But I have to believe this is a matter of firmware updates and time-- not a permanent problem.
Hopefully. It may end up like the 360 where you need to download a per-game patch, but hopefully a system-wide patch will fix the problem. I think this will mostly just ruffle the feathers of those who bought into Sony PR. Yes, that is foolish, but I don't think that means we should let the PR firm off the hook for being misleading either. If they jump on fixing the problem (instead of making dismissive statements), then it should end up being a non-issue.
The IO processor was changed in a later revision of the PS2 (silver slim). Games which didn't follow the TRC requirements mis-used the old functionality and broke when new functionality was introduced. The situation is still far better than the 360, ~30 games broken out of 2000 versus 300 games working.
So those games break on the later versions of the PS2 also? Interesting. You'd think Sony would do what all the x86 manufacturers have had to do: Make all future hardware bug-for-bug compatible with old hardware based on the behavior programmers coded to. But that's probably a lot tougher without x86's extensive history.
Yeah it's a better story than the 360, but that's damning with faint praise, since they have to individually fix and port each game.
I'm confused. If you need to play a PS2 game on the PS3, and it doesn't work well. WHY NOT PLUG IN YOUR PS2?
Because your PS2 is broken, and instead of buying a new one you've been waiting for the PS3 to come out so you can play both next gen titles and your current library? All optical drives fail, original PS2s had many problems and even the slim ones seem to have (though mine is still running fine), so I'd wager there's actually more people in this category than you think. Sony must think so, because they bothered to add it to the console.
I'm more or less in the same boat. My GC has given up the ghost; even after replacing the failed fan it still gives disc read errors. So for me the GC-compatability of the Wii is a major feature. I'll personally be rather pissed if it turns out Nintendo "from the start, expected backwards compatibility to be less than 100%" and just forgot to mention it next to the backward-compatability marketing bullet point.
From my first post, emphasis added: The problem with the current crop of voting machines is that they do not produce a paper ballot that is the actual counted ballot.
I'm not talking about a paper summary, I'm talking about a paper ballot.
That's the point. You can do whatever the hell you want inside the machine, perform whatever trickery you want, but if it prints a ballot with the choices I made on it, then that is all that matters and your trickery was for naught.
Anticipating the next question of "why electronic voting at all then?", the answer is the same reason we moved to it in the first place: preventing poorly formatted ballots from causing invalid votes, and for accessibility reasons.
"In response to these issues, Sony's PR department pointed out that it, from the start, expected backwards compatibility to be less than 100%"
So Sony's PR department expected backwards compatibility to be less than 100% from the start.
Did Sony's PR department point out that backwards compatibility would be less than 100% from the start?
I'll admit I haven't read every PS3-related press release, but have they been informing customers from the beginning that they too should not expect 100% compatability? I don't remember reading anything like that, and based on the good backwards compatability of PS1 games on PS2 I expected the situation to be the same. So if they expected these problems but just didn't tell anyone.. that's supposed to make them sound better?
Yeah, and you also couldn't play your PS2 games on your XBOX. What does it matter that your games use a format that won't work on another console or player? The point with the GC was that they were keeping it's cost down at the expense of being able to play movies. They weren't trying to sell anything more than a game system.
It doesn't matter. It was an example of Nintendo's fetish for strange proprietary formats and hardware. And I doubt it kept costs down to use non-standard DVD players, particularly for those manufacturing media, but the GC was affordable enough regardless, and the form-factor issue (the GC would have had to be larger to fit a full size DVD) was probably more important. Oh, and it's harder to pirate mini-DVDs, which is the main reason Nintendo makes all their weird hardware decisions.
"They weren't trying to sell anything more than a game system" was the whole point of my post, so maybe you should read it again. Or not.
With the Wii, they've added DVD support (presumably because by now the cost impact is minimal) but are abstaining from adding support for an unstandardized movie format (and the added expense that comes with that).
Really I have a hard time believing that DVD support was a signficant cost at any point in time over using mini-DVD. The only difference would be how far the laser has to track, big deal. I bet Wii supports DVD not because of cost, but because mini-DVDs were pretty cramped in the GC generation and full DVD is a big capacity upgrade.
Obviously a next-gen format that requires an expensive new laser is a different story.
Aside from exclusives intended to push one format or the other, do you really think that the majority of movies will be coming out on only one HD format?
Right. The studios could also get around the fatal split-market problem by releasing all their movies in both formats. I notice that some already are released in both, but some of the biggest studios are backers of a single format. Multi-format releases are not a great solution anyway, because it increases costs for movie studios who have to press two versions, complicates supply management for the retailers and increases their shelf space requirements, and it complicates things for consumers because they have to buy the right version for their player (so they have to know and care what version they use, as do any friends/relatives intending to buy them an HD movie as a gift). Dual format players solve all these problems because consumers buy the one "next gen DVD player" and then don't have to care what format movies come in. This is why I think dual-format is what the market will settle on, because it's the only one that doesn't present extra barriers to acceptance.
