That pretty much mirrors my experience. I spend a lot more time gaming on my PS2 than I do on my X-Box.
Who knows how it will be in the next-gen. I bought a PSone the first month they came out. I bought a PS2 at launch. But I have no desire to buy any of the next-gen consoles any time soon. There's plenty of fun games out now on the current generation, and I really don't see anything that new or exciting on the next-gen. Just seems to be better graphics. I'm sure at some point the developers will figure out how to turn that extra horse power into new game experiences eventually, but until then I've got a huge selection of games for the consoles I've got, and the longer I wait the cheaper the games will become, but the fun will be the same.
Do you know what the sound isolation value is of the Sony headphones. I don't see any mentions on the Sony site you linked to and a quick Google search didn't turn up anything.
1. They're generally a lot simpler. An email service and a search engine and a number of media hosting services are much simpler than an operating system and can be implemented easily in high-level languages, without paying much attention to hardware issues.
This is also because most of Google's products are early in the development cycle. Wanna bet in 5 years when we look at Google applications we will have found they are riddled with feature bloat just like Microsoft products? Sure they will. Google is not immune to the market demand for new features to keep customers interested and help it compete with other vendors. Especially now that they are a public company they will have more and more pressure to keep growing revenue and find ways to lock in users, just like Microsoft.
2. They don't have issues with client configuration and client hardware. Or third-party applications. Especially ones that run as system.
That may be true of their search engine, it is certainly not true of other products like Google Desktop or Picassa. Heck, even GMail has to deal will all sorts of not only client OS limitations, but different browser limitations on top of OS limitations.
3. Someone else handles much of the work--rendering and such. Google just has to make sure it does so properly for each project.
Spoken like someone who has never tried to write a complex Ajax implementation. I'm sure Google would love to have one platform to write to (theirs) instead of trying to make applications that work identically across a variety of OS/Browser platforms.
The only problem with this is that this information is easily forged. It would be VERY EASY for someone to frame someone else this way. I'm not saying Merck didn't do it in this case. I'm just saying that even someone with no computer knowledge can change their user name in Word, make some changes, and have it appear as if someone else made the edit.
I payed for my PS2 when it first came out by buying PS2s on my credit card and then selling them on eBay. Made enough profit to buy one for myself plus some gifts for friends.
I had decided not to do it for the 360, since a few months back MS was saying they'd have huge quantities available, and because I don't know ANYONE who wants a 360. Figured the demand wasn't there.
Looks like I was wrong at least on the supply part. Should've got a few preorders in early while I still had the chance. After all, if I was wrong and there was no shortage I always would have been able to sell them on eBay with minimal loss.
Uh, median *household* income in the US is $44.5k. Something tells me the average American household has more than one car, and house, and enough money to live on. $100k is plenty for a typical family of four, and is a lot of money for a single person. Not everything in your home needs to have "LV" stenciled on it.
Yup. Prey was officially killed quite some time ago. Then 3D Realms sold it off to a 3rd party developer a little while back and they've gone gangbusters working on it. Almost nothing except the title and the general concept of the main character is the same as the original Prey.
So, they are trying to convince me that the reason THEY are DRM-ing their CD's is because of Apple?
Got a reading comprehension problem eh? Nowhere did they say they use DRM because of Apple. What they are saying is they want to make it as easy as possible for you to use your iPod to play music tracks from Sony Music's DRMd music releases. Currently Sony is using Microsoft's protected WMA format for their protected files which Apple does not support on the iPod. Sony has asked Apple to license Apple's DRM technology so they can include iPod compatible DRMd files on Sony's music releases, but Apple has refused to. So Sony is asking you to pressure Apple to license their technology to Sony so Sony can ship iPod compatible DRMd music files.
The rental market is a well established market for DVDs, and the movie companies want to be able to directly access this market, bypassing Blockbuster, Netflix and the like so they can take a greater share of the revenue from this market.
