I have yet to see a television set in years over here in Europe which is not able to handle NTSC quite nicely, this mode is called over here 60Hz mode and the old analog tv sets have been able to handle that since the good ole VCR days.
Heck even my old 25 year old portable tv could handle the 60Hz mode....
You have not gotten my point entirely, Canada is pretty much at the same price level as the US, while they run the usual, we do a 1:1 250 parity between Dollar and Euro over here, while in fact even with the VAT counted in, the price should be more along 215-220 Euros. Lots of people are pissed over this over here, because they see a Scam when it happens. Apple also has done that quite often in the past, and Apple europe has lost lots of sales over this (and still does not getting it why apple germany almost was bankrupt and still lags a lot behind a lot in sales compared to the US division, same goes for other european divisions)
This exchange rate scam is not accepted over here very politely especially when it is used to hike prices over a sensitive pricepoint.
As I said a Nintendo DS with no bundle for 199 Euros still would be way more expensive than the japanese version, but this would be the perfect starting pricepoint for the thing over here.
Now with 250 Euros and a bundle game, almost no one wants, they are dangerously close to the xbox 360 and a small pricecut on Microsofts side could shoot them entirely out of the market before they were even able to build up any momentum.
btw... according to your sig logic, I have to give Bush credit as well that more innocent people died already on his war on terrorism than on any terror attack combined worldwide in history.
I just wonder if the numbers of dead us soldiers in iraq already has surpassed the numbers of victims in the world trade center?
Well lets face it, the PC never had any region locks whatsover as a gaming platform, neither does the Nintendo DS, I cannot see any local vendors going haiwire over this.
But at least in the area of PC gaming, inflated local price hiking never has happened, the prices still are somewhat under console level even in rip off regions like europe.
I was really shocked when I went from mainly bargain bin PC gaming to consoles, how expensive all this stuff was and how late the games hit the bargain bins and even then they are at the level of some new PC stuff.
To sum it up, I think in the meanwhile PC gaming is way less expensive because there are not so many hidden pricetags attached to it.
Half your own fault, while we in the Euro zone constantly get shafted over a
hidden 1:1 price screw the dumbasses parity between continental EU and the Dollar zone, you get shafted
over a hidden screw the dumbasses 1:1 parity between continental EU And UK...
You cannot count the VAT in this case, due to the fact that with 17% the UK Vat is along european average (Germany being 16% and soon moving towards 19 and 20% in my country)
You at least woult not get shafted on the prices between Euro and Pound if you had dropped the Pound. Your local vendors have been screwing you for decades with that.
The only reason is price hiking, especially in europe.
Companies tend to calculate a 1:1 euro/dollar parity while in fact it is more
like 1:1.4 this even if 10-20% vat counted out depending on EU region,
gives them a load of extra cash. Of course companies usually do not take
the it into their own pockets once the parity reaches real 1:1 like it used to have a while ago, then suddenly at day zero the raise the prices anyway, due to not being able to cope with the difference.
The funny thing is, if we speak about Nintendo, they in the good ole Snes days tried to enforce region locking on a per country base, they got a decisive smack on the head. Did not have enough influence in the EU, because the TV stations got away with that.
Dont get me wrong, I am not anti Nintendo, I am as Nintendo neutral as anyone can be. But I can see the history. Nintendo has a long history of stumbling over their own arrogance.
This time it seems the rule not the exception. They had everything right, the momentum was there after E3, everyone loved the console, which ought to be not the latest in technology bug cheaper than the rest and with a new controller enabling good gaming ideas.
And now...
Scam pricing to ripp off different regions:
Hint at Nintendo, even 250 USD is not 250 Euros, even with the VAT calculated out the thing still is more expensive than the US version.
Enforced bundles so they can hike prices in certain areas:
Hint at nintendo, an enforced Wii sports bundle does not help sales, it would have been better to sell the console for 200 and let the people decide which game to buy, in the end you will lose money on that decision.
Hidden costs:
Hint at Nintendo: charging another 60 dollars for another controller set pushes you way over the XBOX360 pricewise.
Dropped features:
No dvd, while not being really important anymore, they could at least have offered dvd as buyable option instead of leaving it out entirely.
Region Codes:
While this was heavily promoted, region codes suck, europeans hate them, some americans as well, go for it Nintendo. You just give certain people a legal justification for selling modchips.
I have yet to see a single company pissing so many people off in such a short period of time, the discussions in the forums, basically have all the same tone (wtf did you think nintndo i do not want the f*** wee sports just for price hiking) like Nintendo has last week, they had everything in place.
