Because of the lack of games, and that if M$ could could just buy developers and secure exclusives, ala Sony then they could turn the fortune of the thing around. The XBOX already has loads of games avilable for it and and decent quality of exclusives ie Halo etc.
The reasion that the XBOX is dieing are the sole fault of M$ and do not have anything to do with people developing for it,
Firstly, The thing is really badly designed, from the oversized controller (surpassed only by the dreamcasts in its crapness) to the brilliant idea of using off the shelf parts negating any possible improvements in production technology
Secondly, The total failure to do anything "innovative", People are not going to buy some thing which is exactly the same as the competition, for example imagine where nintendo would be today if they hadn't started doing kiddie games in response to the PSX. You don't attack your enemy on their home turf it's common sense
Thirdly, a total ignorace of the market, right now M$ are spending millions on XBOX live an online inituative to create a virtual disney land, WHY? any twelve year old can tell you that multiplayer on a console means having your friends around for a round of tekken tag, not being owned by some bot weilding script kiddie on the other side of the planet, at best your looking at someone porting evercrack for people desperate enough to pay $30 a month and sony are already well ahead in that department.
Microsoft can buy all the software companies they what, Bungie, Rare, Capcom etc, to secure all the exclusives they what, it ain't going to make a lick of difference unless they solve these problems first, fix the controller, create some new innovative game along the lines of the Sims or what GT1 was, and not treat their marketplace the same way they treat people who buy computers (lame oversized 2 joystick, 3 pedal setups only work with flight sim nuts and they are going to stay on PC's)
The XBOX hasn't got a problem with being labled a turkey it was a turkey when it was released almost a year ago, and the only way to cure a turkey is to shoot it.
That a company would rather spend $1500 then $5000 on a project is quite simple
IT'S ALL OTHER PEOPLES MONEY
The costs are never payed for by the company they are always payed for by the consumer, hense they couldn't give a rats arse about the cost of the project. If funding came out of executive share options (for example) then economic realities would start to set in, but they don't and they won't.
Btw... please don't flame me saying stuff like,,, "but that would mean they would end up less competitive cause company B would take the cheap option" we're talking about *big evil American couporations* here, and they are all the same. The marjority made up only of Management, Marketing and Legal.
but could E3 stop giving awards to games that are still a long way from being released, I mean in the past games like team fortress 2 and freelancer have won best of show, where the hell are they now huh.
It seems that all you have to do to win BOS is turn up with a non-playable demo and wow a few critics, Its like giving a goldern globe for a preview or teaser.
The point of E3 is to demo games which are going to be released this year, normally around september and not things still a good year away from going gold
Cheers thanks for letting me get that out of my system
BTW, I'm not dissing ID or DOOM just E3's brain dead award system
Single hand keyboard, cording ideal
HUD displaing simple vector graphics on pair of glasses that doesn't make me look like a dork
Earphones and a mic that don't make me look like a dork
wireless ablity as well as being able to act as a cell phone
A control block thingy, like on a personal stereo
Life time membership to the borg.
Doesn't need to read handwriting or even be that powerfull, got a laptop to do all that, If someone made a pda like this I would buy ten of the things, pity they sorta became vanity symbols like cell phones I spose, rather then doing anything really usefull.
Btw, killer app, being able to communicate in nightclubs, though sms, how cool whould that be.
Second, the idea is to have the two engines do what they each do best. The electric motor keeps it humming along the highways at cruise speed (where little power is needed), and the fuel one delivers the power to accelerate (where more power is needed). So you get the best from both worlds.
Point in fact, if dual engine designs are so fucking great will all be using them already, ie on engine for with a large displacement for torque and a smaller engine for the highway, it isn't a new idea, I think some of the grand prix cars of the fortys had two engines. I think the problem is one of reliablity since you now have to maintain two engines instead of one.
Anyway why make shit so complex, just have a small turbine engine to generate power for an alternater to a larger full electric motor.
Nice to see cars like this in development, since they are the way of the future if emission laws follow the current trends, I think that this will end up being a public health issue afterall if they can ban smoking in the workplace why can't they do somthing about the smog, since it amounts to the same thing. However I do have some questions,
Firstly, why use a dual engine design? couldn't the gas engine simply be used to power a generator? it being more effiecent to tune a engine to run at a constant RPM. Just have a large electric motor and a small gas motor.
Why is it that all the hybrids I've seen thus far seem to just piggy back a electric engine on a motor cycle engine and make the car weigh in at 2 kilo's. Couldn't the electric motor be part of the weel assembly since it is, after all, only kicking in on the low torques.
Finally, Why use petrol and not natural gas or some other alternative fuel, If you make the tank the standard size then you should be able to get around the "not having enough gas stations problem" which holds these types of fuel back? Since you aren't constantly filling the thing up.
A while ago slashdot posted a story on how intel chips are made, and the thing which really pissed me off about that article was no one seemed interested in actually going out to the factory and seeing how they are made. It was just ten or so pages of some dude talking to designers or management. I think I said "it was a bit like asking how shoes are made and just interviewing the guy how designed nike's gel shoe lace grip".
Now, Im not dissing slashdot for posting the earlier article, Im just saying that some times it can be very interesting to go out and have a look around these places to see just how such and such corp make somthing, ie, big machines going real fast, really demonstrate how capitalism works.
You can palm me off as just being some loser but IMHO it is the coalface of our society more then wall sheet or some building full of office clerks. And should be given as much consideration as say rumours of Apple buying SGI or whatever.
