I don't know which is bigger news, the backwards compatability or the fact that MSFT was able to get Square to bring the FF series to the 360!
They only announced XI - which was actually "announced" in so many words years ago by Square. It's actually surprising it took them this long - it was supposed to come out on the original Xbox.
(I don't recall the original quotes they used, but it was something like "coming for next-generation systems", which at the time only meant the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube... though given the lack of online capability for the GameCube back then, that system was basically ruled out.)
My thinking is Square has had this in the pipeline since then, and at some point MS said to them "you know, why not just make this an Xbox 360 launch title?" They've clearly been holding back certain games for that purpose - Perfect Dark Zero being another example.
I doubt you'll be seeing the non-online FF's on Xbox. Square just showed both FFXII for PS2 and FFVII(??) on PS3 yesterday, which suggests to me that they're still basically in bed with Sony for the main lineage of story-driven FF games... though they will probably continue to release side FF projects like FFXI and FF:CC on other systems.
(Of course, what I wanna know is why Square needs to keep teasing us with this FFVII crap, then saying it's not actually coming out - just re-release the game on PS3 already!)
There seems to be an infinite number of articles about the E3. Where as the Tokyo Game Show, we hear so little about.
Well, it is a Japanese show. I also covered it for the press here the couple times I went and it can be very difficult. Not every American journo can hack it. There is no real effort made to accomodate westerners, even though there are usually quite a few there - the booth chicks (who double as hostesses - they're the ones responsible for showing you the games) rarely speak English, for example. Most signs are not in English either. And the show is not actually in Tokyo - it's in a suburb that a lot of foreigners find inconvenient... and outside the "safety" of Tokyo (where they have their guide books, their English-speaking train attendants, etc.), they may feel a little lost.
You really need to have an adventurous spirit and you really need to not be afraid to just wander around and stick your nose in various places. Even something as simple as learning how to get in to the press only day can be a challenge. (I literally stumbled upon the table I needed to sign up at completely by accident - I just figured I should go look around, and I found the table in a totally isolated corner of the convention center with no signs or anything. Luckily, there was one English speaker at the table.)
A lot of the American press just doesn't bother covering it at all for these reasons, and if they do they sort of just take a few pictures and call it a day. It doesn't help that the show was in decline for a little while (it's now come back up a bit), so some of the press might not think it was a required stop on the game show world tour anymore.
But I think it is. It is almost three times larger than E3, in the country that still produces more than 50% of the world's video game output and two of the three major game consoles (Nintendo's famous for not generally bothering with TGS, but third-party developers still show games for Nintendo systems). And it is just so much more fun than E3, especially as a westerner, because everything just feels so completely different. E3 is really pretty dry once you get past the strippers they hire to stuff in nerdly Everquest outfits - it is an industry trade show, after all. TGS is all flash, pomp and circumstance, and pretty ladies (one per customer at most every booth!). Oh, and about a million square feet of playable games.
Besides the fact that someone has to take time to make a copy, what's the "qualitative" difference you're speaking of?
He was just hoping the fact that he used a lot of big words would convince you that he was smarter than everyone else. Clearly, he isn't.
There is no "qualitative difference" between recording a show yourself when it's on and asking someone else to do it for you. "Qualitative" in this context would mean that there is a distinction between the act of recording for yourself and for somebody else. This strikes me as a very printing press-era sort of mindset - when media is media, it's freely available over the air, and it's possible for that media to exist in an infinite number of places at once, then how is there a qualitative difference between watching media I have recorded and watching media someone else has recorded? Either way, I'm watching the exact same media, and I am costing the broadcasters the exact same amount of money: zero.
The dirty little secret of the TV industry is that they don't have a moral leg to stand on here. They may have a legal one - which is why they keep throwing words around like "theft" and "piracy" - but how do you steal something that's freely available over the airwaves, or that my household pays to receive (and indeed, did actually receive) but that I choose to instead download from somebody else later?
The fact is there's absolutely no difference to anyone when or how I watch TV programs, morally, ethically or by any other standard. The problem for the TV networks is a) they lose the ability to track my viewing habits when I download vs. watching on cable, and b) they lose the ability to serve me ads - but then I skip through the ads on my TiVo anyway, and there's certainly no law that says I have to watch them. (Not yet, anyway.)
Bottom line is it screws up their business model and they don't like it. Too bad for them; they choose to put this stuff out either for free over the air, or over cable that I already pay them for anyway. If they were smart, they'd host downloads for all their TV shows themselves and put everything on free (i.e. basic) cable VOD, which would solve most of their problems. In the absence of that, though, I'm going to keep right on downloading shows from the usual sources and I'm not going to feel bad about it. (Not with a $98 per month cable bill, that's for sure.)
XBox 360 + XBox Media Center = maybe decode 1080i, with surround sound output, plus it's smaller to boot, and includes WiFi by default
No, it doesn't include wi-fi, that's optional (as has been pointed out several times).
Also, I think you're confusing the Xbox Media Center (which is a hack) with the Xbox Media Center Extender. The Media Center Extender will obviously decode 1080i, as that is the whole point of the Xbox 360.
I doubt there will ever be a hacked Media Center like the one for the current Xbox, as the 360 uses all sorts of custom hardware. It's not basically an off the shelf PC like the current Xbox is.
Specifically, Microsoft owns the Windows Media DRM platform (sold under the "playsforsure" certification mark); just about every online music store except iTMS is compatible.
And collectively they have about 10% of the market. So none of this means much.
Sony's rumored to be in talks with Apple right now to build some sort of iTunes functionality into the PS3. I sort of doubt this - they've been competing with Apple in the DAP market otherwise - but if they did this, it'd pretty much blow away anything MS was doing with the Xbox, music-wise. Windows DRM is, honestly, pretty much irrelevant in an iPod world.
Not that any of this matters in the least anyway... these are game consoles we're talking about. Whatever features manufacturers like to hype up before release, up to this point nobody ever, ever uses a game console for anything but playing games. That's reality.
The one trojan horse MS has - and the one non-gaming feature that I think is somewhat useful - is the Media Center Extender that's built in. This could sell some systems, and as MS is currently the only commercial OS producer making a Media Center OS, they've pretty much got that market locked up. They're doing for HTPC's what Apple did for music players - they've got an integrated solution, both software and hardware, and for now they've pretty much got that market to themselves. Sony could always try to add entertainment functionality to the PS3, but it won't mean anything without a media center machine to be able to connect to. The Xbox media functions could end up being pretty useful if Windows MCE really takes off.
the clothing alone is light-years beyond what DOAU offered. The character lighting is too - they self-shadow, for example.
And you have just proven the OP's point for him...
because we all know that what makes a new game system worth buying is better looking clothing.
(I'm being serious - if you think any of this stuff matters to anybody but the dorkiest 13 year old kid who's got nothing else to brag about to his junior high school friends, then I don't know what to tell you.)
