I think it's the whole principle that he's against. Everyone wants your email address now. And they all think they should be sending you email there with updates about their products. It's pretty bad that they want to subject you to spam for trying to submit a phishing attempt to their web site.
This is true because we all have the machine code for Microsoft's software. Having the code, whether is C, C++, Java, VB, or Machine code isn't the same as having the specs for how things are supposed to work. I guess in MSs case they may be one and the same, but having the code doesn't help one create compatible software. If you have the specs, then you can design your own code without worrying about copyright infringement. If all you have is the source code, then there's nothing you can do except copyright infringement.
The president makes the laws. Therefore, anything he deems to be legal is legal. I think what he is doing is very immoral, but I recall someone saying before that this kind of action is actually allowed by US law. The problem is, many people are brought up to not question authority. If they say it's good for you, then you do it. If they tell you not to do then you don't do it. You don't ask questions about why stuff is the way it is.
Apart from Kameo, which actually looks like something new and interesting, there's no games that make me want to spend $400 on new hardware (console, extra controllers,...). I'm sure that the graphics are great on the new FPSs and Driving sims, but those types of games are available on other systems, and I don't feel that it's worth it to go out and buy a new system, just to play similar games with graphics that look better. And I know that there's lots of people who have no problems with their new 360s. But there's enough that do have problems that I would call it buggy. Maybe your particular unit isn't buggy, but in general, they are.
No, on the inside would stop it from being tripped by accident, or by users who have no idea what it does and decide to start playing with it. Also, all updates to the BIOS should just be stored on a secondary chip, and have to be confirmed when the user boots up the next time before it is copied to the actual bios. And there should be a third read only chip containing the original bios, which could somehow be loaded in the case of an emergency/mistake. BIOS chips can't really be that expensive, so putting extra security measures in place to not get your system hosed are important.
I think that they may have had lower production than they thought. Either due to difficulties producing them, or a marketing tactic. The result is however, that they only have a short time left until the other two consoles come out. If they don't sell as many units as possible, then they've missed their chance. When you are first to market, you are supposed to sell as many units as possible, so that by the time the competitors get their product out, nobody wants it because they have already bought your product.
I think the retailers are quite mad that there are no units to sell. I heard on guy at EB, that do to the backlog, they wouldn't have any available units until April, and that was if you ordered in December. I doubt if the situation has gotten any better. I don't know that many people who really care to buy one. It's expensive, buggy, and doesn't really have that many good games available. If MS doesn't get their act together, then the Revo and PS3 are going to hit the shelves, and they've lost their chance at being first to market.
They should just make the motherboard have a physical switch on it that stops your bios from getting written to. For the number of times i've had to flash my bios, it'd be a small price to pay to have to open my computer , just to have the piece of mind that some virus wasn't overwriting my bios. If it was a software setting, then there would be a way around it, but if there was a physical switch, that disconnected the write lines, then it would probably be pretty hard for a hacker to get around that.
But Microsoft tried this last time, with the original XBox, and they never did end up making a net profit on the venture. What makes them think that's it's going to work this time around. They can make more cash by selling their online service, but the other manufacturers are planning to give that away for free. Nintendo sells it's consoles above cost, and got just as manu sales as Microsoft did in the last round. So I would have to say that selling at a loss is not the only way to do it. I think a major reason for the sales of the XBox being so high was that it was basically a PC, and therefore very hackable. Think this new one won't be so hackable, and therefore, won't really catch as much attention on that front.
Higher revenue is only a good thing if your profit margin remains the same. If your profit margin is negative, then the more money you make, the more money you lose. If you have a profit marge of -1% and you make $100, you lose $1. However, if you have a profit marging of -1% and you make $1,000,000,000, you lose $10,000,000. I could have a revenue of $130 billion, but If it cost me $645 billion to sell that $130 billion, then I wouldn't be running a very good business.
They really need to beef up their standards for patent review. Stuff like this should never even get through. People shouldn't have to spend money battling these patents in court. I think cingular should be fined for even submitting a patent which is quite obviously not novel, and just an attempt to patent something that's already used everywhere in order to squeeze money out of others
I think that microsoft should try to narrow what it does instead of trying to do everything that it can. By narrowing it's views, the products it produces will be better.
I think that Microsoft should be held accountable for having that shared documents folder that enables students around the world to share files all over university campuses. I know it was my greatest source of content when I was in university. Napster was nice, but you couldn't beat 10 Mb/s lan with access to the entire student body's files.
