The fact is that only a very small number of XB360s fail
"Very small"? Denial ain't just a river, you know.
MS themselves admitted the number of faulty systems is "meaningful" (their word, not mine) and that the flaws in the system were "significant", were "design issues", and were "multiple" in number. You can read all this yourself straight from the horse's mouth here. Read that call transcript and educate yourself. These are things MS cannot lie about lest they risk a shareholder lawsuit and SEC investigation.
AND, they have handled their defective units in a far more upright fashion than other companies have done, I might add
Nintendo recalled every single Famicom on the market when they realized it suffered from a design flaw. They waited 6 months before they were confident they had fixed it, then they re-launched the system.
A 3 year warranty on a system with admitted significant design flaws (again, MS's own words) is a "far more upright fashion" of dealing with the problem than a recall?
MS will laugh all the way to the bank
To the tune of $7 billion in losses and counting, I guess.
Peter Moore was fired. I like the guy, but he was fired, and probably over the RROD fiasco.
Actual carbonated soda is very rare; it's not that unusual to see even Coca Cola vending machines that don't actually sell cola.
Carbonated soda is not "very rare". And Coca Cola machines without soda only exist when other Coca Cola machines *with* soda sit right next to them.
Japanese vending machines almost always exist in multiple units - it's actually uncommon to see a single vending machine by itself. In the event that you *do*, that vending machine will *always* have at least one, and usually two or more flavors of carbonated soda. When vending machines are paired together, they have one particular kind of drink in each, so yes, of course you will only find carbonated drinks in one out of the four or five machines in any given spot. But they're always there.
(I know the url says "korea", but that's Japan. Here is the original page it's from.)
It is true that Japan has much more variety of drink types in their vending machines than we do. But I disagree that their drinks are all that much healthier. Their vending machines contain drinks of the following types:
a) Canned iced coffee - always sweetened b) Soda c) Beer d) Sweetened, processed juice drinks (their equivalent to "Sunny Delight") e) Iced tea (unsweetened)
Of those, only tea is even remotely healthy and calorie-free. And it's true that it's usually available for those who want it. But then, diet soda is always available at vending machines here too; not as healthy as tea, but at least calorie-free and non-obesity forming. Most people choose something else, in both countries.
Our problem is portion control. The standard bottle size in vending machines here is 20oz. A Japanese canned coffee is I think 7oz. Big difference. We're drinking almost three times the sugar in our sugar drinks as they are, just because we're drinking a lot more of it. (This extends beyond vending machines too; go to McDonald's there and the "large" drink is the same size as a "small" here.)
Combined with the rest of their diet, which is a lot less fatty and rich in calories, and with a lot smaller portions, and of course they're in better shape. Though with the rise of fast food there, they're fattening up now just like we already have. (Most articles on this are a bit alarmist, IMO - it's still obvious that they're in pretty good shape, but obesity rates are rising.)
It's really not rocket science why we're all getting fat. Too many calories, too big portions. It drives me crazy how people read stuff like "fructose makes you fat!" and think they can just cut out fructose and lose weight. Meanwhile, they're still eating double quarter pounders with cheese, a large fries and two apple pies for lunch and wondering why they're still getting fat. The culprit to gaining weight is calories. That's it. Simple laws of physics. All of these foods that supposedly "cause" obesity do so because they are high in calories and low in nutrients. That includes fructose. The bottom line is you need to control your calorie intake, which means both controlling the types of food you eat as well as the amounts.
Or perhaps there's simply a nation more apathetic than the American one?
Well, if that's the case, then I'd say their relatively low crime rate (and ridiculously low rate of gun crime), low unemployment, high literacy rate, high median income, and the fact that they haven't been involved in a major war since WWII shows their apathy is working out pretty well for them.
Maybe we could learn a thing or two from their political process? Is is serving us in any way, shape or form to have presidential election campaigns that are now 2 years long? That's what internet campaigning has done for us...
Maybe the fact that Japan has rejected political appeals to a bunch of MySpace losers is actually a *good* thing...
How can sony honestly be that stupid. Unless we are missing something and they are going to drop the 80gb model down to 499 after the 60gb is phased out this makes no sense at all.
And that is what they're planning to do, mark my words. I think Reeves unintentionally just let that cat out of the bag.
The $499 price point is not going back up; that would be catastrophic. Nobody raises prices on a game console; it just never happens. Especially not a system that's struggling.
On the other hand, Sony has a bunch of 60GB systems still lying around, while it seems their 80GB systems are the new standard model in production. So hey, how about we drop the price $100 and sell the 80GB alongside it for an *extra* $100 while we clear the 60GB's out? Sony wins all the way around - they pocket that extra $100 for as long as the 60GB model still exists, then after the 60GB model is cleared out, they can drop the 80GB to $499 and still not lose (much) money given the cost savings of removing things like hardware BC.
So, you hit it. Once the 60GB units are out of the pipeline, the 80GB unit drops to $499. Sony gets to play it off as another price drop, and jump-start sales again without *really* doing anything. Their developers are happy, their consumers are happy, they get a bunch of positive PR.
Of course, one guy like David Reeves or whatever his name is can easily throw all those plans out the window. That guy probably just cost Sony millions of dollars with his moronic comment, because now people like me will just wait for the 80GB to drop in price, and other people end up just getting scared off the PS3 altogether for the time being.
...is not promising. It utterly fails to capture the Silent Hill mood. It's probably at least partly the voice acting (not that that bodes well either), but it's also the script that leans heavy on the military aspects of the main character's background, and supposedly that's something Konami also played up at their press event. I get the feeling that, in the hands of a new western developer, they're going to go all Resident Evil on us. Which is pretty much exactly the opposite of what most Silent Hill fans want. Silent Hill is the anti-Resident Evil.
Anybody remember the initial previews of Silent Hill 2? (And the final game did live up to that promise.) How still and quiet they were, how the acting was always slow, wistful... "In my restless dreams, I see that town... Silent Hill. You promised me you'd take me there again someday, but you never did... I'm there now, in our special place, waiting for you..."
Gives me chills just thinking about it. There's no such magic about the teaser that was released yesterday.
Still, I'm sure I'll buy it. Hell, I bought SH4 and it was terrible too.
Either way I'd expect a company of Sony's scale to put in the due diligence to ensure the products they buy are without legal issues.
That's not really the way it works, in any company.
Too many deals are done for a large company to scrutinize every single product they buy. That's the whole point of using outside vendors; if they're going to put in the time to fully examine all the code, they may as well just develop the DRM themselves. Instead, the contracts are worded in such a way that it puts the onus on the provider of the product. That way, it's in the best interests of the provider of the product to ensure that what they're providing meets specifications and adheres to the letter of the contract. Otherwise, they know they're at risk of a lawsuit like this.
