I read Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash and thought both were great, except for the endings. I thought the endings were rushed, as if he spent a years carefully writing each novel until his publisher suddenly showed up at his door and said "Dude, you've got 24 hours to finish this novel." I'm waiting for a specific review of the ending of this one before I decide whether to buy.
Definitely not. Python is a terrible teaching language. It is often easier to do the wrong thing than the right thing in Python (which makes it okay as a prototyping language). For a first language, you want something where the good solution is also the easiest. Then, when you have learned good practices, you will apply them in any language you learn. I'd still recommend Smalltalk as a good first language. There really is no better environment for learning to code than Squeak at the moment.
Python is absolutely fine as a first language. It easy to learn, easy to read, and has an interactive interpreter, which makes it easy for a student to quickly test code. It supports most programming styles (OO, functional, etc.), is well documented, and comes with a large standard library of packages with which a newcomer can quickly become productive.
I don't follow your statement about python making it easier to do the wrong thing. Perhaps you could provide some examples. Also, if you're going to push Smalltalk/Squeak as a first language, what makes it a good candidate as language to learn general programming concepts?
Heh, just last month I was helping a friend get her Linux box to work with ATT DSL's email and had to call ATT support for info on the server settings. The first-level support droid, after I explained what info I needed actually told me "well you need to call Linux about that then"! Fortunately, the slightly more human-like entity the next level up had the answers I needed.
Maybe you misunderstood her. She might have said you need to call Linus about that".
Has anyone else noticed that after Vista came out, Microsoft seems to have been losing ground? Netbooks/UMPC's are selling with OEM Linux like hot cakes, and Apple is steadily gaining market share. I also bet that the disappointment with SP1 made it even worse for ol' Billy. Even if Windows 7 is all that and a bag of chips, it'll be too late because Joe the Layman will have seen that Linux really is ready for prime time.
I doubt Joe the Layman knows what Linux is, assuming he has even heard of it. But he has undoubtedly seen numerous Mac ads on TV and has noticed Mac stores popping up everywhere, full of big pretty iMacs and super-thin laptops.
I've never understood how people think that argument proves anything. It ignore the fact that my PC is a multi-use platform. I can also write papers, work from home, keep in touch through e-mail and IM with friend and family, surf the internet, keep track of my finances.... the game console just plays games. That's it. Also, you always see that argument posted on the internet by someone who already clearly owns a computer. So not only have you already purchased a PC but now you've spend extra money on a console or more likely two. Using your highly dubious numbers Mr. Console Fan, your $1250 fails to take into account that you've also bought a PC in that time period. Sorta evens the numbers out a bit.
You make a good point. Most people will also have a PC. But consider that all those other uses you listed could be done on a much more modest PC ($500 or less) that won't have to be upgraded in a few years to play current games. My 4 year old PC can easily still do all those other tasks you listed but it chokes on any recent game demo. Plus it can't do local multiplayer gaming, as the parent poster noted.
Even if the average cost were the same (I don't think it is), many people like the convenience of not having to deal with hardware upgrades, driver upgrades, and compatibility issues. Any many people who want to play on their large TV don't necessarily want to move their PC in front of it to do so.
The only saving grace that the PS3 has is the built in Blu-Ray player. Sony may as well license it to Microsoft and say good night.
And yet in overall worldwide sales, PS3 has been outselling the 360 for pretty much the entire year so far. Maybe there aren't so many people like you after all.
And your math is irrelevant because we all know you're not doing any real gaming on a 12 year old computer. 12 years ago you would most likely have been running Windows 95 on a Pentium 2. How many OS upgrades did you go through and how much did they cost? Still using the same motherboard & power supply? Same type & amount of RAM? Your entire system would have been upgraded several times over by now.
I'm confused - how does the copy belong to the original producer, other than via an artificial government-mandated monopoly?
That is the only way it belongs to the original producer. Then again, the only way that your home or the property upon which it sits would belong to you is by an artificial government-mandated monopoly. Just ask the nomadic native Americans who were here before the Europeans arrived. If you can find any.
Making a copy takes effort on the part of the copyer and none on the part of the original producer.
And me entering your home, "borrowing" your bicycle, and riding it around all day while you're away takes effort on my part and none on yours.
I understand the joke you're trying to make. But when a team finishes a project that will not require much maintenance, it should start a similar project, not unrelated projects. For example, once Madden NFL 10 goes gold on all platforms, the team should start working on the company's next NFL or AFL game, not accounting software.