All Blu-Ray does is play half of next-gen movie content (actually more than half) and allow developers to be lazy, wasting space.
The percentage of movies played isn't the point, it's that if you want to play Hit X you might need HD-DVD and to play Blockbuster Y you might need Blu-Ray.
But yeah, developers get to be lazier. Isn't that what all technology advancements are for?:)
True, and I'll go further. Trying to examine the software for flaws makes it sound as though evident flaws in the software are the problem with the current crop of voting machines. They are not. The problem with the current crop of voting machines is that they do not produce a paper ballot that is the actual counted ballot.
Software is an illusion. You, as in a non-employee of an electronic voting firm, will never be able to prove that whatever software you audit and trust is actually running on the machine. You will never be able to guarantee that there isn't malicious code in the machine. You will never be able to prove it has no bugs. You will never be able to prove that it actually stored your vote in its internal memory exactly as you recorded it.
However, you can be sure that a printed ballot has correctly recorded your vote, because you can read it.
Give me a printed paper ballot, and I won't need to check the software for bugs. If it prints my ballot correctly, it's good enough. If it screws up, it's buggy. That easy.
Yeah, I remember way back when I first heard about it on IRC, they said "My dad just installed a beta Windows XP" and I said "Yeah, I hate windows too".
it still amuses me to think of it as "Windows Blech!"
Yeah, the GC mini-DVDs are also a nice example. Dragged kicking and screaming into the world of optical media, they still couldn't go with something mainstream. Most of their weird proprietary decisions seem to involve preventing piracy and enforcing their licensee agreements -- the GBA-SP thing was at least allegedly a form factor issue, though I don't buy that it would have been impossible to use a normal jack. Anyway, the point is that Nintendo has always been weird and supported strange proprietary tech, but only for purposes of locking down their own console. Sony and MS use proprietary tech as a lever to force consumer's to do things in other markets. This has always been the difference to me: Nintendo's megalomaniacal urges seem to only run as far as ruling video games with an iron fist.
That's exactly what it means. But look at it this way, if Blu-Ray fails, your PS3 is still an incredible game machine. If HDDVD fails, your XBOX360 add-on is a useless piece of plastic. Obviously, Sony is pushing Blu-Ray because of the upside for their A/V business. Obviously Microsoft is doing the same with HDDVD since they're one of the founders (and because Sony supports the other).
And if neither fails? Then you have to buy the one you didn't get anyway, or miss out on half of the movies.
Or you wait until a dual-format player becomes available. Frankly I see both the PS3-as-Blu-Ray-player and xbox HDDVD add-on as dead-ends. Both have roughly equal levels of support and neither proponent is going to simply give up as soon as their opponent gains a slight market share advantage. Therefore we'll end up with a divided market, one part HD-DVD, one part Blu-Ray. At which point they either relax the license restrictions against dual-format players, or they accept that their formats will never become mass-market. The early adopters with enough money to blow on an HD setup today may be willing and able to afford two players, but no way will the average consumer buy an HD player that plays half of new releases nor will they shell out for two players to replace their one DVD. I expect that either dual-format players will be released, or HD formats will remain a niche market until at least the next generation.
Which means in terms of the current choices, I see the xbox hddvd as being the most useless, since all it does is play half of next-gen movie content. PS3, as you say, at least plays games. Which it could have done without Blu Ray, leading back into the "why does my PS3 cost so much?" discussion.
I visited my local eb games last week and the ps3 was on the shelves with all the release games as well.. Are you saying that this system is not yet released yet in the US?
Yeah, that's what we're saying. The U.S. launch date is 11/17. Put down the blotter paper with the blue stars on it, wait until the walls stop crying and the universe ceases to whisper cheat codes to you, and go back to EB.
...Unless someone happens to not be technologically literate..
Don't you think you could get someone to assemble a computer for you for less than $50 labor in India? I do.
I remember that the day I heard the PIC was going to go for $250, there was a $200 PC in the Fry's circular. This was a couple years ago, but it was still a fully-fledged PC with capabalities far beyond the PIC. I knew then PIC was a failure. Now, I think the idea was that people wouldn't be paying $250 and get the PIC, but rather that ISPs would give PICs to customers who signed up for plans. Great, but the ISP still has to spend $250.
So you'd let the guy perform his ball-crush attack just so that you could get a couple licks in yourself?
Look at the relative position of the cop and suspect. With the guy on his back, all the officer has to do is grab the suspect's arm and put weight on it, and the suspect wouldn't have had the leverage to do anything, much less get a death grip on his balls. Maybe you don't know anything about grappling, but I know the cops do. If he was really worried about a deadly groin attack he would have protected his groin by restraining the arm, not thrown a series of punches to the face.
