they should just hand Kindles out to people on planes.
Something new and fun to play with. Get to use it for a few hours to see if you like it - and offering a plane trip with an onboard library of a few hundred thousand books deinitely ranks above half a dozen crappy blockbusters.
More importantly, you can seed the market by letting travellers pay to walk off the plane with their new Kindle and their half-read book.
(Jeff, you owe me if you run with this)
and frequently have done in the past. My only grumble is when somebody connects and troughs all my bandwidth (sure they didn't mean to, but it's a bit rude).
New Belkin N1 router, whilst not being a 'great' router, does have a nice feature in that it can support 2 SSIDs - a normal one on your network and a guest one. Now assuming you could configure this so guest/open SSID only has WAN access, could maybe have bandwidth/transfer capped and set data just to be best effort - then this would solve pretty much all the problems (and people who don't like sharing would just never turn it on).
Leads me onto another issue, home routers currently are very very boring. Probably been the last 5 years since they've taken off. How's about them being able to do something a bit more interesting? If you live in a built up area, they could all mesh themselves together with an agreed protocol and do fancy stuff like providing high burst rates, local high-speed p2p, geographically contextual websites etc.
After playing with iphone/new ipod - the single 'great thing' is the browser built in. Whole two finger stretch/shrink is fantastic and imho the best mobile browsing solution out there.
Apart from that, I cannot see what it offers over 90% of other phones available at a fraction of the price. Lack of 3G is a piss-poor start. Crummy Camera etc etc. Other than the aforementioned browser the selljng point seems to be you can replace your ipod with it. Only reason you'd need an iphone to replace your ipod over say an entry level SE phone is because you've been tied into Apple's DRM. Not too much of a selling point really (Buy anything else and the music you've bought won't work).
That seems a somewhat negative view
on
Is SETI Worth It?
·
· Score: 1
of the aliens. I'm more worried about what'll happen here when the announcement we've made contact goes out.
We'll have people preparing for armageddon and hiding in holes in the gorund, religions declaring crusades, others declaring loyalty to our masters beyond the stars etc.
FFS just look at the reasons we're able to kick off with each other over at the moment. Can't we just wait a little while to sort ourselves out before we go searching for 'interesting times'?
is a system where cell phones can 'legally' be asked to switch to quiet mode.
Cinemas, meeting rooms, restaurants etc could have a little transmitter that announces itself. Would just need to be a very weak signal that wouldn't go through walls, if you have a big room, then just shove a few up in the ceiling tiles every few metres.
To go with this system you just need to have an extra option on your phone to give you, ring, silent and 'civil'.
Can't believe this would be a particularly hard system to setup.
Still nobody ever listens to my great ideas anyway (mainly as I'm too lazy to do much more than post here), but whilst I'm on a role. I hate that my ring is either too quiet, or too loud for the environment I'm in. Why the hell isn't there an option that uses say, oh I dunno the microphone on my phone to work out how loud it needs to ring to be heard? Actually maybe that's not perfect (it's probably quiet stuffed in my pocket) - I'll expand upon this idea, it also takes into account the loudness of it's own ring (ringer and microphone muffled in my pocket so rign gets louder until it reaches a certain threshold on the microphone).
The effectiveness of this trojan is going to be how similar the above steps are to what you'd be asked if you were installing a legitimate codec.
If you thought you'd downloaded a codec and those are the steps required to install a codec, then people will do precisely that.
Not that I'm picking on Apple here, it's exactly the same on Vista. If you present some malicious code as something that requires root access to install, then people will blindy install it. Not quite sure what the solution is to this problem, apart from maybe an extension of the authorization process. Maybe instead of just asking for admin, it should ask "It looks like you're trying to install something to do with Networking -> DNS"... actually the more I read that I get vision of Clippy.
if AT&T is having to hand over $18 a month to Apple, they're going to make damn sure they're going to separate every iPhone user of at least $18 a month extra.