Ship the console for 200 Euros no bundle, plain, no discussion lots of sales.
They have the DS momentum on their side.
Now if Microsoft just drops their prices 50 europs over here, Nintendo lies flat and dead in its starting position and ends up with a Cube like fiasko.
Kill off php please and shut up. PHP has the history of being one of the lousiest worst designed languages ever, with slowly catching up to modern standards.
I have to deal with that absymality of a language every day, and curse it every day....
No, but saying IBM was pushed towards SIMD by altivec is a totally false statement, SIMD even existed in the old cray vector computers of the eighties.
In fact IBM considers altivec a legacy they are not very eager to support at all.
I am not talking about a pure interpreted engine, I was talking about one from Zend (there were some news a few weeks ago) which used compilation into the VM, and that
one resulted in a speed increase of factor 3 least compared to C one.
The reason was the runtime optimization of the VM which could kick in in full force.
Ahem, Cell does not have altivec units, the SMP in the cell is an entirely different beast.
Altivec is dead, IBM never was very fond of it, and no the SMP from the cell does not even come remotely from that corner, have you ever heard of signal processors, way older than altivec, an entirely different field of processors.
It was not the top5% IBM has moved away from the 970 core which basically was a reduced Power4 core years ago, their current top of the line and has been for more than two years is the Power5 line (which is not the sames as the G5, it is what could have become the G6)
Apple did have no choice than moving away, but it is true, that Neither IBM nor Freescale shed a tear of losing Apple. Their core market is a different one nowadays and will be for the upcoming years.
I think Intel has a bigger problem, their core market is PC only and really PC only now they have given up their ARM line (which was their own fault, they had a good headstart but then let it sleep).
The PC itself is basically as concept in the last third of its lifetime with a good 10 years ahead but then it will be over.
Intel has to make the transition from the PC into other markets, but has failed again again and again to do that. If and it will happen, the PC market goes down, or shifts to something else Intel really has a problem on its hands.
Once the stuff is compiled in as classes into the vm it will become a load faster, heck even a port of php5 to native java compilation made it 3-5 times faster.
The reason for this is, all the jit, dynamic optimization etc.. mechanisms which have been developed for the jvm suddenly can start to do the work.
Java is not an interpreted language it is far from that and it is one of the fastest vms you can get currently.
Ahem, there always have been numerous languages running on the VM, all Sun did lately was to add standardized runtime weaving to the mix, so that extremly dynamic languages can alter the compilates on the fly.
This stuf has been in since 5.0 but only on the Sun VM in 6.0 it is standardized.
Most of the dynamic languages running on the vm so far have been relying on pure interpretation, those now can be compiled thanks to the dynamic runtime code weaving.
The author is an idiot, if you go with a gaming machine you better dont go with one from dell where you cannot exchange anything.
The trick is build yourself one from scratch or at least buy one with 100% off the shelve parts in it.
Overall the costs of a gaming pc or a console are the same.
1 Console over the year average, is about 300-500$ given the current/next gen consoles.
Add to that more costs regarding games, because fewer games hit the bin, and pc games tend to hit the game earlier and for less costs than the console counterparts and you will be around the same amount of money you spend on average games.
I also would not go with the highest cost gaming rig on the pc side either, always go for the middle route, most of the times you have to upgrade your graphics card only, and the processor can be upgraded every 3-4 years.
A decend middle aged graphics card can do most new games fine, while costing only 200-300 dollars which is pretty much the same costs you spend on the console.
The major upgrade every 4-5 years also can be justified and partially put on the tax in most countries... so in the end adding the reduced costs for the games, you will end up pretty much the same, the rest depends on your taste.
Sue Microsoft for not implementing or falsely implementing the needed css attributes for disability concerns.
A proper barrier free site always fails on the problem that it has to be compliant with ie as well.
I would noz count on it, while solutions like codeweavers help to get your favorite app running somehow it is not really a pleasure to use that stuff, this is an emulator and you always will get more crashes, some programs that do not run etc...
Ahem sorry to say this your stalinistic rethoric does not help there...
the worst freedom of speech oppressions have happened in the so called eastern block.
The hearing is an excellent analogy, DVDs give a picture quality good enough, now once you are over 30 you have a high chance of not being able to see perfectly....
Slashdot Mirror
ntsc conversion never has been a big issue over here in europe.