But let's check the assumption that you're describing it accurately. What really happens is that the suspect moves his right hand near the officers thigh (above the suspects head, with an improbably arm bend necessary to get at the groin), then stops, his hand doesn't move for several seconds. The cop then grabs the suspects left hand with both hands in order to switch his grip and free up his right hand, which he then uses to punch the suspect repeatedly.
The idea that the officer punched the suspect -- after a five second delay involving switching hands on the suspect's other hand -- as a self-defense response to the world's slowest groin attack is simple laughable.
We are all human, and there are days where people get out of control. This is a tough job, with a lot of high stress. I'm not surprised at all that there are hundreds of instances where an officer may have overstepped justified force. But, again, I would also easily believe that there are lots of cases where it was justified. We are not just robots that can 'reset' ourselves after a highly dangerous situation, so some people might overreact when in another siutation so soon after a stressful one.
First, anyone who is actually surprised, who didn't already think this happened hundreds of times, is simply naive.
Second, I can understand a police officer in a dangerous situation, his nerves tight and his body hopped up on adrenaline, being overly-aggressive with the suspect after the danger has passed. No, I'm not surprised. Police have been very brutal in the past -- see the civil rights movement for anyone whose eyebrows raised at that -- and this is really a more or less mild case of it explainable just via human nature.
Third, the justification for a police officer to use force is to restrain a suspect, and to defend themselves and others. There is no plausible threat from the suspect here. He's on the ground, two officers kneeling on him, neck pinned. He tries to flail ineffectually with his arms, but has no leverage to possibly do anything. If there was a perceived threat, the correct response is to grab his arms and stop the threat, not punch him in the face.
But I've seen worse uses of the "the police needed to defend themselves" excuse.
There was a case here in Austin, Texas last year where a hispanic suspect was arrested. After he was on the ground, on his belly, hand cuffed behind his back, the big burly police officer sitting on his back decided to start punching him in the back of the head. I mean, there was no plausible threat, but they still said it was necessary.
In the Rodney King case, the officers struck him more than sixty times with batons. I don't give a shit what anyone says; if I can hit you sixty times with a stick and you don't even take a single swing at me, you are officially not a threat. If I can hit you with a stick sixty times and not be a bit threatened, then myself and five of my buddies could hold you down and handcuff you. That they continued to beat the man instead of doing just that proves that they were not feeling threatened.
By the way, the Austin case had an interesting ending. The cops were brought up on charges, but aquitted. Even though the guy thought the cops were abusive and racially motivated, he said he forgave them and was glad they didn't get sentenced because he knew how cops were treated in prison. Which sounds more like what you're saying -- a kind of forgivness for guys in a tough job. And which is a far cry for those who say the cops were in the right. I don't know what to think of them, but it isn't good.
Even if all this tech came together and formed a great hybrid player, it still doesn't resolve the central issue of which format to support.
Actually, this is the only solution to the problem that helps the consumer, because the answer to "which format to support" is "both" and then the consumer doesn't have to care what format they use, just like I don't particularly care which of four recordable DVD formats I use; they all work.
Accusations are easy, convictions actually take evidence.
For search warrants and arrests, accusations are sufficient.
I said in another post, that if all they have on her is the documents, they probably won't even charge her because the case would fail. The judicial system still seems mostly intact, such as it is. Of course being arrested and accused of terrorism is still a big deal.
I very much doubt that a bunch of white Protestants planning to blow up a airliner would get any breaks compared to a bunch of Asian Muslims planning to do the same thing in either enforcement or sentencing.
That's nice. What about the ones not planning on blowing up an airliner? Which is more likely to be accused falsely? That's the point.
Before rushing to judgment, lets see how things work out in Londonistan.
Rush? Unless you count recorded human history as rushed, let me hint you in that it suggests rather strongly that prejudice and abuse of power have gone hand in hand forever. Yes, some police harass minorities. Everywhere. As far as Londonistan, an 'enormous fifth column of Islamist terrorists and their sympathizers' holds some parallels with Iraq... have the British soldiers there perhaps arrested an Iraqi who turned out not to be an insurgent as was presumed? May some elements of the British police, given reign to pursue the threat in the home country, take advantage of the ability to vent some racial anger? History says...
What you should say is that they search the computers of the minority of people who are engaged in or supporting terrorism. The police also happen to dislike it when people support or engage in terrorism, like trying to blow up the police or other fine subjects of Her Majesty's realm. Fortunately, the majority of Her Majesty's subjects, including the Muslims, are peace loving people who don't engage in terrorism, and are therefore likable.
Yes, all non-terrorists like all other non-terrorists, regardless of religion, skin color, opinions, or personality. No officer of the law has ever selectively enforced a law or falsely accused someone of a crime because of religion, skin color, or opinions.