So, way to go slashdot, Perhaps you could post a few more articles like this in the future when news is slow. Almost as fun as reading howstuffworks.com.
Really stupid question, could you rig a boot disk, that tricks the gamecube into thinking that it is reading the disks locally when in fact it's reading off a image though the ethernet? then all you would have to do is rip the mini-DVD's on the computer and play them on the cube.
I was thinking, How likly would it be for apple for intergrate the graphics co-processor with the CPU, nforce style, although most likly with radeon?.
Everything I've seen seems to point towards this direction, espically the SGI merger rumour, and now I see that the windows manger is being implemented in Open GL full time, You have to start woundering.
If there will be a london 1960's mission pack, I personally thought that was more fun then the game, For example you stole some spys car and all the missions followed the mr bond plot line.
I don't know what to think about this article...
on
Why Hal Will Never Exist
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I think that the bloke is right that speech is a really bad way of communicating with computers, as they are designed today. But think that it's a bit of a leap of logic to conclude that this will always be the case.
Case inpoint, today computers are normally designed around some kind of windows environment, a Wimp interface, where information in displayed as a metaphore, ie scoll bars, ok buttions etc etc. This is an environment that was never designed for interact beyound a mouse and a keyboard. DVD however do not follow this standard, normally being based on some kind of menu system. Clearly, the way you make something determines the way it is used.
If speech is to be a sucess on computers then the way that people interact with the computer needs to be changed. I think a system like the console where programs arn't very powerfull on their own but due to the way that they have been linked together would work very very well.
I long for the day when I can say, "dump down everything on slashdot and tell me if any of my post have been modded up" to read wget somesite | grep index.html | echo $whatever (please excluse this example), all you would need is somekind of AL which is able to manage the interpreation correctlly (at least most of the time).
I think, fundamentally, computers should be designed to so what you tell them to do (how I think such a system would work) and not force you to do things in a certain way, which is what current systems do today, One should never have to learn a interface.
I also think that this guy has limited his imagination somewhat, the main thing about hal was that he was everywhere, and that in the future, computers are everywhere. For example if you were on the loo, and just thought up a really good chess move, then you would just say, Hal queen to bishop 4, not get up, sit at a console, login a realise you've forgotten what it was you where about to do. Saying that in such a case it's easier to point to some graphic, cause you don't have to think to much, Seems kinda lame
Re:The Matrix: An Example of Bad Software Engineer
on
The Matrix is Reloading
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I don't know about that one... I always imagined the matrix being a kind of giant P2P system, with the base program, the "residual self image" a sort of OS loaded into indivdual. The code for the matrix being more like a tcp/ip type protocol. Therefore, the spoon is able to bend since the indivual has learnt how to alter their own program, and this is reflected in the programs around them. In a way everyone is one with the matrix, or everyone is the matrix
Seeing the movie from this Point of view makes a lot of sense to me, For example, the bit where Neo does the leap of faith, what he is trying to do is reprogam his subconcious OS (his version of the matrix), the way Agent smith is able to jump from body to body since the smith program is able to be loaded into different individuals, or the way one of the cast members says that if you look at the matrix code long enough in real life then you are able to see though the code, (being able to decode to thing in real life, like one of those magic eye things). Whether real humans are able to ever read the matrix protocol I (since the program hasn't been loaded into their mind) I leave up to you,(I think there is a scene where Dozzer does ie "O NO")
I spose you could argue that the machines could implement somekind of packet filter, which dumps the fly thought the window packets, but wouldn't these need to be contained somewhere?. Perhaps this is the story when they "change the program" producing the two cats. since the cat is cault in a loop because it has nowhere to go? (Or something to that effect). Perhaps if they try to change the matrix protocol too much then people start to reject the matrix and the whole system falls apart.
Anyway, reading any more into the movie is getting a bit philosophical, need less to say you did a better post then all those arseholes who say shit like why didn't they use horses instead of people.
The best answer, ofcourse, is "we simply don't know".
In my country, Australia, There was a ad on a while ago that really pissed a hell of a lot of people off.
Basically, The thing run like this, The scene opened in an empty office will all these phones started ringing of employees leaving messages on answering machines giving crazy excuses for not going to work. ie I can't come to work today because my taxi cab was kidnapped by aliens etc etc.
Now, this is all fair enough untill the tag line, "WOMEN can not be expected to work will such and such sale is on". Until I saw that ad I thought feminists, were just a bunch of militant lesbians as much as the next guy. But somthing about that was JUST PLAIN WROUNG. No one should market anything by drawing a generalisation about a group of people. To say somthing like "such and such" is a bad worker becasue they are "such and such" is as bad as saying all black people are gang members or jews are all mean with money.
In our society it is the person that counts not who they are. It is the invidual who decides if they should take the day off, and not some marketing crap thay says your a nerd and thus your life is about Star Wars. Thus you will skip work to see this movie because it is your life.
This article is really just a piece of marketing, but insidiously it's saying people who know a thing or two about computers (who doesn't these days) are all over weight nerds who live with in their mothers basement, have no life apart from everquest, and are basically lesser to us jocks and should be mocked between classes at high school.
That this was mirrored on slashdot, demonstrates how deep this "sterotype" has become.
But wouldn't the average geek just download the thing off P2P, do a reedit cutting out all the lame shit that is sure to be in the movie (lucas is still directing this one), put 5 or so out takes of jar jar getting killed at the end for good measure and upload it again. All with in two days of the thing being shown in the cinima.
