Content will always catch up. I remember when HDTVs first came out, people would whine constantly about the lack of even native 720p source material - you had your computer's output, and that was about it. But, after a while, content did catch up, and you can easily find 720p and 1080p source material - even streamed over the net. Same thing for this - for now, it'll be driven with dual-link or quad-link DVI. But in the future, if this hits the consumer-space, we'll see full-res content for it - I'm somewhat sure you can get that much resolution out of a new film transfer.
Bluetooth keyboards are basically irrelevant to this. You're not going to be typing on a BT keyboard on the bus, or when you're walking around, or whatever.
The problem is, to do any serious Internet usage, you've got to kick the WiFi on, and that causes battery life to take a huge nose dive. The smartphone next to me, for instance, can handle a stunning amount of EVDO usage compared to WiFi. Battery switching seems like a rather inelegant solution, especially for the crowd this phone is aimed towards.
Once I read in a little further, I lost most of my interest in this as a smartphone. There's no HSDPA, no hardware keyboard (the software one looks terrible), it's big (albeit thin), and the battery life is supposedly 5 hours - not exactly awe-inspiring. Couple that with Cingular's terrible plans and so-so coverage in my area, and I've gotta pass. (If I wanted to use WiFi for my high-speed internet access, I would have bought a real PDA.)
It's too bad, because it's a beautiful, feature-filled phone, and the interface looks amazing. But for the smartphone crowd, it just doesn't seem like it's going to hit the right notes. For the "I wish my phone was an iPod Nano" crowd, it'll be pretty awesome.
Personally, I hope this drives Microsoft forward into improving PocketPC. They've had a little too much time to relax with Palm's relative lack of development, and they need a swift kick in the pants. Of course, it's harder when you don't control the hardware platform, but there are many places to improve...
Apple's probably far more worried about the Xbox 360's movie and TV download service, which is apparently doing very, very well. That's not to say this is a bad product - I can think of uses for it - but at the same time, it also seems like a hassle in terms of interface, and interface is king to a lot of folks.
It's not hard to make a good Trek game. Armada, 25th Anniversary, Elite Force, Star Fleet Command III, and A Final Unity were all good games. I think that the _quantity_ of Star Trek games causes this to be forgotten - but Star Wars really does have much the same problem.
Also, I think your basic thesis is wrong anyways. The two big dialogue games (Borg and Klingon) both didn't do very well when they were released back in the mid-90's. What makes a good Star Trek episode may not make a good Star Trek game.
Gears of War isn't an FPS. It's third-person shooter. Also, the control scheme doesn't really seem to lend itself so well to the KB+M, but that might just be my mis-impression.
Unless this software came straight from UC Berkley, that escape route doesn't seem to exist. Their Office of Technology Licensing cannot unilaterally change the license on other people's code.
Looks like we can toss a new one on our stack of freedoms: Free as in "speech". Free as in "beer". Free as in "stolen".
And, yes, I understand nothing's been really stolen, and I really meant it mostly in jest. But this is one of the reasons that the community needs to understand that "open source" is not just "open source". It comprises a variety of licenses, some incompatible with each other. Developers need to be educated as to the ramifications of making bad decisions regarding software licensing.
First of all, thank you for the response. It actually manages to address the points I was making, and doesn't just fall back on "you said religion and science in the same sentence, you don't know what science is!" (I'm pretty sure I know what they both are.) It's well-reasoned and intelligent, and I agree with most of what you say. I deliberately exaggerated some of your statements for effect, and I'm sort of sorry for doing it. The following is where you lose me:
"It also means that if we introduce more science into our daily lives, we become less reliant on small groups of powerful people to vet what we think, do and believe and we become less vulnerable to temporal vanities or trends."
Scientists who are experts in their field _are_ small, powerful groups (at least within their field). That is to say, is a small group of scientists who dictate, say, education policy, actually causing us to be any less reliant on a small, powerful group? I mean, look at the Fed - we've got a small number of amazingly-well-educated folks basically dictating half the economic policy of the USA. Personally, I think they do a good job, but the exact same problem that you think (or I perceive you to think) having scientists will fix still exists - people still second-guess them and scream that they don't know what they're doing, science and math be damned.
(I worked for NASA for a while supporting original GN&C research, and my wife does her own original scientific research and paper-writing where she works. We're hardly the anti-science sort. I just get concerned when I see science being cast as a solution to problems it can't solve.)