FWIW, I wasn't impressed by those DOA4 screens either. And yes, I do believe they were real - GA's actions just obviously screwed up an exclusive that Tecmo had worked out with another publication.
Actually the WiFi won't be built in, it will be an addon which you'll have to purchase separately.
Which is the whole problem with this article (or at least the summary of it - I'm following the/. tradition and not actually R'ing TFA).
The Xbox 360 is basically more of the same of the original Xbox. There's nothing revolutionary about it. It's got built-in Ethernet - just like Xbox 1. It's got Xbox Live - just like Xbox 1. It can act as a Windows Media Center Extender - just like Xbox 1. It can play DVD's - just like Xbox 1. It can play music - just like Xbox 1.
True, some of these things cost extra on Xbox 1, and they'll be built into the Xbox 360. Then again, the Xbox 1 currently costs $149, while the Xbox 360 will likely cost $300 or more at launch. So for the moment, it's a wash.
People always say how the new consoles will "revolutionize" entertainment, computing, or whatever else. It's been going on for 20 or more years, back when the Intellivision was promised to have a computer component available for it and everybody thought that would finally bring PC's to the masses. Well, that didn't happen, but we still have this same exact conversation every time a new console is announced. It's going to do this or that beyond playing games, it's going to revolutionize one medium or another, and blah blah blah.
In the end, it always seems to come down to the fact that it plays games a little better than before and has a little bit better graphics than the systems that came before. That's it.
I expect this to be just as true of the Xbox 360 as any other console. I was almost completely underwhelmed by the MTV unveiling, which seemed to show me nothing much that the current Xbox couldn't do other than playing games in HD (which requires a lot more CPU horsepower to support that 1920x1080 resolution, and no doubt that's why the games themselves don't really look much better... they're just physically bigger).
It's almost sad that it takes an apparently fan-made video to show us something truly new and revolutionary; something that I think we've all been waiting for, but will probably still not happen for quite a few years. (This video's been floating around for the past few days and making some pretty big waves; IGN says it's fake without citing a source, I'm still not sure myself.)
The Xbox 360, though, is basically just following the same pattern every other new system ever has... more of the same, just slightly better, and allowing the manufacturer to again charge a price premium. It's no revolution. (No pun intended.)
I went to a couple of E3's, I think 2000 and 2001. One of them was sort of exciting because it was the start of the current generation of consoles and everything felt new. Almost every single booth had something that made me go "wow!" And the Nintendo and Sony press conferences ahead of the show were fun. (I missed the MS conference.)
The second one was more of a grind. I was actually working for the press both years, so while the first one was exciting enough to overcome the drudgery, by the second everything already felt sort of old-hat. All I really remember was lugging a lapop bag around in the stifling L.A. heat for 12 hours a day and having to listen to what seemed like endlessly boring pitches from PR people. It also seemed noticeably louder than the year before, and by the end of the day I always felt like I'd just attended about nine consecutive rock concerts for a band that I didn't even really like.
I don't really have any desire to go again. Once is really enough - I think most people who go more than that agree, and have pretty much the same experience I did the second time. It also doesn't help that it's such an incestual place; the public's not invited so you just have industry types all over the place, and people are constantly trying to shmooze and "network" and it just gets really annoying. It's very political.
Now, the Tokyo Game Show, on the other hand, I could go every year to and never get tired of it. That show's bigger, for one thing (150,000 people vs. 60,000 at E3), and it's a lot more fun because everything's geared towards the public. Plus, there are way more booth chicks:)
It provides incentive for people to buy the console at launch. Currently it seems Microsoft does not have a true AAA title like Halo to launch with the Xbox 360. If people know that they can play Halo 2 (and maybe with better graphics) as well as the rest of the the Xbox's library of games they are likely to think they will be able to use their new purchase a lot more than just with the maybe 16 games that come out at the time of release.
This reasoning makes no sense, but it's the reasoning I see posted fairly often.
You're basically saying somebody's going to plunk down $300-$400 in order to play the same games they could play if they just stayed at home and used their current system. Right? How is being able to play Halo 2 an "incentive" to buy an Xbox 360? If anything, it's an incentive to developers to keep making games for the Xbox 1 (which has a larger installed base, after all)... which makes it even less attractive for somebody to buy an Xbox 360. It's actually prolonging the lifespan of the original system to the detriment of the new one.
I think backward compatibility is an overrated feature that actually costs manufacturers money in the long run. Look how long Sony ended up supporting two separate home consoles, and that delayed the profitability of the PS2 (as a lot of people bought it at first as a cheap DVD player, and developers had no real incentive to develop for it over the vastly more popular PS1).
We had this same argument in 1983 when the Colecovision could play Atari 2600 games but Atari's own 5200 couldn't and everybody thought that was really stupid. Well, guess what, both companies ended up being forced out of the game console business, so I don't think you can really draw any conclusions about which is the more successful strategy. But you can probably draw conclusions from the fact that the PS2 is the only successful console in the history of consoles that was backward compatible, so I really don't think this feature means much.
Yes, first of all, the stages now are interactive and multi-tier like those in DOA or Mk: Deception,
Somehow I doubt this, as it flies in the face of everything Namco has ever said about Soul Calibur.
The lack of such stages in SC and SC2 was intentional. Namco has always felt that these sorts of gimmicks take away from the one-on-one fighting that makes a good fighting game what it is. It makes them less based on fighting skill, more based on luck and cheap throws.
In fact, nothing I've read in the preview linked here suggests there are now interactive stages. Nothing says anything about online play either.
I certainly hope SC3 stays true to its fighting engine and does not go the DOA/MK route. The good thing about Soul Calibur is that it's always been (going back to Soul Edge/Soul Blade) sort of a "Virtua Fighter Lite" with weapons - it's more accessible than VF but is still focused squarely on the fighters and the fighting rather than gimmicky stages, "fatalities", costumes or cute girls.
Not that there's anything wrong with cute girls, of course.
This is really chilling and scary how people can bully others into submission over one opinion piece.
What MOG did was not an opinion piece; it was, in fact, illegal. PJ is, by her own words, considering her legal options right now, but nobody has the right to a) trespass in another person's home (as MOG all but admits she did in her article, commenting on how the interior of PJ's home looks, noting she was not home at the time), b) list the addresses and telephone numbers of relatives, and c) slander another person publicly with unverified information.
I note that you're an anonymous coward so you obviously do not want us to know who you are. I wonder why?
What MOG did was beyond sleazy; it was illegal, journalistically unethical and personally immoral, and if she was silenced for that, she has nobody to blame but herself.
I'd say you twisted the argument to the point where it doesn't make much sense.
I think the post in question made perfect sense.
MS has, by virtue of their direct control over the Windows OS, the ability to render viruses impotent and irrelevant by actually fixing the root problems that most viruses take advantage of. Instead, they're issuing a band-aid and asking you to pay extra for it. Is that simple enough to understand?
