Wasn't nearly as popular in the US, more of a "cult classic", I guess.
No, it was pretty popular in the US - a "surprise hit" in the same way Katamari Damacy was last year. Did it sell 10 million copies? No, but it did sell quite a few more than it sounds like you're thinking. (Around one million, last time I saw the figures.)
It also popularized the whole music genre (it was not the first game in it - there were music games going back to the NES, although they were a bit different), and was directly responsible for games like Bust-a-Groove and Space Channel 5 that used the exact same play mechanic. It also inspired Konami's entire Bemani lineup, of which Dance Dance Revolution is a part.
It was a pretty important game. Makes me feel old that some people don't even seem to remember it these days - it was only about ten years ago!
Take, for instance, super smash brothers melee: up here in Canada, it's *still* $40 or $50 brand new, depending on the retailer, and it's what, four years old? There are the odd exceptions, but it's extremely rare to get *any* gamecube game brand new for under $40, unless it's crap.
In the US, SSBM is a $20 title, if that. Pikmin, Mario Sunshine, Mario Golf and other major games are also $20 new, and less used.
So you may be right complaining about Canada for all I know, but I'm routinely pretty shocked by how cheap games are getting in the US. It almost has the look of late 1983 again, with a glut of games on the market and too few takers. I literally see piles and piles of used games sitting on shelves, in bins and quite literally on floors of the game stores I go to (major chains like EB), some with big giant signs advertising "$9.99 or Less!" These are not crappy games, either - I saw Soul Calibur in the $9.99 pile, and I bought NHL 2K5 and Burnout 3 for $12.99 each last time I was shopping. Those last two are not even that old!
I never, ever buy these "Player's Choice" or "Platinum" discs because, frankly, I don't like the way they look in my collection. And it is always pretty easy to get the original release for even cheaper than the re-release if you buy used. I think I have only one Greatest Hits in my collection for current systems and that's Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution, which was never released in non-GH format to begin with. Even still, I almost never pay more than $20 for any game, new or used. The last time I did was GTA: San Andreas - time before that was FFX-2. I mean we're talking a couple games over several years' time... and I've got hundreds of games in my current collection. Games are cheap down here.
You're right, even if you're laughing (or trolling). But in 1984, you needed about $20,000 to do anything like a 128K Mac.
Depends on what you wanted to be doing (you said "anything", which is not true). As the article points out, the earliest Macs were extremely limited - non-expandable 128k machines with black and white screens. An Apple//e in 1984 came with 128k standard but could be expanded to at least 1GB (maybe more; I don't remember), could display color graphics at better than VGA resolution (with the right graphics card) and just generally could do all sorts of things the Macs of the day couldn't. They also cost about half as much.
What the//e couldn't do was run the Mac OS and do true multitasking (technically the first Macs didn't do this either), although there were DOS operating environments you could get that would fake it about as well as that first Mac did.
Up until Apple finally killed the II line after the IIgs, the II was always more powerful in practical terms than the Mac, which was always intended (to that point) as an inexpensive alternative to the IBM PC for business users - the lack of training required for employees to use it was one of its big selling points. The Apple//e was the system for average home users, the//c was the system for users on the go, and the IIgs was the eventual system for designers, sound recordists and the like. All the while, the Mac retained its black and white screens and lack of expandability. (I believe the first color Macs were introduced towards the end of the IIgs's life on the market, at which time Apple started shifting some of the II line's intended functionality to the Mac.)
The 65C02 used in the II line was obviously a lot more limited than the 68000 series in the Mac (though I believe the IIgs used a different chip), with less of a future, which is the reason I most often see cited for why Apple killed the II in favor of the Mac, despite the II's greater power at any given point in time. But that wouldn't have precluded Apple from doing what they did later with the Mac anyway and simply switching chips in the II line, emulating the older 65C02 for older apps.
As an Apple II guy (still have my//c), I was very sad to see the II line go in favor of what I and many others at that time perceived to be the inferior, business-oriented Mac line. I think it would have actually served Apple a lot better in the long run to have preserved the II lineage and instead made it Mac compatible, combining the best of both systems (calling it a Mac if they wanted to, but with full II compatibility and//e-like expandability for a reasonable price). Remember that at one point, Apple had greater than 50% of the home market - they lost that when they dropped the II in favor of the Mac, and they have never recovered.
On the other hand... Now Nintendo's claims that its Revolution will be "only" two or three times more powerful than the Gamecube don't seem so bad.
Except for the fact that Nintendo has admitted that the Revolution will be incapable of running at HD resolutions. It will be stuck at 640x480 or at best 720x480.
If you compare the PS3's 1080p capability - that's presumably 1920x1080@60fps - vs. the Revolution's inability to do anything beyond 720x480@30fps (60 fields, 30 full frames), well, you know there has to be a reason for that. It's likely pretty severely lacking in fill rate. Even if most games are only running at 720p on Xbox 360 and PS3 (1280x720@60fps), that will still be significantly more pixels being thrown around than the Revolution will ever be capable of.
I don't know why some people seem to want to always cut Nintendo so much more slack than anybody else. If Sony and MS are overhyping their systems then so is Nintendo. I would be surprised if the Revolution is even two to three times more powerful than the GameCube - from their statements it's sounding to me like it will be only slightly more powerful than the GameCube, but cheaper to produce and with standard networking and wireless built in. Which fits with their current strategy, but would not put it in even the same league as the PS3 or Xbox 360.
You may as well say the 20" RCA analog TV you just bought is just as good as that 1080p plasma display you saw at Best Buy. No, no it isn't. Stop kidding yourself.
Yeah, there's a real myopia among the "industry leaders" and tech geeks who are salivating over this, ignoring the fact that those who most use broadcast TV are doing so because they can't afford the alternatives, and also can't convert.
It's not ignorance. It's just a difference of opinion, and while I can sort of understand both sides, I'm more inclined to agree with the "industry leaders" and tech geeks on this.
First, the people who "cannot afford" to upgrade apparently could afford a TV at some point or they wouldn't have one to begin with. So these are people who are either a) not really all that poor (I mean they may be lower class, but let's be realistic - a TV is not a necessity, it's a luxury) or b) their situation has worsened over the years to the point where they can no longer afford to buy a TV or even a cheap set-top digital converter box (and these are available for under $100).
I would think that the vast majority of that 12% actually just doesn't want to subscribe to cable, even though they can afford it (like the guy I replied to below, who just called paying for cable "stupid"). I would think the second-largest subset of that 12% would fall in my column a) above. I would think the number of people in column b) would be an almost insignificant percentage of the total. Generally, if you have a TV, it means you can afford a TV (or at least an STB), or you can afford the monthly basic cable charge, which is usually only around $7-$8 depending on where you live.
So, the question is do you hold up the rest of the public for those few percent of people? The FCC decided a long time ago that the answer is no - in fact, their rules say once 85% DTV penetration is reached, the analog broadcasts in any given area get switched off. I agree with them on this - this is not the same kind of situation like the eminent domain court decision a few days ago, this is not about some private company coming in and taking something away from you that's required to live (shelter); I mean I don't always side with the government on issues like this.
But in this case, TV is a luxury, and if somebody cannot afford that luxury, well, that sucks, but it's not going to be the end of the world for them, whereas it might be for somebody who doesn't have access to enhanced emergency services because that spectrum wasn't available. Once you're down in the 10% and below range, I really don't see the point in keeping that spectrum tied up to subsidize television-watching for the poor. I mean that is not something I want my government wasting its resources on (and spectrum is a resource, and a limited one). Health care for the poor? Sure. Education? Of course. Television? Umm.. no. That's something where you get a better job and you work for your money and you buy one. Not to sound conservative or anything, but that's what I did with limited familial resources and no political connections, so if I can do it, anyone can.
There should maybe be some sort of emergency response box handed out to people (like, for example, the equivalent of a cheap transistor radio) as a one-time replacement for the emergency broadcasts people might miss without access to their analog TV signals, but that's about all I can see justifying. Beyond that, let's free up this spectrum for better uses.
So tell me, who's going to be the first major television broadcaster to completely shut down their analog over-the-air broadcasts and lose 12 percent of their viewers?
All of them - because they have no choice. The only open question is the date it's going to happen. (Unless congress finally decided that - it was still an issue a week or two ago, when I last read about it.)
Personally, I think paying $300+ a year for cable to PAY for the privledge of watching television is completely stupid.
Nobody said you had to pay for cable. You're free to upgrade to a TV that will receive digital OTA broadcasts, or buy a STB that will convert them to analog for your obsolete set.
Don't want to do that? Tough. I don't recall where any of the TV broadcasters signed a contract with viewers like you guaranteeing your 20 year old TV would always be able to receive a useable free signal.