I think that games should be like porn. Just enough story to tie together the action. Maybe it's just me, but I hate spending 50% of my time listening to/ watching the story. The actual fun part of the game should be playing it. It should be possible to have a story to the game, without feeling like you are watching a movie. This is the way I feel with Final Fantasy (at least the newer ones, the original was better). On the other hand, I feel that games like Zelda, which although very linear, don't have you watch the story, but more in a sense have you act out the story on your own.
I think the problem with a non-linear RPG is that people have trouble finding out when they've advanced in the game, or even beaten it. The probably get frustrated wondering if they are on the right path too. You spend all this time trying to do one thing, and you find out that the result of what you just did isn't really what you wanted to accomplish. I think people like to have a defined starting and end point in a game, and a well defined path between the start and end. If the game is non-linear, how does anyone know what to do next? if you have 5 missions to choose from? which do you choose, and if you choose the wrong one, do you end up with a bad result?
I don't know about you, buy I never had a problem playing any of those sports with just two people, sometimes just by myself. When I was bored, I would often kick a soccer ball against a fence, or practice kicking or throwing a football, or throwing a baseball, or hitting baseballs by pitching them to myself. All these activities can be enjoyed alone or with one other person. The other person just does the running after the ball for you. Or the other person can act as the defender. There is no reason why you need 22 people to play soccer.
If the kids are too lazy to play real sports (soccer, football, baseball, general active play rather than watching tv) then what makes these people think that the kids won't be too lazy to play DDR? Also, you can be really thin, but if you're eating junk food all the time, then you're still going to be unhealthy. They are fighting the problem in the wrong way. They should be getting kids to do more real activities, rather than relying on expensive equipment to make them healthy.
I imagine that if you're buying a $100,000 boat, then it's probably an ocean going vessel, and you could probably get around it by buying the boat somewhere else. I don't think there's any laws that stop you from parking a boat from another country at a marina.
I think the problem is that even if you tell samba that you want to make folders read/write anonymous, it still doesn't always work. This is because the anonymous user that samba uses also has to have access to those folders and files for read/write access. If it doesn't, then the system won't let samba access it, no matter how much it's config files tell it it should be able to. If you want a samba share that you can access anonymously from any computer, make a Fat32 partition, mount it read/write/execute all, and share that. The problem is that you can't share the stuff in your home folder, while still maintaining permissions that are sane on that folder, and it's files.
I would argue that if all you're doing is typing up letters, that a typewriter would probably do a better job than a computer. Perhaps an electronic typewriter with backspace functionality, but still a typewriter. Maybe one of those old word processor machines that's kind of a one-use computer with only word processing and spellcheck. First, the only thing they would do with the typewriter is writing letters. Not checking email, IM'ing, browsing the net, playing solitaire, experimenting with the 42 different fonts, stopping every 3 seconds to go to the mouse, correct that red-underlined word, regain their train of thought, and go back to typing the letter, stopping to fidget with the settings, trying to get the header in the right spot, where with a typewriter, you could manually advance the roller, and put it exactly where you wanted it. I hope you get the point. Personal Computers are nice because they are one machine that is capable of thousands of tasks, and when used properly. But when you're only doing 1 task, the rest of the stuff on the computer distracts you from what you're supposed to be doing, which is typing a letter.
Yes, but Nintendo Gamecube offered something that Nintendo 64 (it's predecessor) didn't have. The ability to use optical disks, which increased game size immensely. I know everybody else had that too, i'm just saying there was a good reason to go from Nintendo 64 to Gamecube. The revolution also looks to have many more features (the controller) that would make me want to upgrade. And by the way, nintendo has some pretty original titles. Take Animal Crossing for 1.
We had a national election last night in Canada. A country of 30 million people. We had no problem getting the votes counted. I know 30 million isn't 300 million, but having 300 million people just means you have more people to count the votes. The trick in Canada is that all the ballots are the same, and only ask you to vote for prime minister (actually, you vote for your MP). It is very simple, and hard for the voter or the counter to screw up.
Call Of Duty 2: Another 3rd person shooter
Project Gotham Racing 3: Another Racing Game
Ton of EA support: More Sports Games
Kameo: Kind of interesting looking
Perfect Dark: Seen This before
There's nothing new on the XBox 360 that doesn't have something similar on other systems. Does graphics alone make one want to run out and spend $500 on the new system/accessories/games? What else am I getting other than better graphics when I buy The new system. Xbox live kind of adds something, but requires highspeed internet and a subscription, which I'm not looking to pay for.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's the whole principle that he's against. Everyone wants your email address now. And they all think they should be sending you email there with updates about their products. It's pretty bad that they want to subject you to spam for trying to submit a phishing attempt to their web site.