"the Al Qaeda Manual, The Terrorists Handbook, The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, a manual for a Dragunov sniper rifle, and The Firearms and RPG Handbook."
I of course misinterpreted the acronym, but they sure do look like RPG manual titles, don't they? "Dungeons and Dragunovs". Did they read them? They'd feel rather silly I bet if they said "At level five, you can learn Mujahideen Sneaky Poison Attack that does 2d6 damage if you roll..."
Not to be flippant, but even the summary points out that she was arrested in connection with a bomb plot, and then these documents were found. Presumeably the prosecution's case will rely on drawing that connection, with the manuals as circumstantial evidence. Frankly if that's the best they have the case may fail, but if it's part of a larger collection of evidence (like that which lead to her arrest) then it may not. The justice system has held up fairly well as fair as maintaining standards of burden of proof even in terrorism cases, so barring something like false arrest I'm not feeling any rights violations here.
Accurate and amusing article. My favorite (mostly for the imagery), the differences in the competition:
Past: "Dreamcast got totally "Dreamcasted" by the Sony hype machine; PS2 saw a full year head start on Microsoft's 1.0 version of the Xbox and Nintendo's new lunchbox, the GameCube.
Present: "With Xbox 360 Microsoft now has a year headstart on Sony and a better online service; Nintendo has gone batshit insane in an attempt to become the ipod of gaming."
Are we going to see movies and studios side with the separate technology and the consumer simply use both?
I can't see how anyone who was around when the various writeable DVD formats were around, resulting in all drives supporting 'DVD +/- R/W', would see it working out any other way. A fractured market won't work. They want to convince people to upgrade to their HD DVD player -- "plays half of upcoming new releases!" isn't going to do it.
The only kink is that I thought I'd heard the consortiums were trying to stop licensees from making cross-compatible players. I'm mistaken, or they changed their mind because they realized it wouldn't work.
I know exactly what you mean about Kai's Power Tools, which was more like a kaleidoscope than actual image editing tools.
I think that in general, though, the constraints on texture artists aren't that great. The art director may call for "wood paneling", but isn't going to necessarily want a particular species of oak. In fact, a randomly-happened-upon wood grain that looks nice may be better than one designed to look like a particular grain. Seeing as how today textures never have enough detail to convey pine vs maple, I don't see it being a big issue in the future.
At the same time, for things which do have very particular desired results, procedural textures probably won't be used. For example, in your Chanel No 5 ad, the gaunt 30-somethings would be done traditionally, while the mosaic floor might be done procedurally. Character models and such are going to continue to be done in the old way.
The real question is really whether a market for such a company exists or not. I.e., you have to imagine not only one "green" building company, you'd have to also imagine a whole lot of other companies paying a hefty premium to be its customers. Do _those_ exist? TBH I have no idea.
For sure there is. My own company has hired "green" developers to construct a new office building in order to stave off environmental critics.
The law has helped with pretty much everything else. In fact, it's _the_ one reason for every single filter installed so far.
Of course, I was saying that there wouldn't be much political impetus to create such a law in this case due to the high costs. Believe me, I've seen the negotiations in progress and even things that aren't major financial burdens are fought tooth and nail; a mandatory 30% increase in construction costs would never pass.
However reading other comments, it has come to my attention that the actual impact to building costs is going to be much lower. It's only 30% more expensive concrete, and even then only on exterior surfaces. As a total portion of building costs it is going to be minor. So I believe that it may be possible to mandate use of this material.
Then my main point is: in that case we'll need to change the law. Because as it is, it's not only offering an excuse, it's actively asking them to be complete sociopaths.
I find it borderline absurd to basically make a law that says "thou shalt do X" and then expect people to be empathic and responsible enough to understand that they don't have to really do that. It's like having a law that says "it's your duty to kick the neighbour's dog", but expect people to be empathic and reasonable enough to understand that only assholes actually do that.
My main point is that the law doesn't actually say that. It is the CEOs' twisted, self-serving interpretation that they use to make excuses for their amoral behavior. It's like the RIAA's version of copyright law -- it doesn't exist, but they use it to justify their behavior and deny you rights you should have.
Anyone saying "the company is legally required to be amoral" is simply wrong. When it's the amoral asshole doing it, you know they aren't just wrong, they're lying.
Of course, there is a downside. Real-time procedural texturing is costly. So if the hardware isn't up to it, the advantages of the texturing will go unrealized. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the first generation merely generates static textures on load, then uses them as if they were bitmaps included with the game. Still, once the box is opened, the potential will be too tempting to ignore.
Yeah, I bet it will be a while until they are generating the textures on the fly every frame. However, as an intermediate step one could imagine being able to easily generate a larger number of textures for varying levels of detail, rather than having to pre-determine what levels you're going to include on the disk.
Slashdot Mirror
But I have to believe this is a matter of firmware updates and time-- not a permanent problem.
