I think games need to be drien by a vision and that vision has to come from a small group of people (otherwise you get a focus-group deciding what minor variations should be included in EA SPORT XX).
As technology marches into the future, the number of people required to make a game has increased - there's simply more work to be done. This doesn't mean the proportion of people required to make creative input has increased in line with the overall rise in the team size (nor should it).
Could I just ask if anybody likes that god-awful escapist web site?
I don't mean the content, I mean the design - I'm convinced they'd just had an FTP of PDFs if they were allowed.
Aesthetics are good - but the damn 'click teeny next button for the next sentence with a huuge great random bit of clipart' is just so 'should have gone bankrupt in 2000'
I can honestly say I don't want what 99% of these people make in their 5 years at the grindstone in full time game development.
Now these people must have got into it initially for the love of games - and even if they jack it all in and get a 'real' job, I assume they'll still like games.
We're going to end up with a huge glut of people with real jobs (i.e. can do whatever they want) moonlighting in the evenings making quality mods, small games for online distribution etc etc.
Much more what I want to buy anyway and should be a nice bit of fresh air
and the third group staring at a blank screen - let me guess their blood pressure was the lowest of all the groups....ffs
I've played both games - one I found exciting, one I didn't. Nothing really to do with the content. I'm sure if they'd given another group DanceDanceRevolution they'd have pegged J-Pop as a greater threat to the US way of life than GTA.
Ah well - no point banging on about this here - I know I'm amongst friends.
You're absolutely right. I've got a K750, which has 2MP and autofocus. It actually takes perfectly good snaps.
Now I'm sure a proper camera would take better shots, I own one, but I'm not going to carry it around with me (however small it may be) just on the offchance I see something I want to take a picture of.
For example yesterday a group of us did some heavy whiteboarding. At the end I just took a snap of the board and now I've got a decent image I can send out to the people who were there and I can use as a reference.
One final quibble - I'm sure the Nokia has a vile interface - but SE is very simple. I open the shutter, point the phone and press a button. Just as fast as any other camera really.
Oh - and this really is the final thing. A nice cameraphone is fun. I have a stupid little message board thingie (www.bobpitch.com) - users register their phone number against their account and if they see anything interesting, take a snap and send it in from their phone. People on the board see the picture or video and SMS back.
Point I'm trying to make is that new camera-phones aren't supposed to be replacing cameras - they're supposed to be replacing old, poor quality camera-phones.
I'm one of the people who is now leaning. Doesn't mean I 'want' OSX, it just means that I can pay a premium on my hardware for my next windows PC and I'll have a free OSX toy to play with.
If I decide I hate OSX then I can trash the partition and make it windows only. In my humble opinion Bootcamp is a wonderful idea for Apple - there's a lot of people who like the look of Apple hardware, but aren't sure about the OS - who'll now buy an Apptel machine. Apple couldn't give a flying-F, they make as much money off this guy as a complete Apple zealot.
Actually, thinking about it a bit more - if Apple machines can now play PC games, then surely people thinking about playing games might cough up for the top-end Apple system. Currently unless you're into serious video/photo editing, I was never quite sure why you'd buy a top of the line Mac ever.
MS are pissy at Apple as previously every machine they sold was a lost windows license.
Apple were pissy at MS as every XP license they sold meant they'd not made a profit on the hardware it ran on.
That's now sorted out - both sides are happy - only person who's pissed off is Michael Dell.
but I suspect the majority of PCs sold without an MS OS on them, get an illegal copy installed upon them.
I'm not trying to 'support' Microsoft, or 'diss' Linux - but the fact is the majority of people use an MS OS and cannot use anything else.
Now I don't mean people here, and I don't mean the people trying to convince Dell to sell them a Linux PC - I mean the people who buy those absolutely rock-bottom price PCs from the large chain stores with some god-forsaken telly-tuddied-excuse-for-an-OS Linux build on them - or the fly-by-night money laundering PC store that sells OS-free systems.
Those people install pirate versions of XP.
Now as I'm trying to make painfully clear, I'm not tarring everybody with the same brush blah blah blah - BUT
Doesn't give MS the right to chase up people who didn't buy from them - BUT can anybody think of any software more pirated than XP - or think that maybe MS shouldn't be given the same protection as every other vendor of software?