Or alternatively keep iphone users attached to their phone for longer than they would for a conventional handset - which I assume means AT&T would not be happy to see an upgraded handset (e.g. a 3G one) launch any time soon as then they'd have to deal with users wanting to upgrade.
Yes, manufacturers are going to try to give journalists gifts and maybe this is to try to sway what they write. Whilst I'd have thought very few journalists would be influenced directly, maybe when you're thinking of the no-name builder of the next nVidia gpu you're going to review, your mind might more quickly leap to the one that's written on the flashdrive in your pocket - and you may give their PR a call first.
Bit thaqt annoyed me about the article was the notion that journalists are paid enough, without having to resort to accepting and flogging gifts. Now that 'paid enough' is their salary and where does their salary come from? Well it comes from those banner ads surrounding their article. If you want to follow the money, then more money comes in from entirely ad-driven revenue to the site, over the value of a few free gifts. When I saw that article, I was being told to buy OCZ and Crucial memory. Whilst those ads are there, I can't be alone in thinking there's a possibility they might look on those manufacturers more 'leniently'
track listings for GH3, after having played the demo I feel sad.
GH3 just doesn't 'feel right'. I'd have been quite happy if Neversoft had just picked up Harmonix's GH2 code and swapped out the tracks - but they didn't:(
Think I may hang on for Rock Band (although I'm never going to get all the kit as the gf already takes the piss enough of me, a grown man, with my little Fisher Price-stylee guitar)
I think the main problem is that we seem to entertain the notion that war can be 'gentlemanly'
It can't. The entire point is to cause as much pain and suffering to the other side, until they can take no more and bend to your will.
Anything other than that is window-dressing. If you're not prepared to die for the war, then you shouldn't have turned up. The idea of joining a national army ujp front and happily going off to kill whoever your leader dislikes that week is bizarre beyond words.
Getting your people captured and then acting indignant when they're beheaded, or protesting footage of 'enemy' snipers is just hypocritical beyond words. Once you go to war, you've made a decision you can't take back and anything goes.
Rather than having a subject header page and then X many pages of flat replies posts following, it allows new threads to be posted and replies at any point (i.e. makes a tree). Main page is just displaying x many parents and their respective rely trees on one page.
Not really designed to be a repository of information for a large number of users, rather a glorified IRC channel.
Site is bobpitch.com - and was designed to look similar to popbitch.com
By ripping off, I just meant taking using and never extending, raising bug reports/feedback/code changes etc.
I could just encrypt the source and hurl it out into the world as it is - take it or leave it. Just if I'm going to put the effort into documenting/re-writing before OSS release, I would like the effort to be appreciated by people reading the documentation and poking at the code.
*whines*
an excellent idea, thankyou.
Think what I shall do is take the existing site (bobpitch.com) and try and re-write it nicely (well fix the stuff I know is very wrong). As code comes out the other end I can bolt it onto the demo system. Hopefully this'll let people see what it's supposed to be doing and allows them to make the decision of whether or not they're interested very quickly.
Thanks again.
Maybe I didn't put that quite right.
I spent a year or so fire-fighting bugs and bolting on some superfluous Bells and Whistles, but basically it now does what I'd wanted it to do from the start.
Now the functionality is there, the next step would be to convert it from a PoC to a proper product - i.e. re-write all the code from scratch. It's this bit thats not very inspirational, load of work to get something that appears to be the same from the outside. Wouldn't mind doing it if it would be of use to other people, but if it's never going to get picked up by anybody, then it is wasted effort.
rant - I just bought the 360 as it came out first and as far as I was aware was only going to come in two flavours ever (and I had best one, so I was happy, yes I am petty).
Hadn't realized Sony supported swapping of PS3 HD. On the assumption this doesn't lose your warranty (HD apart) and there's not a problem shifting stuff across, I humbly aplogize for slighting your system of choice. Happy?
HD as standard - again makes me happy. Why the fuck MS won't allow games to cache off an HD (if available) is beyond me as well (and I'll refrain into getting to BR/360 DVD data transfer rates - mainly as the speed isn't my concern, rather the god-awful racket my 60 makes spinning up).