Hopefully. It may end up like the 360 where you need to download a per-game patch, but hopefully a system-wide patch will fix the problem. I think this will mostly just ruffle the feathers of those who bought into Sony PR. Yes, that is foolish, but I don't think that means we should let the PR firm off the hook for being misleading either. If they jump on fixing the problem (instead of making dismissive statements), then it should end up being a non-issue.
The IO processor was changed in a later revision of the PS2 (silver slim). Games which didn't follow the TRC requirements mis-used the old functionality and broke when new functionality was introduced. The situation is still far better than the 360, ~30 games broken out of 2000 versus 300 games working.
So those games break on the later versions of the PS2 also? Interesting. You'd think Sony would do what all the x86 manufacturers have had to do: Make all future hardware bug-for-bug compatible with old hardware based on the behavior programmers coded to. But that's probably a lot tougher without x86's extensive history.
Yeah it's a better story than the 360, but that's damning with faint praise, since they have to individually fix and port each game.
I'm confused. If you need to play a PS2 game on the PS3, and it doesn't work well. WHY NOT PLUG IN YOUR PS2?
Because your PS2 is broken, and instead of buying a new one you've been waiting for the PS3 to come out so you can play both next gen titles and your current library? All optical drives fail, original PS2s had many problems and even the slim ones seem to have (though mine is still running fine), so I'd wager there's actually more people in this category than you think. Sony must think so, because they bothered to add it to the console.
I'm more or less in the same boat. My GC has given up the ghost; even after replacing the failed fan it still gives disc read errors. So for me the GC-compatability of the Wii is a major feature. I'll personally be rather pissed if it turns out Nintendo "from the start, expected backwards compatibility to be less than 100%" and just forgot to mention it next to the backward-compatability marketing bullet point.
From my first post, emphasis added: The problem with the current crop of voting machines is that they do not produce a paper ballot that is the actual counted ballot.
I'm not talking about a paper summary, I'm talking about a paper ballot.
That's the point. You can do whatever the hell you want inside the machine, perform whatever trickery you want, but if it prints a ballot with the choices I made on it, then that is all that matters and your trickery was for naught.
Anticipating the next question of "why electronic voting at all then?", the answer is the same reason we moved to it in the first place: preventing poorly formatted ballots from causing invalid votes, and for accessibility reasons.
"In response to these issues, Sony's PR department pointed out that it, from the start, expected backwards compatibility to be less than 100%"
So Sony's PR department expected backwards compatibility to be less than 100% from the start.
Did Sony's PR department point out that backwards compatibility would be less than 100% from the start?
I'll admit I haven't read every PS3-related press release, but have they been informing customers from the beginning that they too should not expect 100% compatability? I don't remember reading anything like that, and based on the good backwards compatability of PS1 games on PS2 I expected the situation to be the same. So if they expected these problems but just didn't tell anyone.. that's supposed to make them sound better?
Yeah, and you also couldn't play your PS2 games on your XBOX. What does it matter that your games use a format that won't work on another console or player? The point with the GC was that they were keeping it's cost down at the expense of being able to play movies. They weren't trying to sell anything more than a game system.
It doesn't matter. It was an example of Nintendo's fetish for strange proprietary formats and hardware. And I doubt it kept costs down to use non-standard DVD players, particularly for those manufacturing media, but the GC was affordable enough regardless, and the form-factor issue (the GC would have had to be larger to fit a full size DVD) was probably more important. Oh, and it's harder to pirate mini-DVDs, which is the main reason Nintendo makes all their weird hardware decisions.
"They weren't trying to sell anything more than a game system" was the whole point of my post, so maybe you should read it again. Or not.
With the Wii, they've added DVD support (presumably because by now the cost impact is minimal) but are abstaining from adding support for an unstandardized movie format (and the added expense that comes with that).
Really I have a hard time believing that DVD support was a signficant cost at any point in time over using mini-DVD. The only difference would be how far the laser has to track, big deal. I bet Wii supports DVD not because of cost, but because mini-DVDs were pretty cramped in the GC generation and full DVD is a big capacity upgrade.
Obviously a next-gen format that requires an expensive new laser is a different story.
Aside from exclusives intended to push one format or the other, do you really think that the majority of movies will be coming out on only one HD format?
:)
Right. The studios could also get around the fatal split-market problem by releasing all their movies in both formats. I notice that some already are released in both, but some of the biggest studios are backers of a single format. Multi-format releases are not a great solution anyway, because it increases costs for movie studios who have to press two versions, complicates supply management for the retailers and increases their shelf space requirements, and it complicates things for consumers because they have to buy the right version for their player (so they have to know and care what version they use, as do any friends/relatives intending to buy them an HD movie as a gift). Dual format players solve all these problems because consumers buy the one "next gen DVD player" and then don't have to care what format movies come in. This is why I think dual-format is what the market will settle on, because it's the only one that doesn't present extra barriers to acceptance.