Not entirely sure what point I'm trying to make - but nobody is forced to buy an MS OS - and nobody has the right to pirate it.
I'm just a bit fed up with the whole double standard applied to MS.
I've tried to used Linux - a success is just getting the f'in thing to find/recognise all the drivers. I'm more than prepared to sacrifice a bit of cash to get a PC I can actually do something with (after a weekend swearing at Linux).
Here's a thought. If the Linux community really wanted to crush MS - make a unified f'in build, with unified f'in drivers that's simpler for my Mum to keep running that XP.
Well I now realise that I've gone way off-topic here - but I am just sick and tired of whiners and they're "well I can do it, so what's the problem" attitude.
I look forward to the day when MS locks their OS onto the hardware (just like Apple) and then we don't have to listen to MS whining about mass piracy and you lot whining about MS being some monopolistic big brother - OH hold on..
If something is produced as 'Open Source' in the true sense - i.e. contributions are made from a variety of the most talented people who wish to contribute - YET the content is something people might erm 'object' to - do we run the risk of it being sabotaged?
By this I mean, somebody deliberately seeds the project with a hidden loophole, waits for it to be released and used and then when at critical mass, makes the loop-hole known. Just personally speaking I'd be tempted - and if you can recruit a couple of other like-minded people to assist in reviewing the 99.99% you want them to..
Sony seem completely COMPLETELY incapable of creating any software for their products that even approaches mediocre. Their hardware, whilst of poorer manufacturing quality than previously, is good. They bring out new technologies and from a hardware point of view, do integrate them - I can take the Duo out of my camera, check the photo on my PSP and send it via from my phone. The software I received with each of these pieces of hardware is pathetic and each seems to have been subcontracted out to a random outside company.
Sony needs to leverage their technology and hardware standards to create a single platform. Install a big unified system on your PC and then just download the extensions required for each product you've built.
For Example if I bought a tune online from them, taken a photo with a camera, I'd like it to appear in an iTunes like system that'll let me say synch the music to my W800 and view the photos on my associated PS3 - you get the point, that's just an example, but I just cannot believe they've not got around to making it. Currently I see new Sony kit and am tempted - then the fear sets in as I see it comes with yet another shonky software product that seems to have thousands of forums dedicated to bashing it. Surely I should look at a new Sony product, feel my wallet twinge and become overcome with happiness at the ease it'll integrate into my life with and excitement at a new line in my unified system's GUI.
and one likely to encourage good habits, is to use shared network folders and shared mailboxes.
Each project gets a dedicated folder where latest versions can be stored, backed up, referenced and version controlled if necessary.
Shared mail folders easily allows users to chuck drag across stuff that might be useful later, whilst not having to personally look after it.
Usual problem is that 10 people get cc'd the same attachment - but nobody wants to delete it 'just in case' it's required.
When projects finish the whole folder can just be backed up neatly somewhere leaving a nice centralised record.
little bespoke message board thing. When a user signs up it sends them a single email, with a URL they can click to validate their email address.
These suddenly started to bounce back from AOL. I went through hell trying to convince them to remove me from their spam filter - I really didn't consider one email sent it reponse to a 'click for email validation' button to make me a spammer - but AOL did (quick check showed over 2 years I'd sent about 150 emails to 150 unique AOL accounts).
I guess I could pay to take advantage of AOLs new offer, or just do what I did, and refuse to accept AOL users - no great loss - join me.
on slashdot over the last few days. A major major delay to the launch is surely down to the un-finalised BR spec.
I assume internally the film division of Sony is wanting the thing coming out with all DRM guns-blazing, and the PS3 division is slightly pissy with what they're being made to do.
The 'big thing' with the PS3 is Sonys chance to get a shit-load of BR players into peoples homes at a reasonable cost - so the movie division can cash in selling films, the hardware division can get showered with licensing royalties from the other hardware makers jumping on the wagon and fiance will have all the other stuidos stumping up for BR licenses to press disks.