I don't understand people who consider it some sort of God-given right that they be entitled to free analog TV at the expense of things like better emegergency service communications systems, which is one of the things that spectrum is going to be used for once it's available.
You were warned about the switchover nearly (maybe even more than) a decade ago; you have had plenty of time to prepare, and even if you purchased an analog set at that time, you have gotten plenty of use out of it. If you would like to continue to use it, there are plenty of options available, and it is not the rest of the public's fault if you're not happy with any of them.
Microsoft is becoming irrelevent in the same way that IBM is irrelevent.
For Christ's sake, people, it's spelled "irrelevant." Once is a typo, over and over like this and I feel the need to educate. (But please - "dependent" and "independent" are still spelled with e's... this is another pet peeve of mine here.)
As for MS, the problem is even if none of the things Ballmer mentions comes to pass, they've still got Windows and Office. And that's where they make all their money anyway.
Who other than developers really even knows what.net is? Who really cares? Nobody... but those same people who couldn't even tell you what.net is supposed to do (if they've heard of it at all) are still using Windows PC's running MS Office. MS still gets paid.
This is a company that's hugely profitable with billions in the bank despite their high-profile foundering. You'd think from the stories posted here (Longhorn delays,.net foibles, database problems) that this is a company on its way to being delisted off the stock market and run into bankruptcy. The truth is, at the very worst they're on cruise control right now, and they're on cruise control at 80mph when their competitors are all struggling to hit 60 at full throttle.
To digress only slightly, I will say that I find myself constantly questioning the importance of desktop search in the first place... if MS screws this up, I really doubt anyone other than Slashdot readers are going to care. I say that as someone who's writing this right now on a dual-G5 PowerMac running Tiger. A plain old file search is all I think most people want or need. (Yeah, I know, and "640k oughta be enough for anybody", but I just find desktop search as it's being talked about right now to be a pretty unnatural and non-intuitive way of finding stuff. Give me a file name box and wildcard support and I can find pretty much anything on my computer in about fifteen seconds.)
If it's a fake, it's a pretty impressive one from what I can see.
It is almost certainly a fake and it is not very impressive from my point of view.
The strongest evidence of a fake is that all of the graphics in this presentation are raster, except for this phone, which appears to be vector. Does that make any sense to you? No, not to me either. It's almost as if Motorola would have used one source for all of their images and then a second source for just the image of this phone. Now, you can assume that there'd be some back and forth with Apple or possibly even an outside design agency over this phone, but that still wouldn't explain why this one graphic is in a completely different format than all the others.
Second, this phone is not a PEBL. The PEBL is a specific model, as is the RAZR. Yet it appears under the heading of "PEBL".
Third, the design of the phone itself doesn't make any visual sense. Look at it. It's simply a candybar phone that somebody has Photoshopped an ugly green wheel directly on top of. If we're to believe this, there are actually buttons under the scroll wheel.
Lastly, does this thing look like anything Apple would actually sanction? I mean, seriously. Use your critical thinking skills. Apple has some very rigorous standards for their branding, and they only allow their logos to appear on products that they have approved. Something this big, I can't imagine Steve Jobs himself not being personally involved with. And this does not look like anything either Apple or Jobs would ever allow out there. Not just because it's ugly (though there is that), but it just looks so completely different from their design ethos. Apple is not going to have their first iTunes phone be a mini-Xbox.
I have no doubt this was a real presentation, but this image was not originally part of it, and it is not a real Motorola phone. If I'm wrong, I will eat my hat.
I couldn't agree more. The Dual Shock is perhaps the most uncomfortable controller I have ever used. By far, the most comfortable, intuitive controller is the Gamecube's. Second is the Xbox S controller.
Is it coincidence that your two favorite (and one least favorite) controllers are all current-gen?
You need to brush up on your console history, sonny boy! In my day, we only had one button and we liked it!
Seriously, what's the opposite of "dating yourself"? (And no, I don't mean "going out on a date with yourself"). Well, you're doing it. Back in the day, pads were designed with different types of games in mind than they are now, and if you still play those types of games (and many people do), then the current round of pads is pretty unsuitable. The Xbox pads (both of them) are, for example, horrendous in 2D fighting games - something the best Sega pads were practically designed for. The Xbox controllers just do not have responsive enough buttons, and the action on the d-pad is far too heavy.
Similarly, though, there were some pads back in the day that were just awful compared to anything on the market now in terms of both comfort and suitability to task. I dare you to try and play any game with an Atari 5200 or Colecovision controller (and in the Atari 5200's case, bonus points for not breaking it the first time you plug the system in!). I remember endless nights with that Colecovision controller and the inevitable blisters and hand cramps that went along with it. By the end of the summer after that thing came out, my left (button) hand was quite literally a claw, and my right (stick/disc) hand had a near-permanent divot pressed into the base of my thumb. I really can't see anyone saying the dual shock is the most uncomfortable controller ever made in the face of such historical evidence as this.
It's not all just about comfort in your hand, though, although that's important. But if I were going to rank controllers on that basis alone, the GameCube controller would be head and shoulders above all the rest - and it's almost completely impossible to use for any game other than Mario or Pikmin. No, you have to take other things into account too, the most important being what specific games you most want to play.
There's a reason stuff like those "Retrocon" and Hori 2D GameCube controllers are still popular, you know...
The Sega Saturn 3d controller was perfect. It had the six button setup from the original, but was otherwise the same as the later Dreamcast controller.
Actually not the same at all, but in a good way.
The Dreamcast controller was based on the 3D controller but they went and took a good thing and made it all wrong. The 3D controller is extremely comfortable - despite its sort of odd look, it just fit perfectly in the hand. The buttons also had the perfect amount of springiness, it had the most responsive d-pad ever made and the triggers had a satisfying amount of resistance without being tiring over long periods of use.
About the only thing Sega got right in updating it for the Dreamcast was the triggers. Everything else they just completely screwed up. The Dreamcast pad forces your hands into an almost contorted, inside out position if you hold it firmly (and most people don't for this reason, meaning it slips easily out of your hands), the button layout is a four-button diamond instead of the more standard two-row six-button layout, and the d-pad is now a small cross, not the large and uber-responsive disc of the 3D pad.
I also want to say that I disagree with those who think the 2D Saturn pad is all that great - I think the second Saturn pad was better than the first and for that reason some people seem to give it more credit than it's due. It's not particularly revered in Japan (where it was the original Saturn pad), only here, where it replaced that horrendous and unreliable early pad. Try using one again today, though, and it just feels cheap and flimsy, with unresponsive buttons and a d-pad that pales in comparison to the 3D pad that came later.
My point exactly. Looks like St. Paul is about 350 miles from Chicago. If a train was available that went at least 100mph you could make the trip in 3 1/2 hours. Seems like rail travel should be significantly cheaper than air travel, but it's obviously not. No wonder Amtrak can't make any money, I can't imagine their trains are anywhere near capacity at those prices.
You have obviously never ridden the Empire Builder (the train that runs on the route you mention), which is almost always running at full capacity. In fact, one of Amtrak's main problems is lack of available equipment - they are running train cars on some routes that are more than 50 years old because they simply do not have the money to replace them and they have excess demand to fill them up and more.
Ridership has never been one of Amtrak's problems. People love Amtrak - try to book a room on one of Amtrak's more popular trains and you will want to do it six months or more in advance. Even in coach, except at the very beginning and end of most routes, trains are very nearly 100% full at all times. There are a lot of reasons for this, the biggest probably being there are no major airports in places like Havre, Montana. If you want to go from St. Paul to Havre, your options are to drive or take the train. This is one of the biggest arguments Amtrak proponents make in favor of keeping it around, too - it serves communities that are not served by any other transportation method. (In some cases, that even includes cars... trains can run perfectly well through five feet of snow and I've done this myself several times through the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas. Cars have a bit more of a problem.)
I don't know why people are complaining about Amtrak's prices. Last time I took a trip across the country, which included going first class part of the way, it cost me a total of $739 for two people. The same trip on an airplane (New York to Portland) would have cost more than double at that same time. (Fares do fluctuate; this was near Christmas.) Generally speaking, it is almost always cheaper to take the train, the exceptions being the corridors, where the higher level of service and convenience overcomes the higher pricing.
Also, the Empire Builder does travel faster than 100mph. All Amtrak long-haul trains do. Superliner, Amfleet and Viewliner equipment is all rated to 125mph, and there are plenty of stretches of track where speeds greater than 100mph are allowed. The older "heritage" stuff (which includes all east-coast dining cars, crew dorms and baggage cars) was previously rated to 105mph but I believe they are either in process of being upgraded or have been upgraded already, or they've simply retired the slower stuff (not all of the older equipment is the same - it was built by different manufacturers for different routes initially).