This is true because we all have the machine code for Microsoft's software. Having the code, whether is C, C++, Java, VB, or Machine code isn't the same as having the specs for how things are supposed to work. I guess in MSs case they may be one and the same, but having the code doesn't help one create compatible software. If you have the specs, then you can design your own code without worrying about copyright infringement. If all you have is the source code, then there's nothing you can do except copyright infringement.
The president makes the laws. Therefore, anything he deems to be legal is legal. I think what he is doing is very immoral, but I recall someone saying before that this kind of action is actually allowed by US law. The problem is, many people are brought up to not question authority. If they say it's good for you, then you do it. If they tell you not to do then you don't do it. You don't ask questions about why stuff is the way it is.
Apart from Kameo, which actually looks like something new and interesting, there's no games that make me want to spend $400 on new hardware (console, extra controllers,...). I'm sure that the graphics are great on the new FPSs and Driving sims, but those types of games are available on other systems, and I don't feel that it's worth it to go out and buy a new system, just to play similar games with graphics that look better. And I know that there's lots of people who have no problems with their new 360s. But there's enough that do have problems that I would call it buggy. Maybe your particular unit isn't buggy, but in general, they are.
No, on the inside would stop it from being tripped by accident, or by users who have no idea what it does and decide to start playing with it. Also, all updates to the BIOS should just be stored on a secondary chip, and have to be confirmed when the user boots up the next time before it is copied to the actual bios. And there should be a third read only chip containing the original bios, which could somehow be loaded in the case of an emergency/mistake. BIOS chips can't really be that expensive, so putting extra security measures in place to not get your system hosed are important.
I think that they may have had lower production than they thought. Either due to difficulties producing them, or a marketing tactic. The result is however, that they only have a short time left until the other two consoles come out. If they don't sell as many units as possible, then they've missed their chance. When you are first to market, you are supposed to sell as many units as possible, so that by the time the competitors get their product out, nobody wants it because they have already bought your product.
I think the retailers are quite mad that there are no units to sell. I heard on guy at EB, that do to the backlog, they wouldn't have any available units until April, and that was if you ordered in December. I doubt if the situation has gotten any better. I don't know that many people who really care to buy one. It's expensive, buggy, and doesn't really have that many good games available. If MS doesn't get their act together, then the Revo and PS3 are going to hit the shelves, and they've lost their chance at being first to market.
They should just make the motherboard have a physical switch on it that stops your bios from getting written to. For the number of times i've had to flash my bios, it'd be a small price to pay to have to open my computer , just to have the piece of mind that some virus wasn't overwriting my bios. If it was a software setting, then there would be a way around it, but if there was a physical switch, that disconnected the write lines, then it would probably be pretty hard for a hacker to get around that.
But Microsoft tried this last time, with the original XBox, and they never did end up making a net profit on the venture. What makes them think that's it's going to work this time around. They can make more cash by selling their online service, but the other manufacturers are planning to give that away for free. Nintendo sells it's consoles above cost, and got just as manu sales as Microsoft did in the last round. So I would have to say that selling at a loss is not the only way to do it. I think a major reason for the sales of the XBox being so high was that it was basically a PC, and therefore very hackable. Think this new one won't be so hackable, and therefore, won't really catch as much attention on that front.
Higher revenue is only a good thing if your profit margin remains the same. If your profit margin is negative, then the more money you make, the more money you lose. If you have a profit marge of -1% and you make $100, you lose $1. However, if you have a profit marging of -1% and you make $1,000,000,000, you lose $10,000,000. I could have a revenue of $130 billion, but If it cost me $645 billion to sell that $130 billion, then I wouldn't be running a very good business.
Well, the revenues are way up, but the profits are way down. If you are in business, and not making a profit, well, that's a bad thing.
They really need to beef up their standards for patent review. Stuff like this should never even get through. People shouldn't have to spend money battling these patents in court. I think cingular should be fined for even submitting a patent which is quite obviously not novel, and just an attempt to patent something that's already used everywhere in order to squeeze money out of others
I think that microsoft should try to narrow what it does instead of trying to do everything that it can. By narrowing it's views, the products it produces will be better.
I think that Microsoft should be held accountable for having that shared documents folder that enables students around the world to share files all over university campuses. I know it was my greatest source of content when I was in university. Napster was nice, but you couldn't beat 10 Mb/s lan with access to the entire student body's files.