There's only one problem with this... Only a tiny tiny number of people will actually be able to watch the disks at full res (i.e. Fully DRM'd up PS3->screen+audio path). Whilst a few techy/home-cinema buffs understand this the vast vast majority of the public don't. Can you just IMAGINE the outcry there's going to be when the PS3 launches? All those consumer rights programs "My little Tommy bought a PS3 with his pocket money, bought his films again on BR - and they look exactly the same". "Sony sold me a component HDTV and a PS3 and a BR disk - yet it looks just like DVD" etc
Sony is going to get such a kicking it'd make me wince - if I wasn't looking forward to it so much.
If the PS3 is launched as the BR posterchild, the first BR player people come across, it's forever going to be branded as the start of DRM hell - people love kicking new consoles (PSP/360 shortages, marketing blah blah) - but this is going to be fantastic (and must really really be pissing off the PS3 division, who just wanted to make a lovely console).
"There is no change in our original plan to release the console in spring 2006"
So you've just not updated your plan. That is not the same as saying it will ship in Spring. Looks like they've got 4 months to get the hardware design complete, design a case, manufacture enough to launch and ship.
Not going to happen - wonder where I can put money on that..
Sony is currently fighting the Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD battle. For their horse to win they need to get more Blu-Ray drives out there than HD-DVD ones.
Now with the first gen models of each format coming out, it would seem that HD-DVD drives cost an awful lot less than Blu-Ray - and the more units shipped the cheaper they can be made for. Sony needs to get more people making them and selling them NOW. They need to get other manufacturers to commit to making and shipping huuge numbers NOW.
But there's a bit of a problem here. Sony keeps on saying they're about to launch and sell a lower cost - subsidized Blu-Ray machine that will compete with what they want the other manufacturers to make. In the minds of people - Blu-Ray=PS3.
Why on earth would you buy a Blu-Ray player when there's not really any media for it and you know the PS3 is coming out soon and you know the PS3 will be much cheaper (and a PS3 as well).
Now with that in mind, why on earth would you manufacture a Blu-Ray player?
And if nobody buys a Blu-Ray player - apart from on a PS3 then the format will never take off and it's going to be a disaster for Sony - especially as they're going to have to pay to put a Blu-Ray drive in every PS3 ever made.
So whilst Sony is suffering from delays on the PS3 - surely the sensible thing is to play up how much it'll cost with the hope this will get the standalone blu-ray ball rolling.
for a moment. We don't just use massive storage arrays to allow us to 'access a load of data' they also provide many other benefits. Drive mirroring/parity allows you to integrate backup into your system - one physical device fails and no data is lost.
The main issue is access speed. Most data centres are continuously supplying small amounts of data to a huge number of clients. With a single unit and with a single head that's going to be a massive problem - array can simultaneously read and supply data from the different drives at the same time.
I had Opera for my P800 years ago. It was a nice browser for scaling pages to make them viewable - but it was slooow due to it trying to pull full sized pages over a GPRS connection.
Opera then released an update that had an option allowing you to cache and compress via their proxy server. Free at first and then for a small charge - the difference in browsing speed was massive.
My point was that a good browser alone is not enough to provide a good experience. Consoles just aren't suited to web browsing - i.e. the PSP running out of memory all the time.
You should offer some sort of off-client pre-processing AND a good client - and Opera as far as I'm aware is the only company offering this currently. (You listening Sony?)
but it's their back-end squashing that makes their 'reduced-platform' offering so nice. For example if you're viewing on your phone having the jpgs squashed by the Opera proxy server cuts your bandwidth cost, dramatically speeds up the browser and reduces the amount of memory required on the client.
My main complaint with the PSP is the damn thing keeps on running out of memory if you load up a single bulky page.
I think it should be very nice on the DS - prefer using it on my SE phone than IE on my PocketPC and I can only see it being nicer with the better screen(s) and a touchscreen.
Seems a bit cheaky charging users for it though - maybe the cart will have some local cache on it..
Well at least this has helped me make one decision
on
The Great HDCP Fiasco
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
There's no way I can go out and pay for a HD drive, a new monitor and then watch retail purchases HD content.
It's going to be downloading rips for me it would seem.