Hell half the blokes going to see this movie will know everything there is to about the production anyway... even the endless hoards who think lucas should be put to death for the CRAP that was EP1. Being the exact same people who have all the toys sealed in tupperware in their basement.
Sadly, I will be seeing the movie, wouldn't miss any work to do so but, chances are it will be pretty good, not being able to find the thing on the internet, seeing all the previews, reading the script, knowing what all the cgi models look like and buying most of the toys.
I hope I don't have to spend the rest of the week trolling slashdot about how crappy such and such was like I did with last one
For the love of god, please please please, don't fuck this one up George
I hope that P2P networks for movies in the future take off (already have today), and that hollywoods efforts too control the medium become void. Albert they seem posied to implement some rather stupid laws.
If cinimas lose some of the ablity to provide exclusives, since everyone has already seen the rough cuts months before it is released in the cinima then there should be a lot fewer of these hollywood flops, Movies overhyped inorder to drag as many people to the local multi-plex for the first two weeks before word of month spreads that they sux. Loads of movies fall into this catagorie, pearl harbour, Star Wars EP1 (a movie which broke all box office records before anyone had even seen it) etc. Sadly hollywood seems to have become about promotion rather then about creating movies.
If people have the opition of seeing a movies at a crappy quality, then in the cinima, then buying the DVD months later with all the extras on it, creating movies becomes less about hype and more about making somthing which grows more the more times you see it ie Pulp Fiction etc. In sort there is more incentive for the creation of a quality product and not the same pop corn fodder that has been screening lately.
Piracy could have the effect of nullifying hype which I think benifits everyone, even those which don't partake in the practise (most people are pretty honest, given half a chance).
Seems to be a pretty fair read, I agree with the statement that studios are not scared with what people are doing now but what they may do in the future. After all most things seem to be avilable on Divx now, albert at a much low quality, whether this stops people going to see the movie is up for interpreation, after all I know loads of people who have seen lords of the rings even though they downloaded the divx.
I do have a problem with the idea that these copyright measures are able to slow things down (which I sorta read in the article), what you are dealing with is a social problem and not a technical problem, Hollywood can put all the protections they what on DVD's TV etc and some bloke will just crack it as soon as it comes out (the same situation that exists with software) and to date most of their efforts, like SDMI, have been pretty lame. As for legislation, laws are only as strong as a persons ablity to enforce them and who the hell is going to pay attention to one passed, which only benifits large companies, Where there is no policemen there is no speed limit, after all.
At the end of the day thing like this are only going to annoy honest people.
Technology has just moved along (like it does) and instead of trying to stop the march of progress media companies have to change there business models to the new market, and not try to maintain the statis quo. CD sales are lower today because time which should have been spent creating a new format to replace CD's was spent lowing production processes and now that industry is screwed. Thanks to DVD's the movie industry may survive (who the hell is going to bother dl a 8 gig movie over the internet when they can just buy it), plus there is the experience of seeing the thing at the local multi-plex.
At most, all that is going to happen is someone works out a way to link all the Tivo's together, but isn't that what cable TV is today? just repeats after repreats and WWF. If you can't work out a way to make money in a medium where consumers are doing all the work, and even go to the extent of limiting this type of market from developing, then what hope is there for you. Instead of putting your heads in the secure media sand you should jump on the P2P bandwagon.
Exercise, normally a really hard long run over 12km (not sure what that is in miles)
Then working though the morning from around 6 to 10, in complete silence.
I tend to find that if you zone to working though the night, eating sweets and drinking cola two things tend to happen, Firstly, you gain a shit load of weight (part of the CV really), Second, after a while you tend to not see the forest for the trees, For example a mate of mine went on about how he had spent the evening rewriting the sort() function. This isn't to say I don't do this but that is mostly in debugging and research not writing fresh code.
I think that the type of people who like working though the night are the same type of people who left all their work at university to the last possible minute because it clashed with their Civ/Quake time too much. I guess it works for some people, I'm just not one of them.
I should mention that I don't do it for a living like most people posting would so you can pretty much disregard the above. Not knowing how professionals do it, my best guess would be that EP method where they group programmers in pairs, personally I would find that really annoying.
I think that the programming method works along these lines, knock together some sort of script that more or less does the job, (normally in the zone), draw up some kind of plan in how you what things set out, steal as much code as you can, write the program out in whatever, then spend the next six months debugging. Simple really
In Australia is that they simply screwed the pooch in marketing the thing. They conducted the most annoying advertising campaign I have ever seen personally (living outside of san fan admittedly)
To sum up...
They started running ads for the thing in september when the thing wasn't going to be released in another four months (late march), why would you bother to advertise something which wasn't going to be released until well into to next year?
They started a viral marketing campaign, which basically means they paid some dudes to spray paint green X's everywhere, pissing a lot of people off. To just pay people to vandalise property doesn't make you cool
They spammed local universities with adverts for the thing, putting ads on community boards for months (some of which still haven't been taken down). Like your average college student in Australia (univerisity in this country is publically funded) has the money to buy the thing in the first place and would just because they covered up the play lists and for the local pub. IE, they posted XBOX ads over the enrollment timetables at my local university you can imagine how that went down.
Instead of running locally produced ads on the tube they just ported American advertisments. Which had the effect of alienating people in this country, and there still running the fscking things, I sware if I see that ad for HALO again I'm going to kick in my TV
In short,, the advertising campaign in this country was just crap, in fact it had the effect of pissing a lot of people off, who would have brought the thing. It was simply too much for too long, too badly done. To illustrate, my 56 year old man who knows nothing about computers even went on at me for hours about how he hating seeing ads for the thing everywhere, since being a nerd I was somehow responsible.