Not going to give you stable. My 360 has been bullet-proof since day one and I've still not forgiven Sony for denying the f'in obvious inability of my 1st gen PS1 to shade a polygon properly (yes I hold a grudge) and operate without standing it on it's side. There have been problems with 360s, but MS finally seems to have done the decent thing.
Online - well I don't mind paying the extra for Live. Was never a hidden cost, isn't that much and does just 'work'. I have a PC, I'm aware of the benefits/downsides of free-for-all and on a console I'll pay for an easy life.
If you want to get into features, surely 360 nudges it? Media Centre Client under my TV is rather clever and why they don't push this feature more is beyond me. Now I can understand if you roll your own OS, hate TV, refuses to network your house this may not be a benefit for you, but for most people - a nice thing. If they just rolled over and gave me same functionality as XBMC on the old XB, then I'd buya 360 for every TV in my house tomorrow.
Maybe I was a bit strong on the 'as bad or worse bit' - as I mentioned MS only ramped up the versions after I'd already drunk the Kool-Aid. Apart from the HDMI stuff, optional HD and peripherals there's not really been a major alteration to what you get in your 360 box since day one - they'll all play the same games in the same way. My point was if you're looking to replace your PS2 with a PS3 and play your old games, today you're faced with a 'yes', 'maybe' or 'no' with every PS3 box you might pick up in retail. Doesn't bother me too much, but is a bit of a departure from the standard console model you must admit (unless you can point me to any previous console that exhibits similar behaviour within it's entire lifetime of revisions).
I remember when my bootleg of THRILL KILL turned up in a jiffy bag on my door step.
60 seconds later (including bootup) I realized the game was a steaming pile of shite. Nothing like censorship to wet my loins though.
How much public coverage of 'thwarted free-speech' will it take to get this game to #1? My money's on a pre-Christmas final release - nothing says "Baby Jesus Birthday Cheer" more than graphic dismemberment.
Now I'd kindof expected there to be a PSThree style re-invention of the console after a few years, but this is taking the piss.
The entire idea of a console is you buy one, it is one of millions and they all work in exactly the same way - you have a PS2, you read the review, you buy the game and that's what you get - the reason you didn't buy a PC.
It's not just the fact there are different versions, it's that every one of them seems to be a con. Allow me to explain..
Both the 360 and PS3 have 'cheap' versions. They totted up the bits they needed to make the console, they decided it was going to be too expensive for some and that they had to make these 'cheaper' versions available. Fine by me, I may buy a solid gold 360, but if nobody else does, then I'll get no games.
So, I'm OK with the cheap version - except... Somewhere along the line the decision seemed to get made to make the cheap one as erm unattractive as possible. You can't afford a HD on your 360? Well the sensible option would be to stick an SD slot on the 360. Buy as much storage as you want/can afford and if you later buy the HD, then at least you can ebay the SD or stick it in your camera bag... but no somebody in marketing decided 'magic' 360 memory cards were required. I bought a premium and haven't even got a clue what they look like.
You get a wired controller - you want wireless - you buy a whole new controller. FFS couldn't they just have standardized the controller and had alternate battery covers - one that provides a wire and power, one with batteries and wireless module?
Then the elite comes out, with a 120Gig HD and HDMI - but if you want HD-DVD you have to buy another drive... aaggh. I don't really want HD-DVD, 120Gig sounds better than my 20 Gig and well HDMI would be nice, but I'm fine with component but but... basically I bought top of the range and now I feel grumbly as I now have second best.... and I'm not going to trade in for the Elite as then the Elite2 with HD-DVD will appear and.... well basically it's become like speccing a PC.