I doubt the contract here was any exception, which means Sony most definitely has the upper hand. And they really have to file a lawsuit in order to preserve their leverage against all of their other technology providers. This is how they ensure they get what they're contracting for.
First, Sony releases CD's with a rootkit, and I'm supposed to hate them for it.
Then, they announce they're going to recall the CD's, and I'm supposed to like them again.
Then, their "removal" program doesn't work as advertised, and I'm supposed to hate them again.
Now, they sue the company that provided them with the DRM, implying that they didn't want a rootkit to begin with.
So is Sony "good" again, or are they now evil for using the legal system? It often seems to be taboo around here for any company to sue any other, for any reason.
Why are you so willing to buy from them? Do those trespasses committed by Sony mean nothing to you?
Nintendo sued Camerica over the Game Genie because they didn't want people "cheating" at their own games that they purchased. They lost.
They then sued Tengen (aka Atari) for producing "unlicensed" games - they lost that one too, but because of the expense of going to court over it, we now have required royalties and hardware lock-ins for all third party publishers. The DMCA now makes it a crime to circumvent those technological protections.
Nintendo only recently sued Bung Electronics for copyright violations on products that probably fell under fair use provisions of copyright law and were most certainly reverse-engineered.
In the late 1980's, Atari sued Nintendo for anti-trust violations. Atari won, and Nintendo was convicted of violating anti-trust laws.
As for Microsoft, well, we all know they're a convicted monopolist that also happens to be financing (through a third party) SCO's lawsuit against various Linux entities.
So my guess is you vote with your conscience and don't buy from any of these companies?
Remember last years Ridge Racer and Gran Turismo hoopla from Sony or how about Nintendo's demo with Mario 128 and the realistic Zelda several years ago.
Nintendo never showed a demo of "Mario 128", as in the game. I was at the press conference when they initially unveiled this - I believe it was actually at Space World, not E3. What they showed then was a demo called "128 Marios", *not* "Mario 128". This was only changed to "Mario 128" later. (There is a photo of the original title screen that got changed for later demos floating around the net somewhere, though I can't find it at the moment.) It was always a simple tech demo designed to show that the GameCube was capable of handling 128 N64-quality Marios at the same time without slowdown. There was no game there. It was just a bunch of Marios on a platform in space.
Later, Miyamoto started saying in interviews that he was thinking of ways to turn "Mario 128" into a game. But no game was ever shown, and I don't believe any actual coding was done. Somehow, at some point the press and bloggers turned things around and got the idea retroactively that the tech demo that was shown was footage from a game that was never released. It wasn't. Any ideas Miyamoto did have were no doubt put into Mario Sunshine and Mario Galaxy.
As a person who picked up a guitar 2 months ago, this trend is devestating. I only really got push to finally buy a guitar after watching some *amazing* youtube covers of a couple of songs I happen to love. I absolutely depend on online guitar tabs and these youtube vids to learn... I don't have the money or time or transportation to get real lessons.
Look at it this way: neither did Jimi Hendrix.
That said, I agree with your other points. Just not the one about "depending" on the internet to learn how to play guitar. Plenty of great guitarists learned how to play just fine before the internet was even a glimmer in Al Gore's eye.
The 360 does have a lot FPS titles, but they make up only a small part of my game library (I prefer FPSes on the PC). Let's be honest here, there's something for everyone on this console, and there are titles like Blue Dragon in the pipeline that will try to appeal to those who like specific genres, like JRPGs.
The problem is you've given one or two examples in most of these genres (and some of the examples you gave are 2nd or 3rd rate games). That just doesn't cut it.
There are a few games on the system I want to play; I'm right on the fence about it. The reliability problems have kept me from taking the plunge, though if the game library was stronger I probably would have anyway. The fact is it just doesn't have a lot of RPG's, it doesn't have a lot of arcade-style games other than classics, it doesn't have a lot of adventure games, it doesn't have a lot of quirky niche titles. You have to admit that it's top-heavy with the fps's/tps's and sports games.
Honestly, if you don't really like tps's/fps's (and I don't like them on consoles), what reason is there to buy a 360 over a PS3? Take away the 3D shooters and the PS3's got a pretty similar current and future outlook, but with the addition of blu-ray. Yeah, it costs more, but it's also more reliable... which counts for something too.
I don't honestly own any current-gen system yet, as they all have significant drawbacks for me... the PS3 is too expensive, the 360 is too unreliable and has an unbalanced game library, the Wii is just too unsophisticated for my high-tech, HD tastes. Whichever one solves its problems first is probably going to be the one I buy first. The PS3's got the easiest problem to solve, though.
Um, isn't the console still losing money. I read that MS was aiming for Gaming to be profitable in FY08. With an extra billion dollar hole to dig themselves out of, it might take an extra year, or two to get back to even for them.
It's going to take a lot longer than that.
Before this announcement, they were slightly more than $5 billion in the hole on the Xbox and Xbox 360 together. Now they're approximately $6.5 billion in the hole.
That's a huge amount of money. That's like an entire year's worth of MS Office sales (not profit, sales).
What they're talking about in FY08 is profits going forward. But the Xbox program will not be profitable on the whole for many years, if ever. And it won't even be profitable going forward if stuff like this keeps happening.
What I think is 'odd' [which applied to MS means I think they are lying] is that there was no "pattern' to these XBOX 360 failure for 1.5 years, but one finally appeared in the last 0.25 years. This would make sense IF only a limited batch of them were faulty, but MS extended the warrantee for all 360's, and not just for a batch of 360's within a range of serial numbers.
It must be a design flaw, which the article summary got right (this is one of the few sites I've seen with the guts to say it).
Look at it this way. A certain number of units of any piece of electronics are always going to be defective, no way around it. The average is 5%.
MS is now tacitly admitting that their defect rate is well above 5% - for it to cost them $1.3 billion with only 11 million systems out there, the defect rate must in fact be close to 100%. But even if they're counting on fixing some more conservative number of systems - say 30% - that's still well above the industry average. However you look at it, they're admitting to an "unacceptable" number of defective units, and that can only happen if there's something about the design that's causing it to happen.
What that means is that all Xbox 360's are at risk. It doesn't matter when you got yours; it has RROD potential today, tomorrow, and every day after that. That's the case because all 360's are designed the same way - there hasn't yet been a significant change.
