People need to see these numbers because seeing that a huge portion of the market bought into the same thing as them makes them feel safe about their purchase.
I bought a 360 and I'm happy to see Microsoft have a huge lead on Sony right now becaus this means that over time Japanese are going to develop more for the 360 and I'll be able to have nice japanese RPGs or 'Ninja Gaiden's next to the 'Gears Of War's, 'Halo's and 'Elder Scroll's made by the rest of the world.
I've seen achievements ruin Xbox Live games. I mean, some people are playing on Gears of War to unlock the grenade tag achievement. They'll play over and over and over only with grenades simply to tag people. The problem is this is a pretty difficult strategy because a lot of people favor the shotgun and those grenade handling players become easy shotgun practice. I can't count the number of times I've killed someone who was just trying to tag me with their grenades just so they could get the achievement. Had they used the shotgun or some other strategy they might have killed me and helped their team win.
There shouldn't be a learning curve involved with what amounts to commodity software.
Meh. I was a Wordperfect 4.1 user under DOS for years and then in 1995 I switched to Wordperfect for Windows and then Office a couple of months later. There was a learning curve involved each time. Same thing when I switched to OpenOffice for home usage.
If the workflow is simply different, there was no reason to force this on people. If it is indeed better, then I'd rather use that new one. If you are not happy with the new changes, remember all those years ago when you were writing in Wordperfect under DOS and using that little card with all the meta keys printed on it to do everything. I'm pretty sure you adapted to the graphical way of doing things. People will learn again if they see the use for it. Otherwise companies won't buy the new version and Microsoft will have to revert to the previous way of doing things.
Maybe this particular implementation is flawed, but still, there is a way to make this work. How about you turn your keys, boot up the computer device. As soon as you shift gears, the screen goes blank. The device will only accept voice input at this point. So you go and say:
"Read Mail" and the device reads you the header of the mail and the sender. You say "continue" or "delete" (in case of a Nigerian scam for example). Then the device reads your mail while you are driving. This would be pretty much like listening to the radio, which almost everyone does while driving.
This I think would be a totally reasonable way to use such a device in a car that would not be deemed dangerous by people. This is what Ford and Microsoft should aim for.
40,000???? Really? Where did you get this number! This is awful. So yeah, bad example. Maybe we should prevent people from their stupidity. It just sucks, because there's a lot of reasonable people who could use this in a safe manner. It's like banning cell phone signals in movie theater. It sounds like a really great idea until you have someone like a surgeon who might be called out of the blue to do some very important operation. You want that guy top be available. Oh well.
Why should THEY be responsible? It's the people who make the mistakes, not the constructor. There's way to use this in a very safe way. When the United States has more accidental deaths because of MP3 downloading while driving than of gun ownership related incidents (how many time little Bobby's got shot because they played with their dads gun?), then you might have an issue. In the meantime, there are far more dangerous stuff that is made available to people.
I think Baltar's Number Six and the reborn Number Six is not the same character at all. The Number Six inside Baltar's head is far more manipulative and dangerous than the flesh and bolts one. To me, the reborn Number Six takes her decisions based on her feelings towars Baltar and the human race, while Baltar's (whose is trying to please Baltar, I mean, it's still his fantasy after all) is there to provoke him and has less emotions than the flesh and bolts one.
As for Batlar being a Cylon himself, while an interesting idea (Baltar is even pondering the notion now), it would be anti-climatic, because it's such an interesting burden (for the viewer) to be responsible for the genocide of your race. It's a great burden to carry. It was great to have a delusional Baltar and it would have been for nothing if he is indeed a Cylon. One interresting plot twist tough would be if he turned to believe he is one and commited suicide to prove his point and we then realize he wasn't. That would be the perfect ending for this character I think. Or if the show ends with the destruction of the Cylons and he last ressurection ship, you end up with a lone Baltar without any ressurection ship to revive him if he is indeed one and you have him on the fringe of death and he will never know if was a Cylon indeed. Cue credits.:)
Actually, I love the fact that the Cylons are getting more human. It's so great because as the series evolve you realise that the humans are being colder and colder and acting more like.... machines.