All Blu-Ray does is play half of next-gen movie content (actually more than half) and allow developers to be lazy, wasting space.
The percentage of movies played isn't the point, it's that if you want to play Hit X you might need HD-DVD and to play Blockbuster Y you might need Blu-Ray.
But yeah, developers get to be lazier. Isn't that what all technology advancements are for?
True, and I'll go further. Trying to examine the software for flaws makes it sound as though evident flaws in the software are the problem with the current crop of voting machines. They are not. The problem with the current crop of voting machines is that they do not produce a paper ballot that is the actual counted ballot.
Software is an illusion. You, as in a non-employee of an electronic voting firm, will never be able to prove that whatever software you audit and trust is actually running on the machine. You will never be able to guarantee that there isn't malicious code in the machine. You will never be able to prove it has no bugs. You will never be able to prove that it actually stored your vote in its internal memory exactly as you recorded it.
However, you can be sure that a printed ballot has correctly recorded your vote, because you can read it.
Give me a printed paper ballot, and I won't need to check the software for bugs. If it prints my ballot correctly, it's good enough. If it screws up, it's buggy. That easy.
Yeah, I remember way back when I first heard about it on IRC, they said "My dad just installed a beta Windows XP" and I said "Yeah, I hate windows too".
it still amuses me to think of it as "Windows Blech!"
Yeah, the GC mini-DVDs are also a nice example. Dragged kicking and screaming into the world of optical media, they still couldn't go with something mainstream. Most of their weird proprietary decisions seem to involve preventing piracy and enforcing their licensee agreements -- the GBA-SP thing was at least allegedly a form factor issue, though I don't buy that it would have been impossible to use a normal jack. Anyway, the point is that Nintendo has always been weird and supported strange proprietary tech, but only for purposes of locking down their own console. Sony and MS use proprietary tech as a lever to force consumer's to do things in other markets. This has always been the difference to me: Nintendo's megalomaniacal urges seem to only run as far as ruling video games with an iron fist.
That's exactly what it means. But look at it this way, if Blu-Ray fails, your PS3 is still an incredible game machine. If HDDVD fails, your XBOX360 add-on is a useless piece of plastic. Obviously, Sony is pushing Blu-Ray because of the upside for their A/V business. Obviously Microsoft is doing the same with HDDVD since they're one of the founders (and because Sony supports the other).
And if neither fails? Then you have to buy the one you didn't get anyway, or miss out on half of the movies.
Or you wait until a dual-format player becomes available. Frankly I see both the PS3-as-Blu-Ray-player and xbox HDDVD add-on as dead-ends. Both have roughly equal levels of support and neither proponent is going to simply give up as soon as their opponent gains a slight market share advantage. Therefore we'll end up with a divided market, one part HD-DVD, one part Blu-Ray. At which point they either relax the license restrictions against dual-format players, or they accept that their formats will never become mass-market. The early adopters with enough money to blow on an HD setup today may be willing and able to afford two players, but no way will the average consumer buy an HD player that plays half of new releases nor will they shell out for two players to replace their one DVD. I expect that either dual-format players will be released, or HD formats will remain a niche market until at least the next generation.
Which means in terms of the current choices, I see the xbox hddvd as being the most useless, since all it does is play half of next-gen movie content. PS3, as you say, at least plays games. Which it could have done without Blu Ray, leading back into the "why does my PS3 cost so much?" discussion.
I visited my local eb games last week and the ps3 was on the shelves with all the release games as well.. Are you saying that this system is not yet released yet in the US?
Yeah, that's what we're saying. The U.S. launch date is 11/17. Put down the blotter paper with the blue stars on it, wait until the walls stop crying and the universe ceases to whisper cheat codes to you, and go back to EB.
...Unless someone happens to not be technologically literate..
Don't you think you could get someone to assemble a computer for you for less than $50 labor in India? I do.
I remember that the day I heard the PIC was going to go for $250, there was a $200 PC in the Fry's circular. This was a couple years ago, but it was still a fully-fledged PC with capabalities far beyond the PIC. I knew then PIC was a failure. Now, I think the idea was that people wouldn't be paying $250 and get the PIC, but rather that ISPs would give PICs to customers who signed up for plans. Great, but the ISP still has to spend $250.
So you'd let the guy perform his ball-crush attack just so that you could get a couple licks in yourself?
Look at the relative position of the cop and suspect. With the guy on his back, all the officer has to do is grab the suspect's arm and put weight on it, and the suspect wouldn't have had the leverage to do anything, much less get a death grip on his balls. Maybe you don't know anything about grappling, but I know the cops do. If he was really worried about a deadly groin attack he would have protected his groin by restraining the arm, not thrown a series of punches to the face.