IMHO, If you what to advertise a product the best way to do it is to have a campaign starting a week before the local launch then give the punters a rest before starting to advertise the games, like nintendo are doing.
M$'s attempts at marketing in this country have been really substandard to say the least, they clearly give the impression that M$ does not give a flying frill about this country and consquently no one here could care less about their console, I imagine that the same holds true for other countries expaining it's poor showing there.
The best example would be that ad for windows XP with all those people flying around, M$ run the same ad here completely ignoring that the exact same concept had been used by the telephone company One.tel who had recentally gone broke in this country leaving a lot of Australian stock brokers out of pocket. Clearly, M$ couldn't care less about there public image anywhere out side of North America.
I don't think the problem in Japan is really the price, the Japanese have a history (well, for the last 15 or 20 years anyway) of paying big bucks for these toys. I think for them it is more an issue of national pride (why buy an American game console when you can buy a Japanese one).
I dunno about that one, a mate of mine recently went to japan and brought back some fashion magazines, pretty cool, the spine is on the left hand side rather then on the right, the things are filled with cartoons, there are ads for weight loss and hair removal products for men (I mean for dudes dude) etc etc.
The one thing I noticed is that there are ads for star wars figures, even ads trying to sell motor bikes have rows of star wars figures in the back ground, just cause they were trying to be cool (imagine that in a western mag). Anyway, my point is that, if national pride was such a big issue in japan then things like star wars would not sell because it is American
I think that the problem in japan is that there is no national pride, that people like to see themselves as belonging to a group or a company and not to a nation, like Americans do. I think that if you gave guns to all the employees of sony and nintendo then there is no doubt that they wouldn't go at it. That there is serious fanboy pride in that country to put the rest of us to shame. Perhaps M$ should try to install itself as being a "group" (a better word would be scean) in japan the same way these companies do, trying to create a fanbase, then they would have a greater chance of selling their product. After all, things like pokomon did come from that country, Manga shows tend to have fan service etc etc
Ofcourse if there is anyone from japan posting, could they please follow up, since I am just another ignorate westerner. Better to here it out of the horses mouth
1.) The idea that the Microsft would turn the Xbox into a PC? Do you know how hard they have worked to make sure people _DONT_ perceive the Xbox as a PC? Not only would this piss off hardware vendors but it would land them in legal trouble instantly. I don't care what arguement you may have - you will _never_ see the XBox performing as a PC."
Yeah I agree that all the anti M$ talk on slashdot is getting boring, mostly because it seems to take the line that even if they fail they still win, ie yeah the XBOX is a failure but they are still getting into the lounge room etc etc.
But seriously, if M$ pissed off there OEM's who the hell are they going to go to?. M$ have a Monopoly there is no alternative. At least in terms of a consumer OS, unless apple ports OSX to intel, which ain't going to happen. It is true that you could argue that linux is an alternative, but then what do you say to person X who just whats to run Office?. The only way that would happen is if they all did it at the same time, something equally unlikely, and for joe public that experience would just be painful.
If M$ made an OEM contract that every maker had to kiss bill gates on the arse, Then they would have to do it, in fact the standard OEM agreement isn't much further from that deal.
As for landing them in legal trouble, the government alreadly tryed to split the company and M$ more-or-less ignored that decision and just brought themselves out on appeal, could another lawsuit really scare them? even an American lawsuit.
Having the XBOX as a windows box is somthing that would save the thing overnight, and is probally be what ever the sequal to it will be, say the homestation. M$ wouldn't even have to do the marjority of the work themselves, just a few leaks to some hardware hacker groups, out comes a windows mod, and five minutes later the XBOX is breaking all sales records again, mostly because people are just buying a cheap pc for the living room (which is what the fsching thing should have been in the first place). It is true, that they would take a hit on licensing fees for the games, but then, could things get much worst then they are now? hell just sell the thing with a games bundle (like they did when the thing was launched) and all your bases are covered.
I agree with you on your other points, I just have a problem when you say that M$ would _never_ try to turn the XBOX into a pc, because, as far as Im concerned, it is the only hope in hell that they have any chance of selling it.
The Dreamcast stopped selling in Australia well over a year ago, and even if you were able to find one in a pawn shop or the trading post (I haven't had much luck) then there is little chance of being able to buy any of the games (or even rent them), unless you pirate them off the internet, which isn't really an option in Australia since the broadband is so bad.
Course your right that the Dreamcast was a good console for the time, and if this was a perfect world it would still be going.
I think that a underground scean is growing for the dreamcast in America, where, like the XBOX, it was a success to begin with, and the same thing will probally happen with the XBOX, but sadly good intentions are not enough to keep these things going, No matter how many people like Army's of Darkness it doesn't mean that a sequal is going to be made since, at the end of the day, the original was such a box office flop, deal with it.
Thought thats what I said dude. Normally when you try to do a crowd in cgi, you take a picture of a few people and composite that around the scean so it looks like a few hundred, Or you use a standard cgi modal (gungan ork or whatever) and create a few hundred of those. In the case of Akira this would be impossible because most of the riots happen in shopping malls, city etc, plus human all look different limiting the modal approach.
My point is that you would need a lot of extras, well out of the budget of a scifi live action special (like what they did with dune) which I think is what this guy is planning, so he should give up and just remake a 60's show or something
Even with modern computer effects, and a hugh production budget (which this guy wouldn't get) I think that a live action version would be impossible.