I think that games should be like porn. Just enough story to tie together the action. Maybe it's just me, but I hate spending 50% of my time listening to/ watching the story. The actual fun part of the game should be playing it. It should be possible to have a story to the game, without feeling like you are watching a movie. This is the way I feel with Final Fantasy (at least the newer ones, the original was better). On the other hand, I feel that games like Zelda, which although very linear, don't have you watch the story, but more in a sense have you act out the story on your own.
I think the problem with a non-linear RPG is that people have trouble finding out when they've advanced in the game, or even beaten it. The probably get frustrated wondering if they are on the right path too. You spend all this time trying to do one thing, and you find out that the result of what you just did isn't really what you wanted to accomplish. I think people like to have a defined starting and end point in a game, and a well defined path between the start and end. If the game is non-linear, how does anyone know what to do next? if you have 5 missions to choose from? which do you choose, and if you choose the wrong one, do you end up with a bad result?
You don't have to join a league to play a sport. I don't know where people get this idea.
I don't know about you, buy I never had a problem playing any of those sports with just two people, sometimes just by myself. When I was bored, I would often kick a soccer ball against a fence, or practice kicking or throwing a football, or throwing a baseball, or hitting baseballs by pitching them to myself. All these activities can be enjoyed alone or with one other person. The other person just does the running after the ball for you. Or the other person can act as the defender. There is no reason why you need 22 people to play soccer.
If the kids are too lazy to play real sports (soccer, football, baseball, general active play rather than watching tv) then what makes these people think that the kids won't be too lazy to play DDR? Also, you can be really thin, but if you're eating junk food all the time, then you're still going to be unhealthy. They are fighting the problem in the wrong way. They should be getting kids to do more real activities, rather than relying on expensive equipment to make them healthy.
I imagine that if you're buying a $100,000 boat, then it's probably an ocean going vessel, and you could probably get around it by buying the boat somewhere else. I don't think there's any laws that stop you from parking a boat from another country at a marina.
I think the problem is that even if you tell samba that you want to make folders read/write anonymous, it still doesn't always work. This is because the anonymous user that samba uses also has to have access to those folders and files for read/write access. If it doesn't, then the system won't let samba access it, no matter how much it's config files tell it it should be able to. If you want a samba share that you can access anonymously from any computer, make a Fat32 partition, mount it read/write/execute all, and share that. The problem is that you can't share the stuff in your home folder, while still maintaining permissions that are sane on that folder, and it's files.
I would argue that if all you're doing is typing up letters, that a typewriter would probably do a better job than a computer. Perhaps an electronic typewriter with backspace functionality, but still a typewriter. Maybe one of those old word processor machines that's kind of a one-use computer with only word processing and spellcheck. First, the only thing they would do with the typewriter is writing letters. Not checking email, IM'ing, browsing the net, playing solitaire, experimenting with the 42 different fonts, stopping every 3 seconds to go to the mouse, correct that red-underlined word, regain their train of thought, and go back to typing the letter, stopping to fidget with the settings, trying to get the header in the right spot, where with a typewriter, you could manually advance the roller, and put it exactly where you wanted it. I hope you get the point. Personal Computers are nice because they are one machine that is capable of thousands of tasks, and when used properly. But when you're only doing 1 task, the rest of the stuff on the computer distracts you from what you're supposed to be doing, which is typing a letter.
Yes, but Nintendo Gamecube offered something that Nintendo 64 (it's predecessor) didn't have. The ability to use optical disks, which increased game size immensely. I know everybody else had that too, i'm just saying there was a good reason to go from Nintendo 64 to Gamecube. The revolution also looks to have many more features (the controller) that would make me want to upgrade. And by the way, nintendo has some pretty original titles. Take Animal Crossing for 1.
We had a national election last night in Canada. A country of 30 million people. We had no problem getting the votes counted. I know 30 million isn't 300 million, but having 300 million people just means you have more people to count the votes. The trick in Canada is that all the ballots are the same, and only ask you to vote for prime minister (actually, you vote for your MP). It is very simple, and hard for the voter or the counter to screw up.
Call Of Duty 2: Another 3rd person shooter
Project Gotham Racing 3: Another Racing Game
Ton of EA support: More Sports Games
Kameo: Kind of interesting looking
Perfect Dark: Seen This before
There's nothing new on the XBox 360 that doesn't have something similar on other systems. Does graphics alone make one want to run out and spend $500 on the new system/accessories/games? What else am I getting other than better graphics when I buy The new system. Xbox live kind of adds something, but requires highspeed internet and a subscription, which I'm not looking to pay for.