But let's check the assumption that you're describing it accurately. What really happens is that the suspect moves his right hand near the officers thigh (above the suspects head, with an improbably arm bend necessary to get at the groin), then stops, his hand doesn't move for several seconds. The cop then grabs the suspects left hand with both hands in order to switch his grip and free up his right hand, which he then uses to punch the suspect repeatedly.
The idea that the officer punched the suspect -- after a five second delay involving switching hands on the suspect's other hand -- as a self-defense response to the world's slowest groin attack is simple laughable.
We are all human, and there are days where people get out of control. This is a tough job, with a lot of high stress. I'm not surprised at all that there are hundreds of instances where an officer may have overstepped justified force. But, again, I would also easily believe that there are lots of cases where it was justified. We are not just robots that can 'reset' ourselves after a highly dangerous situation, so some people might overreact when in another siutation so soon after a stressful one.
First, anyone who is actually surprised, who didn't already think this happened hundreds of times, is simply naive.
Second, I can understand a police officer in a dangerous situation, his nerves tight and his body hopped up on adrenaline, being overly-aggressive with the suspect after the danger has passed. No, I'm not surprised. Police have been very brutal in the past -- see the civil rights movement for anyone whose eyebrows raised at that -- and this is really a more or less mild case of it explainable just via human nature.
Third, the justification for a police officer to use force is to restrain a suspect, and to defend themselves and others. There is no plausible threat from the suspect here. He's on the ground, two officers kneeling on him, neck pinned. He tries to flail ineffectually with his arms, but has no leverage to possibly do anything. If there was a perceived threat, the correct response is to grab his arms and stop the threat, not punch him in the face.
But I've seen worse uses of the "the police needed to defend themselves" excuse.
There was a case here in Austin, Texas last year where a hispanic suspect was arrested. After he was on the ground, on his belly, hand cuffed behind his back, the big burly police officer sitting on his back decided to start punching him in the back of the head. I mean, there was no plausible threat, but they still said it was necessary.
In the Rodney King case, the officers struck him more than sixty times with batons. I don't give a shit what anyone says; if I can hit you sixty times with a stick and you don't even take a single swing at me, you are officially not a threat. If I can hit you with a stick sixty times and not be a bit threatened, then myself and five of my buddies could hold you down and handcuff you. That they continued to beat the man instead of doing just that proves that they were not feeling threatened.
By the way, the Austin case had an interesting ending. The cops were brought up on charges, but aquitted. Even though the guy thought the cops were abusive and racially motivated, he said he forgave them and was glad they didn't get sentenced because he knew how cops were treated in prison. Which sounds more like what you're saying -- a kind of forgivness for guys in a tough job. And which is a far cry for those who say the cops were in the right. I don't know what to think of them, but it isn't good.
Even if all this tech came together and formed a great hybrid player, it still doesn't resolve the central issue of which format to support.
Actually, this is the only solution to the problem that helps the consumer, because the answer to "which format to support" is "both" and then the consumer doesn't have to care what format they use, just like I don't particularly care which of four recordable DVD formats I use; they all work.
Accusations are easy, convictions actually take evidence.
For search warrants and arrests, accusations are sufficient.
I said in another post, that if all they have on her is the documents, they probably won't even charge her because the case would fail. The judicial system still seems mostly intact, such as it is. Of course being arrested and accused of terrorism is still a big deal.
I very much doubt that a bunch of white Protestants planning to blow up a airliner would get any breaks compared to a bunch of Asian Muslims planning to do the same thing in either enforcement or sentencing.
That's nice. What about the ones not planning on blowing up an airliner? Which is more likely to be accused falsely? That's the point.
Before rushing to judgment, lets see how things work out in Londonistan.
Rush? Unless you count recorded human history as rushed, let me hint you in that it suggests rather strongly that prejudice and abuse of power have gone hand in hand forever. Yes, some police harass minorities. Everywhere. As far as Londonistan, an 'enormous fifth column of Islamist terrorists and their sympathizers' holds some parallels with Iraq... have the British soldiers there perhaps arrested an Iraqi who turned out not to be an insurgent as was presumed? May some elements of the British police, given reign to pursue the threat in the home country, take advantage of the ability to vent some racial anger? History says...
What you should say is that they search the computers of the minority of people who are engaged in or supporting terrorism. The police also happen to dislike it when people support or engage in terrorism, like trying to blow up the police or other fine subjects of Her Majesty's realm. Fortunately, the majority of Her Majesty's subjects, including the Muslims, are peace loving people who don't engage in terrorism, and are therefore likable.
Yes, all non-terrorists like all other non-terrorists, regardless of religion, skin color, opinions, or personality. No officer of the law has ever selectively enforced a law or falsely accused someone of a crime because of religion, skin color, or opinions.
Must be a nice universe.
"the Al Qaeda Manual, The Terrorists Handbook, The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, a manual for a Dragunov sniper rifle, and The Firearms and RPG Handbook."