*shrugs*
I remember stumping up for a DVD decoder card back in the day - seemed a fair wad of cash, but I did like the picture. Basically it would seem the cost of entry to the new HD DRM future is going to be astronomical - nobody is going to bother...
For the average joe who watches movies on say a player in the lounge, a desktop and a laptop when out and about - exactly how much is it going to cost to upgrade from DVD to HD? How much do they possibly think I'm going to pay extra to replace my equipment that currently meets most of the specs with NEW - JUST TO GET ROUND THEIR F'IN DRM *slams head into desk*
That's it - I'm sitting the next gen out.
the telcos can even attempt to justify this.
I pay to connect to the internet on my ADSL AND I pay for my hosted server to be connected to the internet. The reason I pay both these companies is so I can make a connection between my home PC and my server.
Now my internet provider and my server host can charge me for access, because they have to pay the big-boys for those big-pipes - if they couldn't provide net access, then I'd have no reason for paying them.
Way I see it is that money pours in from both sides of the net connection and a bit is skimmed off at each level until it meets in the middle.
Perfectly good model - it works.
Huge areas of the 2nd world use mobiles as the primary telecoms network.
If you haven't already got copper (and it hasn't been dug up and sold) - you install a mobile network. Have you any idea how many magnitudes cheaper it is to stick in a few BTS, microwave them up than actually start laying copper, in trenches, to each house.
Then there's the difficulty in getting your punters to pay - payg cards make that very easy.
My point is mobiles are there and there to stay. 100 dollar laptop is great, but most people are going to plug it into their mobile to send an email anyway.
If you assume that most of the 100 dollar laptop market already have access to a TV and want/have a phone as well (I'd assume TV and phone come before laptop in aspirational purchases) - then why pay for a CPU and screen again?
The only downside seems to be that you'll need to go back to your house to look at your spreadsheets.
Equipment vendors produce equipment, and then software that can be used to managed/configure it remotely.
You can telnet to the devices in your network, but it's completely impractical for a large number of tasks. For this reason the vendors produce NMS (Network Management Systems) that provide a GUI and interfaces to control the devices en-mass.
Now the problem with this is that it just manages some equipment from one vendor - you're pretty much locked in. You could buy another makers kit, but then you have to run two NMS and most likely buy a solution that sits over the top of them. It's not even just configuring the kit, it's managing alarms, capacity and even just seeing what's connected to what.
Previously in the good times, vendors were happy with this situation - their customers were locked in and they just sold more and more of the same kit without much in the way of reductions - they knew the customers only other choice was to stump up a huge amount to bring in another vendor.
Now times are a bit hard. You want to sell your new bit of kit and people just aren't interested - it's nothing personal, it just costs more to get it into your network than it's going to bring in.
Hence these OSS initiatives. If common and open protocols can be developed across the equipment from these vendors then it just makes everybody's life simpler/cheaper. Telco doesn't have to spend vast sums on managing network and can go with the best vendor for the job. The vendors can sell to customers who previously locked them out, reduce the expense of maintaining an NMS and benefit from customers who now have more cash to spend.
The vendors that don't get involved are those with the most to lose. Makers of old legacy systems which can easily be replaced by some new upstart (e.g. HuaWei).
is surely a big swirly pattern on the screen after each match
"You will forget who won, you will forget who won, you won't pirate our stats."
It must really piss them off with all the DRM they're intent on sticking on media they can't actually do this. Just imagine the fun of being able to resell you the same match every week. In fact they'd just need to tape one game, fire the players and broadcast the tape in loop.
New legislation will be passed making the Person2Person sharing of stats illegal - MLB agents will be kicking down the doors of mothers whose children discussed results in the playground.
Is that they subcontracted out the develpment of the code to a third party.
Now this third party is, I assume, being paid on a regular basis to provide new versions.
If they give GamePark the source and GP just slap it on SourceForge then I'm quite convinced a team would spring up around it and it would rocket off down its new branch.
In fact, not only would this improve the code, it'd save GP cash - they only make money on the hardware anyway.
I'd be quite interested to know what the contract was like between GP and their developer.
Slashdot Mirror
I think games need to be drien by a vision and that vision has to come from a small group of people (otherwise you get a focus-group deciding what minor variations should be included in EA SPORT XX).