The Empire Builder runs quite fast between St. Paul and Chicago - I don't know the exact speeds but BNSF maintains this stretch of track quite well. Keep in mind the train does make stops (just like shinkansen do) so average speeds will be lower.
Are you seriously claiming that if the US just dropped all of its arms, absolutely nobody anywhere would attack it?
I don't think that's the claim. The issue I personally have is that the Bush administration proposes spending $310 million to fund Iraq's rail system and $0 to fund the US's rail system. This does not seem a bit off to you? These priorities are not out of whack?
I cannot for the life of me recall a situation in which our government proposed funding an entire industry in one country while refusing to support that same industry in its own country. Especially when it comes to infrastructure, on which the entire rest of the economy is based. Exactly which country is the Bush administration supposed to be governing? Did we elect the president of Iraq or the president of the US?
I would say the priorities of our government are more than a little off-kilter. It's not about reducing defense spending to zero. It's about $1.2 billion in government funding for Amtrak out of a budget of several trillion. It's a tiny amount in the grand scheme; certainly nobody is asking for anything rivaling the amount spent on defense, or education, or even highways and airports. (David Gunn has never requested more than $2 billion, and has said Amtrak could get by at its current spending level, albeit with deferred maintenance.) It is a much, much smaller amount than the $10 billion the government gave to the airlines after 9/11, it is miniscule compared to the amount the government just gave up in seeking from the tobacco companies as part of the trial it's been waging (recently slashing $120 billion off the penalties they were seeking), it is much lower than many, many other discretionary expenditures. And the proposed amount of spending Bush has set aside for Amtrak next year (zero) is exactly $310 million less than the amount of spending we are putting into Iraq's rail system - the same rail system we destroyed to begin with. We're throwing good money after bad when we could be putting that money to better use right here at home.
Meanwhile things keep improving over in the land of the rising sun.
I wouldn't say improving. Things were probably the best they're ever going to be around the mid-90's.
Privatization has led to a reduced level of service on the shinkansen lines (fewer dining cars, fewer private compartments, higher prices, reduced seat pitch), and it has led to increased advertising in the subways. It is also probably partially responsible for the accident that killed more than 100 people just a couple of months ago, which is being blamed in part due to JR West's company policies for enforcement of on-time performance.
The end result of that accident is likely to be more relaxed schedules and poorer on-time performance. Japan is a country where one major accident like this can change an entire culture (unlike the US, where we'd focus on it for a while and then act like it never even happened). People expect things to be done to prevent it from ever happening again. In this case, part of the solution is going to be reduced penalties for lateness and reduced service.
From a rider standpoint, that will make things safer but it will also make things a lot more like train service in other parts of the world, where schedules are more a suggestion of when trains might arrive than when you know they really will.
You won't know until you've tried Nozomi - the current fastest bullet train in Japan... in a luxurious-2-feet-of-room-in-front-of-you seat in a noise-free air-conditioned cabin where you can read, eat lunch, enjoy the view AND sip your beer all the while you are being taken where you want to go. In under 3 hours for most destinations.
Ok, couple things.
1. Nozomi is a service, not a train. You are probably thinking of the 500 series shinkansen, which were run mainly as part of the Nozomi service and are commonly called "Nozomi trains" in other parts of the world (but not Japan). These trains were a complete disaster financially and are in the process of being retired (if they haven't all been already). They were expensive to build, expensive to operate and seated fewer people than other shinkansen.
2. I don't know what shinkansen you've ever ridden on but I've never been on one with 2 feet of room in front of me. In fact, it's usually more like 4 inches, with a floor made of tile you usually find in bathrooms below you, and a seat barely wide enough to fit an average westerner.
Shinkansen are not luxurious. In fact, private rooms have all but been phased out, same with dining cars (replaced first by snack counters and now simple vending machines on many trains). There are still "green cars" with better amenities and comfort on some trains but these are ludicrously expensive.
Most shinkansen are little more than fast commuter trains in terms of their level of comfort and service. Which makes sense, because most people don't need to spend more than an hour or so on them at a time - it's a small country and the trains are very fast. For any longer trips, people in Japan do actually fly - ANA, for example, was operating something like 21 daily flights using both 747's and 777's from Haneda airport in Tokyo to Osaka up until a year or so ago (I think they've actually increased service now, but may no longer be flying 747's domestically). That's just one airline on one route every day.
So don't confuse the role of the shinkansen. These are not generally long-distance trains for most people, at least not as we would think of a long-distance trains. They are not particularly comfortable, they are not very nice inside. They are just fast.
They stopped all service. Amtrak is such a disaster. (1) To take accela turns the philly->boston ticket from a $174 friday/sunday fare to a $300 fair. (2) The plane ticket prices between those two cities on a friday/sunday are $100 round.
You're forgetting several things here:
1) Acela Express service is only one option on the route you're talking about - there are several others that Amtrak offers that cost significantly less. (Acela Regional, Metroliner, etc.)
2) Acela Express trains are one of the only profitable parts of Amtrak's business, so clearly the business model they've set upon for the train works... when the trains themselves work. This is why it was such a disaster when they had to pull them out of service - right now (well, not right now), these trains are subsidizing most of the NEC improvements that are going on.
The story of why these trains have been so unreliable is a long one, and is rooted in the same congress that has been trying to cut Amtrak's funding for so many years. Congress pressured Amtrak to have a North American-built train and it also refused to amend 19th-century era safety standards so that Amtrak could use similar technology to trains built elsewhere (Japan, Europe, etc.). The direct end result of this is the cracks in the brakes that led to Amtrak taking these trains out of service. The Acela Express trains are based on the TGV, but are about twice as heavy due to safety regs in this country - yet Bombardier/Alstom did not redesign the brake system to take this extra weight into account.
3. The reason why air fares are so low on the route you mention is because of pressure from Amtrak. Amtrak's NEC service (all kinds) is popular enough that it has actually taken riders away from airlines, and that has forced airlines both to use smaller planes and to reduce fares.
I really want amtrak to succeed but they either need to give the same subsidies that they do for roads and airports or just kill the thing off; because its too over specialized for people just doing dc/philly/ny in 1->2 hr hops.
Well, fortunately for Amtrak and its riders, the NEC is the last part of the system that would ever be "killed off".
No, the point is exactly tha you get Linux there. If you got the same performance with Symbian or Windows then it would be equally impressive. s55 might be a nice phone and all, but you probably can't add any extra software (except Java stuff). Could you make s55 play Ogg files? Probably not. Can you get programs for Windows, Symbian, Linux phones, that play Oggs. Probably yes.
Look at the phone and read the article. It's Linux-based, yes, but you're not going to be running SUSE 9.3 on that thing. It's running embedded Linux, it's likely got a fixed interface, and it will run a limited set of OS-based and java apps - just like every other phone.
My Z500a - which apparently uses a proprietary OS from Sony/Ericsson (I don't know what it is) - lets me play mp3's, record and view video files, take pictures (and view pictures that I've uploaded to it), browse the web, download and play games, and download and use various apps that allow me to do things like watch TV or get weather alerts, on two color screens. This Linux phone is not going to do much more, if anything, than that.
My phone gets 10 days of standby time, and 360 minutes of talk time. This is better than this Motorola phone, and it's on a 670mah battery.
So I think people are right to question what's so special about this phone. It almost seems like the article submitter hasn't even looked at phones in years, and like the editors accepted the submission simply because it mentions Linux.
Re:Interesting but not surprising...
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Pac-Man As Pot Head
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You know what. I am so tired of hearing there everyone is a drug abuser. I'd write out a long, detailed scathing response, but I have to go get my 12th Coke of the day now...
What I immediately think of whenever I see a story like this is that Simpsons episode where they go behind the scenes (I think at Itchy and Scratchy) and Otto says something like "man, what were you guys on when you came up with that?" And the writers respond "Um, we'd just ordered a big bucket of chicken wings..."
I worked at one of the companies involved in one of the games mentioned in this article and while yes, some of the employees are definitely recreational drug users outside of work (no different than any other company, really), I can assure you everybody was completely sober and straight during company hours. The game industry is far too competitive to be at anything but your natural best... the worst drug anybody did at work was Red Bull. (Though oddly enough, we also ate a large quantity of chicken wings... coincidence?)
People who do a lot of drugs like to justify it to themselves by telling everybody how creative it makes them, and articles like this try to reinforce that. Well, in my experience, while illegal drugs can be fun (and I don't deny doing the occasional d00b myself once in a while), they do nothing whatsoever to enhance creativity. You're either creative or you aren't; a drug isn't going to change who you are. All drugs do in the workplace is make you less productive.