There have been a number of problems with attempts at creating a limited view DVD. Divx failed since it required a special player and the cost to mfgr and sell the disks remained relativly high (Remember, DVDs cost a lot more to make back then. You can now buy full length movies on DVD at Wallmart for $1). The next attempt at gettting to this market was DVDs that "expired" after being exposed to air. The problem with this method was that it was too easy for the packaging to get damaged during shipping, letting air in and causing the disks to expire prior to purchase. This obviously resulted in a lot of returns driving up cost, and also added hassled for the retailers since they have no way to know if the disk was damaged prior to sale or if a customer watched it or is telling the truth about a purchased disk already being expired prior to them opening it. I'm also guessing the cost to make the disks was higher than normal DVDs.
So if Microsoft has managed to make a disk that will expire at a cost simliar to standard DVDs without the hassle of a special player or risk of "expiring" prior to purchase, they may well be able to open up a new market.
Where are you buying your CDs that you are paying $20 per album? Circuit City and Best Buy normally have most CD's at ~$11.99 the first few weeks of release, and even old releases are generally $15.99 or less.
Check out the Wikipedia entry on Taiwan. I can't believe how pro mainland China and anti-ROC it is. It even makes it sound like the US government is against the current ROC (Taiwan) government.
While I think it is kinda odd for AMD to be trying to sell this in the United States, a market much different than what it was originally designed for, I can see some appeal. AMD has locked the PIC down, so the user can't accidentally screw it up, and all drivers have to be approved and preloaded (or pushed via online update) by AMD, ensuring driver stability and no driver related crashes. Sure you can't expand it or add any software, but its already got a basic suite of utilities that cover 99% of what most users would need. I could see buying something like this for my grandmother who is computer phobic and is always in fear she'll somehow mess the computer up. Due to the locked down nature of the configuration and the prescanned and approved drivers, its really a perfect support free solution for someone like her to get on the Internet and email her family.
The main sticking point for Microsoft is the ability to copy a movie from the new format to hard disk. Microsoft has a lot of money invested in their Media Center software, and even more money in licensing their DRM to to makers of PMPs, media players, etc.
HD-DVD will allow this. People can rip the HD-DVD to hard drive, but the rip will still be DRM encoded. So to stream it to another device for playback, the playback device mfg will have to license the DRM technology from Microsoft.
The problem with Blu-Ray, from Microsoft's perspective, is that it does not rely entirely on Microsoft's DRM. It allows the movie studio to decide if they will allow the disk to be ripped to HD and streamed. With HD-DVD, all movies will be capable of being ripped. If a lot of movie studios decide to not let their movies be ripped, there will be less demand for Microsoft's MCE based computers, and less demand for Microsoft DRM licenses on playback devices. So Microsoft has backed the one format that guarantees that movies will be capable of being ripped.
The Prince of Persia series of games are not adventure games. PoP is an action platformer. Sure they've got the occasional "which switch do I pull" or "find the key" type of puzzle, but that's not enough to make them an adventure game.
Adventure games are games like Maniac Mansion, Myst, or Sam & Max, which tell a story and give you the freedom to explore and advance the story by solving puzzles. There generally is no need for quick reflexes and minimal player controlled combat.
First, there have been reported vulnerabilities with ATMs in the past. Do a search on the Internet. But I think in general you are right, the ATMs Diebold makes probably are much more secure than their voting machines. Why? Banks demand security. They don't want someone hacking the system and making off with large amounts of money. So they won't buy an ATM from Diebold unless they feel that it is farily secure.
Based on what I've seen, most local voting districts don't care about security. They're interested in making the election process happen for as little money as possible. Quick and dirty is fine for them. Since they aren't demanding security, Diebold sees no reason to spend the time making a secure system.
Besides, if there's going to be any vote tamering or fraud, it's most likely to be conducted by the same people who decide what voting systems to purchase.
I'd choose the guy being lit on fire. Why? A guy being lit on fire is always cool. A sex scene is only cool if the people involved are hot or at least mildy attractive.