I am curious to see what the 360's made after this announcement look like, side by side with a pre-announcement system. If there is no change, then I think it's safe to say the flaw still exists - and I sure wouldn't buy such a system. If there *is* a change, though, then I think we'll have a clearer idea of what the flaw was... but it'll still take time to know whether or not the fix was effective.
Either way, I'd put off buying a system for at least six months at this point. Let the old units work their way through the system, wait for the new units to prove themselves.
Yes, I'm sure more people would buy a Ferrari at $100. However, this is not justification for me to steal them and sell them at this price.
Not the point. The point is there are plenty of replica Ferraris out there that clearly copy Ferrari's designs but sell for about $100,000 less. Does Ferrari claim to be "losing $XX billion" to these kit cars? Do they claim that if sales of replicas stopped, all of those consumers would instead buy real Ferraris for $100,000 more? No, because it'd be a ridiculous argument to make.
The RIAA claims they're losing "$10 billion a year" or whatever to piracy. This number then gets thrown around every news story about every copyright infringer who gets taken to court. But the way they arrive at that number is by looking at the number of songs downloaded and calculating what the sales would have been at full price. Obviously, the vast majority of downloaders would never pay full price for the songs they're downloading - otherwise they wouldn't be downloading them for free! (Or very cheap.) People don't have unlimited amounts of money; they have a finite amount of money, and they will stretch it as far as they can. Just because someone has $10 to spend at allofmp3.com doesn't mean they would also have $1,000 to spend at iTunes.
So these are not "losses" for the RIAA - these are sales they would have never had to begin with. It's disingenuous for anyone to say they have "$XX billion in losses" to piracy. There is no way to quantify if or how much of a loss there is, but about all you can say definitively is that whatever number the RIAA comes up with is going to be grossly inaccurate because their methodology is fatally flawed. It's not about how much they think songs are worth, it's about how much a consumer has to spend. And there is a huge disconnect between those two amounts.
It's not about excusing piracy, it's just about the RIAA making an argument that is such an obvious lie that it would make it hard for any reasonable person to believe anything they have to say about piracy. They make it hard to support them by using arguments like this.
One thing I think is clear, though, is that the music industry needs to start letting people hear music for free in order to raise the level of interest. This should be intuitive, but apparently it's not for the RIAA these days. Music has always been given away to the consumer, through radio, through MTV, through in-store plays. Now the RIAA is clamping down on internet radio, MTV basically no longer exists, and radio is just a vast wasteland of crap culled from one or more Billboard charts (which becomes a cycle; when only a few companies own all of the radio stations, it's easy for them to manipulate these charts... which makes it easier to justify playing the songs they want to promote). The only music the RIAA lets you hear for free is the music they want you to hear for free, and in the venues they want you to hear it.
Guys like Prince have the right idea, giving away a CD with the local newspaper... and look how the music industry reacted to it. Some artists also have full albums up for streaming via their web site, though you need to know about the artist in advance to even know to go there (I bought Imogen Heap's last album after hearing the whole thing through her web site). So clearly the artists, or at least some of them, know the score. But the RIAA seems to be doing all it can to make sure that people have as few ways of hearing music as possible, which can only *discourage* people from buying it, not encourage as they seem to think. They've never heard the phrase "out of sight, out of mind", I guess.
Unsigned Band with break-out potential: "So, we sign with you...and our record won't be up for sale on iTunes?"
You're assuming major labels are still out there trolling nightclubs for "unsigned bands with break-out potential".
More often what they're doing is hitting up their local malls and "recruiting" teenage girls (or in the case of boy bands, teenage boys) to actively "break" as the next pop star. These girls and guys had nothing going for them (except cheerleader looks) before, so why would they turn down the promise of riches just because the songs some producer wrote for them to lay their heavily processed vocals over won't be on iTunes? If they do, hey, there's plenty more at the mall they came from.
We're not selfish or greedy because we collect; we just have so many resources that collecting useless crap doesn't interfere with our basic needs. It has no value until someone assigns a value to it that is disproportionally greater than the material and labor costs involved in the original production.
Why do you assume collectors always pay more than the cost of materials and labor?
Lots of people collect things that they find along the side of the road, for free. Other people collect stuff like salt and pepper shakers that they mostly buy at garage sales. I personally collect old video games and game consoles, which I always pay a fraction of their original retail price for.
All of this stuff would have ended up in a landfill or an incinerator if somebody wasn't collecting it. So what's the problem? If somebody can still get enjoyment out of something, then it's hardly trash.
The other day we apparently had 500,000 people lining up around the country to spend $600 on a phone that will be obsolete in 6 months (or is arguably obsolete now). You may have been one of those people for all I know; certainly some people reading this were. I've spent probably that much on my video game collection over a 15 year period and have gotten countless hours of enjoyment out of it. Who is wasting their money here?
Is your argument that none of us should spend any money beyond what our basic needs are? If so, then you're on the wrong planet, man... not even communist countries follow that rule anymore.
Between stuff like this and a CIA who wasted millions of $ over 25 years on a program employing psychics (I kid you not), don't you feel so much safer?
Non-lethal weapons are hardly a waste of money. Nor are they really intended to protect anybody but the people they're being fired at. That's the point - society has all the "protection" it needs provided by police and military using lead bullets, but are we still so barbaric that we want police to shoot lethal weapons into a group of college kids who had a little too much to drink while celebrating their team's championship victory one night and end up a little too rowdy in the streets? Should the penalty for that be death?
People here should be encouraging the development of non-lethal weapons, not making jokes about it or calling it a "waste". If you want a less abusive government, the way to get it is to promote things like non-lethal weapons.
Not to mention both the article and article summary here seem to have been written by junior high schoolers - that's around the age when we all learn that "laughing gas" doesn't really make you laugh. Apparently somebody still hasn't figured that out. Nitrous oxide is an anesthetic and a sedative. Shoot a bunch of it at a rampaging crowd and you'll probably end up with a mob of lazy sunbathers instead of bottle-throwers.
Once again, if the essence of any game is located in its action, reaction, interaction, and the rules which circumscribe those three elements, what does the narrative do?
Here's an example of a writer trying to sound smart by taking something obvious and "deconstructing" it to make it look not obvious. ("Deconstructing" is in quotes because that's not actually what deconstruction is, but it's how some writers define it if they don't know any better.)
The answer is the narrative guides your action, reaction and interaction, and it describes the rules which circumscribe those three elements.
There - happy? It really is that simple. The narrative exists for the purposes of guiding you to various places to do various things, and to tell you what you are and aren't allowed to do in those places and with those things with which you can interact.
Which is just a fancy way of saying what we've all known narratives do since time began. Questioning it now doesn't make it any less true.
