Actually, I don't know if they'll be able be backwards compatible on this one. The PS2 was able to be backwards compatible because of a very smart decision. The I/O processor in the PS2 is backwards compatible in clock frequency and architecture to the MIPS R3000 in the old Playstation, which means that it becomes the primary processor at 33.8MHz when you play Playstation games.
With the PS3, we're talking an architecture change on the main processor again. Keep in mind that the Power4 chip was developed by IBM in Austin as well, so you can guess where the architecture influence will come from on that. To remain backwards compatible, they'd have to somehow find a way to get the PS2 processor back in. Considering how complex the PS2 processor is, I doubt you'll be finding it in an I/O processor this time around.
I do microprocessor design, not system architecture design, so I can't say for sure on this. I can only hope they'll find an engineering solution to this though, perhaps even embedding a software emulator inside the console to allow it to run old games.
Luckily I live just outside of NYC, so I can take a quick trip down to Manhattan to catch it. But I found it funny that in all of New York, there are 3 theatres, all of them in Manhattan. And as far as I can recall, 2 of them (AMC and Loews) are across the street from each other on 42nd street. Convenient for catching 2 shows back to back if one is sold out...
I know this subject is going to get filled with mostly people griping about their bad tech support experiences. I know I've had several myself (Gateway, HP, GE Zurich Warranty support, etc).
But I think a major part of the decline is due to financial constraints. It's cheaper to hire some guy off the street and hand them a checklist and a database of problems and solutions than it is to hire a person with IT experience. A friend passed along an interesting story from their new hire orientation class which illustrates this. A person in that class was hired just out of college to do internal UNIX support for $50K a year at their company. In the middle of a new hire orientation class, that person then asked the other people what UNIX was. They had been hired based purely on a college degree and the fact that they had a slightly relevant degree(MIS). The company figured that actually knowing UNIX wasn't required to do UNIX support.
This would also explain the internal IT support people I've often had to deal with at my company. It's not a pleasant experience when you call up about a network file system problem, and you have to TEACH the tech support person how to debug the problem. And when you tell them they can look up this stuff in the man pages, they respond with "what's a man page?". Ugh...
If IBM bought Sun and folded it underneath, that would make IBM pretty much the only serious player in the mid to high-end UNIX server market. Once that happens, the anti-trust lawyers would get pretty eager again and try to take IBM to court. Especially considering that if IBM bought Sun, it would have no interest in the hardware end since IBM makes its own hardware which directly competes with Sun's products. Either Sun's hardware group would get spun back off like they did to Lexmark, or they would simply re-design them as low-end pSeries products with Power processors instead of the Sparcs. Plus, why bother to support Solaris when you make AIX?
These lawsuits charging IBM of monopolizing a marketplace has happened before (IBM Global Services used to be a subsidiary called ISSC to help thwart anti-trust charges), and with the current Microsoft case I think others (Hitachi, Amdahl, etc.) would prob. like to get in on anti-trust lawsuits against IBM.
I have to agree with you. I happened to go home for my lunch break today and by chance caught Mossberg on CNBC giving his Zaurus review. He actually wasn't as harsh as I was expecting. In contrast, one of the anchors was hammering the Zaurus, and Mossberg even made a comment that she was being harsher than he was. She was calling it clumsy to use, big, and flimsy for the most part. He, for the most part, seemed fair and evenhanded in his evaluations.
Mossberg's major points were that the device had a lot of powerful features, like opening Word docs, and stuff like that. But he said he couldn't recommend it because he felt that a typical basic user wouldn't be bale to get what they wanted out of it. He felt the user interface wasn't veryuser friendly, and he actually did like the keyboard idea, except that it was recessed and difficult to use.
As for the Outlook thing, he also admitted that he never bothered to call Sharp about it. He tried to play like a normal user and just go through the documentation alone. I may not be a normal user, but if I couldn't get my PDA to synch with my programs and the documentation doesn't help, I'd be on the phoen with tech support pretty fast.
A mouse shaped like the head of a golf club driver? I enjoy golf, but creating a mouse the size and shape of a driver head doesn't strike me as being very comfortable to use. I'd be interested to see a quantification of what "modestly successful" means. How many of these things did they actually sell? I can't think of anyone I know who'd want to buy one.
How much $ did the TV industry give your senator?
on
SSSCA Introduced in Senate
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
OpenSecrets lists donations from the TV/Movie/Music industries to senators. For example, this link shows donation totals over all election cycles they have info for all of the senators.
One thing I found interesting in that page is that Hillary Clinton is #4 in the $ amount for senators in all cycles with $601,345; >90% of that was in 2000 alone. Damn, she works fast... And to further screw those of us in New York like myself planning on writing both senators, Schumer wasn't far behind with $519,935
total; and he was #1 in 2002 with about $95K.
Somehow I doubt they'll listen to my opinions on the matter...
I agree. I get a ton of spam to my accounts from users which appear to be from aol.com or yahoo.com. But if you examine the full headers, all of them originate from users in the honkong.com domain. I just wish my email programs allowed me to filter off of strings in the full header, not just the From: fields...
