I can't help but remain skeptical. Maybe it's due to having read too many articles on El Reg, but maybe, just maybe, all those articles about Second Life are just attempts from Linden Labs to keep the hype running? I don't know a single person who has stayed in SL beyond simply trying it out.
Tell me, are your friends like yourself. Are they "traditional hardcore geeks"? SL isn't for you. Remember when the Internet was all shell accounts, gopher, Archie, Veronica, command-line ftp, mutt, pine, and elm? Remember when http came along and unified things, and made it easier for the second generation of less geeky people to use the internet? Remember the complaints about how the web was dumbing stuff down and how commandline everything was better. There's still people complaining about the September that never Ends.
Second Life is the http to There/IMVU/Actiworlds/VRML's gopher/veronica/archie. SL is the NCSA Mosaic of virtual worlds, primitive and cludgy in certain ways, but still there's nothing that comes close to it. It's the virtual world to beat.
3D virtual worlds naturally have a future. Looking at the numbers of users however, that future is with the MMORPG's, not with Second Life and the like.
MMORPG's are not virtual worlds in the way that SL is. They're more like graphical MUDS with all the content provided by an on-high set of gods, the devs. SL has user created content, lots of it, more than anyone can keep track of.
Let's see, they have ripple water from Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Check Health orbs from Marvel Ultimate Alliance. check Art direction and environments that look like they popped out of those Snowblind engine games, BG:DA, Champions of Norrath, etc. Check. Doesn't look that much different from a PS2 game? Check.
It's about time Blizzard learned something from console devs, considering they once were console devs themselves. However, it's a bit late in coming and rather obvious that something like this happened:
Blizdev1: Hey let's finally get around to getting off our lazy asses and doing D3. Blizdev2: Okay, but lets look at our competition first. Blizdev3: I hear the PS2 has a lot of Diablo clones, why don't we look at those in addition to all the PC clones. Blizdevs get PS2. Blizdevs in unison: What the? Ripple water? Rotatable AND zoomable camera? Look at those spells and magic effects. Look at those environments! These games look better than Diablo II! How did they do this! My god, look at this company's output, this Snowblind did 4 games in less time than we did 1! There's no way we can port Diablo to the PS2 now, not with this kind of competition. Blizdev1: Perhaps we should borrow some ideas.
Or maybe they could, you know, while they're borrowing ideas from the PS2 Diablo clones, they could borrow the concept of having a quick health/quick mana button. Which first appeared in the PSone port of Diablo!
Na, they play more like Diablo than Gauntlet Legends. But both Diablo and Gauntlet-foo have Rogue-likes in their ancestry, so they're closely related cousins.
It's Marvel Ultimate Alliance that does it, X-Men Legends (at least the first one that I own) still uses potions. If memory serves me correctly, the PS3 Untold Legends game also does it that way. As I've said before, Blizzard is playing catchup to all those PS2 Diablo clones. That's what happens when you slack off, dev wise, for years. WoW is not an excuse, Square-Enix can do an MMORPG and STILL develop hordes of games. Of course, being a console dev house, Square-Enix actually works hard rather than being to lazy to port their own game to the PS2. Yeah Blizzard, you're a bunch of lazy stupid bums for not porting D2 to the PS2, and now SOE and Snowblind have leapfrogged you.
Why don't you keep your game disks organized like console players do? I understand that until recently PC game boxes weren't rigid or standardized but now they are. Stack em, put em in a shelf, whatever. As for storing data on DVD's, you could get an external hard drive, but is switching disks really that inconvienient?
Developers resent you, because you are the kind of person who back in the 80's would be copying all their non copy protected 8-bit computer disk games and handing them to their friends. To stop that, they added copy protection, and then you said: "copy protection annoys me, I'll just pirate more." Brilliant strategy.
Do not require me to leave the CD in. I have a bunch of games and don't want to dig around for the installation media every time I want to play it.
This is something I don't understand, why are so many PC gamers in this thread talking about CD's... in 2008! And why not leave the disc in, then you can run the game directly from disc and save space.
GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) is a replacement for the PGP suite of cryptographic software. GnuPG is completely compliant with RFC 4880, which is the current IETF standards track specification of OpenPGP.
GnuPG is also a world recognized standard. Proper mail clients should support it out of the box.
I highly recommend you don't bother with the other solutions out there and go straight to XBMC if streaming is all you're looking for. There is nothing on the planet that views as many media file types as XBMC. MythTV, etc... all the other Linux and Windows solutions are woefully inadequate when compared to the functionality of XBMC for streaming media. The other Linux solutions (and I suspect the Windows solutions) do other things that XBMC does not or can not, but for pure media streaming, nothing even comes vaguely close to XBMC.
As a PS3 owner I must admit that the PS3 can only share via DLNA in GameOS, not SMB. It can do SMB under Linux but without RSX there's limits. XBMC does require "modding" your Xbox via sofmod, modchip etc.