It's a great reversal of the roles and I'm sure it will even out at some point because
*** SPOILER ALERT DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN LAST EPISODE BEFORE HIATUS *** William Adama is pretty much willing to nuke the whole fracking planet at this point. It's pretty much a cold decision, considering Earth is in the balance. Maybe now will be a time for the humans to realize what they are turning into and shift their course. The executions "if were not with us on New Caprica you are against us" mentality also was pretty cold. Reminds me of a certain... nah... I won't go into that.:) **** END SPOILER ***
It's interesting that the heart of the Galactica crew right now is pretty much Shannon (a machine) and her husband. It's also interesting that there is also one Cylon who distinctively thinks like a cold-hearted machine, the preacher, who coldly said last episode "Let's kill them, rid the universe of the human pestilence. We are machines, it doesn't matter if it takes us a 1000 years to find Earth", which, you got to admit, he had a really good point. The only thing preventing this is the other Cylons who are slowly evolving with more human feelings.
I just love how the show plays this, consciously or not. (but I bet the writers knew it all along)
The one thing I miss tough is the deliciously crazy Baltar being tormented by Number Six while he is going around on Galactica and having people look at him funny. And the shocker was realizing the Number Six on her own also had her own suggestive-manipulative-Baltar in her head. That was a great revelation. Too bad they didn't get to play more with this since Baltar is now on the base ship.
But scalping is a good thing in that it makes it possible for people willing to pay more (rather than spend ages line) able to get one without getting line.
Actually, I disagree with this. It makes the weathly have a better chance than the regular folks. I thought the United States was the land of equal rights.
That's a very good way to put it. They simply integrate other technologies from other companies (Intel, ATI, NVidia, NeXT, etc) and package it and make it simple to use. Brilliant. I'd mod you up if I could.:)
Well, for starters, while you and I don't like Molson beer, it *is* the "Budweiser" of Canada, which means that a very good chunk of people like anyway. Sure they are missing out on the better stuff, but hey, it's a free market. If YOU had a distribution channel and had advertising space for it, you would do the same. You'd have a busines to run and would want to keep it running.
As for exclusivity, last time I checked, Coca-Cola pretty much has an exclusivity deal with all the major food chains (well, those that I go to anyway) and it doesn't prevent Pepsi from selling in convenience stores.
Also, I bet that the great majority if not all other North American sports team have some exclusivity contract with one beer company or another (same with soft drinks, hotdog bread and sausage) and more often than not it's going to be Budweiser or some other United States *pisswater* as you put it. It's called advertising. You pay for exclusivity.
In the case of Google, they skip the payment part. And it's not as if Google was the only way to advertise on the Web. I see a lot of pop-ups and banners that say otherwise.
Oh please, mr. console maker, oh please let me write software for you. I'll kiss your boots. Oh, please, pretty please.
Considering consoles takes billions to research, market and assemble I think it's fair that the console makers receive a cut on each copy of the games sold. If you don't have the money to support your own hardware business, I think it's ok if the hardware vendor asks for a cut.
Or think of it this way : if it weren't for 3rd parties, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony wouldn't produce enough games to sustain their own hardware business. Even Nintendo! Nintendo can't make enough games to make them profitable all the time, they still partly rely on 3rd party licensing fees, tough they obviously rely less on them than a Sony or Microsoft because their first-party stuff is so popular. They have to make a buck somewhere. Hence licensing fees.
I mean, if Nintendo didn't have 3rd parties, we would have had what, 5 games at the Wii launch? And if 3rd parties didn't have consoles to program for, gaming would not be as popular as it is today. Computers? Computers really squeeze the fun out of gaming for a lot of people because they are not as intuitive to use and simple to set up. So by making development simpler and providing tools and a platform, consoles makers have are right to expect royalties.
And don't believe the hype about games costing more and more. People have been developping games for the PC for years and we've been playing them at 1600x1200 for a long time. Having 25% more real estate horizontally is not going to make the price sky-rocket. Especially since it should cost less to develop for a console since the hardware is fixed and you don't have to worry about incompatibilities.
