This reminds me of the early 1990s trend of "programming for everyone", particularly Macromedia's Lingo in Director. Languages and environments that start this way quickly realize that the end products would be ever so slightly more appealing if they were more flexible. And flexibility is the end of simplicity. The 1.0 of this language is going to be fine for a few intrepid schoolgirls, but soon they're going to have to add basic programming concepts and structures which will leave most people scratching their heads. Haven't we already seen this dramatic arc with Director and Flash?
i lasted about 45 minutes with this game on the xbox 360. load times and frame rates were excrutiating. it got the point where i didn't open doors due to the loads. an adventure game that discourages exploring..that's rich. maybe the 'feature' that the ps3 port will add will be...wait for it...playability!
i have 2 wireless squeezeboxes and a wired squeezebox which i serve using slimserver (open source) on an old pIII linux box with 512 mb RAM. they all sync perfectly. the trick is getting your wirelss network up to snuff. since the squeezeboxes are wireless B i have a totally seperate wireless B network so they don't slow down my wireless G devices. i've also heard that people get even better bandwidth by buying a wired squeezebox and connecting it to a wireless G bridge.
sonos is not fairly expensive. it's *absurdly* expensive. a 3 room setup will cost almost $2000 and you need to buy speakers. you can't even connect it to your stereo via digital out (it doesn't have one).
the sonos remote is sweet. but i can control my squeezeboxes using a similar device known as a wireless PDA. for the price of their remote i have easy and visual access to my music + it will do other things as well (surf the web anyone?)
add to that slimdevices open source policy and i have a host of amazing plugins to choose from - more being added daily.
you may be right. But i know many people personally that got tired of watching their xboxen collect dust (after playing halo..and maybe that other decent game which escapes me right now). for these people, myself included, the promise of a $30-$50 modchip which could actually create something useful out of a paperweight was pretty damn cool.
I modded my xbox with just the X3 chip, not a hard-drive, and installed Xbox Media Center on it so i can access all my (legal) music on my network.
Now, after a year of my xbox gathering dust, i'm finally getting some use out of its digital audio outputs and decent graphics capabilities.
i have no intention of copying xbox games and it's not because they all pretty much suck. (ok i heard halo2 was ok but for xbox live only).
it's possible that i'm in the minority here, but i doubt it. in fact, i'm going to buy another xbox on ebay to mod so i can add music to another room.
I hear the new Xbox won't have a harddrive in it and will be much harder to mod. in that case i won't be buying one becuase the games would have to be unbelievable - which, they won't be. i'll be getting the PS3...
your argument is a more general observation about the world of open source software, and while i agree with you about OSS philosophy, i still wonder about the choice to use this in consumer electronics device that i will use for a year and then toss out - because as good as the software is - the battery will still suck.
is it stability? as crappy as my phone os's have been - they've never crashed on me. i've also never had a phone running WinCe- it's usually openwave or some such thing.
*snip* >>it's about the freedom to study, tinker with, and use software however you want.
that's why i run linux on my desktop. i don't really want to do any of these things with my phone. i want to make and receive calls primarily. everything else is a bell and whistle and will most likely be done wrong - regardless of the os.
more than anything i'd like to see improvements in UI (both software and hardware) and this can be achieved using any os.
Why do we care unless these companies pass the savings from using open source software on to the consumers? i could care less what the underlying os of my phone is...unless of course i could get shell..cause maybe i'd like that..
ditto the squeezebox. i've got 2 of them, 1 wired and 1 wireless, running in sync (if i choose) in different rooms of the house. slimserver (opensource software) runs on a basically discarded dell pIII running mandrake 10 that i upgraded to 512mb of ram. i can use the squeezebox remote to play music, build playlists etc or i can access the web page from my desktop - or from a wireless handheld. i even have slimserver doing bitrate transcoding (down to 96k) so i can listen to my home music from on the road via a laptop and winamp (due to adsl's slow upstream).
this is a shocking misnomer. people who are technophobes write letters with fountain pens. the people this article is referring to are 'techno-dumbasses'.
i bought the XBOX 1 for halo. it ruled. and for a fleeting moment, i confused halo ruling for the XBOX ruling. it cost 50 bucks for the game, $349 bucks for the xbox, and $30 bucks for an additional controller. That's $500 bucks.