I mean, one of the questions on the survey is: "High-definition DVD players can be connected to your home network and the Internet. Does this sound like a feature that would interest you?" Just imagine a typical Walmart shopper even thinking something like that! Inconceivable! What does that even mean? If they recognize the words in that sentence, what average person thinks of setting up another machine on a home network as a feature, not a hassle? I mean, I know that WE enjoy adding NAS to our home networks, but most people - not so much.
Very insightful. About a month or so I was in the local wal-mart pushing the cart near the electronics section heading to the grocery section. And some clerks was trying to explain the PS3 to a shopper who wanted one but wanted to know if it was worth it. So I told him about the features, all of them, the networking, the downloadable games and demos, the web browser the built in video chat, blu-ray, games, picture viewing, cd ripping, remote play with the PSP. And he got this look on his face, he was so out of his league. He then said, that it seemed almost like a computer. And then I told him about Linux on the PS3, which just blew his mind. Then I asked if he had broadband because the PS3 needs it to make effective use of all the features. He had dialup, no plans to upgrade, didn't see the need, and said that perhaps the PS3 wasn't for him yet.
At CES, the Blu-ray Disc Association announced that 3.5 million Blu-ray players had been sold to date. Of those, 3 million were PlayStation 3s, the most future-proof Blu-ray player on the market.
As for quality, the PS3 is one of the top blu-ray players, It may not have the highest picture quality, that award usually goes to samsung in the writeups, but with all the other features BD-Live,gaming etc.
If you've been following CNET's Blu-ray coverage, it shouldn't be shocking that standalones are struggling. The PS3 holds the top spot on our best Blu-ray players list, and every time we review a new Blu-ray player we use the PS3 as our reference. It's the best Blu-ray player we've tested so far, plus you get a high-def gaming console and a well-featured media streamer for $400. Yes, there are a few reasons why you may not want to use a PS3 as your Blu-ray player, but for the vast majority of people the PS3 is just a better value. And with standalone players at current price levels, it seems like consumers agree with us.
They're even saying forgo the dedicated video streamers like the AppleTV for PS3's and Xboxes, because you can rent and download HD content on them via PSN and XBoxLive
And even this article on six reasons NOT to use a PS3 as your blu-ray player still says it's the best one out there:
And a recent firmware update fixed some of the issues listed in that article.
And here's another thing. I'm responding to your post with Firefox 3.0.1 running on a PS3 with a Yellow Dog Linux install.
Like the PS2 Linux kit was the best $200 gaming related purchase I made all those years ago, because it increased the functionality of my PS2 even further beyond PS1 games, PS2 games and DVD's The PS3 trumps it.
It plays DVD too Runs Linux better. (Yes I have run Linux on them both) It has media and internet functions that only Japanese PS2's with the BBN installed had. Plays PS1 PS2 PS3 games.
Slashdot Mirror
s/generous\ tax\ incentives/bribes
Tell me, are your friends like yourself. Are they "traditional hardcore geeks"? SL isn't for you. Remember when the Internet was all shell accounts, gopher, Archie, Veronica, command-line ftp, mutt, pine, and elm? Remember when http came along and unified things, and made it easier for the second generation of less geeky people to use the internet? Remember the complaints about how the web was dumbing stuff down and how commandline everything was better. There's still people complaining about the September that never Ends.
Second Life is the http to There/IMVU/Actiworlds/VRML's gopher/veronica/archie. SL is the NCSA Mosaic of virtual worlds, primitive and cludgy in certain ways, but still there's nothing that comes close to it. It's the virtual world to beat.
MMORPG's are not virtual worlds in the way that SL is. They're more like graphical MUDS with all the content provided by an on-high set of gods, the devs. SL has user created content, lots of it, more than anyone can keep track of.
Poor Dreamcast, the PS2 beats it in yet another way. The PS2 makes a better Linux box.
Here's how to join Nethackers Anonymous:
telnet nethack.alt.org
and also join #nethack on FreeNode.
Black death zombies, and yes, it was permanent.
Here's a solution, run bittorrent on the PS3 itself, save to external hard drive. Watch in GameOS.
Let's see, they have ripple water from Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Check
Health orbs from Marvel Ultimate Alliance. check
Art direction and environments that look like they popped out of those Snowblind engine games, BG:DA, Champions of Norrath, etc. Check.
Doesn't look that much different from a PS2 game? Check.
It's about time Blizzard learned something from console devs, considering they once were console devs themselves. However, it's a bit late in coming and rather obvious that something like this happened:
Blizdev1: Hey let's finally get around to getting off our lazy asses and doing D3.
Blizdev2: Okay, but lets look at our competition first.
Blizdev3: I hear the PS2 has a lot of Diablo clones, why don't we look at those in addition to all the PC clones.
Blizdevs get PS2.
Blizdevs in unison: What the? Ripple water? Rotatable AND zoomable camera? Look at those spells and magic effects. Look at those environments! These games look better than Diablo II! How did they do this! My god, look at this company's output, this Snowblind did 4 games in less time than we did 1! There's no way we can port Diablo to the PS2 now, not with this kind of competition.