I read that, and thought to myself: is science becoming the new religion of the 21st century?
* "Don't act without consulting a scientist!" * "Science is responsible for all good things!" * "Only say things approved by science!" * "Public policy made by scientists is the best policy!"
Did I say religion? Looking at those, I think I meant _theocracy_. And there's not even a vestige of morality to hold check on some of the crazier impulses...
Science is responsible for many, many important things, and it is damned well something we need to emphasize more in schools. It is not, in my opinion, the end-all, be-all of humanity, and you are apparently casting it as such, or nearly so. I know you mean well, so I'm sorry to call you out, but like politicians and clergymen, scientists are starting to grate on me a bit with their attitude of "I know everything".
The only problem is that it requires a $400 investment to get going, whereas these other services run on your PC. I'm guessing that it's more of a subset of PC owners who have a 360, rather than the reverse.
I've heard a lot of good stuff about it, though - the launch week issues have cleared up nicely, and the selection is getting better constantly. It also "just works", which isn't something to be ignored, either.
But, legally, they could. That's my point - the government isn't doing anything a wealthy individual couldn't do.
I'm not a huge fan of the idea, in the sense that it leads to an over-reliance on these systems, versus actual cops walking the beat. But I also don't think a few well-placed cameras will do much harm - in fact, I can think of spots where they'd do quite a bit of good.
I keep seeing this "it violates my privacy!" argument come up, and I'm not sure where it comes from. When you're out on a public street, you do _not_ have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Anyone can videotape you, legally. Hell, anyone can follow you around with a video camera until you head somewhere that's not public. I don't see why it should be different for the government.
I don't have an issue with objecting to the cameras, but "privacy" isn't the reason to do so, IMHO.
What you don't get, apparently, is that this concern doesn't rank very high on the average person's radar compared to other stuff, like _crime_, _taxes_, and other such issues. It's like the "Save the *small rare bird* Foundation" - there's a bunch of folks who care, but they're absolutely dwarfed by those who don't. Why should your cause be at the top of the list, or anywhere in the vicinity?
First, your basis thesis is wrong, because a properly generated one-time pad is perfectly secure, in both a practical and theoretical sense.
Are you saying PGP/GPG is "worthless" because it's not "perfectly secure"? The application here doesn't need to be perfectly secure. It just needs to be "secure enough".
Sure, assuming said circumvention method even exists, and the designers and parents are too dumb to not notice or fix it. Did you even read what I wrote?
Reading these comments, you'd think these kids circumventing their GPS tracking are straight out of some orbiting Battle School (Ender's game ref!), and not the standard, mind-numbing public schools that most people subject their kids to. Never mind that _parents_ are being cast as folks with IQs lower than your standard Fox sitcom character's. I attribute this to many Slashdotters feeling that they were much smarter than their foolish parents about computers, so, obviously, said Slashdotters were much smarter about EVERYTHING.
Will a few kids be smart enough to circumvent this, and the parents too dumb to notice? Yes. Clearly, it is not a solution for every case. But most of these supposed circumvention techniques (leave phone somewhere else, turn it off, pay someone to answer it, whatever) rely on parents being completely stupid, and not having some sort of verification method. I'm not sure if I think the entire concept of GPS tracking your kids is great (I'd like them to be able to provide their positions with their own free will via a button push), but it's not nearly as worthless and bankrupt as some Slashdotters have been ranting.
It's disturbing as all hell to see the kind of parenting mantra that's being espoused on here: "you'll never be able to stop your kid from seeing the real world, so let them run wild at 13!" I guess it's a relief that your average Slashdotter probably won't ever have kids anyways.
I've been using XNA for a while, and it's really a good effort by Microsoft. Easy to develop with, and exposes a pretty nice amount of the graphics and audio hardware. Compare this to PS3 Linux, which apparently doesn't even have accelerated 3D, and it's hard to argue with him - what Net Yaroze was a couple generations ago is now XNA - and much cheaper to boot.
Slashdot Mirror
Neither of these two games is coming out until 2008. They're not going to be out Christmas 2007, and this has been known for quite a while.
I've heard that Viva Pinata for the 360 is beautiful, addictive, and has a relatively shallow learning curve.
Also, Guitar Hero II for the PS2 is like crack cocaine.