Sony's as bad if not worse. Now I never really wanted Blu-Ray, but if it was a no-cost feature it'd have got into my house. Except it was a cost.. First gen expensive and no games, so I can wait. But then drives started bouncing all over the place in size, backwards compatibility is now sliding, USB ports are vanishing (I never wanted that many initially, but now I may get fewer I'm affronted). Do I cough up the extra for an imported first gen one, or so I wait for the local one to come down in price, or maybe import an Asian one for the large Hard Drive or or.. but then if I get one now it'll have the old pads and I'll have to pay to 'upgrade them' (well rebuy them all) as well I want 'the best'....but then there's the cheap bundle with two 'old' pads and software emulation...but the drives will get bigger and if I wait..*head explodes*
I think my point is that the entire idea of a console is that you look at the title on the box, decide if you want to pay the price and you've got that console for that generation. If you don't want to pay the price, you wait 6 months, evaluate the new price on the same console and think again.
PS1 generation I was a student. I lusted, saved and finally bought mid-cycle-life.
PS2/Xbox I'd got my first job, finally had cash and had already bought an 8ft NeoGeo 6-shot cabinet.
I've now got a mortgage, career and am trying to be sensible. I haven't the time or energy to fucking deal with marketing department strategies or speculative bids on the long term l33tness of the console version I happen to end up with.
Until they make their minds up what they're selling I'm just sitting this one out.
Currently I pay for a 20Gig internet connection, giganews account and newsleacher subscription. Why? Well so I can watch the TV shows I want (from the UK) immediately after broadcast.
Now if I had a legitimate way of watching the same, for maybe a couple of dollars a show, I'd take that.
With music I get a bit arsey over DRM - if I've paid for an album, I'd like to be able to listen to it on whateve I want until the end of time. For TV shows, I'm more flexible.
that even with money-no-object, the XPS would be faster at running the games than the Apple quad-core monster. An XPS can be ordered with top-end graphics hardware, the Mac can't - they're just aiming at different markets.
As you work down the Apple range comparing prices, the XPS will generally have (or have the option of having) better GPU grunt under the hood.
Problem as I see it is that Apple != Games. Nobody buys a Mac to play games, therefore there's no need to bot the price/cut margin putting in a fast GPU, therefore still no games.
I've got exactly the same feelings. I've got the money to buy a PS3 - but I find I just haven't. Megadrive/Genesis onwards, I've owned pretty much every console going - some better than others, but there was usually a pretty good reason for each one of them.
I'm aware of a few PS3 games - the dirt-racing one looks fun... erm.. the FPS with the 3-eyed skull on the front... there's that online thing which is forever delayed....
Blu-ray movies would be nice, yes, but if I wanted to watch them I'd make a cheapy little media centre PC (which I keep on meaning to get around to) and put a £133 Blu-Ray drive into it (for less than the price of the £400 PS3 console). Not that I would buy Blu-Ray, buggered if I'm going to rebuy all my DVDs again.
is not shipping a system. Whole point is I can point my mum to something on the Dell (or Apple) website, tell her to order that and know she'll be able to browse the net within half an hour of the tap at the door.
I usually build my own, but there's something to be said for knowing that the OS is installed and has configured drivers for all the chips in the box.
The answer, which is surely what MS is tryng to move the market to anyway, is to include a 'trial' version of windows. It arrives free on the Dell box with say a $30 trial and if you like it you have the option of paying say $50 outright or $5 a month to activate it - oh and did we mention for a mere $5 a month extra we'll chuck in Office? Extra $2 a virus scanner etc etc. In the same way you'll find a trial version of Norton on the machine today, you'll get a trial OS.
To avoid people ripping Dell a new one, they just include a dual-boot to linux option.
So - EU is happy as hardware is no longer being used to bundle software.
Dell's happy as MS is now paying them to pre-install their software on their machines.
Linux fans are happy as more people are buying machines with Linux installed and ready to go.
MS's happy - they've got their claws into you, your visa details on record and can upsell you anything in their product library (why settle for $20 or whatever the OEM icense nets them)
Windows fans... well they're not so happy. If you wanted a Dell box with Vista on it, you're now paying more to MS and subsidizing everybody who ran Linux instead... well can't keep everybody happy all the time..
Slashdot Mirror
they should just hand Kindles out to people on planes.
Something new and fun to play with. Get to use it for a few hours to see if you like it - and offering a plane trip with an onboard library of a few hundred thousand books deinitely ranks above half a dozen crappy blockbusters.