I don't see Apple as a software company, but I don't see them as an hardware company either. I mean, the Apple hardware (as far as Mac goes) has nothing from Apple in it. Apple differentiates itself by smart software. The fact that they provide the hardware to run their platform doesn't necessarily make them a hardware company.
Is Microsoft's console division a hardware division because they sell the 360s? If anything, the 360 is the most software based product on the console market right now. The hardware is nothing to write home about (compared to the PS3's cell and blu-ray or Nintendo's motion detection), but it differentiates itself with smart software like the Dashboard, Marketplace and online multiplayer gaming through XBox Live. All this is can be achieved on any piece of hardware. They simply decided to provide their own for it.
The way I see it, Apple is at most a 50% hardware / 50% software company.
20. Shure E500PTH Sound Isolating Earphones Noice cancelling headsets have been around for years. Nothing new there.
Actually, they are not noise cancelling, but truly noise isolating. I own a pair of Shure (E2g, same thing as E2c, except in black), and they are not like these other kind of noise cancelling headphones. I don't know if any other company provides similar headphones, but Shure's product simply are headphones with foam.
Basically, you insert a foam piece on the little tube that is the Shure headphone and insert it inside your ear exactly like some people do with ear plugs when they go to bed. It's simply blocking out sound from the outside world getting inside your ear. It doesn't work perfectly, since it's still foam and therefore allows a certain amount of sound in, but it's way better than cranking up the sound to hear your music in the subway and allows you to listen to your music to much lower decibel levels. I personally have my Sansa set to the lowest music level and still clearly hear the music at my work place, and set it to about 25% of maximum power while in the subway. I used to set it to much higher decibel levels when I didn't have the Shure headphones.
The only drawback to it is that since your ears are plugged, you can't really hear outside sounds, which means you have to be extra careful when walking on the street because you might not hear cars as well. Also, since your ear is blocked, it means that any internal body sounds (like when your are chewing food) are crystal clear now, making the Shure somewhat annoying when eating.
It's a simple solution to a simple problem. Why have active noise-cancelling headsets when you can simply block the auditory canal from the outside world? Obviously, you are going to run into trouble if you keep listening to your music at the same levels as before and damage your ear drums, but otherwise, it's a perfectly reasonable solution and it works in any environment, while I've heard that active noise-cancellation sometimes doesn't work in certain environments.
Where does this idea of Sony hating 2d games come from? It's not as if there are no popular 2d games in Japan for the PS2. Well, a lot of RPGs at least. There's a whole bunch of them. They even get ported to other territories. Isn't Disgaea, La Pucelle for example extremly popular in Japan and cult favorites in North America? They're both 2D games IIRC.
Sony might prefer 3D games on their console, but judging from the quantity and quality of some of the PS2 2D games, it seems like Sony is allowing them on their consoles.
It's not because some exec from some company said something that it becomes true. Again, if there is any evidence to the contrary and that Sony in fact strongly discourage publishing 2D games on the PS2, I'd like to see more about it.
Great post. I was going to post something similar, but I'll add to it.
It's like owning a hockey team. For many many years, the Molson beer company (a Canadian beer company which merged with the American beer company Coors a few years ago) was the majority (or complete?) owner of the Montreal Canadians. Because of this, the only beer you could buy at the forum was Molson beer. Even more, it was the only beer you could see advertised or sold during Montreal Canadian hockey games or Montreal Canadian related events. Molson had a monopoly over beer consuption during the hockey games. It truly was a monopoly since no other beer company could advertise there. Who in their right mind would allow advertising from a competitor in their own distribution or promotional channel?
I see Google's situation the same. They own the space and the distribution channel. They have the right to advertise anything they want in there.
(On an unrelated note, now that Molson sold the hockey team to George Gillet, an american interrest, they are still the only beer company associated with the team. Why? They offered the best advertising dollars to the team and became one of the biggest sponsor)
Slashdot Mirror
People need to see these numbers because seeing that a huge portion of the market bought into the same thing as them makes them feel safe about their purchase.
I bought a 360 and I'm happy to see Microsoft have a huge lead on Sony right now becaus this means that over time Japanese are going to develop more for the 360 and I'll be able to have nice japanese RPGs or 'Ninja Gaiden's next to the 'Gears Of War's, 'Halo's and 'Elder Scroll's made by the rest of the world.