Apart, from the opening motorcycle chase, everything in the movie is big, your talking about massive riots (one of the themes of the movies is about society tearing itself apart), a military crackdown, and a climax where one of the leads turns into a hugh bloated mess.
Ofcourse, I thought that bringing lord of the rings to the big screen was impossible as well.
If you, really, want to do a live action manga then your best bet would be that Perfect Blue, being a movies which would work well as a thrillar. Not that I saying they should do that either.
Fundamentally just to sell a cut down PC for the lounge room. This is what I thought it was going to be, but then I saw it in the store, and found that it was just another console, just more expensive, with fewer games, and a really bad controller. It seems that M$ simply ignored their punters (the kind of people who buy PC's) and went ahead doing what everyone else was doing in the marketplace, all I or anyone who were likly to buy a XBOX wanted was a simple lounge room PC. If M$ had taken this root then they would be in a much better position today, IMHO.
For a start, M$ would not have had to sell the thing at a lost, and since they own the OS, they could have maintained a reasonable price point. Also they would not have had to spend time buying up developers like bungie since all the games which work on PC would have worked on the XBOX, and lastly they would not have had to have spent millions (more like billions) hyping the thing up just to sell a few units. The only problem would be that they would have pissed off makers like dell or gateway, but seriously where are they going to go (if you say linux I'll shoot you).
I honestly think that if the Xbox had been your standard windows box then the thing would be a success now, the mistake was just trying to create a Playstation with computer hardware. Seriously, This is marketing 101, If you go into a market with an established player, you don't create a "exact" copy of what that guy is doing, you create something different, unless expect to compete on price, which the XBOX never could
Ofcourse, this idea of a lounge room pc, is probally what the XBOX2 (the homestation) will become but by then sony may already have a foot hold in that market and, if that happens, it will have been too late. This must be a good thing, knowing how M$ would act if they had a monopoly on the lounge room, However Sony are not that much better - but at least they got there by making kewl stuff.
Ofcourse, if the idea of buying a "proper" console appeals to you, and not some bloated mess designed to plug you into M$/Sony TV then, do what I did, and just get a gamecube (rocks by the way).
Slashdot Mirror
The reasion that the XBOX is dieing are the sole fault of M$ and do not have anything to do with people developing for it,
Firstly, The thing is really badly designed, from the oversized controller (surpassed only by the dreamcasts in its crapness) to the brilliant idea of using off the shelf parts negating any possible improvements in production technology
Secondly, The total failure to do anything "innovative", People are not going to buy some thing which is exactly the same as the competition, for example imagine where nintendo would be today if they hadn't started doing kiddie games in response to the PSX. You don't attack your enemy on their home turf it's common sense
Thirdly, a total ignorace of the market, right now M$ are spending millions on XBOX live an online inituative to create a virtual disney land, WHY? any twelve year old can tell you that multiplayer on a console means having your friends around for a round of tekken tag, not being owned by some bot weilding script kiddie on the other side of the planet, at best your looking at someone porting evercrack for people desperate enough to pay $30 a month and sony are already well ahead in that department.
Microsoft can buy all the software companies they what, Bungie, Rare, Capcom etc, to secure all the exclusives they what, it ain't going to make a lick of difference unless they solve these problems first, fix the controller, create some new innovative game along the lines of the Sims or what GT1 was, and not treat their marketplace the same way they treat people who buy computers (lame oversized 2 joystick, 3 pedal setups only work with flight sim nuts and they are going to stay on PC's)
The XBOX hasn't got a problem with being labled a turkey it was a turkey when it was released almost a year ago, and the only way to cure a turkey is to shoot it.
IT'S ALL OTHER PEOPLES MONEY
The costs are never payed for by the company they are always payed for by the consumer, hense they couldn't give a rats arse about the cost of the project. If funding came out of executive share options (for example) then economic realities would start to set in, but they don't and they won't.Btw... please don't flame me saying stuff like,,, "but that would mean they would end up less competitive cause company B would take the cheap option" we're talking about *big evil American couporations* here, and they are all the same. The marjority made up only of Management, Marketing and Legal.
It seems that all you have to do to win BOS is turn up with a non-playable demo and wow a few critics, Its like giving a goldern globe for a preview or teaser.
The point of E3 is to demo games which are going to be released this year, normally around september and not things still a good year away from going gold
Cheers thanks for letting me get that out of my system
BTW, I'm not dissing ID or DOOM just E3's brain dead award system
Single hand keyboard, cording ideal
HUD displaing simple vector graphics on pair of glasses that doesn't make me look like a dork
Earphones and a mic that don't make me look like a dork
wireless ablity as well as being able to act as a cell phone
A control block thingy, like on a personal stereo
Life time membership to the borg.
Doesn't need to read handwriting or even be that powerfull, got a laptop to do all that, If someone made a pda like this I would buy ten of the things, pity they sorta became vanity symbols like cell phones I spose, rather then doing anything really usefull.
Btw, killer app, being able to communicate in nightclubs, though sms, how cool whould that be.
Point in fact, if dual engine designs are so fucking great will all be using them already, ie on engine for with a large displacement for torque and a smaller engine for the highway, it isn't a new idea, I think some of the grand prix cars of the fortys had two engines. I think the problem is one of reliablity since you now have to maintain two engines instead of one.
Anyway why make shit so complex, just have a small turbine engine to generate power for an alternater to a larger full electric motor.
