I think that we can assume a uniform distribution on parties.
Not a great assumption. Witness all the get-out-the-vote campaigns by both parties. These only work because distribution of voters is anything but uniform. Why on earth would they spend money on gettting voters to the polls if the numbers would just cancel each other out?
The truth is, in districts where the distribution of occasional voters favors their side, they'll try to get out the vote. If distribution of sometimes-voters favors the opponent, they do stuff to convince them to stay home (for example democrats are much more likely to stay home if campaigning is negative so republicans sometimes go negative specifically to keep 'em home.)
Even the subject of the article makes it clear that his would not be a random vote, and that his family is trying to convince him to vote because they know what he would do. Do you think they would spend any time on this if they thought he was voting for their candidate's opponent?
I wish more people would make web sites for deaf surfers (read: silent). You almost put your job at risk if someone asks you to go to their Myspace page when you're at work. And I despise checking the news and having some jackass ad pop up with some stupid sound.
"Honest boss, I was just checking the weather."
"That didn't sound like the weather to me."
Sheesh.
BTW, I'm all for the ADA on this one. As the web becomes more a part of normal American existence, we need to act more professionally about the way we run it. Just as it would never occur to a business to not have a phone number, we're about at the point where even the smallest organization does some form of business on the web. Government increasingly allows you to do business on the web and is on the cusp of requiring it. It's easy to help blind people on this. It's certainly no more costly to design a web page with the proper tags than it is to make sure your shop has ramps and isle clearance.
It's time to stop being kids with toys and start being men and women with responsibilities. If your web site is serious at all, then grow up and act like it. Stop acting like it's taking food out of your kids mouth to help a blind person across the street.
In one way, you can easily scream OMG ITS A TRAP! The article pretty much gives us the worst case senario, which leaves me thinking FUD. Yeah. That pretty much seems like it. FUD.
Unfortunately this is not an isolated case for the Slashdot community. Haven't had enough FUD from Microsoft? Well, heck, we'll just make our own.
I love Slashdot for facts, but I've just about given up on it for opinions, especially speculations of doomsday. I can't think of a single time I've seen one of these ultimate-death-for-open-source scenarios come to pass. Open question to the Slashdot community: Can you link to any story in Slashdot history that predicted a scenerio of secret scheming above and beyond what the mainstream press was predicting, and it became reality or mostly reality?
Please post 'em. I'd love to have my faith restored.
Because it's not high priority to the customer, only Microsoft. They're instilling a sense of urgency that shouldn't be there and insinuating there's a threat to not installing the software (isn't that what we're trained to think with High Priority Windows Updates?) when it's merely a product and of speculative value to the customer.
It's like me saying there's a high priority to you buying a BMW. No there isn't. It may not be a particularly mean lie, but it is a lie.
You'd rather people stayed with the old, proven-insecure IE6?
What reason do you have to believe that this version will be more secure? It's not exactly like it has proven track-record of reliability. I don't know were people get their definition of the words "secure" and "unsecure" sometimes, but I have a hard time seeing how you could defend this statement as anything more than an out-of-your-ass guess.
Besides, what part of it being a high-priority download forces people to use it...
Nothing is forcing anyone right now, but since the average non-IT user has no frame of reference to know if they should or shouldn't use it, they'll take Microsoft's word that "high priority" is the same thing as "must have". And how am I, an experienced IT engineer, going to tell them that they need to install every other high-priority patch except this one? Am I gonna tell them Microsoft is lying in just this one case? Sure.
As a former owner of an Atari 2600, I am quite aware that we've had more than 3 true generations of consoles. I used the term 3rd generation mostly because it appears to me that the major players are competing on a 3 themed basis. The Xbox 360 only got its name to put a three in the title because they didn't want to seem like they were behind the 8-ball. They wanted to be percieved as every bit as big of a player as Sony. Wouldn't an Xbox 2 have had to struggle a little harder in the hearts of those knowing that a Playstation 3 was available? An Xbox 360 doesn't have to work quite as hard. The market leader has had three generations of its console so it forced the others to follow suit.
Well, that last line is something of a lie at Nintendo headquarters. Nintendo definately did not try to compete head-on with Sony. But that's kind of my point. They purposely decided not to go for the latest hardware and try to say they had more graphical power. Yes, graphical power _is_ the standard by wich these consoles judge their generations. Considering the lack of difference between the controllers use in the PS1, PS2 and PS3, you kind of have to say that it's almost the only difference to Sony. Not only have they been touting their game graphics, but the higher resolution of Blu Ray as well. Microsoft has been doing the same, promising an HD-DVD drive "real soon".
Even on the GameCube, Nintendo marketed the machine based on it's graphical capabilities. They know good and well that this is the stick by which consoles are measured. This doesn't make their choices wrong, it just puts them behind the competition on this measure. A lot behind. It might work, but it won't change the "generation" in which they've chosen to compete.
I have no problem with Nintendo's choice, nor with yours. For what it's worth, I had no problem with GameCubes either and often witnessed my daughter's friends shuttling them from house to house to play games like Super Smash Bros (it appears Nintendo knew what they were doing when they built in the handle.).
What I have the problem with is the people who appear to be insisting that no one "needs" the better graphics hardware and, ironically, that we do "need" the interesting controller hardware of the Wii. The answers are, a)you're right, but I sure "want" it and b)"you're wrong, but it may be nice."