They may not have the luxury of keeping people on overhead waiting for a simlar size/type of project to come around. Furthermore, not all developers on a project are necessarily required over the entire development period so they would be moved to other projects once their piece is done. Note that the OP mentioned not just moving from one project to another but also from one group to another.
You make some interesting points but you may be understating the significance of Bluray and overstating the failure of the PS3. PS3 has sold as many units in its first year as the 360 did in its first year. The difference is that the 360 had no "next gen" competition during that period, whereas PS3 was competing with both the 360 and the Wii. Also, the PS3 had a weak game catalog during that period. So how did the PS3 sell as well as the 360? I think Bluray played a large part. I know several people who bought a PS3 as a Bluray player. They claimed they had no interest in playing games (yeah, right), but soon were buying games either for themselves or their kids. Conversely, I would never have coughed up $500 for just a Bluray player but since it came with the PS3, I've started purchasing and renting Bluray titles.
I think next year will probably determine how much of a success/failure PS3 will become. 360 has a lead of about 6 million units sold but I don't think that directly makes much difference, considering the market between the two consoles is somewhere around 150 million units. I think the bigger issues are what alignments game developers make over the next year or so and what difference Bluray makes for the PS3. Price, of course, will also make a difference.
Yes. It's called Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop Elements, or GIMP. A console does one thing: play games from large publishers. A PC can do more: games from smaller publishers or tasks that aren't games at all.
Not the best examples since you can also run GIMP and perform non-gaming tasks on PS3 under linux.
There may still be hope on the horizon, but saying that people aren't buying PS3s or PS3 games in any real volume is still a matter of fact more than it is an opinion.
Only if you misinterpret the statistics. Why are PS3 game sales lower than the others on the chart you linked? Because the PS3 has a smaller install base. Why does it have a smaller install base? WRT the 360, it's because the PS3 was released a year later. If you go back to vgchartz and look at weekly sales, you'll see that the PS3 currently is selling about 30% fewer units that the other consoles (and this is shortly after Orange Box and Halo 3 were released for the 360). So if you're still claiming that no one is buying PS3s "in any real volume", then I guess you're really saying that none of the current gen consoles are selling.
If they can convince researchers to buy PS3s then it's probably a better deal than selling them to gamers.
Probably not. Sony has been selling PS3s at a loss (and probably still are). They make up the loss through games sales. Until unit production costs drop below sale price, selling units for pure research is not "a better deal" for Sony, since there are no associated game & peripheral sales to recoup their losses.
I agree. Supposedly, somewhere between 60-75 percent of college students change majors at least once. Which makes me wonder whether these high school majors help students to pick the right college major the first time or whether it provides them even less of a general education so that they will be even less prepared when they do switch majors in college.
According to TFA, different districts have different implementations of the program. Some have hundreds of majors from which to choose. Others have a few (e.g., 7) career tracks that are more general. I'm curious just how specialized these programs are and how easily students are allowed to switch majors/tracks. While I think it is harmful to try to lock students into career paths so early, it could be helpful if it actually gave students more freedom to explore different options options to help them make better major selections for college. And for those not going on to college, it could give those that are motivated a chance to develop trade skills before entering the work force.
I'm well aware that percentages can be used to emphasize or deemphasize differences. What I take issue with is your remark that Sony's statement is "a good example of using percentages to hide actual statistics", when you have no basis for claiming that they are engaged in some kind of subterfuge. Using percentages is a reasonable way to indicate change and it is done all the time in situations where people are trying to provide objective indications of growth or decline. Take a look at how annual stock & mutual fund performance is reported.
BTW, if you take a look at the weekly tallies at vgchartz.com, they look pretty consistent with what Sony reported. Sampling of different retailers can easily account for the difference.
And how is that using percentages to hide actual statistics? Do you have some basis for claiming that sales did not increase by 113%? If sales only went up by 13%, then they are either mistaken or they are lying. There's nothing "hidden" in the quoted comment.
The first interpretation you provide is correct for the quote given. The second interpretation is incorrect(it would be correct if someone said sales increased 13%). There's no ambiguity.
There are still good PS1&2 games out there. And rather than dusting off the old PS2 when you want to play them, the PS3 can upscale them for HD (with optional smoothing).
Luckily nobody who bought a PS3 knows what "value for money" is.