I'm fairly sure, based on my experience with drugs, the game industry, and life in general, that none of the games mentioned here had anything to do with drugs whatsoever in terms of their creation. (Except in some of the few recent cases where they're an actual gameplay element - but in those cases, it's generally been so poorly implemented that it almost seems obvious that those who designed and programmed those elements have no experience with the drugs in question whatsoever, in the workplace or anywhere else.)
Innovations need to come from comprimises, not from force like charging to view a web page.
First of all, let's can the idealism and be a little realistic here. You're a web site publisher with little ad revenue left. What do you do? Your training is not in marketing, it's maybe in business development. Are you going to sit there and try to invent a new form of advertising that isn't patented by Google, or are you just going to say "screw it" and charge for the use of your site?
You can hope all you want that people will innovate; the reality is most web site owners are only in it for the money. They don't care about compromise and even if they did, they wouldn't know where to even start coming up with new revenue streams.
I think this is what gets lost in these discussions. You can call it short-sighted, you can call it whatever you want, but the fact is the owners of most web sites are not innovators and never claimed to be. All they want to do is put out a product and make money doing it. If they have exhausted one method, they will simply move on to the next rather than trying to come up with something entirely new. And there's not even anything wrong with this; this is the way small businesses in this country have always worked. It's not up to every guy who runs a bakery or a stationary store or whatever to come up with entirely new business models whenever they hit hard times, and nobody expects them to - yet for some reason, people do expect that when it comes to the web.
Now things are engineered for disposability/cost rather than repairability.
Not if they're made for professionals. Which brings me to the question that must be asked - if you are shooting something as part of your job, why are you using a consumer-grade camcorder?
To the article submitter: my guess is when these repairmen told you that your cameras weren't "up to the task" that they also told you to buy a camcorder made for the task. There are many such models available. Go to any decent camera store (B&H in New York, for example) and look around. It's really not hard. Hell, B&H has a whole professional video category right there on their web site.
I have a feeling the question being asked was not actually "what camcorders are up to the task?" but rather "what camcorder can I get for no extra money that will give me professional level durability?" Sorry, but the fact is you do get what you pay for. Pro gear costs more because it lasts longer and can handle the extra abuse of being tossed around and used basically 24 hours per day. You can't go on the cheap and expect to use a consumer-level camera in a professional capacity (and that is exactly what you have previously tried to do - I'd have thought you'd have learned your lesson by now).
You could take a negative from Ansel Adams that he made way back in the 20's and still make a very find, high quality print today.
That's assuming it was preserved properly, which most negatives most certainly are not.
I have been undertaking a negative scanning project of my own, to try to get all of my and my family's negatives digitized before they crumble into dust. Already, many of my negatives that are only 3 or 4 years old have turned red. (Well, really cyan, but turned positive they're red.) This is what happens to old color negatives.
Black and white negatives hold up better but there are still physical limits and this is still an analog medium. Over time, the celluloid itself degrades. There is no way around this.
The same is true for any medium you were to store a digital photo on (such as a CD) but the difference is you can make an infinite number of copies of that digital file without degrading the image at all. This is not the case with an analog negative, of which there can only ever be one original and that original will someday be gone.
Digital photos taken today won't be around 60 years from now...sorry, but that's the fact. You would constantly have to keep upgrading and transfering your shots to the latest storage medium just to keep up.
Yeah, so? I think it's a bit presumptuous and illogical to say that it's a "fact" that digital photos we take today will not be around in 60 years. Why the hell not? So what if you have to re-archive every few years? Every time you do so, it will be easier because storage space only increases over time. And if you just keep your photos on hard drives (multiple ones for redundancy sake), then it's a total snap to keep them up to date, and you will likely never even really need to worry about it. I mean, I've got documents on my PC from 1985... they just get swept up and put on my new drives as I upgrade.
Not to mention the fact that the camera you buy today is obsolete a year from now when something better AND cheaper comes along.
Camera bodies are irrelevant. A lot of newbie photographers get caught up in concerns about equipment and really, the body is the absolute least important part of the photographic process. Lenses are more important, but most lenses made even 50 years ago will still work (albeit in a limited fashion) on today's digital camera bodies.
A lot of photographers have 40 or 50 camera bodies and while they all have their favorites, most could use any one of them and get equally good pictures. The camera body has nothing to do with how good of a photographer you are, and it has nothing to do with the permanence of your photographs either.
Generally speaking I would think a well-built digital body will last longer than a comparable film body anyway. The law of moving parts applies as equally to cameras as to any other piece of equipment. Digital bodies have fewer moving parts to break.
The one thing about digital cameras that ensures that eventually none of them will work is the batteries. As soon as those proprietary batteries stop being made, your camera is toast. But this is also true of many late-model film cameras. Only true fully manual film cameras are immune from the battery-of-death syndrome.
And that's still got nothing to do with the permanence of your digital photo files. Digital photos will be around as long as you want them, in exactly the same condition as when you originally took them. Now, digital photography technology will no doubt continue to advance to the point where even today's 8 megapixel images will eventually look like 1960's color film to future generations, but the point is those photos will still be preserved and will look exactly the same as they always did. Which is not something you can say about film, no matter how well-preserved it is - it is still an analog medium that is subject to molecular degradation, like any other physical thing is.
I agree. I don't know about anybody else, but despite what the original article post says, I was pretty glued to my local news channel on 9/11 (here in New York). Is anyone actually going to sit there and tell me in all seriousness that their primary source of news and info on 9/11 was somebody's blog? Hell, if you were in a safe enough place to sit and blog about it, then you just weren't close enough to even know what was really going on.
Blogs are a terrible source of news, IMO. They are a better source of opinion, maybe, and for bantering about things like the latest gadgets, but anyone who's either sitting at home typing up a bunch of crap or worse, simply posting a bunch of links to some other "real" news site, is not doing anybody much good at all. And even for opinion, they really mainly exist for those who want to have their egos stroked by finding others whose opinions simply help confirm their own...
I read blogs, and I write one too (when I feel like updating it, which isn't often). But they're hardly a replacement for traditional news. The whole blog craze reminds me a lot of the dot-com era, where everybody thought these small little online startups were going to come in and sweep the big, old, crusty traditional companies out of the way... Then reality set in. The same thing's probably going to happen with blogs. Does that mean blogs serve no purpose? No - I mean, technically, Slashdot is a blog. Engadget is a blog. Gizmodo is a blog. I read these multiple times per day.
But for real breaking news, and for real informed opinion, there is no way for blogs to compete with traditional news media. After all, you generally at least need a college degree to get a job in the news industry - I'm not sure how much you can trust your average high school dropout with access to a PC and a free blogger.com account. (Of course, traditional media's had its own share of problems the past couple years, but then that's partly because they're actually held to some sort of ethical standard. Blogs are not held to any standards whatsoever, and any blogger can get away with pretty much anything they want, however erroneous or borderline slanderous their statements may be.)
Ok, I used to be as big a supporter of Nintendo's "it's the games, stupid" strategy as anybody, but they're taking it a little too far these days. It's become less of a rallying cry and more of an excuse for just not designing their technology properly.
They may as well argue that nobody needs anything but an RF connection, because "you can see the games fine". Composite or s-video? They only "add to the cost". Give me a break.
Game consoles are supposed to last for five or so years. Even today, quite a few people own HDTV's - and mine only cost me $570. In five years, I expect the market for HDTV's will be pretty significant, and Nintendo not supporting HD while Sony and MS does seems like a big mistake. They are basically ceding that part of the market.
They're also ensuring that a) fewer cross-platform games will be made, and b) those that are will always look significantly worse on the Revolution. I mean you're talking the difference between 1920x1080 resolution and 640x480. And you can bet that's a noticeable difference on any HDTV.
So far I haven't heard anything at all about the Revolution that's even an improvement over the GameCube, much less keeping pace with the PS3 and Xbox 360. I like the whole downloadable games thing, but it's not like the GameCube didn't already have a broadband connection, it's just that Nintendo didn't use it. So they get dragged kicking and screaming into broadband a generation too late and now it looks like they're going to get dragged kicking and screaming into HD a generation too late too. Meanwhile, they will just continue to hemmorhage market share until there's basically nothing left.
gamers won't touch it if it becomes fouled with evil ads.
Any examples of gamers not buying any game because it had advertising in it, much less ALL, a majority, or a plurality even?
All he said was "gamers", which by definition means any number above two.
I'm one. Anyone else want to volunteer and turn this into a true factual statement?
Note that examples are not necessary, as he's speaking in future tense. But I certainly will not buy any game that is "fouled with evil ads" (which I take to mean pretty well overrun with them... one or two unobtrusive billboards in a city in a game is not going to bother me).
Slashdot Mirror
Wasn't nearly as popular in the US, more of a "cult classic", I guess.
