And yes, I too am being sarcastic. I realize that I failed (abysmally) to make that clear initially in my fervor to point our your geographic gaffe. Damnit.
What makes this theory eerily realistic is that when the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed in World War II, there were some walls left standing. Etched on those walls were shadows of spiral staircases, statues, and even people. Hypothesis is that the atomic explosion etched the shadows of images onto the walls. So if matter becoming pure energy, such as an atomic blast, can etch images onto a wall, it is not far-fetched that Jesus's resurrection could have done the same thing to The Shroud - if he produced some kind of energy of some sort in the process of resurrection.
Hypothetically speaking (because I find the idea, to quote Mike Tyson, "ludacrisp") if Jesus were the energy source that etched this image on the linen, he wouldn't cast a shadow, now would he?
Hey, to each his or her own. However, I strongly disagree with you on the game selection. PS2 definitely started weak (as they all do), but the catalog has been strong for quite some time. The only games that interest me for X-Box are coming from Sega. Damnit, why won't the make Panzer Dragoon for GCN or PS2?
By the way, yes, the PS2 sucks for DVD playback I think the X-Box sucks for DVD playback too, but noticeably less. Which, actually, makes me think that making the GCN non-DVD wasn't such a bad idea after all.
If you mean an article on xbox.ign.com, of course they claim MS is winning, regardless of the situation. Just like Nintendo Power was probably calling the Virtual Boy a success at one point.
Don't underestimate the power of the installed base. You can't sell games to people that don't own consoles. Not only that, as I recall (ergo, take this with a grain of salt...) there have been more PS2 systems sold in the time since the X-Box was released than X-Boxes. That's not exactly setting the world on fire if you're MS.
I think Sony knows exactly what they're doing. People keep saying that online play is going to be the next killer app for consoles but it isn't happening yet. The huge broadband rollout has not gone as well as expected, which is a big part of this expected console network boom (hence X-Box has built in Ethernet). If I had to guess, Sony put a plan in place to have the PS2 online but they're really waiting until the next hardware iteration for it to take off. I don't really care if consoles go online soon or not--it's a novelty. At some point it may be huge. But not now.
The important fact you're missing is that the games you mention, Everquest and PSO, both require persistent worlds. There are far greater costs to maintain the infrastructure for those games, and a greater dependency on the server for all gameplay. Whereas, a game like Tony Hawk doesn't require any important persistent storage; instead, the developer simply provides a "meeting room", then people play their games against each other. So they can get away with no charge at all.
So, depending on the game, it's not so simple as you seem to think. How much did you pay to play Quake 3 online? Diablo? These are "games worth playing" with "large user bases".
Also, as noted in other posts, Microsoft's strategy may not prevent developers from charging additional costs. See PSO for an example.
Finally, there's this silly little thing known as "conflict of interests." What if Microsoft makes a game that competes against another developer's game (think EA's Madden versus MS's NFL Fever)? Electronic Arts would much rather support their own network independent of MS than depend on a direct competitor. This is not anti-MS rhetoric, this is how business works.
A law set forth in a podunk Arizona county by people who probably shouldn't be remotely involved in lawmaking is not exactly precedent for any type of broad-scale action.
Oh, you mean Maricopa county? It's podunk, alright. If, by "podunk", you mean the fourth most populous county in the United States. Maricopa county just happens to contain a little "podunk" city called Phoenix, which, last I checked is a major metropolitan area.
To be fair, Wallace and Jordan weren't at UNC together. A more direct line would be Scottie Pippen, who plays small forward for the Blazers, and was Jordan's sidekick for six championships with the Bulls.
Re:would you like some cheese with that w(h)ine?
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Coz people are easily gulled, we suffer under both, which was really my point.
True, and what we're really hitting on is the two schools of thinking that grew out of classical liberalism into what we here in the States call "liberal" and "conservative". It's all a matter of who you think is a greater threat to your way of living.
That dwindles it to less than 10% of workers supporting unions.
...except supporting and belonging to unions are two separate issues.
-J
Re:would you like some cheese with that w(h)ine?
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Given the two evils, Huge Corporations and the Huge State, I'd pick the Corps, because at least they don't have large armies and secret police etc etc etc.
You're certainly entitled to your opinion; however, I can vote for my government. I don't remember electing any corporations. The basic purpose of government is, well, governing. Whereas the corporations exist to provide goods and services in exchange for money. Of course, I'm glossing over the perversion of both, but at the basic level, which one has more responsibility towards the people?
If you recall, this occurred on the Simpsons. The Springfield police department sent out notices to criminals claiming they had won a boat. They picked up Homer for an unpaid parking ticket, which he promptly paid, then he demanded his boat. Everything in life can be related back to a Simpsons episode!
Did it occur to those of you modding the parent post down and responding with flames that the author could very well have been intending this message to be facetious? I thought it was hilarious.
Personally, I think its rather idiotic of them not to support Glide in their GeForce drivers, as Glide offers vastly superior performance in games which use it.