(You can question anything - is the sun hot? Is ice cold? Does gravity = 9.8? But those questions don't in themselves form indictments or arguments against tradition or fact, which means they really have no point.)
Yep, isn't it great that the one branch of government that should be completely apolitical has just become yet another neoconservative-controlled institution?
Good thing we got rid of all those "activist" judges who thought their job was to rewrite the law!
Oh, wait...
I guess judges are only "activist" - and that activism is only a bad thing - if they're liberals.
Kinda like being a conservative means you don't believe in big government... except for the military, the CIA, the DHS, the Justice Department (which has been converted into an agency for enforcing a political agenda), the FCC... it's only big government that helps people that's bad. Just like laws that help people are bad; they're perfectly okay to overturn. Overturning a law intended to help people apparently doesn't make a judge "activist", it makes him a "constructionist". Free market price competition? Who needs it? Let big business set the minimum price retailers are allowed to charge. Screw consumers.
I guess I should be glad that our Constitution was apparently written with the interests of global conglomerates first. After all, if a constructionist judge writes a ruling that says so, then it must be true. They can't possibly be following their own political agenda.
I wonder what the argument for 'not' testing these wings up to breakage point?
The argument is that they don't have to. Which they don't.
The wings are designed for certain structural loads. They need to be strong enough to carry the fuselage while accounting for the maximum amount of force they would encounter from the wind. There's then a safety margin built in, which in the case of airliners is an extra 50%. So a wing needs to be able to withstand 150% of the maximum force it would ever be expected to encounter.
The question is do you test up to that 150% - which is all you need to do to certify the airplane - or do you test until the wing breaks? What, exactly, do you learn from an engineering standpoint by testing beyond the 150% limit? That you've over-engineered the plane? There's nothing really to be gained from testing so far beyond the structural loads that any aircraft will ever encounter - even an extra 50% is, by definition, already 50% more of a load that the wing will ever have to withstand.
Look at it this way: if the wing can, for example, bend to 400% of peak structural load, nobody's going to be rewriting 787 flight manuals giving pilots permission to go on barnstorming runs. The rules aren't going to change, because all of the components on the airplane were designed for a certain flight envelope and the fact that one component far exceeds the requirements of that envelope doesn't change the fact that the other components don't.
You are joking, right? Assembly of the first A350 won't even begin for about 5 years. It's not at design freeze. The 787 is about to roll out, and first flight is in a few months.
Yeah, it kind of reminds me of when Airbus called Boeing's composite barrel design "old fashioned"!
Bearing in mind that nobody has produced such a design yet, including Airbus. Until Boeing did it a couple of weeks ago, that is.
The A350 was designed in direct response to the 787, which surprised Airbus in the amount of interest it received (they had at the time placed their bets on the now-troubled A380 program, which may never break even). Saying the 787 copied any of the A350's design or construction methods is getting it completely backwards.
've lost track of just how many uninformed iPhone-hater pieces I've seen over the last week.
Why do you assume they're uninformed? Simply because they disagree with you? They're most likely just as informed as you are.
The reviews, while largely positive, all point out some significant drawbacks, some of which may be deal-breakers for some people. All of the reviews, without exception, are qualified to some extent. Your refusal to acknowledge this is no better than the so-called "uninformed" nay-sayers' refusal to acknowledge the phone's positive points. But those positive points mean nothing if, for example, your needs require using your phone in a car in a hands-free state when the phone doesn't support voice dialing. And as for the keyboard, even David Pogue says his Blackberry isn't going anywhere "anytime soon".
I think it's time for people like you to acknowledge that it is possible to be perfectly well-informed and still not like the iPhone, or like it overall but feel disappointment that Apple has failed to include some common, basic features that are requirements for many people even while adding new features that are of questionable value in a phone.
Also, I sample tons of music, and often find that I only like 2 or 3 songs from an album. In other words, I would be fine if the rest of the ablum were deleted off my hard drive.
This is always one of the big arguments people come up with against the CD, and there is such an obvious retort to it that I just don't understand why you guys don't see it:
You need to start listening to some better artists. Good bands don't put out albums with only 2 or 3 good songs on them.
And yes, that means those 2 or 3 songs you like probably aren't very good either.
Guess what retard emo-hippies, those new releases that you "buy only on vinyl" are no better sounding than the cd...why? Because the vinyl was MADE FROM THE CD YOU JACKASS. Its not like the old days where a record cutting facility will get a big 'ol tape from the mastering studio, and then there will be a guy sitting at the record cutting machine overseeing the process.
No, instead they get a data DVD, or a hard drive, or just a big file that they download. The result is the same - they're using the master.
It sounds like you saw some TV show somewhere with a guy sitting at a vinyl pressing plant who puts an optical disc into a machine and you assumed it was an audio CD. It wasn't. Music today is recorded (usually at 192khz/24 or 32 bit) by computer onto hard drives, where it can then be mastered any number of ways, including onto tape but also onto any data storage medium you like.
I always wondered if terraforming could just be done my massive planting of hardy fauna. A ton of trees (like a rainforest), should drastically change even weather patterns...I always thought that it would be an interesting experiment for a lander to plant - and tend - some cacti or something and see what would happen over time.
The problem is you need to raise the temperature of the atmosphere in order for most anything to grow, because there's no precipitation. The cycle can't begin until you've done that first step.
I haven't RTFA, but there was a show on Discovery Channel a while back where one of the guys who had designed a series of Mars missions for Lockheed/NASA back in the 80's (and he's still fighting for them) had proposed actually building a bunch of factories on Mars whose sole output would be greenhouse gases. Their entire purpose would be to just pump billions of tons of what we'd call pollutants on Earth into the Martian atmosphere. Supposedly you could raise the planet's temperature by 10 degrees over 100 years using this method, which would be enough to start releasing the water trapped in the ground as ice into the atmosphere, creating clouds and precipitation for plants. Then you could start planting forests, which would thrive in the CO2-rich Martian atmosphere and would begin to create the oxygen we need to breathe.
Humans could live on Mars as the terraforming process was ongoing, but they would need to be in enclosed colonies until the process was complete. Eventually, though, they'd be able to venture out into an Earth-like world.
I'm curious to see how the author of this article thinks the process could be sped up - the Discovery show said it would take thousands of years given current technology before the air would be both warm enough to live in and breathable for humans.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact is that only a very small number of XB360s fail
"Very small"? Denial ain't just a river, you know.
MS themselves admitted the number of faulty systems is "meaningful" (their word, not mine) and that the flaws in the system were "significant", were "design issues", and were "multiple" in number. You can read all this yourself straight from the horse's mouth here. Read that call transcript and educate yourself. These are things MS cannot lie about lest they risk a shareholder lawsuit and SEC investigation.