As technology marches into the future, the number of people required to make a game has increased - there's simply more work to be done. This doesn't mean the proportion of people required to make creative input has increased in line with the overall rise in the team size (nor should it).
Could I just ask if anybody likes that god-awful escapist web site?
I don't mean the content, I mean the design - I'm convinced they'd just had an FTP of PDFs if they were allowed.
Aesthetics are good - but the damn 'click teeny next button for the next sentence with a huuge great random bit of clipart' is just so 'should have gone bankrupt in 2000'
I can honestly say I don't want what 99% of these people make in their 5 years at the grindstone in full time game development.
Now these people must have got into it initially for the love of games - and even if they jack it all in and get a 'real' job, I assume they'll still like games.
We're going to end up with a huge glut of people with real jobs (i.e. can do whatever they want) moonlighting in the evenings making quality mods, small games for online distribution etc etc.
Much more what I want to buy anyway and should be a nice bit of fresh air
and the third group staring at a blank screen - let me guess their blood pressure was the lowest of all the groups....ffs
I've played both games - one I found exciting, one I didn't. Nothing really to do with the content. I'm sure if they'd given another group DanceDanceRevolution they'd have pegged J-Pop as a greater threat to the US way of life than GTA.
Ah well - no point banging on about this here - I know I'm amongst friends.
You're absolutely right. I've got a K750, which has 2MP and autofocus. It actually takes perfectly good snaps.
Now I'm sure a proper camera would take better shots, I own one, but I'm not going to carry it around with me (however small it may be) just on the offchance I see something I want to take a picture of.
For example yesterday a group of us did some heavy whiteboarding. At the end I just took a snap of the board and now I've got a decent image I can send out to the people who were there and I can use as a reference.
One final quibble - I'm sure the Nokia has a vile interface - but SE is very simple. I open the shutter, point the phone and press a button. Just as fast as any other camera really.
Oh - and this really is the final thing. A nice cameraphone is fun. I have a stupid little message board thingie (www.bobpitch.com) - users register their phone number against their account and if they see anything interesting, take a snap and send it in from their phone. People on the board see the picture or video and SMS back.
Point I'm trying to make is that new camera-phones aren't supposed to be replacing cameras - they're supposed to be replacing old, poor quality camera-phones.
I'm one of the people who is now leaning. Doesn't mean I 'want' OSX, it just means that I can pay a premium on my hardware for my next windows PC and I'll have a free OSX toy to play with.
If I decide I hate OSX then I can trash the partition and make it windows only. In my humble opinion Bootcamp is a wonderful idea for Apple - there's a lot of people who like the look of Apple hardware, but aren't sure about the OS - who'll now buy an Apptel machine. Apple couldn't give a flying-F, they make as much money off this guy as a complete Apple zealot.
Actually, thinking about it a bit more - if Apple machines can now play PC games, then surely people thinking about playing games might cough up for the top-end Apple system. Currently unless you're into serious video/photo editing, I was never quite sure why you'd buy a top of the line Mac ever.
MS are pissy at Apple as previously every machine they sold was a lost windows license.
Apple were pissy at MS as every XP license they sold meant they'd not made a profit on the hardware it ran on.
That's now sorted out - both sides are happy - only person who's pissed off is Michael Dell.
but I suspect the majority of PCs sold without an MS OS on them, get an illegal copy installed upon them.
I'm not trying to 'support' Microsoft, or 'diss' Linux - but the fact is the majority of people use an MS OS and cannot use anything else.
Now I don't mean people here, and I don't mean the people trying to convince Dell to sell them a Linux PC - I mean the people who buy those absolutely rock-bottom price PCs from the large chain stores with some god-forsaken telly-tuddied-excuse-for-an-OS Linux build on them - or the fly-by-night money laundering PC store that sells OS-free systems.
Those people install pirate versions of XP.
Now as I'm trying to make painfully clear, I'm not tarring everybody with the same brush blah blah blah - BUT
Doesn't give MS the right to chase up people who didn't buy from them - BUT can anybody think of any software more pirated than XP - or think that maybe MS shouldn't be given the same protection as every other vendor of software?