Content will always catch up. I remember when HDTVs first came out, people would whine constantly about the lack of even native 720p source material - you had your computer's output, and that was about it. But, after a while, content did catch up, and you can easily find 720p and 1080p source material - even streamed over the net. Same thing for this - for now, it'll be driven with dual-link or quad-link DVI. But in the future, if this hits the consumer-space, we'll see full-res content for it - I'm somewhat sure you can get that much resolution out of a new film transfer.
Bluetooth keyboards are basically irrelevant to this. You're not going to be typing on a BT keyboard on the bus, or when you're walking around, or whatever.
The problem is, to do any serious Internet usage, you've got to kick the WiFi on, and that causes battery life to take a huge nose dive. The smartphone next to me, for instance, can handle a stunning amount of EVDO usage compared to WiFi. Battery switching seems like a rather inelegant solution, especially for the crowd this phone is aimed towards.
Once I read in a little further, I lost most of my interest in this as a smartphone. There's no HSDPA, no hardware keyboard (the software one looks terrible), it's big (albeit thin), and the battery life is supposedly 5 hours - not exactly awe-inspiring. Couple that with Cingular's terrible plans and so-so coverage in my area, and I've gotta pass. (If I wanted to use WiFi for my high-speed internet access, I would have bought a real PDA.)
It's too bad, because it's a beautiful, feature-filled phone, and the interface looks amazing. But for the smartphone crowd, it just doesn't seem like it's going to hit the right notes. For the "I wish my phone was an iPod Nano" crowd, it'll be pretty awesome.
Personally, I hope this drives Microsoft forward into improving PocketPC. They've had a little too much time to relax with Palm's relative lack of development, and they need a swift kick in the pants. Of course, it's harder when you don't control the hardware platform, but there are many places to improve...
By the numbers:
1. Xbox 360s sold or shipped to retailers: 10.4 million.
2. iTV: 0. None. Nada.
Apple's probably far more worried about the Xbox 360's movie and TV download service, which is apparently doing very, very well. That's not to say this is a bad product - I can think of uses for it - but at the same time, it also seems like a hassle in terms of interface, and interface is king to a lot of folks.
The 360 version is actually _not_ as buggy as the PC version, from what I've read. It just doesn't fix the fundamental design flaws.
It's not hard to make a good Trek game. Armada, 25th Anniversary, Elite Force, Star Fleet Command III, and A Final Unity were all good games. I think that the _quantity_ of Star Trek games causes this to be forgotten - but Star Wars really does have much the same problem.
Also, I think your basic thesis is wrong anyways. The two big dialogue games (Borg and Klingon) both didn't do very well when they were released back in the mid-90's. What makes a good Star Trek episode may not make a good Star Trek game.
Gears of War isn't an FPS. It's third-person shooter. Also, the control scheme doesn't really seem to lend itself so well to the KB+M, but that might just be my mis-impression.
Unless this software came straight from UC Berkley, that escape route doesn't seem to exist. Their Office of Technology Licensing cannot unilaterally change the license on other people's code.
Looks like we can toss a new one on our stack of freedoms:
Free as in "speech".
Free as in "beer".
Free as in "stolen".
And, yes, I understand nothing's been really stolen, and I really meant it mostly in jest. But this is one of the reasons that the community needs to understand that "open source" is not just "open source". It comprises a variety of licenses, some incompatible with each other. Developers need to be educated as to the ramifications of making bad decisions regarding software licensing.
First of all, thank you for the response. It actually manages to address the points I was making, and doesn't just fall back on "you said religion and science in the same sentence, you don't know what science is!" (I'm pretty sure I know what they both are.) It's well-reasoned and intelligent, and I agree with most of what you say. I deliberately exaggerated some of your statements for effect, and I'm sort of sorry for doing it. The following is where you lose me:
"It also means that if we introduce more science into our daily lives, we become less reliant on small groups of powerful people to vet what we think, do and believe and we become less vulnerable to temporal vanities or trends."
Scientists who are experts in their field _are_ small, powerful groups (at least within their field). That is to say, is a small group of scientists who dictate, say, education policy, actually causing us to be any less reliant on a small, powerful group? I mean, look at the Fed - we've got a small number of amazingly-well-educated folks basically dictating half the economic policy of the USA. Personally, I think they do a good job, but the exact same problem that you think (or I perceive you to think) having scientists will fix still exists - people still second-guess them and scream that they don't know what they're doing, science and math be damned.