Someone else said "but if MS didn't charge for it, it'd put all the other anti-virus companies out of business!" The point is anti-virus companies exist because of problems in MS's OS. What you are asking MS to do is ignore the disease - which it is in their power to heal - so that companies selling the equivalent of headache medicine can stay in business. There is no reason for these companies to be in business if viruses are not a problem to begin with. And there is no reason why viruses should be a problem to begin with - the reason they are is that MS does not take security seriously enough.
This is just another example of that, despite its initial appearance to the contrary. Rather than actually fixing their OS's problems, they're saying "how can we make money off of our OS's problems?" Pretty ingenious - if utterly cynical - business model.
I really really really hope that the guys start ripping using the H.264 codec next season, then the HD content would look even sweeter.
Ok, Apple's somehow really brainwashed people with this H.264 thing.
It's a good codec, but it's just the latest version of MPEG-4. And Apple's not the only company to use it either (Nero Digital AVC is H.264, for example).
Apple gets good results because they use fairly high bit rates and spend time on the encoding. But honestly, WMV-HD, which is based on an older MPEG-4 codec, looks just as good to my eyes. It just doesn't compress quite as well (and we're talking a couple of hundred kbps difference; they're not worlds apart).
Anyway, DivX, which is what most of these HDTV shows on BT sites are compressed with, is actually using pretty much the same codec as WMV-HD. It can look just as good as Apple's H.264 stuff. Obviously, though, you're talking a 350MB file for a 44 minute show (60 minutes sans commercials) vs. a 350MB file for a 1 minute trailer, in Apple's case. The bit rate is heavily compressed on the files you can get on BT sites, and the resolution is also lowered in the interests of file size for downloading.
Now, as for what's going on with these lawsuits, it really strikes me as stupid. The TV networks give this stuff away over the airwaves! I understand that they own the exclusive distribution rights, but you know what the obvious solution then is? Offer the damn shows up for download (not streaming) complete with commercials, from the TV station's official site. Simple! Make them low quality divx files just like we get from BT for all I care. I will happily skip over the commercials, but you know what? I do this anyway with my MCE machine, and there's not a damn thing they can do to stop me. So I don't see how they really lose anything from this proposition, and they'd regain their internet distribution for themselves.
Here's an example of why this pisses me off. Tonight MS had the good sense (sarcasm) to schedule their Xbox 360 show at the same time as the Apprentice, which I normally watch. I only have a single tuner. So what do I do? I watch the MS thing and miss the Apprentice. Why do the networks not want me to now see the Apprentice that I missed, complete with the same commercials I would have skipped over anyway if that's how they want it? Why not just give me the stupid show as a free SD-quality download an hour or two after it originally aired?
(btw, I say that knowing that I personally would not be helping them any with my commercial skipping, but the point is the same number of people who watch commercials normally are still gonna watch them on a downloaded file, especially if they're still watching on a TV. The people who don't watch commercials aren't gonna watch them no matter what, and even if they're forced to they're not gonna pay any attention.)
If they're worried about overseas or affiliate distribution, a) put up a country block similar to the one the BBC used for their online Olympic coverage (this was pretty effective - I managed to get around it using an anonymous proxy but it was hellishly unreliable, and 99% of the world would not know how to do this), and b) put the downloads on a time delay such that no show goes up until the last affiliate has screened it.
Why is this such a complicated idea? Which makes more sense, to try to sue every bittorrent site out of existence or to proactively retake their own online distribution back? Online distribution is not going away, the question is whether or not the networks want to control it themselves or cede it to others. (And by using lawsuits as their only strategy, they are ceding it to others... they will never stamp out file sharing completely and they should know it. They need to provide a compelling alternative themselves.)
My point is, you don't need a high percentage of "being right" to be very successful. Who cares how often his predictions come true?
The people who read his predictions, that's who.
The point of this thread is not whether or not Bill Gates is successful. The point is whether or not he is right in his prediction that cell phones will overtake standalone DAPs for music playing. Lots of people assume that because he is successful, that his predictions carry some weight. And his predictions do carry some weight, but that does not imply that he is always, or even usually right.
Gates has predicted a lot of things that have not come true. Some things (like the tablet PC) he insists still will come true, even if it's not happening the way he planned. Other things (like MSN and WebTV) he's basically given up on. But people often forget about these things when they read a new prediction, simply based on the fact that he has made a lot of money with Windows and Office. (And make no mistake - that's still where the vast majority of MS's revenue comes from.)
As far as shooting them, Jedi's can deflect blaster rounds with their sabers right? What's wrong with a good, old fashioned shotgun? click-click BOOM. Deflect that.
I would suspect plain old body armor would take care of that pretty easily.
Don't forget that in the Star Wars universe, bionic limbs and bodies are pretty easy to come by. Weaponry is far advanced of what we have now, so you have to assume that they've already gone through the standard projectile weapons and armor phase. It's all likely as outmoded to them as bows and arrows are to us.
Arm an army in Star Wars with shotguns, and all the other side needs is laser blasters to wipe them all out, since shotguns are close-range weapons. All a Jedi would need against a shotgun would be armor, which would render the shotgun-wielding assailant completely impotent and defenseless. (That's not even counting the fact that Jedi can use their force powers to control physical objects, so I'd imagine a Matrix-style bullet freeze would not be impossible in the Star Wars universe.) My guess is things have just progressed to the point in Star Wars where nobody bothers wearing armor anymore because nobody bothers still using archaic weapons like shotguns that require defending against.
You could say the same thing about a lot of ancient weapons in the real world... why do snipers today use loud rifles that betray their location when a poison arrow would be just as lethal with the bonus of being silent? Because there are defenses against arrows; they're just not in common usage anymore because they've done their job so well that they rendered the crossbow obsolete. This ironically would make the crossbow an effective weapon again for someone trained in the methods of using one, but it would be for a very short period of time before your enemy again starts defending against the crossbow, leaving you sitting there using weapons that are laughably ineffective. It's an easy way to ensure your quick defeat.
If we were to arm our military like they do in star wars, we'd be giving every soldier their normal equipment plus a crossbow, a pack of bolts, a knife, AND a sword. And then telling them to close in as quick as possible and engage in hand to hand combat.
You know, I'm not even a Star Wars geek and I've gotta mix it up a little on this one...
First of all, the whole idea of the Jedi is that they are not just elite soldiers, they are practically Gods. Before Lucas went with this whole ridiculous "mitochondria" nonsense, the Jedi were basically a religious sect that understood how to harness a mysterious force that nobody else understood. So, first, you're already suspending disbelief to hell and back because you've got to believe that these guys could control time and space to some extent.
Now, once you accept that premise - that these are not just "foot-soldiers" (remember that the regular soldiers all throughout the Star Wars movies just carry blasters, from the droid armies on eps. 1-3 to the Imperial Army and the rebels in 4-6), but instead ultra-elite combination soldiers/priests/shamen/wizards, then you can start to see how on the one hand, conventional weapons would be entirely ineffective against them (something Lucas has demonstrated time and time again), and hand-to-hand fighting would be their most effective weapon against you. Conversely, it is also the only real way to kill them.