It's no skin off my nose if these people's preffered platform was an old Nokia with the game Snake. People are free to enjoy or dislike whatever they wish. But to claim the Nokia is actually a superior platform and has no downside is another matter altogether. Sure, it's a free country and they're free to say it, but they're just flat-out wrong.
The Wii is simply not comparable to the PS3 or 360. At best, it's a gen 2.5 rather than a gen 3 (and at worst, it's actually a gen 2). If that suits them, like it seams to suit you, then terrific. Enjoy yourselves, and I might even glom on for a few games. Just don't bother trying to convince me the hardeware is somehow better than Sony's or Microsofts. I might like the Wii just fine despite it having yesterday's hardware, but that will never be a reason for me to actually want it.
Here's the deal: I love old arcade games. I have a PSP, and two of my favorite game UMDs are the Midway and Namco classic collectiosns.(you can call me a chump for not doing homebrew if you must). I also enjoy side scrollers, top scrollers and, though I've never encountered one, I'd probably like a bottom scroller too.
But I love 3D games as well. I love eye-candy. I love the imersive experience of a Far Cry or NFS title.
Am I wrong to love both? Should I only like yesterday's games? Should I be satisfied with whatever is currently available and just ignore the possiblities of tommorow?
I don't think that would be fair to me.
The fact is that there are only two of this generation's consoles that push the graphical envelope, and neither one of them starts with a 'W'. I'm sure the Wii will be a fine machine and I'm sure the games are going to be fun, but the fact is that the kind of fun it will be capable of producing is going to be limited by it's graphics engine. You won't be able to get an upgraded CPU, GPU or output resolution for your Wii. By comparison, grafting on fancy controllers has not only been possible, but highly lucrative for Sony in the past (DDR, EyeToy, Guitar Hero). The ability to create a Wii-like experience on the PS3 is only limited by the imaginations of the game designing community.
I'm not tying to start a negative discussion. I don't seek to be a troll. All I'm saying is that the Wii-loving community should face up to the fact that the machine they desire abosolutely has inferior specs and protesting that they're not "needed" ignors the fact that a lot of people will "want" something more.
I'm surprised and pleased to see Slashdot posting religious images of the Christian variety
Couldn't quite tell if you were being serious, or exactly which part you may be joking about, but, for the record, it was a story about digital photography, not about religion. If I had mod points, your post would simply be off topic.
I hate to be so humorlous, but people get foocused so tightly on certain emotional subjects that they sometimes refuse to see what's really going on. Religion just happens to be one of them. I could give you a thousand examples (well maybe really just a dozen) but yours will do just fine for the moment.
What I think he meant was, what will people on the street say about Sony and the PS3 if you ask 10 of them, ages 15 to 30, at random?
You seem to be saying that a singificant number of those will say something like, "Sony is bad and I won't buy a PS3 because of it."
The guy you're responding to seems to be saying that a very small percentage will have anything negative to say about Sony, an even smaller percantage will even know about any boycotts, and most will hope they get a PS3 for Christmas.
Guess what? He's right. My anecdotal evidence of just talking to folks about Sony video games goes something like, "TW, that PSP you have is cool, can I try" and "I hear that new PS3 is gonna be pretty cool." Of course these people also say, "That DS looks pretty cool, and I here they're comming out with a new Nintendo box too." Or even, "I tried out that Xbox 360 at the store and it was pretty cool. I shure would like one when the price comes down." These people seem to know that the boxes exist, that they're desirable and that they'd like to have something that desireable, but not by any stretch of the imagination that any of these companies are so bad they shouldn't buy their products.
My annecdotal sample includes IT geeks (my current proffesion is IT) as well as non-IT folks and mothers. Even my daughter's anime geek friends, who spend a huge amount of the time surfing geeky web sites and playing WOW, couldn't care less about the boycott. They just want any of the damn things just as soon as they can get them.
Ya see, even all those forums you mention where people rant about boycotts, they represent a tiny percentage of the actual consumer base. Have you looked at the membership numbers of those sites? How many have even 50,000 members?
If the news about a boycott, especialy a major boycott of a major company like Sony, is big, it wont be in the forumns of enthusiast game sites, it'll get reported on CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times. Regularly. If you don't see it there, then it's not big, and the word that Sony is "bad" wont get to enough people to make a difference. Ask some coworkers, ask some friends, ask some family. Ask anyone you haven't alread told about the boycott. See if they even know it exists. Then wish and hope all you want. But if the mainstreem media doesn't pick it up, if your friends don't know about it, and if Sony doesn't completely fuck up the quality of their box,your boycott won't be but a pimple on their ass. They may want to pop you, but you won't do them any serious damage.
1) I don't get it about the vibration thingy. Did y'all really like that? I found it quite anoying and turned it off whenever I could. I just assumed they took it out because of poor responses from focus groups or something. I was quite surprised to hear such a backlash about this. Does this actually either help, or broaden the experience of your gaming? More power to ya and sorry it's gone, but if you(coletively) wouldn't have brought it up, I wouldn't have noticed.
2)High sales numbers because of Blu Ray only. So what? If they have a box with high demand from a bunch of different types of users, why is this a bad thing?
Sure, you claim they need to sell games to make money, but you forget Sony is very much in the movie business. People buy a whole lot more movies than games because of cheaper prices, shorter entertainment intervals (you may play a game for weeks, but only watch a move once or twice) and much broader demographics (movie demographis make the Wii's overatures to the "casual" gamer seem laughable when you compare the total potential market size) Even though margins are smaller for movies, the larger volume could very well make up for the difference. The more Blu Ray players they put in consumer hands, the faster they start to make that movie money, and the faster the PS3 is seen as a net profit center.