(I worked for NASA for a while supporting original GN&C research, and my wife does her own original scientific research and paper-writing where she works. We're hardly the anti-science sort. I just get concerned when I see science being cast as a solution to problems it can't solve.)
I read that, and thought to myself: is science becoming the new religion of the 21st century?
* "Don't act without consulting a scientist!"
* "Science is responsible for all good things!"
* "Only say things approved by science!"
* "Public policy made by scientists is the best policy!"
Did I say religion? Looking at those, I think I meant _theocracy_. And there's not even a vestige of morality to hold check on some of the crazier impulses...
Science is responsible for many, many important things, and it is damned well something we need to emphasize more in schools. It is not, in my opinion, the end-all, be-all of humanity, and you are apparently casting it as such, or nearly so. I know you mean well, so I'm sorry to call you out, but like politicians and clergymen, scientists are starting to grate on me a bit with their attitude of "I know everything".
The only problem is that it requires a $400 investment to get going, whereas these other services run on your PC. I'm guessing that it's more of a subset of PC owners who have a 360, rather than the reverse.
I've heard a lot of good stuff about it, though - the launch week issues have cleared up nicely, and the selection is getting better constantly. It also "just works", which isn't something to be ignored, either.
But, legally, they could. That's my point - the government isn't doing anything a wealthy individual couldn't do.
I'm not a huge fan of the idea, in the sense that it leads to an over-reliance on these systems, versus actual cops walking the beat. But I also don't think a few well-placed cameras will do much harm - in fact, I can think of spots where they'd do quite a bit of good.
I keep seeing this "it violates my privacy!" argument come up, and I'm not sure where it comes from. When you're out on a public street, you do _not_ have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Anyone can videotape you, legally. Hell, anyone can follow you around with a video camera until you head somewhere that's not public. I don't see why it should be different for the government.
I don't have an issue with objecting to the cameras, but "privacy" isn't the reason to do so, IMHO.
What you don't get, apparently, is that this concern doesn't rank very high on the average person's radar compared to other stuff, like _crime_, _taxes_, and other such issues. It's like the "Save the *small rare bird* Foundation" - there's a bunch of folks who care, but they're absolutely dwarfed by those who don't. Why should your cause be at the top of the list, or anywhere in the vicinity?
Doesn't matter. _They_ claimed it could, thus THEY need to make it happen. Or change the claim, which is what happened.
There are indeed some systems that could probably take that sort of punishment, though.
First, your basis thesis is wrong, because a properly generated one-time pad is perfectly secure, in both a practical and theoretical sense.
Are you saying PGP/GPG is "worthless" because it's not "perfectly secure"? The application here doesn't need to be perfectly secure. It just needs to be "secure enough".
Sure, assuming said circumvention method even exists, and the designers and parents are too dumb to not notice or fix it. Did you even read what I wrote?
Reading these comments, you'd think these kids circumventing their GPS tracking are straight out of some orbiting Battle School (Ender's game ref!), and not the standard, mind-numbing public schools that most people subject their kids to. Never mind that _parents_ are being cast as folks with IQs lower than your standard Fox sitcom character's. I attribute this to many Slashdotters feeling that they were much smarter than their foolish parents about computers, so, obviously, said Slashdotters were much smarter about EVERYTHING.
Will a few kids be smart enough to circumvent this, and the parents too dumb to notice? Yes. Clearly, it is not a solution for every case. But most of these supposed circumvention techniques (leave phone somewhere else, turn it off, pay someone to answer it, whatever) rely on parents being completely stupid, and not having some sort of verification method. I'm not sure if I think the entire concept of GPS tracking your kids is great (I'd like them to be able to provide their positions with their own free will via a button push), but it's not nearly as worthless and bankrupt as some Slashdotters have been ranting.
It's disturbing as all hell to see the kind of parenting mantra that's being espoused on here: "you'll never be able to stop your kid from seeing the real world, so let them run wild at 13!" I guess it's a relief that your average Slashdotter probably won't ever have kids anyways.
Well, here's a nice hiring opportunity for Red Hat - let's see if they take advantage of it.
I've been using XNA for a while, and it's really a good effort by Microsoft. Easy to develop with, and exposes a pretty nice amount of the graphics and audio hardware. Compare this to PS3 Linux, which apparently doesn't even have accelerated 3D, and it's hard to argue with him - what Net Yaroze was a couple generations ago is now XNA - and much cheaper to boot.