That's because Glide was a specialized API for 3Dfx chipset. Most developers just write to OpenGL or D3D these days because any 3D accelerator worth its salt will work under both. Further, I believe Glide is effectively dead (with the Voodoo line), so it wouldn't support the fancier features of the new cards. The only reason for them to provide a Glide driver (or, more likely, wrapper) would be for backwards compatibility with old games that were written specifically to support the Voodoo chipset.
As always, only worth as much as any other/. opinion...;)
When I was in college, the only assembly programming we did was for MIPS. For our compiler project, we originally put out MIPS assembly and then retargeted it for the Sparc. I never once had to do any x86 assembly in school.
There's really not that much demand for any assembly in the industry at large. Even microcode is being done in high-level languages these days. I would wager that most of the people doing assembly coding now are in highly specialized fields, especially embedded programming. So, there isn't necessarily any more demand for x86 assembly programmers than for any other (possibly non-standard) architecture. In my opinion (and this is only opinion), while you should learn an assembly language in school to understand the basic building blocks, the choice of architecture isn't crucial. However, since it's not crucial to learn one or the other, I think they should stick with a simple one. x86 is kind of a mess; MIPS was easy to learn. As far as access to the hardware goes, there are simulators for most processors, which is sufficient for education.
Well, what you said is definitely true. However, you're addressing the issue of price with regard to tying. Anti-trust law not being my field, I am working on a general knowledge of the laws. That never stops/.ers from making sweeping statements, though, right?;)
Selling the X-Box at a ridiculously low price to undercut Sony and Nintendo is a luxury Microsoft would be afforded due to their monopoly in other areas. They are not competing based on their merit, they are using predatory pricing practices to take control of the market and squeeze out their competitors. Now, a smaller company like Sega or Nintendo, whose revenue is derived largely from said market, doesn't have the ability to take these massive losses just to wedge their way in and force others out (one might argue that Sony, being a mega-corporation could do the same as MS, but that's a different debate). I'm fairly certain that this sort of pricing violates anti-trust law; it's certainly highly anti-competetive behavior. This is what I was addressing with my earlier comment.
so, selling XBoxes at a low price (or even free) is not illegal, neither is giving away Internet Explorer.
Actually, using your monopoly position to undercut the competition by dumping your product on the market well below the market price is illegal, as I recall.
I believe that's actually a typo rather than an incomplete sentence. I think he meant "nothing could be could be scarier than the gang of file swapping, copyright circumventing hackers..."
Are you talking about a 3rd-party DVD remote for the PS2? The Sony remote for the PS2 is much more like a standard DVD remote. It has buttons like "Title Menu" etc., but the caveat is that it requires 2 meg on your memory card for the updated DVD firmware. Note that, if you have a PS2 with no memory card, you're probably not having much fun with it;) I thought the X-Box DVD remote was much chintzier, but both more than serve their purpose. As for the PS2 remotes having the standard PS2 buttons, this is a "good thing" if you use your PS2 to play audio CDs. I must say that the X-Box remote and firmware are better integrated, but the PS2's equivalents work nicely.
PS2 playback could definitely be better. Maybe it's just my setup, but I use S-Video through my Sony receiver into a Sony TV (just illustrating that all of my components are the same brand), and when the screen goes black -- as often happens in transitions -- the TV sometimes tends to "mode switch" (I don't know what to call it). It will just flicker once (like it's being turned on) and the TV will display "DVD" and the time, as though I just changed the channel or switched sources. This doesn't happen all the time, but it can be really irritating. In the Fight Club extras DVD, the scene where Ed Norton is asleep and Tyler Durden checks on him (after the car crash), this is really prominent. The screen fades to black fairly often and each time, my TV "resets." I have pretty good quality components, damnit, and this is what I get?
There are hockey shafts made out of aluminum; I would assume it is because it is both strong and light (aluminum and carbon shafts are hollow, unlike traditional wood sticks). I was kind of surprised to find out that breaking and aluminum shaft is not that unusual. Since titanium is both lightweight and less brittle than aluminum, I wonder if it would make for a good hockey shaft? On slap shots, and even wrist shots, you generally flex the shaft a fair amount, so its ability to deform and return to its original shape would be a plus, I would think, although you don't want the shaft to be too flexible.
The cost would probably not be prohibitive, as I already pay $80 to $110 for carbon shafts (I swear by the Easton Z-Bubble). I'm not entirely certain that the price is based on the actual manufcaturing cost, anyway.
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And yes, I too am being sarcastic. I realize that I failed (abysmally) to make that clear initially in my fervor to point our your geographic gaffe. Damnit.
-J
-J
- in Arizona
- the 4th largest county in the US
- home of Phoenix, a major metropolitan area
Otherwise, I agree with your sentiments. As someone who grew up in the area, I just wanted to defend my turf-J
So, in other words, no? ;)
-J
Hey, to each his or her own. However, I strongly disagree with you on the game selection. PS2 definitely started weak (as they all do), but the catalog has been strong for quite some time. The only games that interest me for X-Box are coming from Sega. Damnit, why won't the make Panzer Dragoon for GCN or PS2?