AND, they have handled their defective units in a far more upright fashion than other companies have done, I might add
Nintendo recalled every single Famicom on the market when they realized it suffered from a design flaw. They waited 6 months before they were confident they had fixed it, then they re-launched the system.
A 3 year warranty on a system with admitted significant design flaws (again, MS's own words) is a "far more upright fashion" of dealing with the problem than a recall?
MS will laugh all the way to the bank
To the tune of $7 billion in losses and counting, I guess.
Peter Moore was fired. I like the guy, but he was fired, and probably over the RROD fiasco.
Actual carbonated soda is very rare; it's not that unusual to see even Coca Cola vending machines that don't actually sell cola.
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Carbonated soda is not "very rare". And Coca Cola machines without soda only exist when other Coca Cola machines *with* soda sit right next to them.
Japanese vending machines almost always exist in multiple units - it's actually uncommon to see a single vending machine by itself. In the event that you *do*, that vending machine will *always* have at least one, and usually two or more flavors of carbonated soda. When vending machines are paired together, they have one particular kind of drink in each, so yes, of course you will only find carbonated drinks in one out of the four or five machines in any given spot. But they're always there.
This is a typical single-unit Suntory machine installation:
http://www.japonophile.com/wp-content/uploads/200
And the same for Coke:
http://z.about.com/d/gojapan/1/0/8/2/machine2.gif
This is a more common multi-machine installation:
http://www.tjf.or.jp/deai_korea/contents/teacher/
(I know the url says "korea", but that's Japan. Here is the original page it's from.)
It is true that Japan has much more variety of drink types in their vending machines than we do. But I disagree that their drinks are all that much healthier. Their vending machines contain drinks of the following types:
a) Canned iced coffee - always sweetened
b) Soda
c) Beer
d) Sweetened, processed juice drinks (their equivalent to "Sunny Delight")
e) Iced tea (unsweetened)
Of those, only tea is even remotely healthy and calorie-free. And it's true that it's usually available for those who want it. But then, diet soda is always available at vending machines here too; not as healthy as tea, but at least calorie-free and non-obesity forming. Most people choose something else, in both countries.
Our problem is portion control. The standard bottle size in vending machines here is 20oz. A Japanese canned coffee is I think 7oz. Big difference. We're drinking almost three times the sugar in our sugar drinks as they are, just because we're drinking a lot more of it. (This extends beyond vending machines too; go to McDonald's there and the "large" drink is the same size as a "small" here.)
Combined with the rest of their diet, which is a lot less fatty and rich in calories, and with a lot smaller portions, and of course they're in better shape. Though with the rise of fast food there, they're fattening up now just like we already have. (Most articles on this are a bit alarmist, IMO - it's still obvious that they're in pretty good shape, but obesity rates are rising.)
It's really not rocket science why we're all getting fat. Too many calories, too big portions. It drives me crazy how people read stuff like "fructose makes you fat!" and think they can just cut out fructose and lose weight. Meanwhile, they're still eating double quarter pounders with cheese, a large fries and two apple pies for lunch and wondering why they're still getting fat. The culprit to gaining weight is calories. That's it. Simple laws of physics. All of these foods that supposedly "cause" obesity do so because they are high in calories and low in nutrients. That includes fructose. The bottom line is you need to control your calorie intake, which means both controlling the types of food you eat as well as the amounts.
Or perhaps there's simply a nation more apathetic than the American one?
Well, if that's the case, then I'd say their relatively low crime rate (and ridiculously low rate of gun crime), low unemployment, high literacy rate, high median income, and the fact that they haven't been involved in a major war since WWII shows their apathy is working out pretty well for them.
Maybe we could learn a thing or two from their political process? Is is serving us in any way, shape or form to have presidential election campaigns that are now 2 years long? That's what internet campaigning has done for us...
Maybe the fact that Japan has rejected political appeals to a bunch of MySpace losers is actually a *good* thing...
How can sony honestly be that stupid. Unless we are missing something and they are going to drop the 80gb model down to 499 after the 60gb is phased out this makes no sense at all.
And that is what they're planning to do, mark my words. I think Reeves unintentionally just let that cat out of the bag.
The $499 price point is not going back up; that would be catastrophic. Nobody raises prices on a game console; it just never happens. Especially not a system that's struggling.
On the other hand, Sony has a bunch of 60GB systems still lying around, while it seems their 80GB systems are the new standard model in production. So hey, how about we drop the price $100 and sell the 80GB alongside it for an *extra* $100 while we clear the 60GB's out? Sony wins all the way around - they pocket that extra $100 for as long as the 60GB model still exists, then after the 60GB model is cleared out, they can drop the 80GB to $499 and still not lose (much) money given the cost savings of removing things like hardware BC.
So, you hit it. Once the 60GB units are out of the pipeline, the 80GB unit drops to $499. Sony gets to play it off as another price drop, and jump-start sales again without *really* doing anything. Their developers are happy, their consumers are happy, they get a bunch of positive PR.
Of course, one guy like David Reeves or whatever his name is can easily throw all those plans out the window. That guy probably just cost Sony millions of dollars with his moronic comment, because now people like me will just wait for the 80GB to drop in price, and other people end up just getting scared off the PS3 altogether for the time being.
...is not promising. It utterly fails to capture the Silent Hill mood. It's probably at least partly the voice acting (not that that bodes well either), but it's also the script that leans heavy on the military aspects of the main character's background, and supposedly that's something Konami also played up at their press event. I get the feeling that, in the hands of a new western developer, they're going to go all Resident Evil on us. Which is pretty much exactly the opposite of what most Silent Hill fans want. Silent Hill is the anti-Resident Evil.
Anybody remember the initial previews of Silent Hill 2? (And the final game did live up to that promise.) How still and quiet they were, how the acting was always slow, wistful... "In my restless dreams, I see that town... Silent Hill. You promised me you'd take me there again someday, but you never did... I'm there now, in our special place, waiting for you..."
Gives me chills just thinking about it. There's no such magic about the teaser that was released yesterday.
Still, I'm sure I'll buy it. Hell, I bought SH4 and it was terrible too.
Either way I'd expect a company of Sony's scale to put in the due diligence to ensure the products they buy are without legal issues.
That's not really the way it works, in any company.
Too many deals are done for a large company to scrutinize every single product they buy. That's the whole point of using outside vendors; if they're going to put in the time to fully examine all the code, they may as well just develop the DRM themselves. Instead, the contracts are worded in such a way that it puts the onus on the provider of the product. That way, it's in the best interests of the provider of the product to ensure that what they're providing meets specifications and adheres to the letter of the contract. Otherwise, they know they're at risk of a lawsuit like this.