Blizdev1: Perhaps we should borrow some ideas.
Or maybe they could, you know, while they're borrowing ideas from the PS2 Diablo clones, they could borrow the concept of having a quick health/quick mana button. Which first appeared in the PSone port of Diablo!
There is no level 146 in Diablo, the maximum character level is 50.
Na, they play more like Diablo than Gauntlet Legends. But both Diablo and Gauntlet-foo have Rogue-likes in their ancestry, so they're closely related cousins.
It's Marvel Ultimate Alliance that does it, X-Men Legends (at least the first one that I own) still uses potions. If memory serves me correctly, the PS3 Untold Legends game also does it that way. As I've said before, Blizzard is playing catchup to all those PS2 Diablo clones. That's what happens when you slack off, dev wise, for years. WoW is not an excuse, Square-Enix can do an MMORPG and STILL develop hordes of games. Of course, being a console dev house, Square-Enix actually works hard rather than being to lazy to port their own game to the PS2. Yeah Blizzard, you're a bunch of lazy stupid bums for not porting D2 to the PS2, and now SOE and Snowblind have leapfrogged you.
You'll have to define "poor". I've got an 80GB PS3 and it's played every PS2 game I've thrown at it. All PS3's can play PS1 games.
Why don't you keep your game disks organized like console players do? I understand that until recently PC game boxes weren't rigid or standardized but now they are. Stack em, put em in a shelf, whatever. As for storing data on DVD's, you could get an external hard drive, but is switching disks really that inconvienient?
Developers resent you, because you are the kind of person who back in the 80's would be copying all their non copy protected 8-bit computer disk games and handing them to their friends. To stop that, they added copy protection, and then you said: "copy protection annoys me, I'll just pirate more." Brilliant strategy.
This is something I don't understand, why are so many PC gamers in this thread talking about CD's... in 2008! And why not leave the disc in, then you can run the game directly from disc and save space.
Just use IMAP with Gmail, then you can use whatever encryption your mail client supports.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Privacy_Guard
GnuPG is also a world recognized standard. Proper mail clients should support it out of the box.
The one with the Ethernet port is 469 because it can support BD-Live and the others can't. But if you have 469, you're better of getting that PS3.
But what if your Blu-Ray player could dual-boot into Linux (even if you couldn't view the discs in Linux). Would that be cool?
As a PS3 owner I must admit that the PS3 can only share via DLNA in GameOS, not SMB. It can do SMB under Linux but without RSX there's limits. XBMC does require "modding" your Xbox via sofmod, modchip etc.
Very insightful. About a month or so I was in the local wal-mart pushing the cart near the electronics section heading to the grocery section. And some clerks was trying to explain the PS3 to a shopper who wanted one but wanted to know if it was worth it. So I told him about the features, all of them, the networking, the downloadable games and demos, the web browser the built in video chat, blu-ray, games, picture viewing, cd ripping, remote play with the PSP. And he got this look on his face, he was so out of his league. He then said, that it seemed almost like a computer. And then I told him about Linux on the PS3, which just blew his mind. Then I asked if he had broadband because the PS3 needs it to make effective use of all the features. He had dialup, no plans to upgrade, didn't see the need, and said that perhaps the PS3 wasn't for him yet.
the percentage of Blu-Ray that is PS3 is high. I don't know how high, but it's high, dropping a bit now though.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080118-new-nlu-ray-2-0-spec-makes-ps3-the-most-future-proof-player.html
As for quality, the PS3 is one of the top blu-ray players, It may not have the highest picture quality, that award usually goes to samsung in the writeups, but with all the other features BD-Live,gaming etc.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/147209/the_best_bluray_players.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9874808-7.html
http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/03/blu-ray-sony-tech-personal-cx_mji_0403blu.html
http://buy.blorge.com/2008/07/15/buyers-guide-to-blu-ray-players-help-clear-up-the-confusion/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10005897-1.html
a quote:
They're even saying forgo the dedicated video streamers like the AppleTV for PS3's and Xboxes, because you can rent and download HD content on them via PSN and XBoxLive
And even this article on six reasons NOT to use a PS3 as your blu-ray player still says it's the best one out there:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-9941740-1.html
And a recent firmware update fixed some of the issues listed in that article.
And here's another thing. I'm responding to your post with Firefox 3.0.1 running on a PS3 with a Yellow Dog Linux install.
Like the PS2 Linux kit was the best $200 gaming related purchase I made all those years ago, because it increased the functionality of my PS2 even further beyond PS1 games, PS2 games and DVD's The PS3 trumps it.
Maybe he's downloading HD movies via the PS3's Playstation Network video store. :-)
But why not go with the PS3?
It plays DVD too
Runs Linux better. (Yes I have run Linux on them both)
It has media and internet functions that only Japanese PS2's with the BBN installed had.
Plays PS1 PS2 PS3 games.
those "gamers" you're referring to aren't really gamers who play games, they're gamers who play benchmarks for bragging points for their e-penis.