By the way, yes, the PS2 sucks for DVD playback I think the X-Box sucks for DVD playback too, but noticeably less. Which, actually, makes me think that making the GCN non-DVD wasn't such a bad idea after all.
-J
Don't underestimate the power of the installed base. You can't sell games to people that don't own consoles. Not only that, as I recall (ergo, take this with a grain of salt...) there have been more PS2 systems sold in the time since the X-Box was released than X-Boxes. That's not exactly setting the world on fire if you're MS.
I think Sony knows exactly what they're doing. People keep saying that online play is going to be the next killer app for consoles but it isn't happening yet. The huge broadband rollout has not gone as well as expected, which is a big part of this expected console network boom (hence X-Box has built in Ethernet). If I had to guess, Sony put a plan in place to have the PS2 online but they're really waiting until the next hardware iteration for it to take off. I don't really care if consoles go online soon or not--it's a novelty. At some point it may be huge. But not now.
-J
So, depending on the game, it's not so simple as you seem to think. How much did you pay to play Quake 3 online? Diablo? These are "games worth playing" with "large user bases".
Also, as noted in other posts, Microsoft's strategy may not prevent developers from charging additional costs. See PSO for an example.
Finally, there's this silly little thing known as "conflict of interests." What if Microsoft makes a game that competes against another developer's game (think EA's Madden versus MS's NFL Fever)? Electronic Arts would much rather support their own network independent of MS than depend on a direct competitor. This is not anti-MS rhetoric, this is how business works.
-J
-J
To be fair, Wallace and Jordan weren't at UNC together. A more direct line would be Scottie Pippen, who plays small forward for the Blazers, and was Jordan's sidekick for six championships with the Bulls.
-J
-J
-J
-J
If you're fluent in legalese, the patent is available online from the US PTO site.
Joy.
-J
-J
As always, only worth as much as any other /. opinion... ;)
-J
There's really not that much demand for any assembly in the industry at large. Even microcode is being done in high-level languages these days. I would wager that most of the people doing assembly coding now are in highly specialized fields, especially embedded programming. So, there isn't necessarily any more demand for x86 assembly programmers than for any other (possibly non-standard) architecture. In my opinion (and this is only opinion), while you should learn an assembly language in school to understand the basic building blocks, the choice of architecture isn't crucial. However, since it's not crucial to learn one or the other, I think they should stick with a simple one. x86 is kind of a mess; MIPS was easy to learn. As far as access to the hardware goes, there are simulators for most processors, which is sufficient for education.
-J
Selling the X-Box at a ridiculously low price to undercut Sony and Nintendo is a luxury Microsoft would be afforded due to their monopoly in other areas. They are not competing based on their merit, they are using predatory pricing practices to take control of the market and squeeze out their competitors. Now, a smaller company like Sega or Nintendo, whose revenue is derived largely from said market, doesn't have the ability to take these massive losses just to wedge their way in and force others out (one might argue that Sony, being a mega-corporation could do the same as MS, but that's a different debate). I'm fairly certain that this sort of pricing violates anti-trust law; it's certainly highly anti-competetive behavior. This is what I was addressing with my earlier comment.
-J
-J
Strangely, on the same day an Avalanche win followed an earthquake, Montreal got rocked like a Hurricane. Natural disasters for everyone!
-J
-J
Are you talking about a 3rd-party DVD remote for the PS2? The Sony remote for the PS2 is much more like a standard DVD remote. It has buttons like "Title Menu" etc., but the caveat is that it requires 2 meg on your memory card for the updated DVD firmware. Note that, if you have a PS2 with no memory card, you're probably not having much fun with it ;) I thought the X-Box DVD remote was much chintzier, but both more than serve their purpose. As for the PS2 remotes having the standard PS2 buttons, this is a "good thing" if you use your PS2 to play audio CDs. I must say that the X-Box remote and firmware are better integrated, but the PS2's equivalents work nicely.
PS2 playback could definitely be better. Maybe it's just my setup, but I use S-Video through my Sony receiver into a Sony TV (just illustrating that all of my components are the same brand), and when the screen goes black -- as often happens in transitions -- the TV sometimes tends to "mode switch" (I don't know what to call it). It will just flicker once (like it's being turned on) and the TV will display "DVD" and the time, as though I just changed the channel or switched sources. This doesn't happen all the time, but it can be really irritating. In the Fight Club extras DVD, the scene where Ed Norton is asleep and Tyler Durden checks on him (after the car crash), this is really prominent. The screen fades to black fairly often and each time, my TV "resets." I have pretty good quality components, damnit, and this is what I get?
A: It's like an American, but without a gun.
Ah, the wit and wisdom of the Kids in the Hall.
-J
The cost would probably not be prohibitive, as I already pay $80 to $110 for carbon shafts (I swear by the Easton Z-Bubble). I'm not entirely certain that the price is based on the actual manufcaturing cost, anyway.
Anyway, just a thought.
-J