More importantly, you can seed the market by letting travellers pay to walk off the plane with their new Kindle and their half-read book.
(Jeff, you owe me if you run with this)
and frequently have done in the past. My only grumble is when somebody connects and troughs all my bandwidth (sure they didn't mean to, but it's a bit rude).
New Belkin N1 router, whilst not being a 'great' router, does have a nice feature in that it can support 2 SSIDs - a normal one on your network and a guest one. Now assuming you could configure this so guest/open SSID only has WAN access, could maybe have bandwidth/transfer capped and set data just to be best effort - then this would solve pretty much all the problems (and people who don't like sharing would just never turn it on).
Leads me onto another issue, home routers currently are very very boring. Probably been the last 5 years since they've taken off. How's about them being able to do something a bit more interesting? If you live in a built up area, they could all mesh themselves together with an agreed protocol and do fancy stuff like providing high burst rates, local high-speed p2p, geographically contextual websites etc.
After playing with iphone/new ipod - the single 'great thing' is the browser built in. Whole two finger stretch/shrink is fantastic and imho the best mobile browsing solution out there.
Apart from that, I cannot see what it offers over 90% of other phones available at a fraction of the price. Lack of 3G is a piss-poor start. Crummy Camera etc etc. Other than the aforementioned browser the selljng point seems to be you can replace your ipod with it. Only reason you'd need an iphone to replace your ipod over say an entry level SE phone is because you've been tied into Apple's DRM. Not too much of a selling point really (Buy anything else and the music you've bought won't work).
of the aliens. I'm more worried about what'll happen here when the announcement we've made contact goes out.
We'll have people preparing for armageddon and hiding in holes in the gorund, religions declaring crusades, others declaring loyalty to our masters beyond the stars etc.
FFS just look at the reasons we're able to kick off with each other over at the moment. Can't we just wait a little while to sort ourselves out before we go searching for 'interesting times'?
telling you what to do - it'd be whoever put the lock on the console telling you what to do.
is a system where cell phones can 'legally' be asked to switch to quiet mode.
Cinemas, meeting rooms, restaurants etc could have a little transmitter that announces itself. Would just need to be a very weak signal that wouldn't go through walls, if you have a big room, then just shove a few up in the ceiling tiles every few metres.
To go with this system you just need to have an extra option on your phone to give you, ring, silent and 'civil'.
Can't believe this would be a particularly hard system to setup.
Still nobody ever listens to my great ideas anyway (mainly as I'm too lazy to do much more than post here), but whilst I'm on a role. I hate that my ring is either too quiet, or too loud for the environment I'm in. Why the hell isn't there an option that uses say, oh I dunno the microphone on my phone to work out how loud it needs to ring to be heard? Actually maybe that's not perfect (it's probably quiet stuffed in my pocket) - I'll expand upon this idea, it also takes into account the loudness of it's own ring (ringer and microphone muffled in my pocket so rign gets louder until it reaches a certain threshold on the microphone).
The effectiveness of this trojan is going to be how similar the above steps are to what you'd be asked if you were installing a legitimate codec.
If you thought you'd downloaded a codec and those are the steps required to install a codec, then people will do precisely that.
Not that I'm picking on Apple here, it's exactly the same on Vista. If you present some malicious code as something that requires root access to install, then people will blindy install it. Not quite sure what the solution is to this problem, apart from maybe an extension of the authorization process. Maybe instead of just asking for admin, it should ask "It looks like you're trying to install something to do with Networking -> DNS"... actually the more I read that I get vision of Clippy.
down to 10th now... has any advert on \. ever actually caused a site to get 'less' popular before?
if AT&T is having to hand over $18 a month to Apple, they're going to make damn sure they're going to separate every iPhone user of at least $18 a month extra.
Or alternatively keep iphone users attached to their phone for longer than they would for a conventional handset - which I assume means AT&T would not be happy to see an upgraded handset (e.g. a 3G one) launch any time soon as then they'd have to deal with users wanting to upgrade.