I have yet to see a television set in years over here in Europe which is not able to handle NTSC quite nicely, this mode is called over here 60Hz mode and the old analog tv sets have been able to handle that since the good ole VCR days. Heck even my old 25 year old portable tv could handle the 60Hz mode....
You have not gotten my point entirely, Canada is pretty much at the same price level as the US, while they run the usual, we do a 1:1 250 parity between Dollar and Euro over here, while in fact even with the VAT counted in, the price should be more along 215-220 Euros. Lots of people are pissed over this over here, because they see a Scam when it happens. Apple also has done that quite often in the past, and Apple europe has lost lots of sales over this (and still does not getting it why apple germany almost was bankrupt and still lags a lot behind a lot in sales compared to the US division, same goes for other european divisions)
This exchange rate scam is not accepted over here very politely especially when it is used to hike prices over a sensitive pricepoint.
As I said a Nintendo DS with no bundle for 199 Euros still would be way more expensive than the japanese version, but this would be the perfect starting pricepoint for the thing over here.
Now with 250 Euros and a bundle game, almost no one wants, they are dangerously close to the xbox 360 and a small pricecut on Microsofts side could shoot them entirely out of the market before they were even able to build up any momentum.
btw... according to your sig logic, I have to give Bush credit as well that more innocent people died already on his war on terrorism than on any terror attack combined worldwide in history. I just wonder if the numbers of dead us soldiers in iraq already has surpassed the numbers of victims in the world trade center?
Well lets face it, the PC never had any region locks whatsover as a gaming platform, neither does the Nintendo DS, I cannot see any local vendors going haiwire over this. But at least in the area of PC gaming, inflated local price hiking never has happened, the prices still are somewhat under console level even in rip off regions like europe. I was really shocked when I went from mainly bargain bin PC gaming to consoles, how expensive all this stuff was and how late the games hit the bargain bins and even then they are at the level of some new PC stuff. To sum it up, I think in the meanwhile PC gaming is way less expensive because there are not so many hidden pricetags attached to it.
Half your own fault, while we in the Euro zone constantly get shafted over a hidden 1:1 price screw the dumbasses parity between continental EU and the Dollar zone, you get shafted over a hidden screw the dumbasses 1:1 parity between continental EU And UK... You cannot count the VAT in this case, due to the fact that with 17% the UK Vat is along european average (Germany being 16% and soon moving towards 19 and 20% in my country) You at least woult not get shafted on the prices between Euro and Pound if you had dropped the Pound. Your local vendors have been screwing you for decades with that.
The only reason is price hiking, especially in europe. Companies tend to calculate a 1:1 euro/dollar parity while in fact it is more like 1:1.4 this even if 10-20% vat counted out depending on EU region, gives them a load of extra cash. Of course companies usually do not take the it into their own pockets once the parity reaches real 1:1 like it used to have a while ago, then suddenly at day zero the raise the prices anyway, due to not being able to cope with the difference. The funny thing is, if we speak about Nintendo, they in the good ole Snes days tried to enforce region locking on a per country base, they got a decisive smack on the head. Did not have enough influence in the EU, because the TV stations got away with that.
Dont get me wrong, I am not anti Nintendo, I am as Nintendo neutral as anyone can be. But I can see the history. Nintendo has a long history of stumbling over their own arrogance.
This time it seems the rule not the exception. They had everything right, the momentum was there after E3, everyone loved the console, which ought to be not the latest in technology bug cheaper than the rest and with a new controller enabling good gaming ideas.
And now... Scam pricing to ripp off different regions: Hint at Nintendo, even 250 USD is not 250 Euros, even with the VAT calculated out the thing still is more expensive than the US version.
Enforced bundles so they can hike prices in certain areas: Hint at nintendo, an enforced Wii sports bundle does not help sales, it would have been better to sell the console for 200 and let the people decide which game to buy, in the end you will lose money on that decision.
Hidden costs: Hint at Nintendo: charging another 60 dollars for another controller set pushes you way over the XBOX360 pricewise.
Dropped features: No dvd, while not being really important anymore, they could at least have offered dvd as buyable option instead of leaving it out entirely.
Region Codes: While this was heavily promoted, region codes suck, europeans hate them, some americans as well, go for it Nintendo. You just give certain people a legal justification for selling modchips.
I have yet to see a single company pissing so many people off in such a short period of time, the discussions in the forums, basically have all the same tone (wtf did you think nintndo i do not want the f*** wee sports just for price hiking) like Nintendo has last week, they had everything in place. Ship the console for 200 Euros no bundle, plain, no discussion lots of sales. They have the DS momentum on their side. Now if Microsoft just drops their prices 50 europs over here, Nintendo lies flat and dead in its starting position and ends up with a Cube like fiasko.