BTW, yes, you can do the math for movie profit per PS3, even though there are a lot of different Blu Ray players. If the PS3 is, say 30% of the Blu Ray install base and consumer surveys show an average of 5 Blu Ray discs per each PS3-only household, then that represents a profit you can attribute to the PS3. But is it just canabalism that otherwise would have gone to stand-alone Blue Ray players? Once again, so what? Getting an install base out there makes them profits. It doesn't matter whether those profits come from stand-alone or PS3, just as long as the consumer has a player that will entice themt o buy profitable Blu Ray discs.
Insightful indead. Companies choose to trust CxOs, accountants, bookeepers and physical security personnel. These people can cause a tremendous amout of damage to a company, up to, and including, the complete collapse of the company (Enron, Worldcom, etc).
The question isn't whether to trust, but under what conditions? Accountants and bookeepers often have checks, balances, licenses and bonding. CxOs have major positions of repsonsibilty with the salaries to match, and now they have Sarbanes-Oxley too. Physical security folks are often bonded, polygraphed, drug tested, etc.
So which of these are most applicable to IT? Do we have checks, balances, licensing, bonding, major positions of responsibility with the salaries to match? Do we have polygraphs or drug tests? Do we have laws like SOX that put us in the hot seat if things go wrong?
I'm not sugesting we should do any particular one of these things, but as IT continues to mature, and IT is seen, as it should be, as a single point of failure that could cause damage up to, and including, the complete collapse of the company, we're going to need to proffesionalize our practices to the point much greater than the blind faith that often exists today.
TW
(note: I know IT has a major role in SOX compliance, but we're not held responsible unless the company in question builds that into the system. Many companies aren't, at least not to the extent they should. If SOX causes more shops to know exactly who has access to email, and exactly how to go about making sure they're responsible and holding them accountable then, well, problem solved. I personally don't think SOX alone is enough.)
Tomb Raider: Legends is one of the easiest games I've played recently. I beat it on the hardest difficulty setting in about 20 hours of total playtime, and that was with me exploring around to find all the little artifacts.
I think both the story and this comment reveal a blinding flash of the obvious: Different players with different skill levels will have different experiences with the same game.
Saying a game will take 40 hours to complete is like saying It'll take 40 hours of practice to beat Kobe Bryant. This might be true if you're Michael Jordan, but very much not true if you're Total_Wimp.
Maybe it's time to rate games by difficulty, just like different college basketball leagues feature different levels of play. I'd love to see this on multi-player servers as well so I don't end up shooting fish in a barrel or, er, wind up being the fish.
My post was meant to be funny, but you make a good point. Unfortunately, I'm compelled to mention that Timothy McVeigh used a regular ol' truck to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City and the first attempt on the world trade center was with an explosive laden van. It's a mistake for people to only look to the skies for threats, and as the Oklahoma City should have taught us, it's also a mistake to only look toward Arabs or Muslims as the bad guys.
Joke well taken, but in all honesty the bigger joke is that we technically could have had flying cars already. You know what the problem is? the general public couldn't be trusted not to crash the things left and right. In no time there would be more flying lawsuits than cars.
And exactly how is this different from cars with wheels?
Who the heck cares about a game nobody has even heard of. Or wants to hear of. Or could even remotely consider buying.
How about new sequels of already very much loved games?
This really bothers me. I thought it was unimaginative studios that were pushing all these sequels on us but you're here actually demanding the rehashes over something at least unusual if not totally unique. Because of you (and, presumably millions more like you), I'm going to have to wade through shelfs chock full of things like "Devil May Cry 28 - the Ulitimate Devil" in order to find a few gems like "Something No One Ever Thought of Before that's Actually Really Super Cool."
Here's a hint: The Sims, Dance Dance Revolution, Eye Toy, and Guitar Hero were very new, totally unproven, and risky concepts when they first came out. Maybe they weren't all completely new (eye toy type stuff had been done on a small scale), but they were totally new to most players. These games were giant hits because of their freshness. Please don't squash my chances at something fresh so you can eat peas-porage-in-the-pot-nine-days-old.
If you want these sequals, terrific, encourage them and buy them, but for god's sake don't pick on the journalists who actually have the balls to ignore the safe questions and ask about something new.
Clearly, they don't think so, because they're an iMac buyer, not a Mac Mini buyer. What an utterly astounding revelation! It's almost like different people can have different sets of needs and values!
Interesting viewpoint.
I don't see why we'd spend any effort at all letting them know there's another, possibly better choice if they've already made up their mind about which is better. After all, different people do have different sets of needs and values and they're never mistaken about their assesments of these qualities.
And people who buy 480p "HDTVs". We're not going to let them know it's not a very good deal. We won't spend any time letting our parents know about the difference between display resolution and input resolution. The difference between a single core and dual core at the same Mhz speed may be lost on my sister, but why waste the energy letting her know the difference? She's a big girl who understands what she needs. Heck, I might not even tell my wife she could get the same gear cheaper at Newegg.com. She's probably assessed CompUSA and knows her purchases will have more value in the long run.
The value of a 24" LCD vs. a 17" LCD is pretty large. Gets even larger for a 15".
That said, laptop owners have always accepted that they're paying a premium, both for price vs. performance and the inability to reuse components like monitors. Presumably iMac users are accepting a similar tradeoff for an all-in-one unit.