Firstly, why use a dual engine design? couldn't the gas engine simply be used to power a generator? it being more effiecent to tune a engine to run at a constant RPM. Just have a large electric motor and a small gas motor.
Why is it that all the hybrids I've seen thus far seem to just piggy back a electric engine on a motor cycle engine and make the car weigh in at 2 kilo's. Couldn't the electric motor be part of the weel assembly since it is, after all, only kicking in on the low torques.
Finally, Why use petrol and not natural gas or some other alternative fuel, If you make the tank the standard size then you should be able to get around the "not having enough gas stations problem" which holds these types of fuel back? Since you aren't constantly filling the thing up.
Now, Im not dissing slashdot for posting the earlier article, Im just saying that some times it can be very interesting to go out and have a look around these places to see just how such and such corp make somthing, ie, big machines going real fast, really demonstrate how capitalism works.
You can palm me off as just being some loser but IMHO it is the coalface of our society more then wall sheet or some building full of office clerks. And should be given as much consideration as say rumours of Apple buying SGI or whatever.
So, way to go slashdot, Perhaps you could post a few more articles like this in the future when news is slow. Almost as fun as reading howstuffworks.com.
Everything I've seen seems to point towards this direction, espically the SGI merger rumour, and now I see that the windows manger is being implemented in Open GL full time, You have to start woundering.
Case inpoint, today computers are normally designed around some kind of windows environment, a Wimp interface, where information in displayed as a metaphore, ie scoll bars, ok buttions etc etc. This is an environment that was never designed for interact beyound a mouse and a keyboard. DVD however do not follow this standard, normally being based on some kind of menu system. Clearly, the way you make something determines the way it is used.
If speech is to be a sucess on computers then the way that people interact with the computer needs to be changed. I think a system like the console where programs arn't very powerfull on their own but due to the way that they have been linked together would work very very well.
I long for the day when I can say, "dump down everything on slashdot and tell me if any of my post have been modded up" to read wget somesite | grep index.html | echo $whatever (please excluse this example), all you would need is somekind of AL which is able to manage the interpreation correctlly (at least most of the time).
I think, fundamentally, computers should be designed to so what you tell them to do (how I think such a system would work) and not force you to do things in a certain way, which is what current systems do today, One should never have to learn a interface.
I also think that this guy has limited his imagination somewhat, the main thing about hal was that he was everywhere, and that in the future, computers are everywhere. For example if you were on the loo, and just thought up a really good chess move, then you would just say, Hal queen to bishop 4, not get up, sit at a console, login a realise you've forgotten what it was you where about to do. Saying that in such a case it's easier to point to some graphic, cause you don't have to think to much, Seems kinda lame
Seeing the movie from this Point of view makes a lot of sense to me, For example, the bit where Neo does the leap of faith, what he is trying to do is reprogam his subconcious OS (his version of the matrix), the way Agent smith is able to jump from body to body since the smith program is able to be loaded into different individuals, or the way one of the cast members says that if you look at the matrix code long enough in real life then you are able to see though the code, (being able to decode to thing in real life, like one of those magic eye things). Whether real humans are able to ever read the matrix protocol I (since the program hasn't been loaded into their mind) I leave up to you,(I think there is a scene where Dozzer does ie "O NO")
I spose you could argue that the machines could implement somekind of packet filter, which dumps the fly thought the window packets, but wouldn't these need to be contained somewhere?. Perhaps this is the story when they "change the program" producing the two cats. since the cat is cault in a loop because it has nowhere to go? (Or something to that effect). Perhaps if they try to change the matrix protocol too much then people start to reject the matrix and the whole system falls apart.
Anyway, reading any more into the movie is getting a bit philosophical, need less to say you did a better post then all those arseholes who say shit like why didn't they use horses instead of people.
The best answer, ofcourse, is "we simply don't know".
Basically, The thing run like this, The scene opened in an empty office will all these phones started ringing of employees leaving messages on answering machines giving crazy excuses for not going to work. ie I can't come to work today because my taxi cab was kidnapped by aliens etc etc.
Now, this is all fair enough untill the tag line, "WOMEN can not be expected to work will such and such sale is on". Until I saw that ad I thought feminists, were just a bunch of militant lesbians as much as the next guy. But somthing about that was JUST PLAIN WROUNG. No one should market anything by drawing a generalisation about a group of people. To say somthing like "such and such" is a bad worker becasue they are "such and such" is as bad as saying all black people are gang members or jews are all mean with money.
In our society it is the person that counts not who they are. It is the invidual who decides if they should take the day off, and not some marketing crap thay says your a nerd and thus your life is about Star Wars. Thus you will skip work to see this movie because it is your life.
This article is really just a piece of marketing, but insidiously it's saying people who know a thing or two about computers (who doesn't these days) are all over weight nerds who live with in their mothers basement, have no life apart from everquest, and are basically lesser to us jocks and should be mocked between classes at high school.
That this was mirrored on slashdot, demonstrates how deep this "sterotype" has become.
Hell half the blokes going to see this movie will know everything there is to about the production anyway... even the endless hoards who think lucas should be put to death for the CRAP that was EP1. Being the exact same people who have all the toys sealed in tupperware in their basement.
Sadly, I will be seeing the movie, wouldn't miss any work to do so but, chances are it will be pretty good, not being able to find the thing on the internet, seeing all the previews, reading the script, knowing what all the cgi models look like and buying most of the toys.