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Who knows how it will be in the next-gen. I bought a PSone the first month they came out. I bought a PS2 at launch. But I have no desire to buy any of the next-gen consoles any time soon. There's plenty of fun games out now on the current generation, and I really don't see anything that new or exciting on the next-gen. Just seems to be better graphics. I'm sure at some point the developers will figure out how to turn that extra horse power into new game experiences eventually, but until then I've got a huge selection of games for the consoles I've got, and the longer I wait the cheaper the games will become, but the fun will be the same.
Fine, buy a Game Cube, or a current generation PS2 or X-Box. Obviously the next-generation systems aren't for you at this time.
Do you know what the sound isolation value is of the Sony headphones. I don't see any mentions on the Sony site you linked to and a quick Google search didn't turn up anything.
This is also because most of Google's products are early in the development cycle. Wanna bet in 5 years when we look at Google applications we will have found they are riddled with feature bloat just like Microsoft products? Sure they will. Google is not immune to the market demand for new features to keep customers interested and help it compete with other vendors. Especially now that they are a public company they will have more and more pressure to keep growing revenue and find ways to lock in users, just like Microsoft.
2. They don't have issues with client configuration and client hardware. Or third-party applications. Especially ones that run as system.
That may be true of their search engine, it is certainly not true of other products like Google Desktop or Picassa. Heck, even GMail has to deal will all sorts of not only client OS limitations, but different browser limitations on top of OS limitations.
3. Someone else handles much of the work--rendering and such. Google just has to make sure it does so properly for each project.
Spoken like someone who has never tried to write a complex Ajax implementation. I'm sure Google would love to have one platform to write to (theirs) instead of trying to make applications that work identically across a variety of OS/Browser platforms.
The only problem with this is that this information is easily forged. It would be VERY EASY for someone to frame someone else this way. I'm not saying Merck didn't do it in this case. I'm just saying that even someone with no computer knowledge can change their user name in Word, make some changes, and have it appear as if someone else made the edit.
If they aren't on the east coast how do you explain the navy episode where a boat sailed from Springfield harbor to NYC in a very short time?
I payed for my PS2 when it first came out by buying PS2s on my credit card and then selling them on eBay. Made enough profit to buy one for myself plus some gifts for friends. I had decided not to do it for the 360, since a few months back MS was saying they'd have huge quantities available, and because I don't know ANYONE who wants a 360. Figured the demand wasn't there. Looks like I was wrong at least on the supply part. Should've got a few preorders in early while I still had the chance. After all, if I was wrong and there was no shortage I always would have been able to sell them on eBay with minimal loss.
The RF frequencies used for cell phones are much better at propagating through building materials than the RF frequency proposed for 802.16.
Last year they provided live feeds of the event. I can't seem to find any for this year, anyone if one exists?
Uh, median *household* income in the US is $44.5k. Something tells me the average American household has more than one car, and house, and enough money to live on. $100k is plenty for a typical family of four, and is a lot of money for a single person. Not everything in your home needs to have "LV" stenciled on it.
Yup. Prey was officially killed quite some time ago. Then 3D Realms sold it off to a 3rd party developer a little while back and they've gone gangbusters working on it. Almost nothing except the title and the general concept of the main character is the same as the original Prey.
Got a reading comprehension problem eh? Nowhere did they say they use DRM because of Apple. What they are saying is they want to make it as easy as possible for you to use your iPod to play music tracks from Sony Music's DRMd music releases. Currently Sony is using Microsoft's protected WMA format for their protected files which Apple does not support on the iPod. Sony has asked Apple to license Apple's DRM technology so they can include iPod compatible DRMd files on Sony's music releases, but Apple has refused to. So Sony is asking you to pressure Apple to license their technology to Sony so Sony can ship iPod compatible DRMd music files.