Not entirely sure what point I'm trying to make - but nobody is forced to buy an MS OS - and nobody has the right to pirate it.
I'm just a bit fed up with the whole double standard applied to MS.
I've tried to used Linux - a success is just getting the f'in thing to find/recognise all the drivers. I'm more than prepared to sacrifice a bit of cash to get a PC I can actually do something with (after a weekend swearing at Linux).
Here's a thought. If the Linux community really wanted to crush MS - make a unified f'in build, with unified f'in drivers that's simpler for my Mum to keep running that XP.
Well I now realise that I've gone way off-topic here - but I am just sick and tired of whiners and they're "well I can do it, so what's the problem" attitude.
I look forward to the day when MS locks their OS onto the hardware (just like Apple) and then we don't have to listen to MS whining about mass piracy and you lot whining about MS being some monopolistic big brother - OH hold on..
If something is produced as 'Open Source' in the true sense - i.e. contributions are made from a variety of the most talented people who wish to contribute - YET the content is something people might erm 'object' to - do we run the risk of it being sabotaged?
By this I mean, somebody deliberately seeds the project with a hidden loophole, waits for it to be released and used and then when at critical mass, makes the loop-hole known. Just personally speaking I'd be tempted - and if you can recruit a couple of other like-minded people to assist in reviewing the 99.99% you want them to..
Sony seem completely COMPLETELY incapable of creating any software for their products that even approaches mediocre. Their hardware, whilst of poorer manufacturing quality than previously, is good. They bring out new technologies and from a hardware point of view, do integrate them - I can take the Duo out of my camera, check the photo on my PSP and send it via from my phone. The software I received with each of these pieces of hardware is pathetic and each seems to have been subcontracted out to a random outside company.
Sony needs to leverage their technology and hardware standards to create a single platform. Install a big unified system on your PC and then just download the extensions required for each product you've built.
For Example if I bought a tune online from them, taken a photo with a camera, I'd like it to appear in an iTunes like system that'll let me say synch the music to my W800 and view the photos on my associated PS3 - you get the point, that's just an example, but I just cannot believe they've not got around to making it. Currently I see new Sony kit and am tempted - then the fear sets in as I see it comes with yet another shonky software product that seems to have thousands of forums dedicated to bashing it. Surely I should look at a new Sony product, feel my wallet twinge and become overcome with happiness at the ease it'll integrate into my life with and excitement at a new line in my unified system's GUI.
"We've hacked MS's copy-protection"
"we've given a rough idea about how we did it"
"We're not going to release the details for fear of piracy"
Guess who's waiting for a fat MS cheque for 'security consultancy' in the post over the next couple of days.
and one likely to encourage good habits, is to use shared network folders and shared mailboxes. Each project gets a dedicated folder where latest versions can be stored, backed up, referenced and version controlled if necessary.
Shared mail folders easily allows users to chuck drag across stuff that might be useful later, whilst not having to personally look after it.
Usual problem is that 10 people get cc'd the same attachment - but nobody wants to delete it 'just in case' it's required.
When projects finish the whole folder can just be backed up neatly somewhere leaving a nice centralised record.
little bespoke message board thing. When a user signs up it sends them a single email, with a URL they can click to validate their email address.
These suddenly started to bounce back from AOL. I went through hell trying to convince them to remove me from their spam filter - I really didn't consider one email sent it reponse to a 'click for email validation' button to make me a spammer - but AOL did (quick check showed over 2 years I'd sent about 150 emails to 150 unique AOL accounts).
I guess I could pay to take advantage of AOLs new offer, or just do what I did, and refuse to accept AOL users - no great loss - join me.
on slashdot over the last few days. A major major delay to the launch is surely down to the un-finalised BR spec.
I assume internally the film division of Sony is wanting the thing coming out with all DRM guns-blazing, and the PS3 division is slightly pissy with what they're being made to do.
The 'big thing' with the PS3 is Sonys chance to get a shit-load of BR players into peoples homes at a reasonable cost - so the movie division can cash in selling films, the hardware division can get showered with licensing royalties from the other hardware makers jumping on the wagon and fiance will have all the other stuidos stumping up for BR licenses to press disks.