I doubt the contract here was any exception, which means Sony most definitely has the upper hand. And they really have to file a lawsuit in order to preserve their leverage against all of their other technology providers. This is how they ensure they get what they're contracting for.
First, Sony releases CD's with a rootkit, and I'm supposed to hate them for it.
Then, they announce they're going to recall the CD's, and I'm supposed to like them again.
Then, their "removal" program doesn't work as advertised, and I'm supposed to hate them again.
Now, they sue the company that provided them with the DRM, implying that they didn't want a rootkit to begin with.
So is Sony "good" again, or are they now evil for using the legal system? It often seems to be taboo around here for any company to sue any other, for any reason.
Why are you so willing to buy from them? Do those trespasses committed by Sony mean nothing to you?
Nintendo sued Camerica over the Game Genie because they didn't want people "cheating" at their own games that they purchased. They lost.
They then sued Tengen (aka Atari) for producing "unlicensed" games - they lost that one too, but because of the expense of going to court over it, we now have required royalties and hardware lock-ins for all third party publishers. The DMCA now makes it a crime to circumvent those technological protections.
Nintendo only recently sued Bung Electronics for copyright violations on products that probably fell under fair use provisions of copyright law and were most certainly reverse-engineered.
In the late 1980's, Atari sued Nintendo for anti-trust violations. Atari won, and Nintendo was convicted of violating anti-trust laws.
As for Microsoft, well, we all know they're a convicted monopolist that also happens to be financing (through a third party) SCO's lawsuit against various Linux entities.
So my guess is you vote with your conscience and don't buy from any of these companies?
Remember last years Ridge Racer and Gran Turismo hoopla from Sony or how about Nintendo's demo with Mario 128 and the realistic Zelda several years ago.
Nintendo never showed a demo of "Mario 128", as in the game. I was at the press conference when they initially unveiled this - I believe it was actually at Space World, not E3. What they showed then was a demo called "128 Marios", *not* "Mario 128". This was only changed to "Mario 128" later. (There is a photo of the original title screen that got changed for later demos floating around the net somewhere, though I can't find it at the moment.) It was always a simple tech demo designed to show that the GameCube was capable of handling 128 N64-quality Marios at the same time without slowdown. There was no game there. It was just a bunch of Marios on a platform in space.
Later, Miyamoto started saying in interviews that he was thinking of ways to turn "Mario 128" into a game. But no game was ever shown, and I don't believe any actual coding was done. Somehow, at some point the press and bloggers turned things around and got the idea retroactively that the tech demo that was shown was footage from a game that was never released. It wasn't. Any ideas Miyamoto did have were no doubt put into Mario Sunshine and Mario Galaxy.
Maybe I'm too young or too socialist, but if you want something private, don't put it in an accessible area.
Great. Give me your address so I can come steal your car out of your driveway.
Oh, it's in a garage? I'll just rent a flatbed and take that too. It's in an accessible area, so it's ok, right?
As a person who picked up a guitar 2 months ago, this trend is devestating. I only really got push to finally buy a guitar after watching some *amazing* youtube covers of a couple of songs I happen to love. I absolutely depend on online guitar tabs and these youtube vids to learn... I don't have the money or time or transportation to get real lessons.
Look at it this way: neither did Jimi Hendrix.
That said, I agree with your other points. Just not the one about "depending" on the internet to learn how to play guitar. Plenty of great guitarists learned how to play just fine before the internet was even a glimmer in Al Gore's eye.
(Yes, that's a joke.)
The 360 does have a lot FPS titles, but they make up only a small part of my game library (I prefer FPSes on the PC). Let's be honest here, there's something for everyone on this console, and there are titles like Blue Dragon in the pipeline that will try to appeal to those who like specific genres, like JRPGs.
The problem is you've given one or two examples in most of these genres (and some of the examples you gave are 2nd or 3rd rate games). That just doesn't cut it.
There are a few games on the system I want to play; I'm right on the fence about it. The reliability problems have kept me from taking the plunge, though if the game library was stronger I probably would have anyway. The fact is it just doesn't have a lot of RPG's, it doesn't have a lot of arcade-style games other than classics, it doesn't have a lot of adventure games, it doesn't have a lot of quirky niche titles. You have to admit that it's top-heavy with the fps's/tps's and sports games.
Honestly, if you don't really like tps's/fps's (and I don't like them on consoles), what reason is there to buy a 360 over a PS3? Take away the 3D shooters and the PS3's got a pretty similar current and future outlook, but with the addition of blu-ray. Yeah, it costs more, but it's also more reliable... which counts for something too.
I don't honestly own any current-gen system yet, as they all have significant drawbacks for me... the PS3 is too expensive, the 360 is too unreliable and has an unbalanced game library, the Wii is just too unsophisticated for my high-tech, HD tastes. Whichever one solves its problems first is probably going to be the one I buy first. The PS3's got the easiest problem to solve, though.
Um, isn't the console still losing money. I read that MS was aiming for Gaming to be profitable in FY08. With an extra billion dollar hole to dig themselves out of, it might take an extra year, or two to get back to even for them.
It's going to take a lot longer than that.
Before this announcement, they were slightly more than $5 billion in the hole on the Xbox and Xbox 360 together. Now they're approximately $6.5 billion in the hole.
That's a huge amount of money. That's like an entire year's worth of MS Office sales (not profit, sales).
What they're talking about in FY08 is profits going forward. But the Xbox program will not be profitable on the whole for many years, if ever. And it won't even be profitable going forward if stuff like this keeps happening.
What I think is 'odd' [which applied to MS means I think they are lying] is that there was no "pattern' to these XBOX 360 failure for 1.5 years, but one finally appeared in the last 0.25 years. This would make sense IF only a limited batch of them were faulty, but MS extended the warrantee for all 360's, and not just for a batch of 360's within a range of serial numbers.
It must be a design flaw, which the article summary got right (this is one of the few sites I've seen with the guts to say it).
Look at it this way. A certain number of units of any piece of electronics are always going to be defective, no way around it. The average is 5%.
MS is now tacitly admitting that their defect rate is well above 5% - for it to cost them $1.3 billion with only 11 million systems out there, the defect rate must in fact be close to 100%. But even if they're counting on fixing some more conservative number of systems - say 30% - that's still well above the industry average. However you look at it, they're admitting to an "unacceptable" number of defective units, and that can only happen if there's something about the design that's causing it to happen.