I've since bought about 3 more games for the XBOX, all of which were horrible. I've rented a dozen more..more awful games.
Then there were the promises. good games on the horizon! then when the horizon appeared, more crap. (note: i don't play sports games but i hear they're pretty good)
meanwhile, all my friends with PS2's were playing really excellent games while XBOX was dreaming up more ways of taking my money (XBOX Live).
guess what M$. fool me once - shame on you. fool me twice? PS3.
1. how good is your stereo? 2. how good are your ears?
i can't stand 128bit mp3's - they sound squidgy. but at 256bit on my decent home stereo i don't mind them at all. but, when i listen to uncompressed - there's just something a little bit more sparkly about the music.
compression is already obsolete as long as you've got the drive space and the bandwidth.
there's no such thing as better than a lossless compression, so by better than.wav i assmue you mean better than a perfect rip of a CD. as long as master recordings are available in high quality analog or as better than 16bit 44.1khz digital files you can create a better better quality digital file..but it will be bigger.
The city was the main character (you idiot)
on
The Scar
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
claiming perdido street station was horrible and the characters lacked development is just silly. had you paid any attention you would have realized that the city was the main character of the book and everyone else was supporting cast.
i, for one, immensely enjoyed his longish descriptions of new crobuzon and the myriad species that lived there. comparisons to dickens in this regard would not be unjustified.
to classify perdido, or the scar as SF is really the heart of the problem though. mieville himself refers to his style of writing as 'weird fiction' - which i think is much more descriptive. many people also feel that this could have been classified as 'horror' which i can also see.
as much as i enjoyed perdido - the scar was better. it's a monumental book and will be looked back on as being seminal.
With all the attention DVD's have been getting lately (for instance)and the main cause of their sales boom being pricing (20$ and under) - don't you think that the CD industry could save itself simply by lowering the cost of CD's to say - 5-7$ like vinyl used to be?
no - patching bad. but it's been a factor in game publishing too long for everyone to just change their ways. not many company's can have dev times as long as iD and Blizzard - the "its done when it's done guys."
as for morrowind, the patches weren't system crashing type fixes - they were gameplay enhancements, and a month lead time wasn't enough. i can see pc games coming out followed 5 or 6 months later by their console versions - hence giving PC games another plus.
also, don't forget that patches require at least some semblance of system acumen on the users' part to install. the slap-in-the-cd-and-push-play console crowd simply won't get it. companies will try patches - but they'll fail. releasing the PC version first will be a cost saving - even profit generating alternative to angry console customers.
prediction: 90% of xboxes sold will never see an ethernet cable sticking out of their asses! that'll be for the PC users with xboxes. ironic no?
what are you doing on slashdot!!!?? you are confused, angry (about what?) and just wrong! i'd secretly suspect you of flame baiting but you don't seem bright enough.
you cannot patch a console game effectively, and for this reason, the PC game platform will endure - if only for the reason that it acts as a public beta. just look at games like Morrowind on the PC. It's gotten updates that actually make it a great game - updates that the XBOX will never see.
game developers are used to the release now and patch later product cycle - and they are getting reamed by reviewers as they try to follow the same model in console development.
additionally, game makers want to see their games (and show off their games at E3 etc) looking the best they can possibly look - and THAT is on a PC with the latest greatest hardware.
and so many more reasons having to do with playability, hackability, mods, community etc...