No, it was pretty popular in the US - a "surprise hit" in the same way Katamari Damacy was last year. Did it sell 10 million copies? No, but it did sell quite a few more than it sounds like you're thinking. (Around one million, last time I saw the figures.)
It also popularized the whole music genre (it was not the first game in it - there were music games going back to the NES, although they were a bit different), and was directly responsible for games like Bust-a-Groove and Space Channel 5 that used the exact same play mechanic. It also inspired Konami's entire Bemani lineup, of which Dance Dance Revolution is a part.
It was a pretty important game. Makes me feel old that some people don't even seem to remember it these days - it was only about ten years ago!
Sorry, but I decided to read it with the voice of Sam Kinison just for yuks.
I mean, the MPAA and RIAA are nuts, right? If only he were alive, he'd make a great spokesman.
Not shrill enough. I'm thinking Bobcat Goldthwait can handle RIAA duties and Gilbert Godfried can run PR for the MPAA.
Now that's a perfect fit.
Take, for instance, super smash brothers melee: up here in Canada, it's *still* $40 or $50 brand new, depending on the retailer, and it's what, four years old? There are the odd exceptions, but it's extremely rare to get *any* gamecube game brand new for under $40, unless it's crap.
In the US, SSBM is a $20 title, if that. Pikmin, Mario Sunshine, Mario Golf and other major games are also $20 new, and less used.
So you may be right complaining about Canada for all I know, but I'm routinely pretty shocked by how cheap games are getting in the US. It almost has the look of late 1983 again, with a glut of games on the market and too few takers. I literally see piles and piles of used games sitting on shelves, in bins and quite literally on floors of the game stores I go to (major chains like EB), some with big giant signs advertising "$9.99 or Less!" These are not crappy games, either - I saw Soul Calibur in the $9.99 pile, and I bought NHL 2K5 and Burnout 3 for $12.99 each last time I was shopping. Those last two are not even that old!
I never, ever buy these "Player's Choice" or "Platinum" discs because, frankly, I don't like the way they look in my collection. And it is always pretty easy to get the original release for even cheaper than the re-release if you buy used. I think I have only one Greatest Hits in my collection for current systems and that's Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution, which was never released in non-GH format to begin with. Even still, I almost never pay more than $20 for any game, new or used. The last time I did was GTA: San Andreas - time before that was FFX-2. I mean we're talking a couple games over several years' time... and I've got hundreds of games in my current collection. Games are cheap down here.
You're right, even if you're laughing (or trolling). But in 1984, you needed about $20,000 to do anything like a 128K Mac.
//e in 1984 came with 128k standard but could be expanded to at least 1GB (maybe more; I don't remember), could display color graphics at better than VGA resolution (with the right graphics card) and just generally could do all sorts of things the Macs of the day couldn't. They also cost about half as much.
//e couldn't do was run the Mac OS and do true multitasking (technically the first Macs didn't do this either), although there were DOS operating environments you could get that would fake it about as well as that first Mac did.
//e was the system for average home users, the //c was the system for users on the go, and the IIgs was the eventual system for designers, sound recordists and the like. All the while, the Mac retained its black and white screens and lack of expandability. (I believe the first color Macs were introduced towards the end of the IIgs's life on the market, at which time Apple started shifting some of the II line's intended functionality to the Mac.)
//c), I was very sad to see the II line go in favor of what I and many others at that time perceived to be the inferior, business-oriented Mac line. I think it would have actually served Apple a lot better in the long run to have preserved the II lineage and instead made it Mac compatible, combining the best of both systems (calling it a Mac if they wanted to, but with full II compatibility and //e-like expandability for a reasonable price). Remember that at one point, Apple had greater than 50% of the home market - they lost that when they dropped the II in favor of the Mac, and they have never recovered.
Depends on what you wanted to be doing (you said "anything", which is not true). As the article points out, the earliest Macs were extremely limited - non-expandable 128k machines with black and white screens. An Apple
What the
Up until Apple finally killed the II line after the IIgs, the II was always more powerful in practical terms than the Mac, which was always intended (to that point) as an inexpensive alternative to the IBM PC for business users - the lack of training required for employees to use it was one of its big selling points. The Apple
The 65C02 used in the II line was obviously a lot more limited than the 68000 series in the Mac (though I believe the IIgs used a different chip), with less of a future, which is the reason I most often see cited for why Apple killed the II in favor of the Mac, despite the II's greater power at any given point in time. But that wouldn't have precluded Apple from doing what they did later with the Mac anyway and simply switching chips in the II line, emulating the older 65C02 for older apps.
As an Apple II guy (still have my
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
No gapless playback either. Paperweight.
On the other hand... Now Nintendo's claims that its Revolution will be "only" two or three times more powerful than the Gamecube don't seem so bad.
Except for the fact that Nintendo has admitted that the Revolution will be incapable of running at HD resolutions. It will be stuck at 640x480 or at best 720x480.
If you compare the PS3's 1080p capability - that's presumably 1920x1080@60fps - vs. the Revolution's inability to do anything beyond 720x480@30fps (60 fields, 30 full frames), well, you know there has to be a reason for that. It's likely pretty severely lacking in fill rate. Even if most games are only running at 720p on Xbox 360 and PS3 (1280x720@60fps), that will still be significantly more pixels being thrown around than the Revolution will ever be capable of.
I don't know why some people seem to want to always cut Nintendo so much more slack than anybody else. If Sony and MS are overhyping their systems then so is Nintendo. I would be surprised if the Revolution is even two to three times more powerful than the GameCube - from their statements it's sounding to me like it will be only slightly more powerful than the GameCube, but cheaper to produce and with standard networking and wireless built in. Which fits with their current strategy, but would not put it in even the same league as the PS3 or Xbox 360.
You may as well say the 20" RCA analog TV you just bought is just as good as that 1080p plasma display you saw at Best Buy. No, no it isn't. Stop kidding yourself.
Yeah, there's a real myopia among the "industry leaders" and tech geeks who are salivating over this, ignoring the fact that those who most use broadcast TV are doing so because they can't afford the alternatives, and also can't convert.
It's not ignorance. It's just a difference of opinion, and while I can sort of understand both sides, I'm more inclined to agree with the "industry leaders" and tech geeks on this.
First, the people who "cannot afford" to upgrade apparently could afford a TV at some point or they wouldn't have one to begin with. So these are people who are either a) not really all that poor (I mean they may be lower class, but let's be realistic - a TV is not a necessity, it's a luxury) or b) their situation has worsened over the years to the point where they can no longer afford to buy a TV or even a cheap set-top digital converter box (and these are available for under $100).
I would think that the vast majority of that 12% actually just doesn't want to subscribe to cable, even though they can afford it (like the guy I replied to below, who just called paying for cable "stupid"). I would think the second-largest subset of that 12% would fall in my column a) above. I would think the number of people in column b) would be an almost insignificant percentage of the total. Generally, if you have a TV, it means you can afford a TV (or at least an STB), or you can afford the monthly basic cable charge, which is usually only around $7-$8 depending on where you live.
So, the question is do you hold up the rest of the public for those few percent of people? The FCC decided a long time ago that the answer is no - in fact, their rules say once 85% DTV penetration is reached, the analog broadcasts in any given area get switched off. I agree with them on this - this is not the same kind of situation like the eminent domain court decision a few days ago, this is not about some private company coming in and taking something away from you that's required to live (shelter); I mean I don't always side with the government on issues like this.
But in this case, TV is a luxury, and if somebody cannot afford that luxury, well, that sucks, but it's not going to be the end of the world for them, whereas it might be for somebody who doesn't have access to enhanced emergency services because that spectrum wasn't available. Once you're down in the 10% and below range, I really don't see the point in keeping that spectrum tied up to subsidize television-watching for the poor. I mean that is not something I want my government wasting its resources on (and spectrum is a resource, and a limited one). Health care for the poor? Sure. Education? Of course. Television? Umm.. no. That's something where you get a better job and you work for your money and you buy one. Not to sound conservative or anything, but that's what I did with limited familial resources and no political connections, so if I can do it, anyone can.
There should maybe be some sort of emergency response box handed out to people (like, for example, the equivalent of a cheap transistor radio) as a one-time replacement for the emergency broadcasts people might miss without access to their analog TV signals, but that's about all I can see justifying. Beyond that, let's free up this spectrum for better uses.
So tell me, who's going to be the first major television broadcaster to completely shut down their analog over-the-air broadcasts and lose 12 percent of their viewers?
All of them - because they have no choice. The only open question is the date it's going to happen. (Unless congress finally decided that - it was still an issue a week or two ago, when I last read about it.)
Personally, I think paying $300+ a year for cable to PAY for the privledge of watching television is completely stupid.
Nobody said you had to pay for cable. You're free to upgrade to a TV that will receive digital OTA broadcasts, or buy a STB that will convert them to analog for your obsolete set.