What that means is that all Xbox 360's are at risk. It doesn't matter when you got yours; it has RROD potential today, tomorrow, and every day after that. That's the case because all 360's are designed the same way - there hasn't yet been a significant change.
I am curious to see what the 360's made after this announcement look like, side by side with a pre-announcement system. If there is no change, then I think it's safe to say the flaw still exists - and I sure wouldn't buy such a system. If there *is* a change, though, then I think we'll have a clearer idea of what the flaw was... but it'll still take time to know whether or not the fix was effective.
Either way, I'd put off buying a system for at least six months at this point. Let the old units work their way through the system, wait for the new units to prove themselves.
Yes, I'm sure more people would buy a Ferrari at $100. However, this is not justification for me to steal them and sell them at this price.
Not the point. The point is there are plenty of replica Ferraris out there that clearly copy Ferrari's designs but sell for about $100,000 less. Does Ferrari claim to be "losing $XX billion" to these kit cars? Do they claim that if sales of replicas stopped, all of those consumers would instead buy real Ferraris for $100,000 more? No, because it'd be a ridiculous argument to make.
The RIAA claims they're losing "$10 billion a year" or whatever to piracy. This number then gets thrown around every news story about every copyright infringer who gets taken to court. But the way they arrive at that number is by looking at the number of songs downloaded and calculating what the sales would have been at full price. Obviously, the vast majority of downloaders would never pay full price for the songs they're downloading - otherwise they wouldn't be downloading them for free! (Or very cheap.) People don't have unlimited amounts of money; they have a finite amount of money, and they will stretch it as far as they can. Just because someone has $10 to spend at allofmp3.com doesn't mean they would also have $1,000 to spend at iTunes.
So these are not "losses" for the RIAA - these are sales they would have never had to begin with. It's disingenuous for anyone to say they have "$XX billion in losses" to piracy. There is no way to quantify if or how much of a loss there is, but about all you can say definitively is that whatever number the RIAA comes up with is going to be grossly inaccurate because their methodology is fatally flawed. It's not about how much they think songs are worth, it's about how much a consumer has to spend. And there is a huge disconnect between those two amounts.
It's not about excusing piracy, it's just about the RIAA making an argument that is such an obvious lie that it would make it hard for any reasonable person to believe anything they have to say about piracy. They make it hard to support them by using arguments like this.
One thing I think is clear, though, is that the music industry needs to start letting people hear music for free in order to raise the level of interest. This should be intuitive, but apparently it's not for the RIAA these days. Music has always been given away to the consumer, through radio, through MTV, through in-store plays. Now the RIAA is clamping down on internet radio, MTV basically no longer exists, and radio is just a vast wasteland of crap culled from one or more Billboard charts (which becomes a cycle; when only a few companies own all of the radio stations, it's easy for them to manipulate these charts... which makes it easier to justify playing the songs they want to promote). The only music the RIAA lets you hear for free is the music they want you to hear for free, and in the venues they want you to hear it.
Guys like Prince have the right idea, giving away a CD with the local newspaper... and look how the music industry reacted to it. Some artists also have full albums up for streaming via their web site, though you need to know about the artist in advance to even know to go there (I bought Imogen Heap's last album after hearing the whole thing through her web site). So clearly the artists, or at least some of them, know the score. But the RIAA seems to be doing all it can to make sure that people have as few ways of hearing music as possible, which can only *discourage* people from buying it, not encourage as they seem to think. They've never heard the phrase "out of sight, out of mind", I guess.
Unsigned Band with break-out potential: "So, we sign with you...and our record won't be up for sale on iTunes?"
You're assuming major labels are still out there trolling nightclubs for "unsigned bands with break-out potential".
More often what they're doing is hitting up their local malls and "recruiting" teenage girls (or in the case of boy bands, teenage boys) to actively "break" as the next pop star. These girls and guys had nothing going for them (except cheerleader looks) before, so why would they turn down the promise of riches just because the songs some producer wrote for them to lay their heavily processed vocals over won't be on iTunes? If they do, hey, there's plenty more at the mall they came from.
We're not selfish or greedy because we collect; we just have so many resources that collecting useless crap doesn't interfere with our basic needs. It has no value until someone assigns a value to it that is disproportionally greater than the material and labor costs involved in the original production.
Why do you assume collectors always pay more than the cost of materials and labor?
Lots of people collect things that they find along the side of the road, for free. Other people collect stuff like salt and pepper shakers that they mostly buy at garage sales. I personally collect old video games and game consoles, which I always pay a fraction of their original retail price for.
All of this stuff would have ended up in a landfill or an incinerator if somebody wasn't collecting it. So what's the problem? If somebody can still get enjoyment out of something, then it's hardly trash.
The other day we apparently had 500,000 people lining up around the country to spend $600 on a phone that will be obsolete in 6 months (or is arguably obsolete now). You may have been one of those people for all I know; certainly some people reading this were. I've spent probably that much on my video game collection over a 15 year period and have gotten countless hours of enjoyment out of it. Who is wasting their money here?
Is your argument that none of us should spend any money beyond what our basic needs are? If so, then you're on the wrong planet, man... not even communist countries follow that rule anymore.
Between stuff like this and a CIA who wasted millions of $ over 25 years on a program employing psychics (I kid you not), don't you feel so much safer?
Non-lethal weapons are hardly a waste of money. Nor are they really intended to protect anybody but the people they're being fired at. That's the point - society has all the "protection" it needs provided by police and military using lead bullets, but are we still so barbaric that we want police to shoot lethal weapons into a group of college kids who had a little too much to drink while celebrating their team's championship victory one night and end up a little too rowdy in the streets? Should the penalty for that be death?
People here should be encouraging the development of non-lethal weapons, not making jokes about it or calling it a "waste". If you want a less abusive government, the way to get it is to promote things like non-lethal weapons.
Not to mention both the article and article summary here seem to have been written by junior high schoolers - that's around the age when we all learn that "laughing gas" doesn't really make you laugh. Apparently somebody still hasn't figured that out. Nitrous oxide is an anesthetic and a sedative. Shoot a bunch of it at a rampaging crowd and you'll probably end up with a mob of lazy sunbathers instead of bottle-throwers.
Once again, if the essence of any game is located in its action, reaction, interaction, and the rules which circumscribe those three elements, what does the narrative do?
Here's an example of a writer trying to sound smart by taking something obvious and "deconstructing" it to make it look not obvious. ("Deconstructing" is in quotes because that's not actually what deconstruction is, but it's how some writers define it if they don't know any better.)
The answer is the narrative guides your action, reaction and interaction, and it describes the rules which circumscribe those three elements.