The other thing that a lot of people who argue this point seem to miss is that the Jedi do die out in the end! I mean, it is a parallel to what happened in real life to the knights on this planet, and purposely so. It's the end of chivalry in Star Wars just as it was here, and it happens in Star Wars for some of the very same reasons.
Its kind of rediculous to think anyone at all would ever try to engage anyone else in melee weapon combat as a battle tactic.
Unless that's what you're really good at. If you're a trained swordsman who's so good that he can both dodge bullets and deflect them without fail, why wouldn't you try to engage your enemy in melee combat? Your opponent would be basically defenseless in such a situation, unless he was as well-trained in melee combat as you are.
(The best shooter can't do anything more than shoot straight and accurately, so if there was such a person who could deflect bullets with a sword, it wouldn't matter how good of a shooter he was facing - they'd be just as ineffective. The problem is the mass of real swords makes it impossible to use one that way, but that's why light sabers are supposedly made of light... which is a whole other discussion.)
I thought it was going to be released in November?
I think you need to look up the difference between "unveiling" and "releasing".
This is not news, though - even the headline calls it a "reminder". People have known about this unveiling for several weeks (if not months?) now. It has nothing to do with the launch in November - consoles are always unveiled before they're launched (well, except for the Sega Saturn, and we all saw how well that went over).
On a side not who the hell needs a 19" laptop. why not buy a seguay(spelling) and just pack a desktop around?
"Laptop" is a misnomer, and technically it's not even what Dell calls these things. It's a notebook. Notebooks and laptops are not the same thing and this is a perfect illustration of the distinction.
A laptop is a computer you put on your lap.
A notebook is a computer with a screen that folds down over the keyboard (with a form factor like a paper notebook, hence the name).
A laptop may or may not have a folding screen (the earliest models didn't). A notebook may or may not be "lappable" - i.e. it may or may not be small enough, cool enough or light enough to hold on your lap.
A 19" notebook is a portable PC, but I wouldn't call it a laptop. There's nothing wrong with this category of machine, IMO - I personally keep my notebook on my coffee table 99% of the time, and only carry it with me to a place (in other words, I don't have a need to bust it out in-transit on a train or a bus, I take it out on a corresponding desk or table somewhere else).
Laptops are perfectly fine if you want a real go-anywhere computer. But this is not a laptop, and not everybody needs that amount of portability. Some people just need a machine to act as a desktop most of the time, but that still doesn't take up a lot of space and can be moved around easily when needed.
So what? The MP3/digital portable audio market is still in it's infancy. I'd bet that most Americans still haven't heard of the Ipod, and quite a few still don't know what MP3's are.
Oh, sure, you could argue "only" 22 million Americans is not that big of a number, percentage-wise, but you have to realize that those 22 million Americans also have friends and family members, and once you do, you'll also realize that it's highly unlikely anybody in this country has not heard of the iPod.
It's also more remarkable that this survey did not even include teenagers. So the numbers are likely considerably higher than even that already impressive number.
The mp3 player market is not in its infancy. This is a fallacy that a lot of Apple's competitors seem to like to tell themselves to help them sleep at night. It's a young market, yes, but it is already pretty saturated. It's very hard to get 22 million adult Americans to buy anything collectively, let alone something that was considered a luxury product for ubergeeks just a couple of years ago.
Nokia and others are betting the other way; that the market for standalone digital audio players is going to start to level out soon, and the remaining market (primarily comprised of those who don't need the capacity or battery life of the higher-end players) will turn to cell phones for their music. Obviously, this will still lock out services like Yahoo or Napster.
That's not to say these companies can't make money selling music to the small market they have. But they will never be a serious threat to Apple and the iPod. Sorry, but that's just the reality. Apple is entrenched in a market that has become saturated faster than any I can ever remember.
Grrrr... looks like I confused my towns/counties since reading the article. I thought it said "Hempstead", not "Westchester". Well, the basic point still stands - there are millions of people in that general area up there, and very few of them have ties to IBM. Lots of them have ties to other businesses, especially in NYC.
She is a paralegal working for some number of years in an area where 90% of the jobs are tied to IBM in some way.
90%?? You don't know Long Island, do you?
Long Island is (mostly) a suburb of New York City, with a metro area that's home to somewhere around 29 million people. About 3 million of those people live on Long Island.
Last I heard, IBM did not have 2.7 million employees on its Long Island campus. I mean, when I read this article, that part of it was what immediately struck me. Sure, ethically speaking the religious jabs, the giving out of the home addresses, etc. were worse, but the insinuation that because she's on Long Island she's in "IBM country" and by implication an IBM shill struck me as simply stupid. A whole lot of people live on Long Island and not that many of them work for IBM.
Disclaimer: I also live on Long Island, so if you're MOG I guess you'll now have to wonder whether I'm a paid IBM shill too.
(and btw, IBM has offices all over the place, including in New York City itself. So is everyone in the entire NYC metro area now suddenly on IBM's payroll? Talk about paranoia!)
I think the Windows Media Center Edition button makes it obviously clear that this will not only be a game system, but a PVR and progressive scan DVD player/burner.
The Media Center button is so it can act as a Media Center Extender, which the current Xbox also does - for $100 extra. It is not going to be an MCE machine itself.
It also does not imply anything about burning discs (which is not even a requirement of a real MCE machine).
In that whole process, the independant verification (or first-hand verification when "independant" has no meaning, such as "Fred said X in a private interview")
I'm going to burn some karma here, because the whole "-ant"/"-ent" thing has really started to burn my goose. All over the net, it seems like the misspelling of words like this has actually become more common than the correct one, and I've got an itch to finally say something about it.
It's "independent", people. Similarly, it's "dependent" and "sentence". It is not "independant", "sentance", or "dependant" (in this context, anyway).
"Dependant" is an actual word, but it's a noun that means "subordinate". It is not an adjective meaning "to depend on someone". There is no noun form of "independant", so that spelling is just wrong any way you slice it and in any dialect of English.
It's getting to be like the there/their/they're thing that people used to have (some people still do, but it seems like the grammar nazis of the past were mostly successful in stamping that out). I know some people don't care about such things, and I usually don't either, but you write like this and people who know better (usually the very people to whom you're trying to get a point across) will think you're an idiot. So it is in your own best interests to know the difference between what's correct and what isn't.
To the actual poster above, as someone who speaks with such knowledge about what is required of true journalists, I would think you would have known that proper spelling is a prerequisite.
(Yes, I know, everybody makes typos - including me - but say it twice in one sentence and it ain't a typo anymore.)
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I don't know which is bigger news, the backwards compatability or the fact that MSFT was able to get Square to bring the FF series to the 360!
They only announced XI - which was actually "announced" in so many words years ago by Square. It's actually surprising it took them this long - it was supposed to come out on the original Xbox.