How about attempted murder?
Actually... no. HD-DVD is. But in a good, pleasing way.
... and bring us HDR dammit!
You forgot
"Video! Radio star dead?"
You bastards!
I've seen achievements ruin Xbox Live games. I mean, some people are playing on Gears of War to unlock the grenade tag achievement. They'll play over and over and over only with grenades simply to tag people. The problem is this is a pretty difficult strategy because a lot of people favor the shotgun and those grenade handling players become easy shotgun practice. I can't count the number of times I've killed someone who was just trying to tag me with their grenades just so they could get the achievement. Had they used the shotgun or some other strategy they might have killed me and helped their team win.
There shouldn't be a learning curve involved with what amounts to commodity software.
Meh. I was a Wordperfect 4.1 user under DOS for years and then in 1995 I switched to Wordperfect for Windows and then Office a couple of months later. There was a learning curve involved each time. Same thing when I switched to OpenOffice for home usage.
If the workflow is simply different, there was no reason to force this on people. If it is indeed better, then I'd rather use that new one. If you are not happy with the new changes, remember all those years ago when you were writing in Wordperfect under DOS and using that little card with all the meta keys printed on it to do everything. I'm pretty sure you adapted to the graphical way of doing things. People will learn again if they see the use for it. Otherwise companies won't buy the new version and Microsoft will have to revert to the previous way of doing things.
Maybe this particular implementation is flawed, but still, there is a way to make this work. How about you turn your keys, boot up the computer device. As soon as you shift gears, the screen goes blank. The device will only accept voice input at this point. So you go and say:
"Read Mail" and the device reads you the header of the mail and the sender. You say "continue" or "delete" (in case of a Nigerian scam for example). Then the device reads your mail while you are driving. This would be pretty much like listening to the radio, which almost everyone does while driving.
This I think would be a totally reasonable way to use such a device in a car that would not be deemed dangerous by people. This is what Ford and Microsoft should aim for.
I haven't picked a good argument, but my point remains valid. Why should Ford and MS be responsible for the deaths?
bout one for every 40,000
40,000???? Really? Where did you get this number! This is awful. So yeah, bad example. Maybe we should prevent people from their stupidity. It just sucks, because there's a lot of reasonable people who could use this in a safe manner. It's like banning cell phone signals in movie theater. It sounds like a really great idea until you have someone like a surgeon who might be called out of the blue to do some very important operation. You want that guy top be available. Oh well.
Why should THEY be responsible? It's the people who make the mistakes, not the constructor. There's way to use this in a very safe way. When the United States has more accidental deaths because of MP3 downloading while driving than of gun ownership related incidents (how many time little Bobby's got shot because they played with their dads gun?), then you might have an issue. In the meantime, there are far more dangerous stuff that is made available to people.
I think Baltar's Number Six and the reborn Number Six is not the same character at all. The Number Six inside Baltar's head is far more manipulative and dangerous than the flesh and bolts one. To me, the reborn Number Six takes her decisions based on her feelings towars Baltar and the human race, while Baltar's (whose is trying to please Baltar, I mean, it's still his fantasy after all) is there to provoke him and has less emotions than the flesh and bolts one.
:)
As for Batlar being a Cylon himself, while an interesting idea (Baltar is even pondering the notion now), it would be anti-climatic, because it's such an interesting burden (for the viewer) to be responsible for the genocide of your race. It's a great burden to carry. It was great to have a delusional Baltar and it would have been for nothing if he is indeed a Cylon. One interresting plot twist tough would be if he turned to believe he is one and commited suicide to prove his point and we then realize he wasn't. That would be the perfect ending for this character I think. Or if the show ends with the destruction of the Cylons and he last ressurection ship, you end up with a lone Baltar without any ressurection ship to revive him if he is indeed one and you have him on the fringe of death and he will never know if was a Cylon indeed. Cue credits.
Actually, I love the fact that the Cylons are getting more human. It's so great because as the series evolve you realise that the humans are being colder and colder and acting more like.... machines.