But you have to wonder, with the Mini showing that desktop computers don't have to be very large, wouldn't the average iMac buyer get better value if the monitor was a seprate unit? There's very little advantage to having an iMac vs. a Mini and monitor either in footprint, complexity or portability.
There's a video out as well, so you can make due for a bit if the display goes out. And personally I'd just pull the drive before sending it back - or better yet, encrypt it on the volume and rely on your backups.
But that doesn't really answer the implied question of the overall value of seperate components. In three to four years when you want to buy a faster computer, you're going to need to buy a new monitor as well, even though monitors tend to have a much longer usable life.
On the other hand, if you decide you need a different monitor (is something even bigger needed for DVD watching?) then you have this rather large box that you need to find somewhere to stow, yet still keep accessible enough to change the DVD you're playing. That's not even counting that you'd be denying yourself the ability to use that nice 24" monitor somwhere else in the house or the ablity to get a little money back by selling it on ebay.
No, it's not the end of the world to have them combined, but in this case, with a very nice monitor and nice computer specs, it would be more valuable to the consumer to have them seperate.
Valve's games constantly have very high quality, outstanding story and very enjoyable gameplay. To make their game as perfect as possible, I feel that giving them another 3-4 months is acceptable.
The quality thing is all good and fine, but would you accept that excuse for a 4-month delay from, say, "Scientific American," or "Motor Trend"? How about the next episode of "24"?
The fact is, I waited a long time for both Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, both for "quality" and other reasons, and this wait wasn't a big problem for me. But if Valve expects me to buy into the "episodes" thing, they better give me some regularly spaced, relatively quickly released entertainment. I shouldn't be wondering if the wait for the next chapter will be doubled to the better part of a year.
This is not an apeal to lower quality, it's an apeal to be respectful of the consumer of serialized entertainment. If they're going down this path, then they should understand what the assumptions are when you publish something called an "episode." If they can't do that, maybe this isn't really isn't the type of gaming experience they should be pursuing.
BTW, "Seinfeld" had to meet strict deadlines. It seldom had quality problems. "Deadline" and "Quality" are not mutually exclusive terms.
That was my first thought too. Then I remembered that the ESRB had raised the rating of GTA: San Andreas to "Adults Only" after the Hot Chocolate mod was released.
Yeah, I know, RockStar would rip out scenes of Bully right and left if necessary to get it down to a "Mature" rating. However, theorectially it could still get rated "Adults Only". Wal Mart doesn't want to be put in the position of having presold a game that it would like to turn around and not sell at all due to company policy. They don't want surprises like San Andreas.
Now, as to why Slashdoters care, that's another issue. I can understand them not wanting speech infringed, etc, but I'm pretty much completely failing to see how this could either infringe free expresion or even provide a "slippery slope" to infringing free expression.
I think this is actually kind of smart for Wal Mart. They're waiting to see the exactly what the product will be before they start to sell it. I'd want to know if a game called "Pleasant Dreams" was a title for 5 year-olds, a soft core pornography game or a game where you hack up bloody nightmare monsters before selling it too.
I was in an EBgames shop and two teenage boys were trying to buy a game. The clerk refused to sell it to them because they looked under age and had no ID with them (or didn't want to produce it). They argued. They begged. They left without the game. They cussed loudly on their way out.
The clerk, backed up by at least one other clerk on duty and a little shaken by the situation, said she was just trying to do her job, and that was the policy of the store. I applaude the store and I applaude the clerk.
Knowing that stores will not routinely sell mature games to minors helps me feel that I have backup. Knowing theatres won't routinely let underage kids into see R rated movies helps me feel I have backup. It's easy for me to override these hurdles. I just buy the game or I take her to the movie. But it's my choice.
I know that many times they get ratings wrong. It's an imperfect system. But it gives me someplace to start, a default position if you will. If I see the game is labled as mature, I can then investigate furhter to see if I'd really find it objectionable. My daughter is 17 so this is no longer really an issue for us, but I would have been somewhat miffed if she had been sold Grand Theft Auto when she was 14. On the other hand, I routinely let her play Unreal Tournament at an even younger age because by my personal standards, its less of an issue. That's my choice as a father, the choice to allow my daughter to use media of a mature nature, or to just say no. The ratings help me do that, and I'm glad they're helping others as well.
So you aren't stuck with Windows Mobile, having to pay for any good tool to use on it, or installing freeware that barely works.
The thing is, the device in question does what the Mylo does out-of-the-box without any seperate software. My view of Windows Mobile is still somewhat mixed, but the messaging, web browsing picture view and music listening have been pretty good without the hassle of getting more software.
Caviate: The iPod succeeded where others failed because it was super easy to use and super slick. If the Mylo fits this mold, it'll probably find it pretty easy to beat Windows Mobile. Windows mobile is pretty good, but definately not "slick". However, if it's kind of like the PSP (also pretty good, but not slick) then I don't see how a person could justify spending 350 clams on it.
BTW, I consider the 770 to be practically a different category. It's a nifty web device with a nice sized screen, but no keyboard. You'd never use it in place of an iPod and only for very limited messaging, but you could comfortably sit on the couch or in a coffe shop and enjoy a nice browse session. I think comparing the two is a bit of a stretch.
I don't get it. Why not just get a Cingular 8125? I'm failing to see any stat that's better except memory, and buying an extra Mini-SD to bring that stat up still gets you in the door cheaper than the Mylo. The screen is actually slightly larger than the Mylo (2.8 vs 2.4) and the keyboard is much better.