(I don't recall the original quotes they used, but it was something like "coming for next-generation systems", which at the time only meant the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube... though given the lack of online capability for the GameCube back then, that system was basically ruled out.)
My thinking is Square has had this in the pipeline since then, and at some point MS said to them "you know, why not just make this an Xbox 360 launch title?" They've clearly been holding back certain games for that purpose - Perfect Dark Zero being another example.
I doubt you'll be seeing the non-online FF's on Xbox. Square just showed both FFXII for PS2 and FFVII(??) on PS3 yesterday, which suggests to me that they're still basically in bed with Sony for the main lineage of story-driven FF games... though they will probably continue to release side FF projects like FFXI and FF:CC on other systems.
(Of course, what I wanna know is why Square needs to keep teasing us with this FFVII crap, then saying it's not actually coming out - just re-release the game on PS3 already!)
There seems to be an infinite number of articles about the E3. Where as the Tokyo Game Show, we hear so little about.
Well, it is a Japanese show. I also covered it for the press here the couple times I went and it can be very difficult. Not every American journo can hack it. There is no real effort made to accomodate westerners, even though there are usually quite a few there - the booth chicks (who double as hostesses - they're the ones responsible for showing you the games) rarely speak English, for example. Most signs are not in English either. And the show is not actually in Tokyo - it's in a suburb that a lot of foreigners find inconvenient... and outside the "safety" of Tokyo (where they have their guide books, their English-speaking train attendants, etc.), they may feel a little lost.
You really need to have an adventurous spirit and you really need to not be afraid to just wander around and stick your nose in various places. Even something as simple as learning how to get in to the press only day can be a challenge. (I literally stumbled upon the table I needed to sign up at completely by accident - I just figured I should go look around, and I found the table in a totally isolated corner of the convention center with no signs or anything. Luckily, there was one English speaker at the table.)
A lot of the American press just doesn't bother covering it at all for these reasons, and if they do they sort of just take a few pictures and call it a day. It doesn't help that the show was in decline for a little while (it's now come back up a bit), so some of the press might not think it was a required stop on the game show world tour anymore.
But I think it is. It is almost three times larger than E3, in the country that still produces more than 50% of the world's video game output and two of the three major game consoles (Nintendo's famous for not generally bothering with TGS, but third-party developers still show games for Nintendo systems). And it is just so much more fun than E3, especially as a westerner, because everything just feels so completely different. E3 is really pretty dry once you get past the strippers they hire to stuff in nerdly Everquest outfits - it is an industry trade show, after all. TGS is all flash, pomp and circumstance, and pretty ladies (one per customer at most every booth!). Oh, and about a million square feet of playable games.
Besides the fact that someone has to take time to make a copy, what's the "qualitative" difference you're speaking of?
He was just hoping the fact that he used a lot of big words would convince you that he was smarter than everyone else. Clearly, he isn't.
There is no "qualitative difference" between recording a show yourself when it's on and asking someone else to do it for you. "Qualitative" in this context would mean that there is a distinction between the act of recording for yourself and for somebody else. This strikes me as a very printing press-era sort of mindset - when media is media, it's freely available over the air, and it's possible for that media to exist in an infinite number of places at once, then how is there a qualitative difference between watching media I have recorded and watching media someone else has recorded? Either way, I'm watching the exact same media, and I am costing the broadcasters the exact same amount of money: zero.
The dirty little secret of the TV industry is that they don't have a moral leg to stand on here. They may have a legal one - which is why they keep throwing words around like "theft" and "piracy" - but how do you steal something that's freely available over the airwaves, or that my household pays to receive (and indeed, did actually receive) but that I choose to instead download from somebody else later?
The fact is there's absolutely no difference to anyone when or how I watch TV programs, morally, ethically or by any other standard. The problem for the TV networks is a) they lose the ability to track my viewing habits when I download vs. watching on cable, and b) they lose the ability to serve me ads - but then I skip through the ads on my TiVo anyway, and there's certainly no law that says I have to watch them. (Not yet, anyway.)
Bottom line is it screws up their business model and they don't like it. Too bad for them; they choose to put this stuff out either for free over the air, or over cable that I already pay them for anyway. If they were smart, they'd host downloads for all their TV shows themselves and put everything on free (i.e. basic) cable VOD, which would solve most of their problems. In the absence of that, though, I'm going to keep right on downloading shows from the usual sources and I'm not going to feel bad about it. (Not with a $98 per month cable bill, that's for sure.)
XBox 360 + XBox Media Center = maybe decode 1080i, with surround sound output, plus it's smaller to boot, and includes WiFi by default
No, it doesn't include wi-fi, that's optional (as has been pointed out several times).
Also, I think you're confusing the Xbox Media Center (which is a hack) with the Xbox Media Center Extender. The Media Center Extender will obviously decode 1080i, as that is the whole point of the Xbox 360.
I doubt there will ever be a hacked Media Center like the one for the current Xbox, as the 360 uses all sorts of custom hardware. It's not basically an off the shelf PC like the current Xbox is.
Specifically, Microsoft owns the Windows Media DRM platform (sold under the "playsforsure" certification mark); just about every online music store except iTMS is compatible.
And collectively they have about 10% of the market. So none of this means much.
Sony's rumored to be in talks with Apple right now to build some sort of iTunes functionality into the PS3. I sort of doubt this - they've been competing with Apple in the DAP market otherwise - but if they did this, it'd pretty much blow away anything MS was doing with the Xbox, music-wise. Windows DRM is, honestly, pretty much irrelevant in an iPod world.
Not that any of this matters in the least anyway... these are game consoles we're talking about. Whatever features manufacturers like to hype up before release, up to this point nobody ever, ever uses a game console for anything but playing games. That's reality.
The one trojan horse MS has - and the one non-gaming feature that I think is somewhat useful - is the Media Center Extender that's built in. This could sell some systems, and as MS is currently the only commercial OS producer making a Media Center OS, they've pretty much got that market locked up. They're doing for HTPC's what Apple did for music players - they've got an integrated solution, both software and hardware, and for now they've pretty much got that market to themselves. Sony could always try to add entertainment functionality to the PS3, but it won't mean anything without a media center machine to be able to connect to. The Xbox media functions could end up being pretty useful if Windows MCE really takes off.
the clothing alone is light-years beyond what DOAU offered. The character lighting is too - they self-shadow, for example.
And you have just proven the OP's point for him...
because we all know that what makes a new game system worth buying is better looking clothing.
(I'm being serious - if you think any of this stuff matters to anybody but the dorkiest 13 year old kid who's got nothing else to brag about to his junior high school friends, then I don't know what to tell you.)
FWIW, I wasn't impressed by those DOA4 screens either. And yes, I do believe they were real - GA's actions just obviously screwed up an exclusive that Tecmo had worked out with another publication.
Actually the WiFi won't be built in, it will be an addon which you'll have to purchase separately.