There - happy? It really is that simple. The narrative exists for the purposes of guiding you to various places to do various things, and to tell you what you are and aren't allowed to do in those places and with those things with which you can interact.
Which is just a fancy way of saying what we've all known narratives do since time began. Questioning it now doesn't make it any less true.
(You can question anything - is the sun hot? Is ice cold? Does gravity = 9.8? But those questions don't in themselves form indictments or arguments against tradition or fact, which means they really have no point.)
Yep, isn't it great that the one branch of government that should be completely apolitical has just become yet another neoconservative-controlled institution?
Good thing we got rid of all those "activist" judges who thought their job was to rewrite the law!
Oh, wait...
I guess judges are only "activist" - and that activism is only a bad thing - if they're liberals.
Kinda like being a conservative means you don't believe in big government... except for the military, the CIA, the DHS, the Justice Department (which has been converted into an agency for enforcing a political agenda), the FCC... it's only big government that helps people that's bad. Just like laws that help people are bad; they're perfectly okay to overturn. Overturning a law intended to help people apparently doesn't make a judge "activist", it makes him a "constructionist". Free market price competition? Who needs it? Let big business set the minimum price retailers are allowed to charge. Screw consumers.
I guess I should be glad that our Constitution was apparently written with the interests of global conglomerates first. After all, if a constructionist judge writes a ruling that says so, then it must be true. They can't possibly be following their own political agenda.
I wonder what the argument for 'not' testing these wings up to breakage point?
The argument is that they don't have to. Which they don't.
The wings are designed for certain structural loads. They need to be strong enough to carry the fuselage while accounting for the maximum amount of force they would encounter from the wind. There's then a safety margin built in, which in the case of airliners is an extra 50%. So a wing needs to be able to withstand 150% of the maximum force it would ever be expected to encounter.
The question is do you test up to that 150% - which is all you need to do to certify the airplane - or do you test until the wing breaks? What, exactly, do you learn from an engineering standpoint by testing beyond the 150% limit? That you've over-engineered the plane? There's nothing really to be gained from testing so far beyond the structural loads that any aircraft will ever encounter - even an extra 50% is, by definition, already 50% more of a load that the wing will ever have to withstand.
Look at it this way: if the wing can, for example, bend to 400% of peak structural load, nobody's going to be rewriting 787 flight manuals giving pilots permission to go on barnstorming runs. The rules aren't going to change, because all of the components on the airplane were designed for a certain flight envelope and the fact that one component far exceeds the requirements of that envelope doesn't change the fact that the other components don't.
You are joking, right? Assembly of the first A350 won't even begin for about 5 years. It's not at design freeze. The 787 is about to roll out, and first flight is in a few months.
Yeah, it kind of reminds me of when Airbus called Boeing's composite barrel design "old fashioned"!
Bearing in mind that nobody has produced such a design yet, including Airbus. Until Boeing did it a couple of weeks ago, that is.
The A350 was designed in direct response to the 787, which surprised Airbus in the amount of interest it received (they had at the time placed their bets on the now-troubled A380 program, which may never break even). Saying the 787 copied any of the A350's design or construction methods is getting it completely backwards.
've lost track of just how many uninformed iPhone-hater pieces I've seen over the last week.
Why do you assume they're uninformed? Simply because they disagree with you? They're most likely just as informed as you are.
The reviews, while largely positive, all point out some significant drawbacks, some of which may be deal-breakers for some people. All of the reviews, without exception, are qualified to some extent. Your refusal to acknowledge this is no better than the so-called "uninformed" nay-sayers' refusal to acknowledge the phone's positive points. But those positive points mean nothing if, for example, your needs require using your phone in a car in a hands-free state when the phone doesn't support voice dialing. And as for the keyboard, even David Pogue says his Blackberry isn't going anywhere "anytime soon".
I think it's time for people like you to acknowledge that it is possible to be perfectly well-informed and still not like the iPhone, or like it overall but feel disappointment that Apple has failed to include some common, basic features that are requirements for many people even while adding new features that are of questionable value in a phone.
Also, I sample tons of music, and often find that I only like 2 or 3 songs from an album. In other words, I would be fine if the rest of the ablum were deleted off my hard drive.
This is always one of the big arguments people come up with against the CD, and there is such an obvious retort to it that I just don't understand why you guys don't see it:
You need to start listening to some better artists. Good bands don't put out albums with only 2 or 3 good songs on them.
And yes, that means those 2 or 3 songs you like probably aren't very good either.
Guess what retard emo-hippies, those new releases that you "buy only on vinyl" are no better sounding than the cd...why? Because the vinyl was MADE FROM THE CD YOU JACKASS. Its not like the old days where a record cutting facility will get a big 'ol tape from the mastering studio, and then there will be a guy sitting at the record cutting machine overseeing the process.
No, instead they get a data DVD, or a hard drive, or just a big file that they download. The result is the same - they're using the master.
It sounds like you saw some TV show somewhere with a guy sitting at a vinyl pressing plant who puts an optical disc into a machine and you assumed it was an audio CD. It wasn't. Music today is recorded (usually at 192khz/24 or 32 bit) by computer onto hard drives, where it can then be mastered any number of ways, including onto tape but also onto any data storage medium you like.
I always wondered if terraforming could just be done my massive planting of hardy fauna. A ton of trees (like a rainforest), should drastically change even weather patterns...I always thought that it would be an interesting experiment for a lander to plant - and tend - some cacti or something and see what would happen over time.
The problem is you need to raise the temperature of the atmosphere in order for most anything to grow, because there's no precipitation. The cycle can't begin until you've done that first step.
I haven't RTFA, but there was a show on Discovery Channel a while back where one of the guys who had designed a series of Mars missions for Lockheed/NASA back in the 80's (and he's still fighting for them) had proposed actually building a bunch of factories on Mars whose sole output would be greenhouse gases. Their entire purpose would be to just pump billions of tons of what we'd call pollutants on Earth into the Martian atmosphere. Supposedly you could raise the planet's temperature by 10 degrees over 100 years using this method, which would be enough to start releasing the water trapped in the ground as ice into the atmosphere, creating clouds and precipitation for plants. Then you could start planting forests, which would thrive in the CO2-rich Martian atmosphere and would begin to create the oxygen we need to breathe.
Humans could live on Mars as the terraforming process was ongoing, but they would need to be in enclosed colonies until the process was complete. Eventually, though, they'd be able to venture out into an Earth-like world.
I'm curious to see how the author of this article thinks the process could be sped up - the Discovery show said it would take thousands of years given current technology before the air would be both warm enough to live in and breathable for humans.