An added benefit of Virgin Mobile is that you can get a list of your calls and how much you were charged for each call. This is great for submitting expense reports when you're traveling on business. T-Mobile would be cheaper for me overall with their $100 for 1000 minutes for a year (Virgin Mobile is $15 every 90 days at $0.18 a minute for the lowest-use plan), but being able to submit expense reports is great for me.
Sure, it doesn't HAVE to be. Except Sony spent a lot of money creating the cell processor so that they CAN. You think polygon counts won't end up being 6 times more than they are on the PS2? Textures won't be six times the size?
480i is NOT HD. The minimum to be considered HD is 720p. Even if you sell a 480p TV, you have to call it an EDTV.
Every TV does 480i.
Interresting way to look at it. It's not high-end anymore? There's higher grade than that because a tiny minority has it?
The "high-end electronics market" is a rather specific term - these people can spend tens of thousands of dollars on their systems. I bought a 50" HDTV last year and have a component audio system to go with it, and I consider myself to be just outside of the fringe of the high-end electronics market. Prices on HDTVs are dropping like rocks, and the fact that you see them in Wal-Mart means that they're in the mainstream market now, not just the high-end.
I guess I wasn't clear in my comment... I meant that in the absence of decompression hardware, I'd rather not have to sacrifice CPU time to decompress textures if it's not necessary.
Even lowball estimates of HDTV penetration are that 10% of all households have HDTVs. If 10% of all people have it, then it's not the high-end electronics market anymore. In 5 years after the analog cutoff, what will that percentage be?
But I'd rather have the CPU dedicated to rendering more complex environments than decompressing textures. With how much more powerful this generation is, maybe it's not as much of an issue. Or maybe it's worse, given how much larger the textures will need to be. Of course, it may be more efficient to load a smaller compressed image off the disc and decompress it than to wait while the whole thing is loaded.
I think that the real thing people have a problem with is that they don't want to pay for HD. I have an HDTV, so I want all this stuff. I'm not happy that I'll have to pay $600 to get it, but I spent a lot more than that on my TV, so I'll do it (eventually). If you don't have an HDTV, then yeah, you don't need any of this other stuff. But it wouldn't have been wise for them to wait another 5 years to start going to HD (except for Nintendo, and they can pull it off because they're going after a different market).
That's one of the great things about San Andreas compared to Vice City, and that wasn't even swapping disks - just waiting for the other side to load. San Andreas' landscape is HUGE - just imaging what they could fit on a Blu-Ray disk. Since they have simultaneous releases for XBox and PS3 for GTA4, I hope they don't cripple their landscape to fit it on a DVD for future games. It probably won't be a problem for GTA4, but once they start really exploiting the capabilities of the machines (like the difference between GTA3, GTA:VC and GTA:SA), they'll have a lot more room to play with Blu-Ray. Maybe they'll even go back to being Sony exclusive.
We're forced to pay an extra $300 so that game dev's can be lazy with their compression methods.
Running at 1080p widescreen instead of 480p standard means that there's 6.75 times more data (1920x1080 vs 640x480). Are you saying that game developers who are currently filling up DVDs for PS2 and XBox games should suddenly have compression algorithms that are 6.75 times more efficient? Or would you like swapping out 7 DVDs?
The Wii also has no free browser. They just haven't said how much it'll cost yet.
Re:I want to clarify a couple of things
on
The Wii Takes NYC
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· Score: 1
It's only including one controller, though, right? And it kind of sucks that the controllers are $40 each, not including the nunchuck attachment.
Which means that I'll need to pay $250 for the console + $120 to get 3 extra controllers + $20 to get an extra nunchuck = $390, and then probably an extra $40 later when more complicated 4 player games start requiring them. (I'm assuming Wii Sports doesn't require the nunchuck, but I could be wrong...)
Even if you do have a hard drive... A Blu-Ray disc will hold 30GB. How long is it going to take to download a game that uses a significant percentage of a Blu-Ray disc? And how big is your hard drive going to have to be to hold all of the games that you buy?
Er, well, it looks like the one I previously linked to provides some handy information, but not it's/its specifically. So the editors should have this one as well:
Bob the Angry Flower's Guide to it's/its
hackers created the 'hot coffee' modification by disassembling and then combining, recompiling and altering the game's source code.
I don't see how what Rockstar said "goes against" what the modder said. Rockstar doesn't say that the modder added content, they said he combined, recompiled, and altered the game's source, which is what you would need to do to make the game take an alternate path into the mini-game.
This statement goes against what the modder responsible for "Hot Coffee" has said, claiming the sex mini-game was merely made available using the patch and no additional content was added.
From Rockstar:
hackers created the 'hot coffee' modification by disassembling and then combining, recompiling and altering the game's source code.
I don't see how what Rockstar said "goes against" what the modder said. Rockstar doesn't say that the modder added content, they said he combined, recompiled, and altered the game's source, which is what you would need to do to make the game take an alternate path into the mini-game.
I actually had this happen to me a couple of times. I ordered some pictures through Walmart.com and had them deliver to my parents' local Wal-Mart to pick up, and when they went there, they were told that they couldn't have some of the pictures. I had to fax them a document saying that I owned the copyright and give them permission to reproduce them.
And this was with a Sony MVC-CD400, which is a 4 megapixel camera.
Slashdot Mirror
Borders will collect sales tax in Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon, who do not assess sales tax state-wide? That's kind of odd.