I hope I don't have to spend the rest of the week trolling slashdot about how crappy such and such was like I did with last one
For the love of god, please please please, don't fuck this one up George
I hope that P2P networks for movies in the future take off (already have today), and that hollywoods efforts too control the medium become void. Albert they seem posied to implement some rather stupid laws.
If cinimas lose some of the ablity to provide exclusives, since everyone has already seen the rough cuts months before it is released in the cinima then there should be a lot fewer of these hollywood flops, Movies overhyped inorder to drag as many people to the local multi-plex for the first two weeks before word of month spreads that they sux. Loads of movies fall into this catagorie, pearl harbour, Star Wars EP1 (a movie which broke all box office records before anyone had even seen it) etc. Sadly hollywood seems to have become about promotion rather then about creating movies.
If people have the opition of seeing a movies at a crappy quality, then in the cinima, then buying the DVD months later with all the extras on it, creating movies becomes less about hype and more about making somthing which grows more the more times you see it ie Pulp Fiction etc. In sort there is more incentive for the creation of a quality product and not the same pop corn fodder that has been screening lately.
Piracy could have the effect of nullifying hype which I think benifits everyone, even those which don't partake in the practise (most people are pretty honest, given half a chance).
I do have a problem with the idea that these copyright measures are able to slow things down (which I sorta read in the article), what you are dealing with is a social problem and not a technical problem, Hollywood can put all the protections they what on DVD's TV etc and some bloke will just crack it as soon as it comes out (the same situation that exists with software) and to date most of their efforts, like SDMI, have been pretty lame. As for legislation, laws are only as strong as a persons ablity to enforce them and who the hell is going to pay attention to one passed, which only benifits large companies, Where there is no policemen there is no speed limit, after all.
At the end of the day thing like this are only going to annoy honest people.
Technology has just moved along (like it does) and instead of trying to stop the march of progress media companies have to change there business models to the new market, and not try to maintain the statis quo. CD sales are lower today because time which should have been spent creating a new format to replace CD's was spent lowing production processes and now that industry is screwed. Thanks to DVD's the movie industry may survive (who the hell is going to bother dl a 8 gig movie over the internet when they can just buy it), plus there is the experience of seeing the thing at the local multi-plex.
At most, all that is going to happen is someone works out a way to link all the Tivo's together, but isn't that what cable TV is today? just repeats after repreats and WWF. If you can't work out a way to make money in a medium where consumers are doing all the work, and even go to the extent of limiting this type of market from developing, then what hope is there for you. Instead of putting your heads in the secure media sand you should jump on the P2P bandwagon.
Exercise, normally a really hard long run over 12km (not sure what that is in miles)
Then working though the morning from around 6 to 10, in complete silence.
I tend to find that if you zone to working though the night, eating sweets and drinking cola two things tend to happen, Firstly, you gain a shit load of weight (part of the CV really), Second, after a while you tend to not see the forest for the trees, For example a mate of mine went on about how he had spent the evening rewriting the sort() function. This isn't to say I don't do this but that is mostly in debugging and research not writing fresh code.
I think that the type of people who like working though the night are the same type of people who left all their work at university to the last possible minute because it clashed with their Civ/Quake time too much. I guess it works for some people, I'm just not one of them.
I should mention that I don't do it for a living like most people posting would so you can pretty much disregard the above. Not knowing how professionals do it, my best guess would be that EP method where they group programmers in pairs, personally I would find that really annoying.
I think that the programming method works along these lines, knock together some sort of script that more or less does the job, (normally in the zone), draw up some kind of plan in how you what things set out, steal as much code as you can, write the program out in whatever, then spend the next six months debugging. Simple really
To sum up...
They started running ads for the thing in september when the thing wasn't going to be released in another four months (late march), why would you bother to advertise something which wasn't going to be released until well into to next year?
They started a viral marketing campaign, which basically means they paid some dudes to spray paint green X's everywhere, pissing a lot of people off. To just pay people to vandalise property doesn't make you cool
They spammed local universities with adverts for the thing, putting ads on community boards for months (some of which still haven't been taken down). Like your average college student in Australia (univerisity in this country is publically funded) has the money to buy the thing in the first place and would just because they covered up the play lists and for the local pub. IE, they posted XBOX ads over the enrollment timetables at my local university you can imagine how that went down.
Instead of running locally produced ads on the tube they just ported American advertisments. Which had the effect of alienating people in this country, and there still running the fscking things, I sware if I see that ad for HALO again I'm going to kick in my TV
In short,, the advertising campaign in this country was just crap, in fact it had the effect of pissing a lot of people off, who would have brought the thing. It was simply too much for too long, too badly done. To illustrate, my 56 year old man who knows nothing about computers even went on at me for hours about how he hating seeing ads for the thing everywhere, since being a nerd I was somehow responsible.
IMHO, If you what to advertise a product the best way to do it is to have a campaign starting a week before the local launch then give the punters a rest before starting to advertise the games, like nintendo are doing.
M$'s attempts at marketing in this country have been really substandard to say the least, they clearly give the impression that M$ does not give a flying frill about this country and consquently no one here could care less about their console, I imagine that the same holds true for other countries expaining it's poor showing there.
The best example would be that ad for windows XP with all those people flying around, M$ run the same ad here completely ignoring that the exact same concept had been used by the telephone company One.tel who had recentally gone broke in this country leaving a lot of Australian stock brokers out of pocket. Clearly, M$ couldn't care less about there public image anywhere out side of North America.