Slashdot Mirror
This reminds me of the early 1990s trend of "programming for everyone", particularly Macromedia's Lingo in Director. Languages and environments that start this way quickly realize that the end products would be ever so slightly more appealing if they were more flexible. And flexibility is the end of simplicity. The 1.0 of this language is going to be fine for a few intrepid schoolgirls, but soon they're going to have to add basic programming concepts and structures which will leave most people scratching their heads. Haven't we already seen this dramatic arc with Director and Flash?
i lasted about 45 minutes with this game on the xbox 360. load times and frame rates were excrutiating. it got the point where i didn't open doors due to the loads. an adventure game that discourages exploring..that's rich. maybe the 'feature' that the ps3 port will add will be...wait for it...playability!
...and most likely fail in the effort.
dude if i did that my partents would totally, like, kill me.
i have 2 wireless squeezeboxes and a wired squeezebox which i serve using slimserver (open source) on an old pIII linux box with 512 mb RAM. they all sync perfectly. the trick is getting your wirelss network up to snuff. since the squeezeboxes are wireless B i have a totally seperate wireless B network so they don't slow down my wireless G devices. i've also heard that people get even better bandwidth by buying a wired squeezebox and connecting it to a wireless G bridge.
sonos is not fairly expensive. it's *absurdly* expensive. a 3 room setup will cost almost $2000 and you need to buy speakers. you can't even connect it to your stereo via digital out (it doesn't have one).
the sonos remote is sweet. but i can control my squeezeboxes using a similar device known as a wireless PDA. for the price of their remote i have easy and visual access to my music + it will do other things as well (surf the web anyone?)
add to that slimdevices open source policy and i have a host of amazing plugins to choose from - more being added daily.
I modded my xbox with just the X3 chip, not a hard-drive, and installed Xbox Media Center on it so i can access all my (legal) music on my network.
Now, after a year of my xbox gathering dust, i'm finally getting some use out of its digital audio outputs and decent graphics capabilities. i have no intention of copying xbox games and it's not because they all pretty much suck. (ok i heard halo2 was ok but for xbox live only). it's possible that i'm in the minority here, but i doubt it. in fact, i'm going to buy another xbox on ebay to mod so i can add music to another room.
I hear the new Xbox won't have a harddrive in it and will be much harder to mod. in that case i won't be buying one becuase the games would have to be unbelievable - which, they won't be. i'll be getting the PS3...
your argument is a more general observation about the world of open source software, and while i agree with you about OSS philosophy, i still wonder about the choice to use this in consumer electronics device that i will use for a year and then toss out - because as good as the software is - the battery will still suck.
is it stability? as crappy as my phone os's have been - they've never crashed on me. i've also never had a phone running WinCe- it's usually openwave or some such thing.
*snip*
>>it's about the freedom to study, tinker with, and use software however you want.
that's why i run linux on my desktop. i don't really want to do any of these things with my phone. i want to make and receive calls primarily. everything else is a bell and whistle and will most likely be done wrong - regardless of the os.
more than anything i'd like to see improvements in UI (both software and hardware) and this can be achieved using any os.
Why do we care unless these companies pass the savings from using open source software on to the consumers? i could care less what the underlying os of my phone is...unless of course i could get shell..cause maybe i'd like that..
ditto the squeezebox. i've got 2 of them, 1 wired and 1 wireless, running in sync (if i choose) in different rooms of the house. slimserver (opensource software) runs on a basically discarded dell pIII running mandrake 10 that i upgraded to 512mb of ram. i can use the squeezebox remote to play music, build playlists etc or i can access the web page from my desktop - or from a wireless handheld. i even have slimserver doing bitrate transcoding (down to 96k) so i can listen to my home music from on the road via a laptop and winamp (due to adsl's slow upstream).
it kind of rules.
if microsoft wanted a $100 computer - they should just build one for $200. they did it with the xbox.
this is a shocking misnomer. people who are technophobes write letters with fountain pens. the people this article is referring to are 'techno-dumbasses'.
i bought the XBOX 1 for halo. it ruled. and for a fleeting moment, i confused halo ruling for the XBOX ruling. it cost 50 bucks for the game, $349 bucks for the xbox, and $30 bucks for an additional controller. That's $500 bucks.