Kill off php please and shut up. PHP has the history of being one of the lousiest worst designed languages ever, with slowly catching up to modern standards. I have to deal with that absymality of a language every day, and curse it every day....
No, but saying IBM was pushed towards SIMD by altivec is a totally false statement, SIMD even existed in the old cray vector computers of the eighties. In fact IBM considers altivec a legacy they are not very eager to support at all.
I am not talking about a pure interpreted engine, I was talking about one from Zend (there were some news a few weeks ago) which used compilation into the VM, and that one resulted in a speed increase of factor 3 least compared to C one. The reason was the runtime optimization of the VM which could kick in in full force.
Ahem, Cell does not have altivec units, the SMP in the cell is an entirely different beast. Altivec is dead, IBM never was very fond of it, and no the SMP from the cell does not even come remotely from that corner, have you ever heard of signal processors, way older than altivec, an entirely different field of processors.
It was not the top5% IBM has moved away from the 970 core which basically was a reduced Power4 core years ago, their current top of the line and has been for more than two years is the Power5 line (which is not the sames as the G5, it is what could have become the G6) Apple did have no choice than moving away, but it is true, that Neither IBM nor Freescale shed a tear of losing Apple. Their core market is a different one nowadays and will be for the upcoming years. I think Intel has a bigger problem, their core market is PC only and really PC only now they have given up their ARM line (which was their own fault, they had a good headstart but then let it sleep). The PC itself is basically as concept in the last third of its lifetime with a good 10 years ahead but then it will be over. Intel has to make the transition from the PC into other markets, but has failed again again and again to do that. If and it will happen, the PC market goes down, or shifts to something else Intel really has a problem on its hands.
Once the stuff is compiled in as classes into the vm it will become a load faster, heck even a port of php5 to native java compilation made it 3-5 times faster. The reason for this is, all the jit, dynamic optimization etc.. mechanisms which have been developed for the jvm suddenly can start to do the work. Java is not an interpreted language it is far from that and it is one of the fastest vms you can get currently.
Ahem, there always have been numerous languages running on the VM, all Sun did lately was to add standardized runtime weaving to the mix, so that extremly dynamic languages can alter the compilates on the fly. This stuf has been in since 5.0 but only on the Sun VM in 6.0 it is standardized. Most of the dynamic languages running on the vm so far have been relying on pure interpretation, those now can be compiled thanks to the dynamic runtime code weaving.
The author is an idiot, if you go with a gaming machine you better dont go with one from dell where you cannot exchange anything. The trick is build yourself one from scratch or at least buy one with 100% off the shelve parts in it. Overall the costs of a gaming pc or a console are the same. 1 Console over the year average, is about 300-500$ given the current/next gen consoles. Add to that more costs regarding games, because fewer games hit the bin, and pc games tend to hit the game earlier and for less costs than the console counterparts and you will be around the same amount of money you spend on average games. I also would not go with the highest cost gaming rig on the pc side either, always go for the middle route, most of the times you have to upgrade your graphics card only, and the processor can be upgraded every 3-4 years. A decend middle aged graphics card can do most new games fine, while costing only 200-300 dollars which is pretty much the same costs you spend on the console. The major upgrade every 4-5 years also can be justified and partially put on the tax in most countries... so in the end adding the reduced costs for the games, you will end up pretty much the same, the rest depends on your taste.
Good luck for you mine failed two days after warranty expiration, the sony TFT monitor I have however works flawlessly and has been for years now.
Sue Microsoft for not implementing or falsely implementing the needed css attributes for disability concerns. A proper barrier free site always fails on the problem that it has to be compliant with ie as well.
will go into the store for a PS3, will see its price tag and will leave the store with a Wii.
still completely dumbed down unusable...
I would noz count on it, while solutions like codeweavers help to get your favorite app running somehow it is not really a pleasure to use that stuff, this is an emulator and you always will get more crashes, some programs that do not run etc...
Ahem sorry to say this your stalinistic rethoric does not help there... the worst freedom of speech oppressions have happened in the so called eastern block.
Not if I give up my freedom for that...
The hearing is an excellent analogy, DVDs give a picture quality good enough, now once you are over 30 you have a high chance of not being able to see perfectly....
Gnu Hurd has been taking longer, Windows Vista probably has been in development also for quite a while, but wont beat it.