:)
It's a great reversal of the roles and I'm sure it will even out at some point because
*** SPOILER ALERT DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN LAST EPISODE BEFORE HIATUS ***
William Adama is pretty much willing to nuke the whole fracking planet at this point. It's pretty much a cold decision, considering Earth is in the balance. Maybe now will be a time for the humans to realize what they are turning into and shift their course. The executions "if were not with us on New Caprica you are against us" mentality also was pretty cold. Reminds me of a certain... nah... I won't go into that.
**** END SPOILER ***
It's interesting that the heart of the Galactica crew right now is pretty much Shannon (a machine) and her husband. It's also interesting that there is also one Cylon who distinctively thinks like a cold-hearted machine, the preacher, who coldly said last episode "Let's kill them, rid the universe of the human pestilence. We are machines, it doesn't matter if it takes us a 1000 years to find Earth", which, you got to admit, he had a really good point. The only thing preventing this is the other Cylons who are slowly evolving with more human feelings.
I just love how the show plays this, consciously or not. (but I bet the writers knew it all along)
The one thing I miss tough is the deliciously crazy Baltar being tormented by Number Six while he is going around on Galactica and having people look at him funny. And the shocker was realizing the Number Six on her own also had her own suggestive-manipulative-Baltar in her head. That was a great revelation. Too bad they didn't get to play more with this since Baltar is now on the base ship.
But scalping is a good thing in that it makes it possible for people willing to pay more (rather than spend ages line) able to get one without getting line.
Actually, I disagree with this. It makes the weathly have a better chance than the regular folks. I thought the United States was the land of equal rights.
Maybe you could swap for a figurine of Mila Jojovich in Resident Evil 1? She is blonde in that movie and she does wear a red dress.
That's a very good way to put it. They simply integrate other technologies from other companies (Intel, ATI, NVidia, NeXT, etc) and package it and make it simple to use. Brilliant. I'd mod you up if I could. :)
Well, for starters, while you and I don't like Molson beer, it *is* the "Budweiser" of Canada, which means that a very good chunk of people like anyway. Sure they are missing out on the better stuff, but hey, it's a free market. If YOU had a distribution channel and had advertising space for it, you would do the same. You'd have a busines to run and would want to keep it running.
As for exclusivity, last time I checked, Coca-Cola pretty much has an exclusivity deal with all the major food chains (well, those that I go to anyway) and it doesn't prevent Pepsi from selling in convenience stores.
Also, I bet that the great majority if not all other North American sports team have some exclusivity contract with one beer company or another (same with soft drinks, hotdog bread and sausage) and more often than not it's going to be Budweiser or some other United States *pisswater* as you put it. It's called advertising. You pay for exclusivity.
In the case of Google, they skip the payment part. And it's not as if Google was the only way to advertise on the Web. I see a lot of pop-ups and banners that say otherwise.
Oh please, mr. console maker, oh please let me write software for you. I'll kiss your boots. Oh, please, pretty please.
:)
Considering consoles takes billions to research, market and assemble I think it's fair that the console makers receive a cut on each copy of the games sold. If you don't have the money to support your own hardware business, I think it's ok if the hardware vendor asks for a cut.
Or think of it this way : if it weren't for 3rd parties, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony wouldn't produce enough games to sustain their own hardware business. Even Nintendo! Nintendo can't make enough games to make them profitable all the time, they still partly rely on 3rd party licensing fees, tough they obviously rely less on them than a Sony or Microsoft because their first-party stuff is so popular. They have to make a buck somewhere. Hence licensing fees.
I mean, if Nintendo didn't have 3rd parties, we would have had what, 5 games at the Wii launch? And if 3rd parties didn't have consoles to program for, gaming would not be as popular as it is today. Computers? Computers really squeeze the fun out of gaming for a lot of people because they are not as intuitive to use and simple to set up. So by making development simpler and providing tools and a platform, consoles makers have are right to expect royalties.
And don't believe the hype about games costing more and more. People have been developping games for the PC for years and we've been playing them at 1600x1200 for a long time. Having 25% more real estate horizontally is not going to make the price sky-rocket. Especially since it should cost less to develop for a console since the hardware is fixed and you don't have to worry about incompatibilities.