Don't want to do that? Tough. I don't recall where any of the TV broadcasters signed a contract with viewers like you guaranteeing your 20 year old TV would always be able to receive a useable free signal.
I don't understand people who consider it some sort of God-given right that they be entitled to free analog TV at the expense of things like better emegergency service communications systems, which is one of the things that spectrum is going to be used for once it's available.
You were warned about the switchover nearly (maybe even more than) a decade ago; you have had plenty of time to prepare, and even if you purchased an analog set at that time, you have gotten plenty of use out of it. If you would like to continue to use it, there are plenty of options available, and it is not the rest of the public's fault if you're not happy with any of them.
Microsoft is becoming irrelevent in the same way that IBM is irrelevent.
.net is? Who really cares? Nobody... but those same people who couldn't even tell you what .net is supposed to do (if they've heard of it at all) are still using Windows PC's running MS Office. MS still gets paid.
.net foibles, database problems) that this is a company on its way to being delisted off the stock market and run into bankruptcy. The truth is, at the very worst they're on cruise control right now, and they're on cruise control at 80mph when their competitors are all struggling to hit 60 at full throttle.
For Christ's sake, people, it's spelled "irrelevant." Once is a typo, over and over like this and I feel the need to educate. (But please - "dependent" and "independent" are still spelled with e's... this is another pet peeve of mine here.)
As for MS, the problem is even if none of the things Ballmer mentions comes to pass, they've still got Windows and Office. And that's where they make all their money anyway.
Who other than developers really even knows what
This is a company that's hugely profitable with billions in the bank despite their high-profile foundering. You'd think from the stories posted here (Longhorn delays,
To digress only slightly, I will say that I find myself constantly questioning the importance of desktop search in the first place... if MS screws this up, I really doubt anyone other than Slashdot readers are going to care. I say that as someone who's writing this right now on a dual-G5 PowerMac running Tiger. A plain old file search is all I think most people want or need. (Yeah, I know, and "640k oughta be enough for anybody", but I just find desktop search as it's being talked about right now to be a pretty unnatural and non-intuitive way of finding stuff. Give me a file name box and wildcard support and I can find pretty much anything on my computer in about fifteen seconds.)
If it's a fake, it's a pretty impressive one from what I can see.
It is almost certainly a fake and it is not very impressive from my point of view.
The strongest evidence of a fake is that all of the graphics in this presentation are raster, except for this phone, which appears to be vector. Does that make any sense to you? No, not to me either. It's almost as if Motorola would have used one source for all of their images and then a second source for just the image of this phone. Now, you can assume that there'd be some back and forth with Apple or possibly even an outside design agency over this phone, but that still wouldn't explain why this one graphic is in a completely different format than all the others.
Second, this phone is not a PEBL. The PEBL is a specific model, as is the RAZR. Yet it appears under the heading of "PEBL".
Third, the design of the phone itself doesn't make any visual sense. Look at it. It's simply a candybar phone that somebody has Photoshopped an ugly green wheel directly on top of. If we're to believe this, there are actually buttons under the scroll wheel.
Lastly, does this thing look like anything Apple would actually sanction? I mean, seriously. Use your critical thinking skills. Apple has some very rigorous standards for their branding, and they only allow their logos to appear on products that they have approved. Something this big, I can't imagine Steve Jobs himself not being personally involved with. And this does not look like anything either Apple or Jobs would ever allow out there. Not just because it's ugly (though there is that), but it just looks so completely different from their design ethos. Apple is not going to have their first iTunes phone be a mini-Xbox.
I have no doubt this was a real presentation, but this image was not originally part of it, and it is not a real Motorola phone. If I'm wrong, I will eat my hat.
I couldn't agree more. The Dual Shock is perhaps the most uncomfortable controller I have ever used. By far, the most comfortable, intuitive controller is the Gamecube's. Second is the Xbox S controller.
Is it coincidence that your two favorite (and one least favorite) controllers are all current-gen?
You need to brush up on your console history, sonny boy! In my day, we only had one button and we liked it!
Seriously, what's the opposite of "dating yourself"? (And no, I don't mean "going out on a date with yourself"). Well, you're doing it. Back in the day, pads were designed with different types of games in mind than they are now, and if you still play those types of games (and many people do), then the current round of pads is pretty unsuitable. The Xbox pads (both of them) are, for example, horrendous in 2D fighting games - something the best Sega pads were practically designed for. The Xbox controllers just do not have responsive enough buttons, and the action on the d-pad is far too heavy.
Similarly, though, there were some pads back in the day that were just awful compared to anything on the market now in terms of both comfort and suitability to task. I dare you to try and play any game with an Atari 5200 or Colecovision controller (and in the Atari 5200's case, bonus points for not breaking it the first time you plug the system in!). I remember endless nights with that Colecovision controller and the inevitable blisters and hand cramps that went along with it. By the end of the summer after that thing came out, my left (button) hand was quite literally a claw, and my right (stick/disc) hand had a near-permanent divot pressed into the base of my thumb. I really can't see anyone saying the dual shock is the most uncomfortable controller ever made in the face of such historical evidence as this.
It's not all just about comfort in your hand, though, although that's important. But if I were going to rank controllers on that basis alone, the GameCube controller would be head and shoulders above all the rest - and it's almost completely impossible to use for any game other than Mario or Pikmin. No, you have to take other things into account too, the most important being what specific games you most want to play.
There's a reason stuff like those "Retrocon" and Hori 2D GameCube controllers are still popular, you know...
The Sega Saturn 3d controller was perfect. It had the six button setup from the original, but was otherwise the same as the later Dreamcast controller.
Actually not the same at all, but in a good way.
The Dreamcast controller was based on the 3D controller but they went and took a good thing and made it all wrong. The 3D controller is extremely comfortable - despite its sort of odd look, it just fit perfectly in the hand. The buttons also had the perfect amount of springiness, it had the most responsive d-pad ever made and the triggers had a satisfying amount of resistance without being tiring over long periods of use.
About the only thing Sega got right in updating it for the Dreamcast was the triggers. Everything else they just completely screwed up. The Dreamcast pad forces your hands into an almost contorted, inside out position if you hold it firmly (and most people don't for this reason, meaning it slips easily out of your hands), the button layout is a four-button diamond instead of the more standard two-row six-button layout, and the d-pad is now a small cross, not the large and uber-responsive disc of the 3D pad.
I also want to say that I disagree with those who think the 2D Saturn pad is all that great - I think the second Saturn pad was better than the first and for that reason some people seem to give it more credit than it's due. It's not particularly revered in Japan (where it was the original Saturn pad), only here, where it replaced that horrendous and unreliable early pad. Try using one again today, though, and it just feels cheap and flimsy, with unresponsive buttons and a d-pad that pales in comparison to the 3D pad that came later.
My point exactly. Looks like St. Paul is about 350 miles from Chicago. If a train was available that went at least 100mph you could make the trip in 3 1/2 hours. Seems like rail travel should be significantly cheaper than air travel, but it's obviously not. No wonder Amtrak can't make any money, I can't imagine their trains are anywhere near capacity at those prices.
You have obviously never ridden the Empire Builder (the train that runs on the route you mention), which is almost always running at full capacity. In fact, one of Amtrak's main problems is lack of available equipment - they are running train cars on some routes that are more than 50 years old because they simply do not have the money to replace them and they have excess demand to fill them up and more.
Ridership has never been one of Amtrak's problems. People love Amtrak - try to book a room on one of Amtrak's more popular trains and you will want to do it six months or more in advance. Even in coach, except at the very beginning and end of most routes, trains are very nearly 100% full at all times. There are a lot of reasons for this, the biggest probably being there are no major airports in places like Havre, Montana. If you want to go from St. Paul to Havre, your options are to drive or take the train. This is one of the biggest arguments Amtrak proponents make in favor of keeping it around, too - it serves communities that are not served by any other transportation method. (In some cases, that even includes cars... trains can run perfectly well through five feet of snow and I've done this myself several times through the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas. Cars have a bit more of a problem.)
I don't know why people are complaining about Amtrak's prices. Last time I took a trip across the country, which included going first class part of the way, it cost me a total of $739 for two people. The same trip on an airplane (New York to Portland) would have cost more than double at that same time. (Fares do fluctuate; this was near Christmas.) Generally speaking, it is almost always cheaper to take the train, the exceptions being the corridors, where the higher level of service and convenience overcomes the higher pricing.
Also, the Empire Builder does travel faster than 100mph. All Amtrak long-haul trains do. Superliner, Amfleet and Viewliner equipment is all rated to 125mph, and there are plenty of stretches of track where speeds greater than 100mph are allowed. The older "heritage" stuff (which includes all east-coast dining cars, crew dorms and baggage cars) was previously rated to 105mph but I believe they are either in process of being upgraded or have been upgraded already, or they've simply retired the slower stuff (not all of the older equipment is the same - it was built by different manufacturers for different routes initially).