I dunno about that one, a mate of mine recently went to japan and brought back some fashion magazines, pretty cool, the spine is on the left hand side rather then on the right, the things are filled with cartoons, there are ads for weight loss and hair removal products for men (I mean for dudes dude) etc etc.
The one thing I noticed is that there are ads for star wars figures, even ads trying to sell motor bikes have rows of star wars figures in the back ground, just cause they were trying to be cool (imagine that in a western mag). Anyway, my point is that, if national pride was such a big issue in japan then things like star wars would not sell because it is American
I think that the problem in japan is that there is no national pride, that people like to see themselves as belonging to a group or a company and not to a nation, like Americans do. I think that if you gave guns to all the employees of sony and nintendo then there is no doubt that they wouldn't go at it. That there is serious fanboy pride in that country to put the rest of us to shame. Perhaps M$ should try to install itself as being a "group" (a better word would be scean) in japan the same way these companies do, trying to create a fanbase, then they would have a greater chance of selling their product. After all, things like pokomon did come from that country, Manga shows tend to have fan service etc etc
Ofcourse if there is anyone from japan posting, could they please follow up, since I am just another ignorate westerner. Better to here it out of the horses mouth
Yeah I agree that all the anti M$ talk on slashdot is getting boring, mostly because it seems to take the line that even if they fail they still win, ie yeah the XBOX is a failure but they are still getting into the lounge room etc etc.
But seriously, if M$ pissed off there OEM's who the hell are they going to go to?. M$ have a Monopoly there is no alternative. At least in terms of a consumer OS, unless apple ports OSX to intel, which ain't going to happen. It is true that you could argue that linux is an alternative, but then what do you say to person X who just whats to run Office?. The only way that would happen is if they all did it at the same time, something equally unlikely, and for joe public that experience would just be painful.
If M$ made an OEM contract that every maker had to kiss bill gates on the arse, Then they would have to do it, in fact the standard OEM agreement isn't much further from that deal.
As for landing them in legal trouble, the government alreadly tryed to split the company and M$ more-or-less ignored that decision and just brought themselves out on appeal, could another lawsuit really scare them? even an American lawsuit.
Having the XBOX as a windows box is somthing that would save the thing overnight, and is probally be what ever the sequal to it will be, say the homestation. M$ wouldn't even have to do the marjority of the work themselves, just a few leaks to some hardware hacker groups, out comes a windows mod, and five minutes later the XBOX is breaking all sales records again, mostly because people are just buying a cheap pc for the living room (which is what the fsching thing should have been in the first place). It is true, that they would take a hit on licensing fees for the games, but then, could things get much worst then they are now? hell just sell the thing with a games bundle (like they did when the thing was launched) and all your bases are covered.
I agree with you on your other points, I just have a problem when you say that M$ would _never_ try to turn the XBOX into a pc, because, as far as Im concerned, it is the only hope in hell that they have any chance of selling it.
Course your right that the Dreamcast was a good console for the time, and if this was a perfect world it would still be going.
I think that a underground scean is growing for the dreamcast in America, where, like the XBOX, it was a success to begin with, and the same thing will probally happen with the XBOX, but sadly good intentions are not enough to keep these things going, No matter how many people like Army's of Darkness it doesn't mean that a sequal is going to be made since, at the end of the day, the original was such a box office flop, deal with it.
My point is that you would need a lot of extras, well out of the budget of a scifi live action special (like what they did with dune) which I think is what this guy is planning, so he should give up and just remake a 60's show or something
Apart, from the opening motorcycle chase, everything in the movie is big, your talking about massive riots (one of the themes of the movies is about society tearing itself apart), a military crackdown, and a climax where one of the leads turns into a hugh bloated mess.
Ofcourse, I thought that bringing lord of the rings to the big screen was impossible as well.
If you, really, want to do a live action manga then your best bet would be that Perfect Blue, being a movies which would work well as a thrillar. Not that I saying they should do that either.
Fundamentally just to sell a cut down PC for the lounge room. This is what I thought it was going to be, but then I saw it in the store, and found that it was just another console, just more expensive, with fewer games, and a really bad controller. It seems that M$ simply ignored their punters (the kind of people who buy PC's) and went ahead doing what everyone else was doing in the marketplace, all I or anyone who were likly to buy a XBOX wanted was a simple lounge room PC. If M$ had taken this root then they would be in a much better position today, IMHO.
For a start, M$ would not have had to sell the thing at a lost, and since they own the OS, they could have maintained a reasonable price point. Also they would not have had to spend time buying up developers like bungie since all the games which work on PC would have worked on the XBOX, and lastly they would not have had to have spent millions (more like billions) hyping the thing up just to sell a few units. The only problem would be that they would have pissed off makers like dell or gateway, but seriously where are they going to go (if you say linux I'll shoot you).
I honestly think that if the Xbox had been your standard windows box then the thing would be a success now, the mistake was just trying to create a Playstation with computer hardware. Seriously, This is marketing 101, If you go into a market with an established player, you don't create a "exact" copy of what that guy is doing, you create something different, unless expect to compete on price, which the XBOX never could
Ofcourse, this idea of a lounge room pc, is probally what the XBOX2 (the homestation) will become but by then sony may already have a foot hold in that market and, if that happens, it will have been too late. This must be a good thing, knowing how M$ would act if they had a monopoly on the lounge room, However Sony are not that much better - but at least they got there by making kewl stuff.
Ofcourse, if the idea of buying a "proper" console appeals to you, and not some bloated mess designed to plug you into M$/Sony TV then, do what I did, and just get a gamecube (rocks by the way).