Gee... I kinda overshoot my rebutal. Oh well.
I don't see Apple as a software company, but I don't see them as an hardware company either. I mean, the Apple hardware (as far as Mac goes) has nothing from Apple in it. Apple differentiates itself by smart software. The fact that they provide the hardware to run their platform doesn't necessarily make them a hardware company.
Is Microsoft's console division a hardware division because they sell the 360s? If anything, the 360 is the most software based product on the console market right now. The hardware is nothing to write home about (compared to the PS3's cell and blu-ray or Nintendo's motion detection), but it differentiates itself with smart software like the Dashboard, Marketplace and online multiplayer gaming through XBox Live. All this is can be achieved on any piece of hardware. They simply decided to provide their own for it.
The way I see it, Apple is at most a 50% hardware / 50% software company.
20. Shure E500PTH Sound Isolating Earphones
Noice cancelling headsets have been around for years. Nothing new there.
Actually, they are not noise cancelling, but truly noise isolating. I own a pair of Shure (E2g, same thing as E2c, except in black), and they are not like these other kind of noise cancelling headphones. I don't know if any other company provides similar headphones, but Shure's product simply are headphones with foam.
Basically, you insert a foam piece on the little tube that is the Shure headphone and insert it inside your ear exactly like some people do with ear plugs when they go to bed. It's simply blocking out sound from the outside world getting inside your ear. It doesn't work perfectly, since it's still foam and therefore allows a certain amount of sound in, but it's way better than cranking up the sound to hear your music in the subway and allows you to listen to your music to much lower decibel levels. I personally have my Sansa set to the lowest music level and still clearly hear the music at my work place, and set it to about 25% of maximum power while in the subway. I used to set it to much higher decibel levels when I didn't have the Shure headphones.
The only drawback to it is that since your ears are plugged, you can't really hear outside sounds, which means you have to be extra careful when walking on the street because you might not hear cars as well. Also, since your ear is blocked, it means that any internal body sounds (like when your are chewing food) are crystal clear now, making the Shure somewhat annoying when eating.
It's a simple solution to a simple problem. Why have active noise-cancelling headsets when you can simply block the auditory canal from the outside world? Obviously, you are going to run into trouble if you keep listening to your music at the same levels as before and damage your ear drums, but otherwise, it's a perfectly reasonable solution and it works in any environment, while I've heard that active noise-cancellation sometimes doesn't work in certain environments.
Where does this idea of Sony hating 2d games come from? It's not as if there are no popular 2d games in Japan for the PS2. Well, a lot of RPGs at least. There's a whole bunch of them. They even get ported to other territories. Isn't Disgaea, La Pucelle for example extremly popular in Japan and cult favorites in North America? They're both 2D games IIRC.
Sony might prefer 3D games on their console, but judging from the quantity and quality of some of the PS2 2D games, it seems like Sony is allowing them on their consoles.
It's not because some exec from some company said something that it becomes true. Again, if there is any evidence to the contrary and that Sony in fact strongly discourage publishing 2D games on the PS2, I'd like to see more about it.
Great post. I was going to post something similar, but I'll add to it.
It's like owning a hockey team. For many many years, the Molson beer company (a Canadian beer company which merged with the American beer company Coors a few years ago) was the majority (or complete?) owner of the Montreal Canadians. Because of this, the only beer you could buy at the forum was Molson beer. Even more, it was the only beer you could see advertised or sold during Montreal Canadian hockey games or Montreal Canadian related events. Molson had a monopoly over beer consuption during the hockey games. It truly was a monopoly since no other beer company could advertise there. Who in their right mind would allow advertising from a competitor in their own distribution or promotional channel?
I see Google's situation the same. They own the space and the distribution channel. They have the right to advertise anything they want in there.
(On an unrelated note, now that Molson sold the hockey team to George Gillet, an american interrest, they are still the only beer company associated with the team. Why? They offered the best advertising dollars to the team and became one of the biggest sponsor)
Now let's make a life simulator to simulate the evolution of the Earth. We could call it Sim Ea... err... wait.
Sony exec was quoted saying :
The sky doesn't reflect on a car roof until we say it does!