The Empire Builder runs quite fast between St. Paul and Chicago - I don't know the exact speeds but BNSF maintains this stretch of track quite well. Keep in mind the train does make stops (just like shinkansen do) so average speeds will be lower.
Are you seriously claiming that if the US just dropped all of its arms, absolutely nobody anywhere would attack it?
I don't think that's the claim. The issue I personally have is that the Bush administration proposes spending $310 million to fund Iraq's rail system and $0 to fund the US's rail system. This does not seem a bit off to you? These priorities are not out of whack?
I cannot for the life of me recall a situation in which our government proposed funding an entire industry in one country while refusing to support that same industry in its own country. Especially when it comes to infrastructure, on which the entire rest of the economy is based. Exactly which country is the Bush administration supposed to be governing? Did we elect the president of Iraq or the president of the US?
I would say the priorities of our government are more than a little off-kilter. It's not about reducing defense spending to zero. It's about $1.2 billion in government funding for Amtrak out of a budget of several trillion. It's a tiny amount in the grand scheme; certainly nobody is asking for anything rivaling the amount spent on defense, or education, or even highways and airports. (David Gunn has never requested more than $2 billion, and has said Amtrak could get by at its current spending level, albeit with deferred maintenance.) It is a much, much smaller amount than the $10 billion the government gave to the airlines after 9/11, it is miniscule compared to the amount the government just gave up in seeking from the tobacco companies as part of the trial it's been waging (recently slashing $120 billion off the penalties they were seeking), it is much lower than many, many other discretionary expenditures. And the proposed amount of spending Bush has set aside for Amtrak next year (zero) is exactly $310 million less than the amount of spending we are putting into Iraq's rail system - the same rail system we destroyed to begin with. We're throwing good money after bad when we could be putting that money to better use right here at home.
Meanwhile things keep improving over in the land of the rising sun.
I wouldn't say improving. Things were probably the best they're ever going to be around the mid-90's.
Privatization has led to a reduced level of service on the shinkansen lines (fewer dining cars, fewer private compartments, higher prices, reduced seat pitch), and it has led to increased advertising in the subways. It is also probably partially responsible for the accident that killed more than 100 people just a couple of months ago, which is being blamed in part due to JR West's company policies for enforcement of on-time performance.
The end result of that accident is likely to be more relaxed schedules and poorer on-time performance. Japan is a country where one major accident like this can change an entire culture (unlike the US, where we'd focus on it for a while and then act like it never even happened). People expect things to be done to prevent it from ever happening again. In this case, part of the solution is going to be reduced penalties for lateness and reduced service.
From a rider standpoint, that will make things safer but it will also make things a lot more like train service in other parts of the world, where schedules are more a suggestion of when trains might arrive than when you know they really will.
You won't know until you've tried Nozomi - the current fastest bullet train in Japan... in a luxurious-2-feet-of-room-in-front-of-you seat in a noise-free air-conditioned cabin where you can read, eat lunch, enjoy the view AND sip your beer all the while you are being taken where you want to go. In under 3 hours for most destinations.
Ok, couple things.
1. Nozomi is a service, not a train. You are probably thinking of the 500 series shinkansen, which were run mainly as part of the Nozomi service and are commonly called "Nozomi trains" in other parts of the world (but not Japan). These trains were a complete disaster financially and are in the process of being retired (if they haven't all been already). They were expensive to build, expensive to operate and seated fewer people than other shinkansen.
2. I don't know what shinkansen you've ever ridden on but I've never been on one with 2 feet of room in front of me. In fact, it's usually more like 4 inches, with a floor made of tile you usually find in bathrooms below you, and a seat barely wide enough to fit an average westerner.
Shinkansen are not luxurious. In fact, private rooms have all but been phased out, same with dining cars (replaced first by snack counters and now simple vending machines on many trains). There are still "green cars" with better amenities and comfort on some trains but these are ludicrously expensive.
Most shinkansen are little more than fast commuter trains in terms of their level of comfort and service. Which makes sense, because most people don't need to spend more than an hour or so on them at a time - it's a small country and the trains are very fast. For any longer trips, people in Japan do actually fly - ANA, for example, was operating something like 21 daily flights using both 747's and 777's from Haneda airport in Tokyo to Osaka up until a year or so ago (I think they've actually increased service now, but may no longer be flying 747's domestically). That's just one airline on one route every day.
So don't confuse the role of the shinkansen. These are not generally long-distance trains for most people, at least not as we would think of a long-distance trains. They are not particularly comfortable, they are not very nice inside. They are just fast.
They stopped all service. Amtrak is such a disaster. (1) To take accela turns the philly->boston ticket from a $174 friday/sunday
fare to a $300 fair. (2) The plane ticket prices between those two cities on a friday/sunday are $100 round.
You're forgetting several things here:
1) Acela Express service is only one option on the route you're talking about - there are several others that Amtrak offers that cost significantly less. (Acela Regional, Metroliner, etc.)
2) Acela Express trains are one of the only profitable parts of Amtrak's business, so clearly the business model they've set upon for the train works... when the trains themselves work. This is why it was such a disaster when they had to pull them out of service - right now (well, not right now), these trains are subsidizing most of the NEC improvements that are going on.
The story of why these trains have been so unreliable is a long one, and is rooted in the same congress that has been trying to cut Amtrak's funding for so many years. Congress pressured Amtrak to have a North American-built train and it also refused to amend 19th-century era safety standards so that Amtrak could use similar technology to trains built elsewhere (Japan, Europe, etc.). The direct end result of this is the cracks in the brakes that led to Amtrak taking these trains out of service. The Acela Express trains are based on the TGV, but are about twice as heavy due to safety regs in this country - yet Bombardier/Alstom did not redesign the brake system to take this extra weight into account.
3. The reason why air fares are so low on the route you mention is because of pressure from Amtrak. Amtrak's NEC service (all kinds) is popular enough that it has actually taken riders away from airlines, and that has forced airlines both to use smaller planes and to reduce fares.
I really want amtrak to succeed but they either need to give the same subsidies that they do for roads and airports or just kill the thing off; because its too over specialized for people just doing dc/philly/ny in 1->2 hr hops.
Well, fortunately for Amtrak and its riders, the NEC is the last part of the system that would ever be "killed off".
No, the point is exactly tha you get Linux there. If you got the same performance with Symbian or Windows then it would be equally impressive. s55 might be a nice phone and all, but you probably can't add any extra software (except Java stuff). Could you make s55 play Ogg files? Probably not. Can you get programs for Windows, Symbian, Linux phones, that play Oggs. Probably yes.
Look at the phone and read the article. It's Linux-based, yes, but you're not going to be running SUSE 9.3 on that thing. It's running embedded Linux, it's likely got a fixed interface, and it will run a limited set of OS-based and java apps - just like every other phone.
My Z500a - which apparently uses a proprietary OS from Sony/Ericsson (I don't know what it is) - lets me play mp3's, record and view video files, take pictures (and view pictures that I've uploaded to it), browse the web, download and play games, and download and use various apps that allow me to do things like watch TV or get weather alerts, on two color screens. This Linux phone is not going to do much more, if anything, than that.
My phone gets 10 days of standby time, and 360 minutes of talk time. This is better than this Motorola phone, and it's on a 670mah battery.
So I think people are right to question what's so special about this phone. It almost seems like the article submitter hasn't even looked at phones in years, and like the editors accepted the submission simply because it mentions Linux.
You know what. I am so tired of hearing there everyone is a drug abuser. I'd write out a long, detailed scathing response, but I have to go get my 12th Coke of the day now...
What I immediately think of whenever I see a story like this is that Simpsons episode where they go behind the scenes (I think at Itchy and Scratchy) and Otto says something like "man, what were you guys on when you came up with that?" And the writers respond "Um, we'd just ordered a big bucket of chicken wings..."
I worked at one of the companies involved in one of the games mentioned in this article and while yes, some of the employees are definitely recreational drug users outside of work (no different than any other company, really), I can assure you everybody was completely sober and straight during company hours. The game industry is far too competitive to be at anything but your natural best... the worst drug anybody did at work was Red Bull. (Though oddly enough, we also ate a large quantity of chicken wings... coincidence?)
People who do a lot of drugs like to justify it to themselves by telling everybody how creative it makes them, and articles like this try to reinforce that. Well, in my experience, while illegal drugs can be fun (and I don't deny doing the occasional d00b myself once in a while), they do nothing whatsoever to enhance creativity. You're either creative or you aren't; a drug isn't going to change who you are. All drugs do in the workplace is make you less productive.