Yes, manufacturers are going to try to give journalists gifts and maybe this is to try to sway what they write. Whilst I'd have thought very few journalists would be influenced directly, maybe when you're thinking of the no-name builder of the next nVidia gpu you're going to review, your mind might more quickly leap to the one that's written on the flashdrive in your pocket - and you may give their PR a call first.
Bit thaqt annoyed me about the article was the notion that journalists are paid enough, without having to resort to accepting and flogging gifts. Now that 'paid enough' is their salary and where does their salary come from? Well it comes from those banner ads surrounding their article. If you want to follow the money, then more money comes in from entirely ad-driven revenue to the site, over the value of a few free gifts. When I saw that article, I was being told to buy OCZ and Crucial memory. Whilst those ads are there, I can't be alone in thinking there's a possibility they might look on those manufacturers more 'leniently'
track listings for GH3, after having played the demo I feel sad. :(
GH3 just doesn't 'feel right'. I'd have been quite happy if Neversoft had just picked up Harmonix's GH2 code and swapped out the tracks - but they didn't
Think I may hang on for Rock Band (although I'm never going to get all the kit as the gf already takes the piss enough of me, a grown man, with my little Fisher Price-stylee guitar)
I think the main problem is that we seem to entertain the notion that war can be 'gentlemanly'
It can't. The entire point is to cause as much pain and suffering to the other side, until they can take no more and bend to your will.
Anything other than that is window-dressing. If you're not prepared to die for the war, then you shouldn't have turned up. The idea of joining a national army ujp front and happily going off to kill whoever your leader dislikes that week is bizarre beyond words.
Getting your people captured and then acting indignant when they're beheaded, or protesting footage of 'enemy' snipers is just hypocritical beyond words. Once you go to war, you've made a decision you can't take back and anything goes.
has it's fair share of stonings, infanticide, genocide blah blah.
Kill a few space aliens and people get uppity? FFS Have none of them read that book?
Rather than having a subject header page and then X many pages of flat replies posts following, it allows new threads to be posted and replies at any point (i.e. makes a tree). Main page is just displaying x many parents and their respective rely trees on one page.
Not really designed to be a repository of information for a large number of users, rather a glorified IRC channel.
Site is bobpitch.com - and was designed to look similar to popbitch.com
By ripping off, I just meant taking using and never extending, raising bug reports/feedback/code changes etc.
I could just encrypt the source and hurl it out into the world as it is - take it or leave it. Just if I'm going to put the effort into documenting/re-writing before OSS release, I would like the effort to be appreciated by people reading the documentation and poking at the code.
*whines*
an excellent idea, thankyou.
Think what I shall do is take the existing site (bobpitch.com) and try and re-write it nicely (well fix the stuff I know is very wrong). As code comes out the other end I can bolt it onto the demo system. Hopefully this'll let people see what it's supposed to be doing and allows them to make the decision of whether or not they're interested very quickly.
Thanks again.
Maybe I didn't put that quite right.
I spent a year or so fire-fighting bugs and bolting on some superfluous Bells and Whistles, but basically it now does what I'd wanted it to do from the start.
Now the functionality is there, the next step would be to convert it from a PoC to a proper product - i.e. re-write all the code from scratch. It's this bit thats not very inspirational, load of work to get something that appears to be the same from the outside. Wouldn't mind doing it if it would be of use to other people, but if it's never going to get picked up by anybody, then it is wasted effort.
rant - I just bought the 360 as it came out first and as far as I was aware was only going to come in two flavours ever (and I had best one, so I was happy, yes I am petty).
Hadn't realized Sony supported swapping of PS3 HD. On the assumption this doesn't lose your warranty (HD apart) and there's not a problem shifting stuff across, I humbly aplogize for slighting your system of choice. Happy?
HD as standard - again makes me happy. Why the fuck MS won't allow games to cache off an HD (if available) is beyond me as well (and I'll refrain into getting to BR/360 DVD data transfer rates - mainly as the speed isn't my concern, rather the god-awful racket my 60 makes spinning up).