In fact, I don't see why anyone would want to use a device like this that's limited to Wi-Fi networks. Wi-fi is better than cords, but you're still on a relatively short leash. My internet browsing, text messaging and email works just fine on my phone almost anywhere without setting up yet another hot-spot. Sound and pictures work great too, though video is a little fussy if don't get the quality just right.
In a day when people are getting more and more communication choices on their cell phones, video on their iPods, and the internet on their DSs and PSPs, I'm just utterly failing to see a market rushing to embrace this kind of device.
Slashdot Mirror
Not a great assumption. Witness all the get-out-the-vote campaigns by both parties. These only work because distribution of voters is anything but uniform. Why on earth would they spend money on gettting voters to the polls if the numbers would just cancel each other out?
The truth is, in districts where the distribution of occasional voters favors their side, they'll try to get out the vote. If distribution of sometimes-voters favors the opponent, they do stuff to convince them to stay home (for example democrats are much more likely to stay home if campaigning is negative so republicans sometimes go negative specifically to keep 'em home.)
Even the subject of the article makes it clear that his would not be a random vote, and that his family is trying to convince him to vote because they know what he would do. Do you think they would spend any time on this if they thought he was voting for their candidate's opponent?
TW
I wish more people would make web sites for deaf surfers (read: silent). You almost put your job at risk if someone asks you to go to their Myspace page when you're at work. And I despise checking the news and having some jackass ad pop up with some stupid sound.
"Honest boss, I was just checking the weather."
"That didn't sound like the weather to me."
Sheesh.
BTW, I'm all for the ADA on this one. As the web becomes more a part of normal American existence, we need to act more professionally about the way we run it. Just as it would never occur to a business to not have a phone number, we're about at the point where even the smallest organization does some form of business on the web. Government increasingly allows you to do business on the web and is on the cusp of requiring it. It's easy to help blind people on this. It's certainly no more costly to design a web page with the proper tags than it is to make sure your shop has ramps and isle clearance.
It's time to stop being kids with toys and start being men and women with responsibilities. If your web site is serious at all, then grow up and act like it. Stop acting like it's taking food out of your kids mouth to help a blind person across the street.
TW
Unfortunately this is not an isolated case for the Slashdot community. Haven't had enough FUD from Microsoft? Well, heck, we'll just make our own.
I love Slashdot for facts, but I've just about given up on it for opinions, especially speculations of doomsday. I can't think of a single time I've seen one of these ultimate-death-for-open-source scenarios come to pass. Open question to the Slashdot community: Can you link to any story in Slashdot history that predicted a scenerio of secret scheming above and beyond what the mainstream press was predicting, and it became reality or mostly reality?
Please post 'em. I'd love to have my faith restored.
TW
Why do you say they're lying?
Because it's not high priority to the customer, only Microsoft. They're instilling a sense of urgency that shouldn't be there and insinuating there's a threat to not installing the software (isn't that what we're trained to think with High Priority Windows Updates?) when it's merely a product and of speculative value to the customer.
It's like me saying there's a high priority to you buying a BMW. No there isn't. It may not be a particularly mean lie, but it is a lie.
TW
What reason do you have to believe that this version will be more secure? It's not exactly like it has proven track-record of reliability. I don't know were people get their definition of the words "secure" and "unsecure" sometimes, but I have a hard time seeing how you could defend this statement as anything more than an out-of-your-ass guess.
Nothing is forcing anyone right now, but since the average non-IT user has no frame of reference to know if they should or shouldn't use it, they'll take Microsoft's word that "high priority" is the same thing as "must have". And how am I, an experienced IT engineer, going to tell them that they need to install every other high-priority patch except this one? Am I gonna tell them Microsoft is lying in just this one case? Sure.
TW
As a former owner of an Atari 2600, I am quite aware that we've had more than 3 true generations of consoles. I used the term 3rd generation mostly because it appears to me that the major players are competing on a 3 themed basis. The Xbox 360 only got its name to put a three in the title because they didn't want to seem like they were behind the 8-ball. They wanted to be percieved as every bit as big of a player as Sony. Wouldn't an Xbox 2 have had to struggle a little harder in the hearts of those knowing that a Playstation 3 was available? An Xbox 360 doesn't have to work quite as hard. The market leader has had three generations of its console so it forced the others to follow suit.
Well, that last line is something of a lie at Nintendo headquarters. Nintendo definately did not try to compete head-on with Sony. But that's kind of my point. They purposely decided not to go for the latest hardware and try to say they had more graphical power. Yes, graphical power _is_ the standard by wich these consoles judge their generations. Considering the lack of difference between the controllers use in the PS1, PS2 and PS3, you kind of have to say that it's almost the only difference to Sony. Not only have they been touting their game graphics, but the higher resolution of Blu Ray as well. Microsoft has been doing the same, promising an HD-DVD drive "real soon".
Even on the GameCube, Nintendo marketed the machine based on it's graphical capabilities. They know good and well that this is the stick by which consoles are measured. This doesn't make their choices wrong, it just puts them behind the competition on this measure. A lot behind. It might work, but it won't change the "generation" in which they've chosen to compete.
TW
I have no problem with Nintendo's choice, nor with yours. For what it's worth, I had no problem with GameCubes either and often witnessed my daughter's friends shuttling them from house to house to play games like Super Smash Bros (it appears Nintendo knew what they were doing when they built in the handle.).
What I have the problem with is the people who appear to be insisting that no one "needs" the better graphics hardware and, ironically, that we do "need" the interesting controller hardware of the Wii. The answers are, a)you're right, but I sure "want" it and b)"you're wrong, but it may be nice."