I'm fairly sure, based on my experience with drugs, the game industry, and life in general, that none of the games mentioned here had anything to do with drugs whatsoever in terms of their creation. (Except in some of the few recent cases where they're an actual gameplay element - but in those cases, it's generally been so poorly implemented that it almost seems obvious that those who designed and programmed those elements have no experience with the drugs in question whatsoever, in the workplace or anywhere else.)
Innovations need to come from comprimises, not from force like charging to view a web page.
First of all, let's can the idealism and be a little realistic here. You're a web site publisher with little ad revenue left. What do you do? Your training is not in marketing, it's maybe in business development. Are you going to sit there and try to invent a new form of advertising that isn't patented by Google, or are you just going to say "screw it" and charge for the use of your site?
You can hope all you want that people will innovate; the reality is most web site owners are only in it for the money. They don't care about compromise and even if they did, they wouldn't know where to even start coming up with new revenue streams.
I think this is what gets lost in these discussions. You can call it short-sighted, you can call it whatever you want, but the fact is the owners of most web sites are not innovators and never claimed to be. All they want to do is put out a product and make money doing it. If they have exhausted one method, they will simply move on to the next rather than trying to come up with something entirely new. And there's not even anything wrong with this; this is the way small businesses in this country have always worked. It's not up to every guy who runs a bakery or a stationary store or whatever to come up with entirely new business models whenever they hit hard times, and nobody expects them to - yet for some reason, people do expect that when it comes to the web.
Now things are engineered for disposability/cost rather than repairability.
Not if they're made for professionals. Which brings me to the question that must be asked - if you are shooting something as part of your job, why are you using a consumer-grade camcorder?
To the article submitter: my guess is when these repairmen told you that your cameras weren't "up to the task" that they also told you to buy a camcorder made for the task. There are many such models available. Go to any decent camera store (B&H in New York, for example) and look around. It's really not hard. Hell, B&H has a whole professional video category right there on their web site.
I have a feeling the question being asked was not actually "what camcorders are up to the task?" but rather "what camcorder can I get for no extra money that will give me professional level durability?" Sorry, but the fact is you do get what you pay for. Pro gear costs more because it lasts longer and can handle the extra abuse of being tossed around and used basically 24 hours per day. You can't go on the cheap and expect to use a consumer-level camera in a professional capacity (and that is exactly what you have previously tried to do - I'd have thought you'd have learned your lesson by now).
You could take a negative from Ansel Adams that he made way back in the 20's and still make a very find, high quality print today.
That's assuming it was preserved properly, which most negatives most certainly are not.
I have been undertaking a negative scanning project of my own, to try to get all of my and my family's negatives digitized before they crumble into dust. Already, many of my negatives that are only 3 or 4 years old have turned red. (Well, really cyan, but turned positive they're red.) This is what happens to old color negatives.
Black and white negatives hold up better but there are still physical limits and this is still an analog medium. Over time, the celluloid itself degrades. There is no way around this.
The same is true for any medium you were to store a digital photo on (such as a CD) but the difference is you can make an infinite number of copies of that digital file without degrading the image at all. This is not the case with an analog negative, of which there can only ever be one original and that original will someday be gone.
Digital photos taken today won't be around 60 years from now...sorry, but that's the fact. You would constantly have to keep upgrading and transfering your shots to the latest storage medium just to keep up.
Yeah, so? I think it's a bit presumptuous and illogical to say that it's a "fact" that digital photos we take today will not be around in 60 years. Why the hell not? So what if you have to re-archive every few years? Every time you do so, it will be easier because storage space only increases over time. And if you just keep your photos on hard drives (multiple ones for redundancy sake), then it's a total snap to keep them up to date, and you will likely never even really need to worry about it. I mean, I've got documents on my PC from 1985... they just get swept up and put on my new drives as I upgrade.
Not to mention the fact that the camera you buy today is obsolete a year from now when something better AND cheaper comes along.
Camera bodies are irrelevant. A lot of newbie photographers get caught up in concerns about equipment and really, the body is the absolute least important part of the photographic process. Lenses are more important, but most lenses made even 50 years ago will still work (albeit in a limited fashion) on today's digital camera bodies.
A lot of photographers have 40 or 50 camera bodies and while they all have their favorites, most could use any one of them and get equally good pictures. The camera body has nothing to do with how good of a photographer you are, and it has nothing to do with the permanence of your photographs either.
Generally speaking I would think a well-built digital body will last longer than a comparable film body anyway. The law of moving parts applies as equally to cameras as to any other piece of equipment. Digital bodies have fewer moving parts to break.
The one thing about digital cameras that ensures that eventually none of them will work is the batteries. As soon as those proprietary batteries stop being made, your camera is toast. But this is also true of many late-model film cameras. Only true fully manual film cameras are immune from the battery-of-death syndrome.
And that's still got nothing to do with the permanence of your digital photo files. Digital photos will be around as long as you want them, in exactly the same condition as when you originally took them. Now, digital photography technology will no doubt continue to advance to the point where even today's 8 megapixel images will eventually look like 1960's color film to future generations, but the point is those photos will still be preserved and will look exactly the same as they always did. Which is not something you can say about film, no matter how well-preserved it is - it is still an analog medium that is subject to molecular degradation, like any other physical thing is.
Why will the traditional media be going anywhere?
I agree. I don't know about anybody else, but despite what the original article post says, I was pretty glued to my local news channel on 9/11 (here in New York). Is anyone actually going to sit there and tell me in all seriousness that their primary source of news and info on 9/11 was somebody's blog? Hell, if you were in a safe enough place to sit and blog about it, then you just weren't close enough to even know what was really going on.
Blogs are a terrible source of news, IMO. They are a better source of opinion, maybe, and for bantering about things like the latest gadgets, but anyone who's either sitting at home typing up a bunch of crap or worse, simply posting a bunch of links to some other "real" news site, is not doing anybody much good at all. And even for opinion, they really mainly exist for those who want to have their egos stroked by finding others whose opinions simply help confirm their own...
I read blogs, and I write one too (when I feel like updating it, which isn't often). But they're hardly a replacement for traditional news. The whole blog craze reminds me a lot of the dot-com era, where everybody thought these small little online startups were going to come in and sweep the big, old, crusty traditional companies out of the way... Then reality set in. The same thing's probably going to happen with blogs. Does that mean blogs serve no purpose? No - I mean, technically, Slashdot is a blog. Engadget is a blog. Gizmodo is a blog. I read these multiple times per day.
But for real breaking news, and for real informed opinion, there is no way for blogs to compete with traditional news media. After all, you generally at least need a college degree to get a job in the news industry - I'm not sure how much you can trust your average high school dropout with access to a PC and a free blogger.com account. (Of course, traditional media's had its own share of problems the past couple years, but then that's partly because they're actually held to some sort of ethical standard. Blogs are not held to any standards whatsoever, and any blogger can get away with pretty much anything they want, however erroneous or borderline slanderous their statements may be.)
Ok, I used to be as big a supporter of Nintendo's "it's the games, stupid" strategy as anybody, but they're taking it a little too far these days. It's become less of a rallying cry and more of an excuse for just not designing their technology properly.
They may as well argue that nobody needs anything but an RF connection, because "you can see the games fine". Composite or s-video? They only "add to the cost". Give me a break.
Game consoles are supposed to last for five or so years. Even today, quite a few people own HDTV's - and mine only cost me $570. In five years, I expect the market for HDTV's will be pretty significant, and Nintendo not supporting HD while Sony and MS does seems like a big mistake. They are basically ceding that part of the market.
They're also ensuring that a) fewer cross-platform games will be made, and b) those that are will always look significantly worse on the Revolution. I mean you're talking the difference between 1920x1080 resolution and 640x480. And you can bet that's a noticeable difference on any HDTV.
So far I haven't heard anything at all about the Revolution that's even an improvement over the GameCube, much less keeping pace with the PS3 and Xbox 360. I like the whole downloadable games thing, but it's not like the GameCube didn't already have a broadband connection, it's just that Nintendo didn't use it. So they get dragged kicking and screaming into broadband a generation too late and now it looks like they're going to get dragged kicking and screaming into HD a generation too late too. Meanwhile, they will just continue to hemmorhage market share until there's basically nothing left.
gamers won't touch it if it becomes fouled with evil ads.
Any examples of gamers not buying any game because it had advertising in it, much less ALL, a majority, or a plurality even?
All he said was "gamers", which by definition means any number above two.
I'm one. Anyone else want to volunteer and turn this into a true factual statement?
Note that examples are not necessary, as he's speaking in future tense. But I certainly will not buy any game that is "fouled with evil ads" (which I take to mean pretty well overrun with them... one or two unobtrusive billboards in a city in a game is not going to bother me).