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I don't know if they'll be able be backwards compatible on this one. The PS2 was able to be backwards compatible because of a very smart decision. The I/O processor in the PS2 is backwards compatible in clock frequency and architecture to the MIPS R3000 in the old Playstation, which means that it becomes the primary processor at 33.8MHz when you play Playstation games.
With the PS3, we're talking an architecture change on the main processor again. Keep in mind that the Power4 chip was developed by IBM in Austin as well, so you can guess where the architecture influence will come from on that. To remain backwards compatible, they'd have to somehow find a way to get the PS2 processor back in. Considering how complex the PS2 processor is, I doubt you'll be finding it in an I/O processor this time around.
I do microprocessor design, not system architecture design, so I can't say for sure on this. I can only hope they'll find an engineering solution to this though, perhaps even embedding a software emulator inside the console to allow it to run old games.
Luckily I live just outside of NYC, so I can take a quick trip down to Manhattan to catch it. But I found it funny that in all of New York, there are 3 theatres, all of them in Manhattan. And as far as I can recall, 2 of them (AMC and Loews) are across the street from each other on 42nd street. Convenient for catching 2 shows back to back if one is sold out...
I know this subject is going to get filled with mostly people griping about their bad tech support experiences. I know I've had several myself (Gateway, HP, GE Zurich Warranty support, etc).
But I think a major part of the decline is due to financial constraints. It's cheaper to hire some guy off the street and hand them a checklist and a database of problems and solutions than it is to hire a person with IT experience. A friend passed along an interesting story from their new hire orientation class which illustrates this. A person in that class was hired just out of college to do internal UNIX support for $50K a year at their company. In the middle of a new hire orientation class, that person then asked the other people what UNIX was. They had been hired based purely on a college degree and the fact that they had a slightly relevant degree(MIS). The company figured that actually knowing UNIX wasn't required to do UNIX support.
This would also explain the internal IT support people I've often had to deal with at my company. It's not a pleasant experience when you call up about a network file system problem, and you have to TEACH the tech support person how to debug the problem. And when you tell them they can look up this stuff in the man pages, they respond with "what's a man page?". Ugh...
If IBM bought Sun and folded it underneath, that would make IBM pretty much the only serious player in the mid to high-end UNIX server market. Once that happens, the anti-trust lawyers would get pretty eager again and try to take IBM to court. Especially considering that if IBM bought Sun, it would have no interest in the hardware end since IBM makes its own hardware which directly competes with Sun's products. Either Sun's hardware group would get spun back off like they did to Lexmark, or they would simply re-design them as low-end pSeries products with Power processors instead of the Sparcs. Plus, why bother to support Solaris when you make AIX?
.02....
These lawsuits charging IBM of monopolizing a marketplace has happened before (IBM Global Services used to be a subsidiary called ISSC to help thwart anti-trust charges), and with the current Microsoft case I think others (Hitachi, Amdahl, etc.) would prob. like to get in on anti-trust lawsuits against IBM.
Just my
I have to agree with you. I happened to go home for my lunch break today and by chance caught Mossberg on CNBC giving his Zaurus review. He actually wasn't as harsh as I was expecting. In contrast, one of the anchors was hammering the Zaurus, and Mossberg even made a comment that she was being harsher than he was. She was calling it clumsy to use, big, and flimsy for the most part. He, for the most part, seemed fair and evenhanded in his evaluations.
Mossberg's major points were that the device had a lot of powerful features, like opening Word docs, and stuff like that. But he said he couldn't recommend it because he felt that a typical basic user wouldn't be bale to get what they wanted out of it. He felt the user interface wasn't veryuser friendly, and he actually did like the keyboard idea, except that it was recessed and difficult to use.
As for the Outlook thing, he also admitted that he never bothered to call Sharp about it. He tried to play like a normal user and just go through the documentation alone. I may not be a normal user, but if I couldn't get my PDA to synch with my programs and the documentation doesn't help, I'd be on the phoen with tech support pretty fast.
A mouse shaped like the head of a golf club driver? I enjoy golf, but creating a mouse the size and shape of a driver head doesn't strike me as being very comfortable to use. I'd be interested to see a quantification of what "modestly successful" means. How many of these things did they actually sell? I can't think of anyone I know who'd want to buy one.
OpenSecrets lists donations from the TV/Movie/Music industries to senators. For example, this link shows donation totals over all election cycles they have info for all of the senators.
One thing I found interesting in that page is that Hillary Clinton is #4 in the $ amount for senators in all cycles with $601,345; >90% of that was in 2000 alone. Damn, she works fast... And to further screw those of us in New York like myself planning on writing both senators, Schumer wasn't far behind with $519,935 total; and he was #1 in 2002 with about $95K. Somehow I doubt they'll listen to my opinions on the matter...
I agree. I get a ton of spam to my accounts from users which appear to be from aol.com or yahoo.com. But if you examine the full headers, all of them originate from users in the honkong.com domain. I just wish my email programs allowed me to filter off of strings in the full header, not just the From: fields...