It's no skin off my nose if these people's preffered platform was an old Nokia with the game Snake. People are free to enjoy or dislike whatever they wish. But to claim the Nokia is actually a superior platform and has no downside is another matter altogether. Sure, it's a free country and they're free to say it, but they're just flat-out wrong.
The Wii is simply not comparable to the PS3 or 360. At best, it's a gen 2.5 rather than a gen 3 (and at worst, it's actually a gen 2). If that suits them, like it seams to suit you, then terrific. Enjoy yourselves, and I might even glom on for a few games. Just don't bother trying to convince me the hardeware is somehow better than Sony's or Microsofts. I might like the Wii just fine despite it having yesterday's hardware, but that will never be a reason for me to actually want it.
TW
Ok, I'm finally gonna bite on the Wii subject.
Here's the deal: I love old arcade games. I have a PSP, and two of my favorite game UMDs are the Midway and Namco classic collectiosns.(you can call me a chump for not doing homebrew if you must). I also enjoy side scrollers, top scrollers and, though I've never encountered one, I'd probably like a bottom scroller too.
But I love 3D games as well. I love eye-candy. I love the imersive experience of a Far Cry or NFS title.
Am I wrong to love both? Should I only like yesterday's games? Should I be satisfied with whatever is currently available and just ignore the possiblities of tommorow?
I don't think that would be fair to me.
The fact is that there are only two of this generation's consoles that push the graphical envelope, and neither one of them starts with a 'W'. I'm sure the Wii will be a fine machine and I'm sure the games are going to be fun, but the fact is that the kind of fun it will be capable of producing is going to be limited by it's graphics engine. You won't be able to get an upgraded CPU, GPU or output resolution for your Wii. By comparison, grafting on fancy controllers has not only been possible, but highly lucrative for Sony in the past (DDR, EyeToy, Guitar Hero). The ability to create a Wii-like experience on the PS3 is only limited by the imaginations of the game designing community.
I'm not tying to start a negative discussion. I don't seek to be a troll. All I'm saying is that the Wii-loving community should face up to the fact that the machine they desire abosolutely has inferior specs and protesting that they're not "needed" ignors the fact that a lot of people will "want" something more.
TW
Couldn't quite tell if you were being serious, or exactly which part you may be joking about, but, for the record, it was a story about digital photography, not about religion. If I had mod points, your post would simply be off topic.
I hate to be so humorlous, but people get foocused so tightly on certain emotional subjects that they sometimes refuse to see what's really going on. Religion just happens to be one of them. I could give you a thousand examples (well maybe really just a dozen) but yours will do just fine for the moment.
Digital photograhy of a painting: YES
Story about religion: NO
adios,
TW
What I think he meant was, what will people on the street say about Sony and the PS3 if you ask 10 of them, ages 15 to 30, at random?
You seem to be saying that a singificant number of those will say something like, "Sony is bad and I won't buy a PS3 because of it."
The guy you're responding to seems to be saying that a very small percentage will have anything negative to say about Sony, an even smaller percantage will even know about any boycotts, and most will hope they get a PS3 for Christmas.
Guess what? He's right. My anecdotal evidence of just talking to folks about Sony video games goes something like, "TW, that PSP you have is cool, can I try" and "I hear that new PS3 is gonna be pretty cool." Of course these people also say, "That DS looks pretty cool, and I here they're comming out with a new Nintendo box too." Or even, "I tried out that Xbox 360 at the store and it was pretty cool. I shure would like one when the price comes down." These people seem to know that the boxes exist, that they're desirable and that they'd like to have something that desireable, but not by any stretch of the imagination that any of these companies are so bad they shouldn't buy their products.
My annecdotal sample includes IT geeks (my current proffesion is IT) as well as non-IT folks and mothers. Even my daughter's anime geek friends, who spend a huge amount of the time surfing geeky web sites and playing WOW, couldn't care less about the boycott. They just want any of the damn things just as soon as they can get them.
Ya see, even all those forums you mention where people rant about boycotts, they represent a tiny percentage of the actual consumer base. Have you looked at the membership numbers of those sites? How many have even 50,000 members?
If the news about a boycott, especialy a major boycott of a major company like Sony, is big, it wont be in the forumns of enthusiast game sites, it'll get reported on CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times. Regularly. If you don't see it there, then it's not big, and the word that Sony is "bad" wont get to enough people to make a difference. Ask some coworkers, ask some friends, ask some family. Ask anyone you haven't alread told about the boycott. See if they even know it exists. Then wish and hope all you want. But if the mainstreem media doesn't pick it up, if your friends don't know about it, and if Sony doesn't completely fuck up the quality of their box,your boycott won't be but a pimple on their ass. They may want to pop you, but you won't do them any serious damage.
TW
Couple things
1) I don't get it about the vibration thingy. Did y'all really like that? I found it quite anoying and turned it off whenever I could. I just assumed they took it out because of poor responses from focus groups or something. I was quite surprised to hear such a backlash about this. Does this actually either help, or broaden the experience of your gaming? More power to ya and sorry it's gone, but if you(coletively) wouldn't have brought it up, I wouldn't have noticed.
2)High sales numbers because of Blu Ray only. So what? If they have a box with high demand from a bunch of different types of users, why is this a bad thing?