I've since bought about 3 more games for the XBOX, all of which were horrible. I've rented a dozen more..more awful games.
Then there were the promises. good games on the horizon! then when the horizon appeared, more crap. (note: i don't play sports games but i hear they're pretty good)
meanwhile, all my friends with PS2's were playing really excellent games while XBOX was dreaming up more ways of taking my money (XBOX Live).
guess what M$. fool me once - shame on you. fool me twice? PS3.
My XBOX now runs linux.
1. how good is your stereo?
.wav i assmue you mean better than a perfect rip of a CD. as long as master recordings are available in high quality analog or as better than 16bit 44.1khz digital files you can create a better better quality digital file..but it will be bigger.
2. how good are your ears?
i can't stand 128bit mp3's - they sound squidgy. but at 256bit on my decent home stereo i don't mind them at all. but, when i listen to uncompressed - there's just something a little bit more sparkly about the music.
compression is already obsolete as long as you've got the drive space and the bandwidth.
there's no such thing as better than a lossless compression, so by better than
claiming perdido street station was horrible and the characters lacked development is just silly. had you paid any attention you would have realized that the city was the main character of the book and everyone else was supporting cast.
i, for one, immensely enjoyed his longish descriptions of new crobuzon and the myriad species that lived there. comparisons to dickens in this regard would not be unjustified.
to classify perdido, or the scar as SF is really the heart of the problem though. mieville himself refers to his style of writing as 'weird fiction' - which i think is much more descriptive. many people also feel that this could have been classified as 'horror' which i can also see.
as much as i enjoyed perdido - the scar was better. it's a monumental book and will be looked back on as being seminal.
i'd read a napkin that this guy had written on.
imagine a whole beowulf cl....ahh forget it.
...i'm much more likely to give my info to a smiling face!
With all the attention DVD's have been getting lately (for instance)and the main cause of their sales boom being pricing (20$ and under) - don't you think that the CD industry could save itself simply by lowering the cost of CD's to say - 5-7$ like vinyl used to be?
my clothes smell like beer too...i don't write slashdot about it.
yeah, 75 per hour. right, like i'll fall for that again! i was the shmuck standing around at 5am for the leonids only to see maybe 10.
find some other chump.
49%?? so what stock do we buy to offset our disastrous tech heavy portfolios?
....to see a beowulf cluster of these...
ouch, sorry.
VS. build quality of creative products - crap
Vs. customer service at creative - shite
Vs. UI of creative products - obtuse
there's probably more...
no - patching bad. but it's been a factor in game publishing too long for everyone to just change their ways. not many company's can have dev times as long as iD and Blizzard - the "its done when it's done guys."
as for morrowind, the patches weren't system crashing type fixes - they were gameplay enhancements, and a month lead time wasn't enough. i can see pc games coming out followed 5 or 6 months later by their console versions - hence giving PC games another plus.
also, don't forget that patches require at least some semblance of system acumen on the users' part to install. the slap-in-the-cd-and-push-play console crowd simply won't get it. companies will try patches - but they'll fail. releasing the PC version first will be a cost saving - even profit generating alternative to angry console customers.
prediction: 90% of xboxes sold will never see an ethernet cable sticking out of their asses! that'll be for the PC users with xboxes. ironic no?
click here
you cannot patch a console game effectively, and for this reason, the PC game platform will endure - if only for the reason that it acts as a public beta. just look at games like Morrowind on the PC. It's gotten updates that actually make it a great game - updates that the XBOX will never see.
game developers are used to the release now and patch later product cycle - and they are getting reamed by reviewers as they try to follow the same model in console development.
additionally, game makers want to see their games (and show off their games at E3 etc) looking the best they can possibly look - and THAT is on a PC with the latest greatest hardware.
and so many more reasons having to do with playability, hackability, mods, community etc...