/. tradition and not actually R'ing TFA).
Which is the whole problem with this article (or at least the summary of it - I'm following the
The Xbox 360 is basically more of the same of the original Xbox. There's nothing revolutionary about it. It's got built-in Ethernet - just like Xbox 1. It's got Xbox Live - just like Xbox 1. It can act as a Windows Media Center Extender - just like Xbox 1. It can play DVD's - just like Xbox 1. It can play music - just like Xbox 1.
True, some of these things cost extra on Xbox 1, and they'll be built into the Xbox 360. Then again, the Xbox 1 currently costs $149, while the Xbox 360 will likely cost $300 or more at launch. So for the moment, it's a wash.
People always say how the new consoles will "revolutionize" entertainment, computing, or whatever else. It's been going on for 20 or more years, back when the Intellivision was promised to have a computer component available for it and everybody thought that would finally bring PC's to the masses. Well, that didn't happen, but we still have this same exact conversation every time a new console is announced. It's going to do this or that beyond playing games, it's going to revolutionize one medium or another, and blah blah blah.
In the end, it always seems to come down to the fact that it plays games a little better than before and has a little bit better graphics than the systems that came before. That's it.
I expect this to be just as true of the Xbox 360 as any other console. I was almost completely underwhelmed by the MTV unveiling, which seemed to show me nothing much that the current Xbox couldn't do other than playing games in HD (which requires a lot more CPU horsepower to support that 1920x1080 resolution, and no doubt that's why the games themselves don't really look much better... they're just physically bigger).
It's almost sad that it takes an apparently fan-made video to show us something truly new and revolutionary; something that I think we've all been waiting for, but will probably still not happen for quite a few years. (This video's been floating around for the past few days and making some pretty big waves; IGN says it's fake without citing a source, I'm still not sure myself.)
The Xbox 360, though, is basically just following the same pattern every other new system ever has... more of the same, just slightly better, and allowing the manufacturer to again charge a price premium. It's no revolution. (No pun intended.)
I went to a couple of E3's, I think 2000 and 2001. One of them was sort of exciting because it was the start of the current generation of consoles and everything felt new. Almost every single booth had something that made me go "wow!" And the Nintendo and Sony press conferences ahead of the show were fun. (I missed the MS conference.)
:)
The second one was more of a grind. I was actually working for the press both years, so while the first one was exciting enough to overcome the drudgery, by the second everything already felt sort of old-hat. All I really remember was lugging a lapop bag around in the stifling L.A. heat for 12 hours a day and having to listen to what seemed like endlessly boring pitches from PR people. It also seemed noticeably louder than the year before, and by the end of the day I always felt like I'd just attended about nine consecutive rock concerts for a band that I didn't even really like.
I don't really have any desire to go again. Once is really enough - I think most people who go more than that agree, and have pretty much the same experience I did the second time. It also doesn't help that it's such an incestual place; the public's not invited so you just have industry types all over the place, and people are constantly trying to shmooze and "network" and it just gets really annoying. It's very political.
Now, the Tokyo Game Show, on the other hand, I could go every year to and never get tired of it. That show's bigger, for one thing (150,000 people vs. 60,000 at E3), and it's a lot more fun because everything's geared towards the public. Plus, there are way more booth chicks
It provides incentive for people to buy the console at launch. Currently it seems Microsoft does not have a true AAA title like Halo to launch with the Xbox 360. If people know that they can play Halo 2 (and maybe with better graphics) as well as the rest of the the Xbox's library of games they are likely to think they will be able to use their new purchase a lot more than just with the maybe 16 games that come out at the time of release.
This reasoning makes no sense, but it's the reasoning I see posted fairly often.
You're basically saying somebody's going to plunk down $300-$400 in order to play the same games they could play if they just stayed at home and used their current system. Right? How is being able to play Halo 2 an "incentive" to buy an Xbox 360? If anything, it's an incentive to developers to keep making games for the Xbox 1 (which has a larger installed base, after all)... which makes it even less attractive for somebody to buy an Xbox 360. It's actually prolonging the lifespan of the original system to the detriment of the new one.
I think backward compatibility is an overrated feature that actually costs manufacturers money in the long run. Look how long Sony ended up supporting two separate home consoles, and that delayed the profitability of the PS2 (as a lot of people bought it at first as a cheap DVD player, and developers had no real incentive to develop for it over the vastly more popular PS1).
We had this same argument in 1983 when the Colecovision could play Atari 2600 games but Atari's own 5200 couldn't and everybody thought that was really stupid. Well, guess what, both companies ended up being forced out of the game console business, so I don't think you can really draw any conclusions about which is the more successful strategy. But you can probably draw conclusions from the fact that the PS2 is the only successful console in the history of consoles that was backward compatible, so I really don't think this feature means much.
Yes, first of all, the stages now are interactive and multi-tier like those in DOA or Mk: Deception,
Somehow I doubt this, as it flies in the face of everything Namco has ever said about Soul Calibur.
The lack of such stages in SC and SC2 was intentional. Namco has always felt that these sorts of gimmicks take away from the one-on-one fighting that makes a good fighting game what it is. It makes them less based on fighting skill, more based on luck and cheap throws.
In fact, nothing I've read in the preview linked here suggests there are now interactive stages. Nothing says anything about online play either.
I certainly hope SC3 stays true to its fighting engine and does not go the DOA/MK route. The good thing about Soul Calibur is that it's always been (going back to Soul Edge/Soul Blade) sort of a "Virtua Fighter Lite" with weapons - it's more accessible than VF but is still focused squarely on the fighters and the fighting rather than gimmicky stages, "fatalities", costumes or cute girls.
Not that there's anything wrong with cute girls, of course.
This is really chilling and scary how people can bully others into submission over one opinion piece.
What MOG did was not an opinion piece; it was, in fact, illegal. PJ is, by her own words, considering her legal options right now, but nobody has the right to a) trespass in another person's home (as MOG all but admits she did in her article, commenting on how the interior of PJ's home looks, noting she was not home at the time), b) list the addresses and telephone numbers of relatives, and c) slander another person publicly with unverified information.
I note that you're an anonymous coward so you obviously do not want us to know who you are. I wonder why?
What MOG did was beyond sleazy; it was illegal, journalistically unethical and personally immoral, and if she was silenced for that, she has nobody to blame but herself.
I'd say you twisted the argument to the point where it doesn't make much sense.
I think the post in question made perfect sense.
MS has, by virtue of their direct control over the Windows OS, the ability to render viruses impotent and irrelevant by actually fixing the root problems that most viruses take advantage of. Instead, they're issuing a band-aid and asking you to pay extra for it. Is that simple enough to understand?
Someone else said "but if MS didn't charge for it, it'd put all the other anti-virus companies out of business!" The point is anti-virus companies exist because of problems in MS's OS. What you are asking MS to do is ignore the disease - which it is in their power to heal - so that companies selling the equivalent of headache medicine can stay in business. There is no reason for these companies to be in business if viruses are not a problem to begin with. And there is no reason why viruses should be a problem to begin with - the reason they are is that MS does not take security seriously enough.