The rental market is a well established market for DVDs, and the movie companies want to be able to directly access this market, bypassing Blockbuster, Netflix and the like so they can take a greater share of the revenue from this market. There have been a number of problems with attempts at creating a limited view DVD. Divx failed since it required a special player and the cost to mfgr and sell the disks remained relativly high (Remember, DVDs cost a lot more to make back then. You can now buy full length movies on DVD at Wallmart for $1). The next attempt at gettting to this market was DVDs that "expired" after being exposed to air. The problem with this method was that it was too easy for the packaging to get damaged during shipping, letting air in and causing the disks to expire prior to purchase. This obviously resulted in a lot of returns driving up cost, and also added hassled for the retailers since they have no way to know if the disk was damaged prior to sale or if a customer watched it or is telling the truth about a purchased disk already being expired prior to them opening it. I'm also guessing the cost to make the disks was higher than normal DVDs. So if Microsoft has managed to make a disk that will expire at a cost simliar to standard DVDs without the hassle of a special player or risk of "expiring" prior to purchase, they may well be able to open up a new market.
Where are you buying your CDs that you are paying $20 per album? Circuit City and Best Buy normally have most CD's at ~$11.99 the first few weeks of release, and even old releases are generally $15.99 or less.
Check out the Wikipedia entry on Taiwan. I can't believe how pro mainland China and anti-ROC it is. It even makes it sound like the US government is against the current ROC (Taiwan) government.
While I think it is kinda odd for AMD to be trying to sell this in the United States, a market much different than what it was originally designed for, I can see some appeal. AMD has locked the PIC down, so the user can't accidentally screw it up, and all drivers have to be approved and preloaded (or pushed via online update) by AMD, ensuring driver stability and no driver related crashes. Sure you can't expand it or add any software, but its already got a basic suite of utilities that cover 99% of what most users would need. I could see buying something like this for my grandmother who is computer phobic and is always in fear she'll somehow mess the computer up. Due to the locked down nature of the configuration and the prescanned and approved drivers, its really a perfect support free solution for someone like her to get on the Internet and email her family.
Just because one is not a Christian does not make them an Athiest.
That's a good question. Which company is the best one for selling/buying used games? If EB/Game Stop are no good, who is more reasonable?
Are you saying Steve Job doesn't want a bigger pie too?
HD-DVD will allow this. People can rip the HD-DVD to hard drive, but the rip will still be DRM encoded. So to stream it to another device for playback, the playback device mfg will have to license the DRM technology from Microsoft.
The problem with Blu-Ray, from Microsoft's perspective, is that it does not rely entirely on Microsoft's DRM. It allows the movie studio to decide if they will allow the disk to be ripped to HD and streamed. With HD-DVD, all movies will be capable of being ripped. If a lot of movie studios decide to not let their movies be ripped, there will be less demand for Microsoft's MCE based computers, and less demand for Microsoft DRM licenses on playback devices. So Microsoft has backed the one format that guarantees that movies will be capable of being ripped.
I've never heard of giant squid attacking life rafts before. Got any links to documentation?
The Prince of Persia series of games are not adventure games. PoP is an action platformer. Sure they've got the occasional "which switch do I pull" or "find the key" type of puzzle, but that's not enough to make them an adventure game. Adventure games are games like Maniac Mansion, Myst, or Sam & Max, which tell a story and give you the freedom to explore and advance the story by solving puzzles. There generally is no need for quick reflexes and minimal player controlled combat.
If you were going to have a pet monkey, what type of monkey would you get?
Based on what I've seen, most local voting districts don't care about security. They're interested in making the election process happen for as little money as possible. Quick and dirty is fine for them. Since they aren't demanding security, Diebold sees no reason to spend the time making a secure system.
Besides, if there's going to be any vote tamering or fraud, it's most likely to be conducted by the same people who decide what voting systems to purchase.
I'd choose the guy being lit on fire. Why? A guy being lit on fire is always cool. A sex scene is only cool if the people involved are hot or at least mildy attractive.