Sure, you claim they need to sell games to make money, but you forget Sony is very much in the movie business. People buy a whole lot more movies than games because of cheaper prices, shorter entertainment intervals (you may play a game for weeks, but only watch a move once or twice) and much broader demographics (movie demographis make the Wii's overatures to the "casual" gamer seem laughable when you compare the total potential market size) Even though margins are smaller for movies, the larger volume could very well make up for the difference. The more Blu Ray players they put in consumer hands, the faster they start to make that movie money, and the faster the PS3 is seen as a net profit center.
BTW, yes, you can do the math for movie profit per PS3, even though there are a lot of different Blu Ray players. If the PS3 is, say 30% of the Blu Ray install base and consumer surveys show an average of 5 Blu Ray discs per each PS3-only household, then that represents a profit you can attribute to the PS3. But is it just canabalism that otherwise would have gone to stand-alone Blue Ray players? Once again, so what? Getting an install base out there makes them profits. It doesn't matter whether those profits come from stand-alone or PS3, just as long as the consumer has a player that will entice themt o buy profitable Blu Ray discs.
TW
Insightful indead. Companies choose to trust CxOs, accountants, bookeepers and physical security personnel. These people can cause a tremendous amout of damage to a company, up to, and including, the complete collapse of the company (Enron, Worldcom, etc).
The question isn't whether to trust, but under what conditions? Accountants and bookeepers often have checks, balances, licenses and bonding. CxOs have major positions of repsonsibilty with the salaries to match, and now they have Sarbanes-Oxley too. Physical security folks are often bonded, polygraphed, drug tested, etc.
So which of these are most applicable to IT? Do we have checks, balances, licensing, bonding, major positions of responsibility with the salaries to match? Do we have polygraphs or drug tests? Do we have laws like SOX that put us in the hot seat if things go wrong?
I'm not sugesting we should do any particular one of these things, but as IT continues to mature, and IT is seen, as it should be, as a single point of failure that could cause damage up to, and including, the complete collapse of the company, we're going to need to proffesionalize our practices to the point much greater than the blind faith that often exists today.
TW
(note: I know IT has a major role in SOX compliance, but we're not held responsible unless the company in question builds that into the system. Many companies aren't, at least not to the extent they should. If SOX causes more shops to know exactly who has access to email, and exactly how to go about making sure they're responsible and holding them accountable then, well, problem solved. I personally don't think SOX alone is enough.)
I think both the story and this comment reveal a blinding flash of the obvious: Different players with different skill levels will have different experiences with the same game.
Saying a game will take 40 hours to complete is like saying It'll take 40 hours of practice to beat Kobe Bryant. This might be true if you're Michael Jordan, but very much not true if you're Total_Wimp.
Maybe it's time to rate games by difficulty, just like different college basketball leagues feature different levels of play. I'd love to see this on multi-player servers as well so I don't end up shooting fish in a barrel or, er, wind up being the fish.
TW
My post was meant to be funny, but you make a good point. Unfortunately, I'm compelled to mention that Timothy McVeigh used a regular ol' truck to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City and the first attempt on the world trade center was with an explosive laden van. It's a mistake for people to only look to the skies for threats, and as the Oklahoma City should have taught us, it's also a mistake to only look toward Arabs or Muslims as the bad guys.
TW
TW
This really bothers me. I thought it was unimaginative studios that were pushing all these sequels on us but you're here actually demanding the rehashes over something at least unusual if not totally unique. Because of you (and, presumably millions more like you), I'm going to have to wade through shelfs chock full of things like "Devil May Cry 28 - the Ulitimate Devil" in order to find a few gems like "Something No One Ever Thought of Before that's Actually Really Super Cool."
Here's a hint: The Sims, Dance Dance Revolution, Eye Toy, and Guitar Hero were very new, totally unproven, and risky concepts when they first came out. Maybe they weren't all completely new (eye toy type stuff had been done on a small scale), but they were totally new to most players. These games were giant hits because of their freshness. Please don't squash my chances at something fresh so you can eat peas-porage-in-the-pot-nine-days-old.
If you want these sequals, terrific, encourage them and buy them, but for god's sake don't pick on the journalists who actually have the balls to ignore the safe questions and ask about something new.
TW
God I hope so. What on earth is the advantage of open source security if they don't get this kind of analysis?
TW
Clearly, they don't think so, because they're an iMac buyer, not a Mac Mini buyer. What an utterly astounding revelation! It's almost like different people can have different sets of needs and values!
Interesting viewpoint.
I don't see why we'd spend any effort at all letting them know there's another, possibly better choice if they've already made up their mind about which is better. After all, different people do have different sets of needs and values and they're never mistaken about their assesments of these qualities.
And people who buy 480p "HDTVs". We're not going to let them know it's not a very good deal. We won't spend any time letting our parents know about the difference between display resolution and input resolution. The difference between a single core and dual core at the same Mhz speed may be lost on my sister, but why waste the energy letting her know the difference? She's a big girl who understands what she needs. Heck, I might not even tell my wife she could get the same gear cheaper at Newegg.com. She's probably assessed CompUSA and knows her purchases will have more value in the long run.
Sure.
TW
So much for laptops...
The value of a 24" LCD vs. a 17" LCD is pretty large. Gets even larger for a 15".
That said, laptop owners have always accepted that they're paying a premium, both for price vs. performance and the inability to reuse components like monitors. Presumably iMac users are accepting a similar tradeoff for an all-in-one unit.
But you have to wonder, with the Mini showing that desktop computers don't have to be very large, wouldn't the average iMac buyer get better value if the monitor was a seprate unit? There's very little advantage to having an iMac vs. a Mini and monitor either in footprint, complexity or portability.