This is just another example of that, despite its initial appearance to the contrary. Rather than actually fixing their OS's problems, they're saying "how can we make money off of our OS's problems?" Pretty ingenious - if utterly cynical - business model.
I really really really hope that the guys start ripping using the H.264 codec next season, then the HD content would look even sweeter.
Ok, Apple's somehow really brainwashed people with this H.264 thing.
It's a good codec, but it's just the latest version of MPEG-4. And Apple's not the only company to use it either (Nero Digital AVC is H.264, for example).
Apple gets good results because they use fairly high bit rates and spend time on the encoding. But honestly, WMV-HD, which is based on an older MPEG-4 codec, looks just as good to my eyes. It just doesn't compress quite as well (and we're talking a couple of hundred kbps difference; they're not worlds apart).
Anyway, DivX, which is what most of these HDTV shows on BT sites are compressed with, is actually using pretty much the same codec as WMV-HD. It can look just as good as Apple's H.264 stuff. Obviously, though, you're talking a 350MB file for a 44 minute show (60 minutes sans commercials) vs. a 350MB file for a 1 minute trailer, in Apple's case. The bit rate is heavily compressed on the files you can get on BT sites, and the resolution is also lowered in the interests of file size for downloading.
Now, as for what's going on with these lawsuits, it really strikes me as stupid. The TV networks give this stuff away over the airwaves! I understand that they own the exclusive distribution rights, but you know what the obvious solution then is? Offer the damn shows up for download (not streaming) complete with commercials, from the TV station's official site. Simple! Make them low quality divx files just like we get from BT for all I care. I will happily skip over the commercials, but you know what? I do this anyway with my MCE machine, and there's not a damn thing they can do to stop me. So I don't see how they really lose anything from this proposition, and they'd regain their internet distribution for themselves.
Here's an example of why this pisses me off. Tonight MS had the good sense (sarcasm) to schedule their Xbox 360 show at the same time as the Apprentice, which I normally watch. I only have a single tuner. So what do I do? I watch the MS thing and miss the Apprentice. Why do the networks not want me to now see the Apprentice that I missed, complete with the same commercials I would have skipped over anyway if that's how they want it? Why not just give me the stupid show as a free SD-quality download an hour or two after it originally aired?
(btw, I say that knowing that I personally would not be helping them any with my commercial skipping, but the point is the same number of people who watch commercials normally are still gonna watch them on a downloaded file, especially if they're still watching on a TV. The people who don't watch commercials aren't gonna watch them no matter what, and even if they're forced to they're not gonna pay any attention.)
If they're worried about overseas or affiliate distribution, a) put up a country block similar to the one the BBC used for their online Olympic coverage (this was pretty effective - I managed to get around it using an anonymous proxy but it was hellishly unreliable, and 99% of the world would not know how to do this), and b) put the downloads on a time delay such that no show goes up until the last affiliate has screened it.
Why is this such a complicated idea? Which makes more sense, to try to sue every bittorrent site out of existence or to proactively retake their own online distribution back? Online distribution is not going away, the question is whether or not the networks want to control it themselves or cede it to others. (And by using lawsuits as their only strategy, they are ceding it to others... they will never stamp out file sharing completely and they should know it. They need to provide a compelling alternative themselves.)
My point is, you don't need a high percentage of "being right" to be very successful. Who cares how often his predictions come true?
The people who read his predictions, that's who.
The point of this thread is not whether or not Bill Gates is successful. The point is whether or not he is right in his prediction that cell phones will overtake standalone DAPs for music playing. Lots of people assume that because he is successful, that his predictions carry some weight. And his predictions do carry some weight, but that does not imply that he is always, or even usually right.
Gates has predicted a lot of things that have not come true. Some things (like the tablet PC) he insists still will come true, even if it's not happening the way he planned. Other things (like MSN and WebTV) he's basically given up on. But people often forget about these things when they read a new prediction, simply based on the fact that he has made a lot of money with Windows and Office. (And make no mistake - that's still where the vast majority of MS's revenue comes from.)
As far as shooting them, Jedi's can deflect blaster rounds with their sabers right? What's wrong with a good, old fashioned shotgun? click-click BOOM. Deflect that.
I would suspect plain old body armor would take care of that pretty easily.
Don't forget that in the Star Wars universe, bionic limbs and bodies are pretty easy to come by. Weaponry is far advanced of what we have now, so you have to assume that they've already gone through the standard projectile weapons and armor phase. It's all likely as outmoded to them as bows and arrows are to us.
Arm an army in Star Wars with shotguns, and all the other side needs is laser blasters to wipe them all out, since shotguns are close-range weapons. All a Jedi would need against a shotgun would be armor, which would render the shotgun-wielding assailant completely impotent and defenseless. (That's not even counting the fact that Jedi can use their force powers to control physical objects, so I'd imagine a Matrix-style bullet freeze would not be impossible in the Star Wars universe.) My guess is things have just progressed to the point in Star Wars where nobody bothers wearing armor anymore because nobody bothers still using archaic weapons like shotguns that require defending against.
You could say the same thing about a lot of ancient weapons in the real world... why do snipers today use loud rifles that betray their location when a poison arrow would be just as lethal with the bonus of being silent? Because there are defenses against arrows; they're just not in common usage anymore because they've done their job so well that they rendered the crossbow obsolete. This ironically would make the crossbow an effective weapon again for someone trained in the methods of using one, but it would be for a very short period of time before your enemy again starts defending against the crossbow, leaving you sitting there using weapons that are laughably ineffective. It's an easy way to ensure your quick defeat.
If we were to arm our military like they do in star wars, we'd be giving every soldier their normal equipment plus a crossbow, a pack of bolts, a knife, AND a sword. And then telling them to close in as quick as possible and engage in hand to hand combat.
You know, I'm not even a Star Wars geek and I've gotta mix it up a little on this one...
First of all, the whole idea of the Jedi is that they are not just elite soldiers, they are practically Gods. Before Lucas went with this whole ridiculous "mitochondria" nonsense, the Jedi were basically a religious sect that understood how to harness a mysterious force that nobody else understood. So, first, you're already suspending disbelief to hell and back because you've got to believe that these guys could control time and space to some extent.
Now, once you accept that premise - that these are not just "foot-soldiers" (remember that the regular soldiers all throughout the Star Wars movies just carry blasters, from the droid armies on eps. 1-3 to the Imperial Army and the rebels in 4-6), but instead ultra-elite combination soldiers/priests/shamen/wizards, then you can start to see how on the one hand, conventional weapons would be entirely ineffective against them (something Lucas has demonstrated time and time again), and hand-to-hand fighting would be their most effective weapon against you. Conversely, it is also the only real way to kill them.