That's kind of strange, given that relocation expenses are tax deductible...
Perhaps they're implying that the mirrors move in Hilbert space, which would be quite an accomplishment.
An added benefit of Virgin Mobile is that you can get a list of your calls and how much you were charged for each call. This is great for submitting expense reports when you're traveling on business. T-Mobile would be cheaper for me overall with their $100 for 1000 minutes for a year (Virgin Mobile is $15 every 90 days at $0.18 a minute for the lowest-use plan), but being able to submit expense reports is great for me.
Sure, it doesn't HAVE to be. Except Sony spent a lot of money creating the cell processor so that they CAN. You think polygon counts won't end up being 6 times more than they are on the PS2? Textures won't be six times the size?
That would include 480i...
480i is NOT HD. The minimum to be considered HD is 720p. Even if you sell a 480p TV, you have to call it an EDTV.
Every TV does 480i.
Interresting way to look at it. It's not high-end anymore? There's higher grade than that because a tiny minority has it?
The "high-end electronics market" is a rather specific term - these people can spend tens of thousands of dollars on their systems. I bought a 50" HDTV last year and have a component audio system to go with it, and I consider myself to be just outside of the fringe of the high-end electronics market. Prices on HDTVs are dropping like rocks, and the fact that you see them in Wal-Mart means that they're in the mainstream market now, not just the high-end.
I guess I wasn't clear in my comment... I meant that in the absence of decompression hardware, I'd rather not have to sacrifice CPU time to decompress textures if it's not necessary.
Playing a game IS full-screen video - it's just rendered.
HD-DVD uses blue lasers, too. So they'd still be having the problem. Maybe more, because MS might have included HD-DVD in the XBox 360.
Because all of the manufacturers would be focusing on only one format, costs would come down even quicker.
And would those savings be passed on to the consumers in the absence of competition?
Even lowball estimates of HDTV penetration are that 10% of all households have HDTVs. If 10% of all people have it, then it's not the high-end electronics market anymore. In 5 years after the analog cutoff, what will that percentage be?
Hardware support for decompression: nice
But I'd rather have the CPU dedicated to rendering more complex environments than decompressing textures. With how much more powerful this generation is, maybe it's not as much of an issue. Or maybe it's worse, given how much larger the textures will need to be. Of course, it may be more efficient to load a smaller compressed image off the disc and decompress it than to wait while the whole thing is loaded.
I think that the real thing people have a problem with is that they don't want to pay for HD. I have an HDTV, so I want all this stuff. I'm not happy that I'll have to pay $600 to get it, but I spent a lot more than that on my TV, so I'll do it (eventually). If you don't have an HDTV, then yeah, you don't need any of this other stuff. But it wouldn't have been wise for them to wait another 5 years to start going to HD (except for Nintendo, and they can pull it off because they're going after a different market).
That's one of the great things about San Andreas compared to Vice City, and that wasn't even swapping disks - just waiting for the other side to load. San Andreas' landscape is HUGE - just imaging what they could fit on a Blu-Ray disk. Since they have simultaneous releases for XBox and PS3 for GTA4, I hope they don't cripple their landscape to fit it on a DVD for future games. It probably won't be a problem for GTA4, but once they start really exploiting the capabilities of the machines (like the difference between GTA3, GTA:VC and GTA:SA), they'll have a lot more room to play with Blu-Ray. Maybe they'll even go back to being Sony exclusive.
Running at 1080p widescreen instead of 480p standard means that there's 6.75 times more data (1920x1080 vs 640x480). Are you saying that game developers who are currently filling up DVDs for PS2 and XBox games should suddenly have compression algorithms that are 6.75 times more efficient? Or would you like swapping out 7 DVDs?
The Wii also has no free browser. They just haven't said how much it'll cost yet.
It's only including one controller, though, right? And it kind of sucks that the controllers are $40 each, not including the nunchuck attachment.
Which means that I'll need to pay $250 for the console + $120 to get 3 extra controllers + $20 to get an extra nunchuck = $390, and then probably an extra $40 later when more complicated 4 player games start requiring them. (I'm assuming Wii Sports doesn't require the nunchuck, but I could be wrong...)
Even if you do have a hard drive... A Blu-Ray disc will hold 30GB. How long is it going to take to download a game that uses a significant percentage of a Blu-Ray disc? And how big is your hard drive going to have to be to hold all of the games that you buy?
If you have a BS in EE, then you're forever tainted. Sorry, you can never become a real Software Engineer.
I have yet to meet the firewall that I couldn't pierce with SSH over stunnel, with a little extra work if it's a proxy.
Er, well, it looks like the one I previously linked to provides some handy information, but not it's/its specifically. So the editors should have this one as well: Bob the Angry Flower's Guide to it's/its
The Slashdot editors need to print this out and tape it to their monitors: Bob the Angry Flower
You'd think they could spell check the title, at least.
The most annoying thing is that I can't Ctrl-Click to open the articles I want to read in a new tab. Ahh, Mozilla, how you've gotten me addicted.
I actually had this happen to me a couple of times. I ordered some pictures through Walmart.com and had them deliver to my parents' local Wal-Mart to pick up, and when they went there, they were told that they couldn't have some of the pictures. I had to fax them a document saying that I owned the copyright and give them permission to reproduce them. And this was with a Sony MVC-CD400, which is a 4 megapixel camera.