TW
But that doesn't really answer the implied question of the overall value of seperate components. In three to four years when you want to buy a faster computer, you're going to need to buy a new monitor as well, even though monitors tend to have a much longer usable life.
On the other hand, if you decide you need a different monitor (is something even bigger needed for DVD watching?) then you have this rather large box that you need to find somewhere to stow, yet still keep accessible enough to change the DVD you're playing. That's not even counting that you'd be denying yourself the ability to use that nice 24" monitor somwhere else in the house or the ablity to get a little money back by selling it on ebay.
No, it's not the end of the world to have them combined, but in this case, with a very nice monitor and nice computer specs, it would be more valuable to the consumer to have them seperate.
TW
The fact is, I waited a long time for both Doom 3 and Half-Life 2, both for "quality" and other reasons, and this wait wasn't a big problem for me. But if Valve expects me to buy into the "episodes" thing, they better give me some regularly spaced, relatively quickly released entertainment. I shouldn't be wondering if the wait for the next chapter will be doubled to the better part of a year.
This is not an apeal to lower quality, it's an apeal to be respectful of the consumer of serialized entertainment. If they're going down this path, then they should understand what the assumptions are when you publish something called an "episode." If they can't do that, maybe this isn't really isn't the type of gaming experience they should be pursuing.
BTW, "Seinfeld" had to meet strict deadlines. It seldom had quality problems. "Deadline" and "Quality" are not mutually exclusive terms.
TW
That was my first thought too. Then I remembered that the ESRB had raised the rating of GTA: San Andreas to "Adults Only" after the Hot Chocolate mod was released.
Yeah, I know, RockStar would rip out scenes of Bully right and left if necessary to get it down to a "Mature" rating. However, theorectially it could still get rated "Adults Only". Wal Mart doesn't want to be put in the position of having presold a game that it would like to turn around and not sell at all due to company policy. They don't want surprises like San Andreas.
Now, as to why Slashdoters care, that's another issue. I can understand them not wanting speech infringed, etc, but I'm pretty much completely failing to see how this could either infringe free expresion or even provide a "slippery slope" to infringing free expression.
I think this is actually kind of smart for Wal Mart. They're waiting to see the exactly what the product will be before they start to sell it. I'd want to know if a game called "Pleasant Dreams" was a title for 5 year-olds, a soft core pornography game or a game where you hack up bloody nightmare monsters before selling it too.
TW
I was in an EBgames shop and two teenage boys were trying to buy a game. The clerk refused to sell it to them because they looked under age and had no ID with them (or didn't want to produce it). They argued. They begged. They left without the game. They cussed loudly on their way out.
The clerk, backed up by at least one other clerk on duty and a little shaken by the situation, said she was just trying to do her job, and that was the policy of the store. I applaude the store and I applaude the clerk.
Knowing that stores will not routinely sell mature games to minors helps me feel that I have backup. Knowing theatres won't routinely let underage kids into see R rated movies helps me feel I have backup. It's easy for me to override these hurdles. I just buy the game or I take her to the movie. But it's my choice.
I know that many times they get ratings wrong. It's an imperfect system. But it gives me someplace to start, a default position if you will. If I see the game is labled as mature, I can then investigate furhter to see if I'd really find it objectionable. My daughter is 17 so this is no longer really an issue for us, but I would have been somewhat miffed if she had been sold Grand Theft Auto when she was 14. On the other hand, I routinely let her play Unreal Tournament at an even younger age because by my personal standards, its less of an issue. That's my choice as a father, the choice to allow my daughter to use media of a mature nature, or to just say no. The ratings help me do that, and I'm glad they're helping others as well.
So you aren't stuck with Windows Mobile, having to pay for any good tool to use on it, or installing freeware that barely works.
The thing is, the device in question does what the Mylo does out-of-the-box without any seperate software. My view of Windows Mobile is still somewhat mixed, but the messaging, web browsing picture view and music listening have been pretty good without the hassle of getting more software.
Caviate: The iPod succeeded where others failed because it was super easy to use and super slick. If the Mylo fits this mold, it'll probably find it pretty easy to beat Windows Mobile. Windows mobile is pretty good, but definately not "slick". However, if it's kind of like the PSP (also pretty good, but not slick) then I don't see how a person could justify spending 350 clams on it.
BTW, I consider the 770 to be practically a different category. It's a nifty web device with a nice sized screen, but no keyboard. You'd never use it in place of an iPod and only for very limited messaging, but you could comfortably sit on the couch or in a coffe shop and enjoy a nice browse session. I think comparing the two is a bit of a stretch.
TW
I don't get it. Why not just get a Cingular 8125? I'm failing to see any stat that's better except memory, and buying an extra Mini-SD to bring that stat up still gets you in the door cheaper than the Mylo. The screen is actually slightly larger than the Mylo (2.8 vs 2.4) and the keyboard is much better.
In fact, I don't see why anyone would want to use a device like this that's limited to Wi-Fi networks. Wi-fi is better than cords, but you're still on a relatively short leash. My internet browsing, text messaging and email works just fine on my phone almost anywhere without setting up yet another hot-spot. Sound and pictures work great too, though video is a little fussy if don't get the quality just right.
In a day when people are getting more and more communication choices on their cell phones, video on their iPods, and the internet on their DSs and PSPs, I'm just utterly failing to see a market rushing to embrace this kind of device.
TW