The other thing that a lot of people who argue this point seem to miss is that the Jedi do die out in the end! I mean, it is a parallel to what happened in real life to the knights on this planet, and purposely so. It's the end of chivalry in Star Wars just as it was here, and it happens in Star Wars for some of the very same reasons.
Its kind of rediculous to think anyone at all would ever try to engage anyone else in melee weapon combat as a battle tactic.
Unless that's what you're really good at. If you're a trained swordsman who's so good that he can both dodge bullets and deflect them without fail, why wouldn't you try to engage your enemy in melee combat? Your opponent would be basically defenseless in such a situation, unless he was as well-trained in melee combat as you are.
(The best shooter can't do anything more than shoot straight and accurately, so if there was such a person who could deflect bullets with a sword, it wouldn't matter how good of a shooter he was facing - they'd be just as ineffective. The problem is the mass of real swords makes it impossible to use one that way, but that's why light sabers are supposedly made of light... which is a whole other discussion.)
I thought it was going to be released in November?
I think you need to look up the difference between "unveiling" and "releasing".
This is not news, though - even the headline calls it a "reminder". People have known about this unveiling for several weeks (if not months?) now. It has nothing to do with the launch in November - consoles are always unveiled before they're launched (well, except for the Sega Saturn, and we all saw how well that went over).
On a side not who the hell needs a 19" laptop. why not buy a seguay(spelling) and just pack a desktop around?
"Laptop" is a misnomer, and technically it's not even what Dell calls these things. It's a notebook. Notebooks and laptops are not the same thing and this is a perfect illustration of the distinction.
A laptop is a computer you put on your lap.
A notebook is a computer with a screen that folds down over the keyboard (with a form factor like a paper notebook, hence the name).
A laptop may or may not have a folding screen (the earliest models didn't). A notebook may or may not be "lappable" - i.e. it may or may not be small enough, cool enough or light enough to hold on your lap.
A 19" notebook is a portable PC, but I wouldn't call it a laptop. There's nothing wrong with this category of machine, IMO - I personally keep my notebook on my coffee table 99% of the time, and only carry it with me to a place (in other words, I don't have a need to bust it out in-transit on a train or a bus, I take it out on a corresponding desk or table somewhere else).
Laptops are perfectly fine if you want a real go-anywhere computer. But this is not a laptop, and not everybody needs that amount of portability. Some people just need a machine to act as a desktop most of the time, but that still doesn't take up a lot of space and can be moved around easily when needed.
Well, assuming firmware updates are possible with iPods... maybe I've just been spoiled by my Neuros.
Firmware updates are not only possible, they are issued fairly regularly.
So what? The MP3/digital portable audio market is still in it's infancy. I'd bet that most Americans still haven't heard of the Ipod, and quite a few still don't know what MP3's are.
The current market research doesn't necessarily agree.
Oh, sure, you could argue "only" 22 million Americans is not that big of a number, percentage-wise, but you have to realize that those 22 million Americans also have friends and family members, and once you do, you'll also realize that it's highly unlikely anybody in this country has not heard of the iPod.
It's also more remarkable that this survey did not even include teenagers. So the numbers are likely considerably higher than even that already impressive number.
The mp3 player market is not in its infancy. This is a fallacy that a lot of Apple's competitors seem to like to tell themselves to help them sleep at night. It's a young market, yes, but it is already pretty saturated. It's very hard to get 22 million adult Americans to buy anything collectively, let alone something that was considered a luxury product for ubergeeks just a couple of years ago.
Nokia and others are betting the other way; that the market for standalone digital audio players is going to start to level out soon, and the remaining market (primarily comprised of those who don't need the capacity or battery life of the higher-end players) will turn to cell phones for their music. Obviously, this will still lock out services like Yahoo or Napster.
That's not to say these companies can't make money selling music to the small market they have. But they will never be a serious threat to Apple and the iPod. Sorry, but that's just the reality. Apple is entrenched in a market that has become saturated faster than any I can ever remember.
Are you somehow claiming that every single employee of SCO (or even all of the SCO bosses) are followers of the Church of the LDS?
Am I the only one that read this as "the Church of LSD"? Now that would make some sense.
Grrrr... looks like I confused my towns/counties since reading the article. I thought it said "Hempstead", not "Westchester". Well, the basic point still stands - there are millions of people in that general area up there, and very few of them have ties to IBM. Lots of them have ties to other businesses, especially in NYC.
She is a paralegal working for some number of years in an area where 90% of the jobs are tied to IBM in some way.
90%?? You don't know Long Island, do you?
Long Island is (mostly) a suburb of New York City, with a metro area that's home to somewhere around 29 million people. About 3 million of those people live on Long Island.
Last I heard, IBM did not have 2.7 million employees on its Long Island campus. I mean, when I read this article, that part of it was what immediately struck me. Sure, ethically speaking the religious jabs, the giving out of the home addresses, etc. were worse, but the insinuation that because she's on Long Island she's in "IBM country" and by implication an IBM shill struck me as simply stupid. A whole lot of people live on Long Island and not that many of them work for IBM.
Disclaimer: I also live on Long Island, so if you're MOG I guess you'll now have to wonder whether I'm a paid IBM shill too.
(and btw, IBM has offices all over the place, including in New York City itself. So is everyone in the entire NYC metro area now suddenly on IBM's payroll? Talk about paranoia!)
I think the Windows Media Center Edition button makes it obviously clear that this will not only be a game system, but a PVR and progressive scan DVD player/burner.
The Media Center button is so it can act as a Media Center Extender, which the current Xbox also does - for $100 extra. It is not going to be an MCE machine itself.
It also does not imply anything about burning discs (which is not even a requirement of a real MCE machine).
In that whole process, the independant verification (or first-hand verification when "independant" has no meaning, such as "Fred said X in a private interview")
I'm going to burn some karma here, because the whole "-ant"/"-ent" thing has really started to burn my goose. All over the net, it seems like the misspelling of words like this has actually become more common than the correct one, and I've got an itch to finally say something about it.
It's "independent", people. Similarly, it's "dependent" and "sentence". It is not "independant", "sentance", or "dependant" (in this context, anyway).
"Dependant" is an actual word, but it's a noun that means "subordinate". It is not an adjective meaning "to depend on someone". There is no noun form of "independant", so that spelling is just wrong any way you slice it and in any dialect of English.
It's getting to be like the there/their/they're thing that people used to have (some people still do, but it seems like the grammar nazis of the past were mostly successful in stamping that out). I know some people don't care about such things, and I usually don't either, but you write like this and people who know better (usually the very people to whom you're trying to get a point across) will think you're an idiot. So it is in your own best interests to know the difference between what's correct and what isn't.
To the actual poster above, as someone who speaks with such knowledge about what is required of true journalists, I would think you would have known that proper spelling is a prerequisite.
(Yes, I know, everybody makes typos - including me - but say it twice in one sentence and it ain't a typo anymore.)