There's only one problem with this... Only a tiny tiny number of people will actually be able to watch the disks at full res (i.e. Fully DRM'd up PS3->screen+audio path). Whilst a few techy/home-cinema buffs understand this the vast vast majority of the public don't. Can you just IMAGINE the outcry there's going to be when the PS3 launches? All those consumer rights programs "My little Tommy bought a PS3 with his pocket money, bought his films again on BR - and they look exactly the same". "Sony sold me a component HDTV and a PS3 and a BR disk - yet it looks just like DVD" etc
Sony is going to get such a kicking it'd make me wince - if I wasn't looking forward to it so much.
If the PS3 is launched as the BR posterchild, the first BR player people come across, it's forever going to be branded as the start of DRM hell - people love kicking new consoles (PSP/360 shortages, marketing blah blah) - but this is going to be fantastic (and must really really be pissing off the PS3 division, who just wanted to make a lovely console).
"There is no change in our original plan to release the console in spring 2006"
So you've just not updated your plan. That is not the same as saying it will ship in Spring. Looks like they've got 4 months to get the hardware design complete, design a case, manufacture enough to launch and ship.
Not going to happen - wonder where I can put money on that..
Sony is currently fighting the Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD battle. For their horse to win they need to get more Blu-Ray drives out there than HD-DVD ones.
Now with the first gen models of each format coming out, it would seem that HD-DVD drives cost an awful lot less than Blu-Ray - and the more units shipped the cheaper they can be made for. Sony needs to get more people making them and selling them NOW. They need to get other manufacturers to commit to making and shipping huuge numbers NOW.
But there's a bit of a problem here. Sony keeps on saying they're about to launch and sell a lower cost - subsidized Blu-Ray machine that will compete with what they want the other manufacturers to make. In the minds of people - Blu-Ray=PS3.
Why on earth would you buy a Blu-Ray player when there's not really any media for it and you know the PS3 is coming out soon and you know the PS3 will be much cheaper (and a PS3 as well).
Now with that in mind, why on earth would you manufacture a Blu-Ray player?
And if nobody buys a Blu-Ray player - apart from on a PS3 then the format will never take off and it's going to be a disaster for Sony - especially as they're going to have to pay to put a Blu-Ray drive in every PS3 ever made.
So whilst Sony is suffering from delays on the PS3 - surely the sensible thing is to play up how much it'll cost with the hope this will get the standalone blu-ray ball rolling.
for a moment. We don't just use massive storage arrays to allow us to 'access a load of data' they also provide many other benefits. Drive mirroring/parity allows you to integrate backup into your system - one physical device fails and no data is lost.
The main issue is access speed. Most data centres are continuously supplying small amounts of data to a huge number of clients. With a single unit and with a single head that's going to be a massive problem - array can simultaneously read and supply data from the different drives at the same time.
I had Opera for my P800 years ago. It was a nice browser for scaling pages to make them viewable - but it was slooow due to it trying to pull full sized pages over a GPRS connection.
Opera then released an update that had an option allowing you to cache and compress via their proxy server. Free at first and then for a small charge - the difference in browsing speed was massive.
My point was that a good browser alone is not enough to provide a good experience. Consoles just aren't suited to web browsing - i.e. the PSP running out of memory all the time.
You should offer some sort of off-client pre-processing AND a good client - and Opera as far as I'm aware is the only company offering this currently. (You listening Sony?)
but it's their back-end squashing that makes their 'reduced-platform' offering so nice. For example if you're viewing on your phone having the jpgs squashed by the Opera proxy server cuts your bandwidth cost, dramatically speeds up the browser and reduces the amount of memory required on the client.
My main complaint with the PSP is the damn thing keeps on running out of memory if you load up a single bulky page.
I think it should be very nice on the DS - prefer using it on my SE phone than IE on my PocketPC and I can only see it being nicer with the better screen(s) and a touchscreen.
Seems a bit cheaky charging users for it though - maybe the cart will have some local cache on it..
There's no way I can go out and pay for a HD drive, a new monitor and then watch retail purchases HD content.
It's going to be downloading rips for me it would seem.
