshock, the PC version nowadays sells for 10 euros the PS3 still for 70, that is the prime example on how screwed console owners get with the game prices!
Oh no, people who say "hoose" instead of "house" and other gibberish
Actually they say "moose" instead of "mouse" :-)
I agree here, I live in austria and the switchover was absolutely painless. We also hat a coupon system where everyone got a 70 Euro coupon or so, you could get the cheapest receivers exactly at that price. Benefits, in many areas the reception now is way better and cheap DVB-T sticks are basically now available in every supermarket.
Downside, I have yet to see one, except that the national television station lost a lot of viewers (mostly older people were still watching air only, and those are in a huge degree incompetent to tune in their tv) because suddenly they had more stations and could reach the private stations which they never had tuned in.
But the situation here is differently. Cable is way cheaper and 1/3rd of all households has already a satellite dish because we in the past had only two channels and people started to switch over to cable and satellite asap (in the 70s and 80s) to get out of this misery. The only ones left with a houshold antenna mostly were elderly people!
I guess it depends on many factors, but overally the situation here is quite good with DTV, the reception definitely is better. The picture quality is good but not that much of a huge jump since PAL never had the issues of NTSC!
I am really amazed how bad DTV in the USA seems to be. Over here in europe the switchover was a no brainer. The antennas you got basically with every box were very small nobody was experimenting with rabbit ears. The reception generally way better. And to the best you now can get cheap (20-30) dollars DTV usb sticks which you can plug into every computer. Since the antennas are that small, you can take it with you. And believe me the antennas are really small, about 3 inch or so in length! The funny thing is, that over here we had a lot of areas where there was no chance with rabbit ear designs (well we never had them mostly long single antennas) but those areas can be covered now almost perfectly with DTV!
Dunno what the difference is, I assume the modulation and frequencies used and the signal strength combined. AFAIR the USA uses again different standards than the rest of the world!
If you mean with networks the BBC, well it is paid by the uk taxpayer, and outside of the uk it is the same situation, if you do not bypass the country restrictions, then you get the message sorry, you cannot watch it in your area. As usual you can bypass it, but I am not from the UK and I would love to watch the BBC "legally"...
Same goes for the US tv stations which already stream. I know about the legal situation but it probably would be the right time to get things right now, otherwise they will be hit as hard as the music industry. It already is happening with people constantly loading shows from torrents, because they cannot watch it on tv here or awefully dubbed and if they can watch it mostly dubbed with a 2 years delay!
Heck those are exactly also people who could live with commercials and would not even bother to download the episodes if there was another way!