I of course misinterpreted the acronym, but they sure do look like RPG manual titles, don't they? "Dungeons and Dragunovs". Did they read them? They'd feel rather silly I bet if they said "At level five, you can learn Mujahideen Sneaky Poison Attack that does 2d6 damage if you roll..."
Not to be flippant, but even the summary points out that she was arrested in connection with a bomb plot, and then these documents were found. Presumeably the prosecution's case will rely on drawing that connection, with the manuals as circumstantial evidence. Frankly if that's the best they have the case may fail, but if it's part of a larger collection of evidence (like that which lead to her arrest) then it may not. The justice system has held up fairly well as fair as maintaining standards of burden of proof even in terrorism cases, so barring something like false arrest I'm not feeling any rights violations here.
Accurate and amusing article. My favorite (mostly for the imagery), the differences in the competition:
Past:
"Dreamcast got totally "Dreamcasted" by the Sony hype machine; PS2 saw a full year head start on Microsoft's 1.0 version of the Xbox and Nintendo's new lunchbox, the GameCube.
Present:
"With Xbox 360 Microsoft now has a year headstart on Sony and a better online service; Nintendo has gone batshit insane in an attempt to become the ipod of gaming."
Are we going to see movies and studios side with the separate technology and the consumer simply use both?
I can't see how anyone who was around when the various writeable DVD formats were around, resulting in all drives supporting 'DVD +/- R/W', would see it working out any other way. A fractured market won't work. They want to convince people to upgrade to their HD DVD player -- "plays half of upcoming new releases!" isn't going to do it.
The only kink is that I thought I'd heard the consortiums were trying to stop licensees from making cross-compatible players. I'm mistaken, or they changed their mind because they realized it wouldn't work.
I know exactly what you mean about Kai's Power Tools, which was more like a kaleidoscope than actual image editing tools.
I think that in general, though, the constraints on texture artists aren't that great. The art director may call for "wood paneling", but isn't going to necessarily want a particular species of oak. In fact, a randomly-happened-upon wood grain that looks nice may be better than one designed to look like a particular grain. Seeing as how today textures never have enough detail to convey pine vs maple, I don't see it being a big issue in the future.
At the same time, for things which do have very particular desired results, procedural textures probably won't be used. For example, in your Chanel No 5 ad, the gaunt 30-somethings would be done traditionally, while the mosaic floor might be done procedurally. Character models and such are going to continue to be done in the old way.
The real question is really whether a market for such a company exists or not. I.e., you have to imagine not only one "green" building company, you'd have to also imagine a whole lot of other companies paying a hefty premium to be its customers. Do _those_ exist? TBH I have no idea.
For sure there is. My own company has hired "green" developers to construct a new office building in order to stave off environmental critics.
The law has helped with pretty much everything else. In fact, it's _the_ one reason for every single filter installed so far.
Of course, I was saying that there wouldn't be much political impetus to create such a law in this case due to the high costs. Believe me, I've seen the negotiations in progress and even things that aren't major financial burdens are fought tooth and nail; a mandatory 30% increase in construction costs would never pass.
However reading other comments, it has come to my attention that the actual impact to building costs is going to be much lower. It's only 30% more expensive concrete, and even then only on exterior surfaces. As a total portion of building costs it is going to be minor. So I believe that it may be possible to mandate use of this material.
Then my main point is: in that case we'll need to change the law. Because as it is, it's not only offering an excuse, it's actively asking them to be complete sociopaths.
I find it borderline absurd to basically make a law that says "thou shalt do X" and then expect people to be empathic and responsible enough to understand that they don't have to really do that. It's like having a law that says "it's your duty to kick the neighbour's dog", but expect people to be empathic and reasonable enough to understand that only assholes actually do that.
My main point is that the law doesn't actually say that. It is the CEOs' twisted, self-serving interpretation that they use to make excuses for their amoral behavior. It's like the RIAA's version of copyright law -- it doesn't exist, but they use it to justify their behavior and deny you rights you should have.
Anyone saying "the company is legally required to be amoral" is simply wrong. When it's the amoral asshole doing it, you know they aren't just wrong, they're lying.
Of course, there is a downside. Real-time procedural texturing is costly. So if the hardware isn't up to it, the advantages of the texturing will go unrealized. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the first generation merely generates static textures on load, then uses them as if they were bitmaps included with the game. Still, once the box is opened, the potential will be too tempting to ignore.
Yeah, I bet it will be a while until they are generating the textures on the fly every frame. However, as an intermediate step one could imagine being able to easily generate a larger number of textures for varying levels of detail, rather than having to pre-determine what levels you're going to include on the disk.
Did I hear a vote for a 30% tax hike... hooray!
;)
So... 100% of your current taxes goes towards concrete?
Don't worry, I'll be staying the hell away from your public-service-free-yet-concrete-filled city.