*shrugs*
I remember stumping up for a DVD decoder card back in the day - seemed a fair wad of cash, but I did like the picture. Basically it would seem the cost of entry to the new HD DRM future is going to be astronomical - nobody is going to bother...
For the average joe who watches movies on say a player in the lounge, a desktop and a laptop when out and about - exactly how much is it going to cost to upgrade from DVD to HD? How much do they possibly think I'm going to pay extra to replace my equipment that currently meets most of the specs with NEW - JUST TO GET ROUND THEIR F'IN DRM *slams head into desk* That's it - I'm sitting the next gen out.
the telcos can even attempt to justify this.
I pay to connect to the internet on my ADSL AND I pay for my hosted server to be connected to the internet. The reason I pay both these companies is so I can make a connection between my home PC and my server.
Now my internet provider and my server host can charge me for access, because they have to pay the big-boys for those big-pipes - if they couldn't provide net access, then I'd have no reason for paying them.
Way I see it is that money pours in from both sides of the net connection and a bit is skimmed off at each level until it meets in the middle.
Perfectly good model - it works.
" ...don't talk on two cell phones simultaneously with a metallic eggcup in your mouth"
Huge areas of the 2nd world use mobiles as the primary telecoms network.
If you haven't already got copper (and it hasn't been dug up and sold) - you install a mobile network. Have you any idea how many magnitudes cheaper it is to stick in a few BTS, microwave them up than actually start laying copper, in trenches, to each house.
Then there's the difficulty in getting your punters to pay - payg cards make that very easy.
My point is mobiles are there and there to stay. 100 dollar laptop is great, but most people are going to plug it into their mobile to send an email anyway.
If you assume that most of the 100 dollar laptop market already have access to a TV and want/have a phone as well (I'd assume TV and phone come before laptop in aspirational purchases) - then why pay for a CPU and screen again?
The only downside seems to be that you'll need to go back to your house to look at your spreadsheets.
Equipment vendors produce equipment, and then software that can be used to managed/configure it remotely.
You can telnet to the devices in your network, but it's completely impractical for a large number of tasks. For this reason the vendors produce NMS (Network Management Systems) that provide a GUI and interfaces to control the devices en-mass.
Now the problem with this is that it just manages some equipment from one vendor - you're pretty much locked in. You could buy another makers kit, but then you have to run two NMS and most likely buy a solution that sits over the top of them. It's not even just configuring the kit, it's managing alarms, capacity and even just seeing what's connected to what.
Previously in the good times, vendors were happy with this situation - their customers were locked in and they just sold more and more of the same kit without much in the way of reductions - they knew the customers only other choice was to stump up a huge amount to bring in another vendor.
Now times are a bit hard. You want to sell your new bit of kit and people just aren't interested - it's nothing personal, it just costs more to get it into your network than it's going to bring in.
Hence these OSS initiatives. If common and open protocols can be developed across the equipment from these vendors then it just makes everybody's life simpler/cheaper. Telco doesn't have to spend vast sums on managing network and can go with the best vendor for the job. The vendors can sell to customers who previously locked them out, reduce the expense of maintaining an NMS and benefit from customers who now have more cash to spend.
The vendors that don't get involved are those with the most to lose. Makers of old legacy systems which can easily be replaced by some new upstart (e.g. HuaWei).
is surely a big swirly pattern on the screen after each match
"You will forget who won, you will forget who won, you won't pirate our stats."
It must really piss them off with all the DRM they're intent on sticking on media they can't actually do this. Just imagine the fun of being able to resell you the same match every week. In fact they'd just need to tape one game, fire the players and broadcast the tape in loop.
New legislation will be passed making the Person2Person sharing of stats illegal - MLB agents will be kicking down the doors of mothers whose children discussed results in the playground.
Is that they subcontracted out the develpment of the code to a third party.
Now this third party is, I assume, being paid on a regular basis to provide new versions.
If they give GamePark the source and GP just slap it on SourceForge then I'm quite convinced a team would spring up around it and it would rocket off down its new branch.
In fact, not only would this improve the code, it'd save GP cash - they only make money on the hardware anyway.
I'd be quite interested to know what the contract was like between GP and their developer.