Not going to give you stable. My 360 has been bullet-proof since day one and I've still not forgiven Sony for denying the f'in obvious inability of my 1st gen PS1 to shade a polygon properly (yes I hold a grudge) and operate without standing it on it's side. There have been problems with 360s, but MS finally seems to have done the decent thing.
Online - well I don't mind paying the extra for Live. Was never a hidden cost, isn't that much and does just 'work'. I have a PC, I'm aware of the benefits/downsides of free-for-all and on a console I'll pay for an easy life.
If you want to get into features, surely 360 nudges it? Media Centre Client under my TV is rather clever and why they don't push this feature more is beyond me. Now I can understand if you roll your own OS, hate TV, refuses to network your house this may not be a benefit for you, but for most people - a nice thing. If they just rolled over and gave me same functionality as XBMC on the old XB, then I'd buya 360 for every TV in my house tomorrow.
Maybe I was a bit strong on the 'as bad or worse bit' - as I mentioned MS only ramped up the versions after I'd already drunk the Kool-Aid. Apart from the HDMI stuff, optional HD and peripherals there's not really been a major alteration to what you get in your 360 box since day one - they'll all play the same games in the same way. My point was if you're looking to replace your PS2 with a PS3 and play your old games, today you're faced with a 'yes', 'maybe' or 'no' with every PS3 box you might pick up in retail. Doesn't bother me too much, but is a bit of a departure from the standard console model you must admit (unless you can point me to any previous console that exhibits similar behaviour within it's entire lifetime of revisions).
I remember when my bootleg of THRILL KILL turned up in a jiffy bag on my door step.
60 seconds later (including bootup) I realized the game was a steaming pile of shite. Nothing like censorship to wet my loins though.
How much public coverage of 'thwarted free-speech' will it take to get this game to #1? My money's on a pre-Christmas final release - nothing says "Baby Jesus Birthday Cheer" more than graphic dismemberment.
Now I'd kindof expected there to be a PSThree style re-invention of the console after a few years, but this is taking the piss.
The entire idea of a console is you buy one, it is one of millions and they all work in exactly the same way - you have a PS2, you read the review, you buy the game and that's what you get - the reason you didn't buy a PC.
It's not just the fact there are different versions, it's that every one of them seems to be a con. Allow me to explain..
Both the 360 and PS3 have 'cheap' versions. They totted up the bits they needed to make the console, they decided it was going to be too expensive for some and that they had to make these 'cheaper' versions available. Fine by me, I may buy a solid gold 360, but if nobody else does, then I'll get no games.
So, I'm OK with the cheap version - except... Somewhere along the line the decision seemed to get made to make the cheap one as erm unattractive as possible. You can't afford a HD on your 360? Well the sensible option would be to stick an SD slot on the 360. Buy as much storage as you want/can afford and if you later buy the HD, then at least you can ebay the SD or stick it in your camera bag... but no somebody in marketing decided 'magic' 360 memory cards were required. I bought a premium and haven't even got a clue what they look like.
You get a wired controller - you want wireless - you buy a whole new controller. FFS couldn't they just have standardized the controller and had alternate battery covers - one that provides a wire and power, one with batteries and wireless module?
Then the elite comes out, with a 120Gig HD and HDMI - but if you want HD-DVD you have to buy another drive... aaggh. I don't really want HD-DVD, 120Gig sounds better than my 20 Gig and well HDMI would be nice, but I'm fine with component but but... basically I bought top of the range and now I feel grumbly as I now have second best.... and I'm not going to trade in for the Elite as then the Elite2 with HD-DVD will appear and.... well basically it's become like speccing a PC.
Sony's as bad if not worse. Now I never really wanted Blu-Ray, but if it was a no-cost feature it'd have got into my house. Except it was a cost.. First gen expensive and no games, so I can wait. But then drives started bouncing all over the place in size, backwards compatibility is now sliding, USB ports are vanishing (I never wanted that many initially, but now I may get fewer I'm affronted). Do I cough up the extra for an imported first gen one, or so I wait for the local one to come down in price, or maybe import an Asian one for the large Hard Drive or or.. but then if I get one now it'll have the old pads and I'll have to pay to 'upgrade them' (well rebuy them all) as well I want 'the best'....but then there's the cheap bundle with two 'old' pads and software emulation...but the drives will get bigger and if I wait..*head explodes*
I think my point is that the entire idea of a console is that you look at the title on the box, decide if you want to pay the price and you've got that console for that generation. If you don't want to pay the price, you wait 6 months, evaluate the new price on the same console and think again.
PS1 generation I was a student. I lusted, saved and finally bought mid-cycle-life.
PS2/Xbox I'd got my first job, finally had cash and had already bought an 8ft NeoGeo 6-shot cabinet.
I've now got a mortgage, career and am trying to be sensible. I haven't the time or energy to fucking deal with marketing department strategies or speculative bids on the long term l33tness of the console version I happen to end up with.
Until they make their minds up what they're selling I'm just sitting this one out.
Currently I pay for a 20Gig internet connection, giganews account and newsleacher subscription. Why? Well so I can watch the TV shows I want (from the UK) immediately after broadcast.
Now if I had a legitimate way of watching the same, for maybe a couple of dollars a show, I'd take that.
With music I get a bit arsey over DRM - if I've paid for an album, I'd like to be able to listen to it on whateve I want until the end of time. For TV shows, I'm more flexible.
that even with money-no-object, the XPS would be faster at running the games than the Apple quad-core monster. An XPS can be ordered with top-end graphics hardware, the Mac can't - they're just aiming at different markets.
As you work down the Apple range comparing prices, the XPS will generally have (or have the option of having) better GPU grunt under the hood.
Problem as I see it is that Apple != Games. Nobody buys a Mac to play games, therefore there's no need to bot the price/cut margin putting in a fast GPU, therefore still no games.
but if MS isn't going to be allowed to bundle their OS with hardware, then I can't think of a more plausible alternative as to what will happen.
I've got exactly the same feelings. I've got the money to buy a PS3 - but I find I just haven't. Megadrive/Genesis onwards, I've owned pretty much every console going - some better than others, but there was usually a pretty good reason for each one of them.
I'm aware of a few PS3 games - the dirt-racing one looks fun... erm.. the FPS with the 3-eyed skull on the front... there's that online thing which is forever delayed....
Blu-ray movies would be nice, yes, but if I wanted to watch them I'd make a cheapy little media centre PC (which I keep on meaning to get around to) and put a £133 Blu-Ray drive into it (for less than the price of the £400 PS3 console). Not that I would buy Blu-Ray, buggered if I'm going to rebuy all my DVDs again.
is not shipping a system. Whole point is I can point my mum to something on the Dell (or Apple) website, tell her to order that and know she'll be able to browse the net within half an hour of the tap at the door.
I usually build my own, but there's something to be said for knowing that the OS is installed and has configured drivers for all the chips in the box.
The answer, which is surely what MS is tryng to move the market to anyway, is to include a 'trial' version of windows. It arrives free on the Dell box with say a $30 trial and if you like it you have the option of paying say $50 outright or $5 a month to activate it - oh and did we mention for a mere $5 a month extra we'll chuck in Office? Extra $2 a virus scanner etc etc. In the same way you'll find a trial version of Norton on the machine today, you'll get a trial OS.
To avoid people ripping Dell a new one, they just include a dual-boot to linux option.
So - EU is happy as hardware is no longer being used to bundle software.
Dell's happy as MS is now paying them to pre-install their software on their machines.
Linux fans are happy as more people are buying machines with Linux installed and ready to go.
MS's happy - they've got their claws into you, your visa details on record and can upsell you anything in their product library (why settle for $20 or whatever the OEM icense nets them) Windows fans... well they're not so happy. If you wanted a Dell box with Vista on it, you're now paying more to MS and subsidizing everybody who ran Linux instead... well can't keep everybody happy all the time..