That's some nice trolling there. And funny how you contradict your earlier post, claiming that Sony can only profit by selling fewer consoles. Selling units at a loss is pretty common for new consoles (although I'm guessing you already knew that). If you don't want all the features of a PS3, obviously you shouldn't buy it but to say that it isn't "value for money" is just ridiculous.
It's the video game bestseller list of the North American portion of an online retailer who does not specialize in video games. It is not a statistically sound sample for how any console is doing overall.
It is certainly not a definitive indicator but it is current and available. To give you a non-American retailer, the German Amazon site currently ranks PS3 at #14 in the games section. The highest ranked XBox360 was #381. Of course, it would be nice to know where the 360 would rank if you combined sales from all models. If anyone could post stats/ranks for other retailers, I would be interested to see how they compare.
Not sure why you think retailers specializing in video games are particularly relevant. I think what's more relevant is which retailers sell the most games/consoles. According to this article (which cites NDP) from 2004, WalMart was the top game retailer.
The Amazon numbers may be tiresome but at least they are current. The problem with your NDP numbers is that the most recent numbers you show are for June - before the PS3 price cut, before E3, and before the public acknowledgment of the $1 Billion RRoD debacle. Speaking of which, NDP states that as of two weeks after the price cut, PS3 sales were up 135% at Sony's top 5 retailers.
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I read Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash and thought both were great, except for the endings. I thought the endings were rushed, as if he spent a years carefully writing each novel until his publisher suddenly showed up at his door and said "Dude, you've got 24 hours to finish this novel." I'm waiting for a specific review of the ending of this one before I decide whether to buy.
Python is absolutely fine as a first language. It easy to learn, easy to read, and has an interactive interpreter, which makes it easy for a student to quickly test code. It supports most programming styles (OO, functional, etc.), is well documented, and comes with a large standard library of packages with which a newcomer can quickly become productive.
I don't follow your statement about python making it easier to do the wrong thing. Perhaps you could provide some examples. Also, if you're going to push Smalltalk/Squeak as a first language, what makes it a good candidate as language to learn general programming concepts?
Maybe you misunderstood her. She might have said you need to call Linus about that".
I doubt Joe the Layman knows what Linux is, assuming he has even heard of it. But he has undoubtedly seen numerous Mac ads on TV and has noticed Mac stores popping up everywhere, full of big pretty iMacs and super-thin laptops.
You make a good point. Most people will also have a PC. But consider that all those other uses you listed could be done on a much more modest PC ($500 or less) that won't have to be upgraded in a few years to play current games. My 4 year old PC can easily still do all those other tasks you listed but it chokes on any recent game demo. Plus it can't do local multiplayer gaming, as the parent poster noted.
Even if the average cost were the same (I don't think it is), many people like the convenience of not having to deal with hardware upgrades, driver upgrades, and compatibility issues. Any many people who want to play on their large TV don't necessarily want to move their PC in front of it to do so.
And yet in overall worldwide sales, PS3 has been outselling the 360 for pretty much the entire year so far. Maybe there aren't so many people like you after all.
And your math is irrelevant because we all know you're not doing any real gaming on a 12 year old computer. 12 years ago you would most likely have been running Windows 95 on a Pentium 2. How many OS upgrades did you go through and how much did they cost? Still using the same motherboard & power supply? Same type & amount of RAM? Your entire system would have been upgraded several times over by now.
That is the only way it belongs to the original producer. Then again, the only way that your home or the property upon which it sits would belong to you is by an artificial government-mandated monopoly. Just ask the nomadic native Americans who were here before the Europeans arrived. If you can find any.
And me entering your home, "borrowing" your bicycle, and riding it around all day while you're away takes effort on my part and none on yours.
I wouldn't worry just yet. It looks like the discs may actually be 400 GB Bluray discs that will be compatible with existing players.
They may not have the luxury of keeping people on overhead waiting for a simlar size/type of project to come around. Furthermore, not all developers on a project are necessarily required over the entire development period so they would be moved to other projects once their piece is done. Note that the OP mentioned not just moving from one project to another but also from one group to another.
You make some interesting points but you may be understating the significance of Bluray and overstating the failure of the PS3. PS3 has sold as many units in its first year as the 360 did in its first year. The difference is that the 360 had no "next gen" competition during that period, whereas PS3 was competing with both the 360 and the Wii. Also, the PS3 had a weak game catalog during that period. So how did the PS3 sell as well as the 360? I think Bluray played a large part. I know several people who bought a PS3 as a Bluray player. They claimed they had no interest in playing games (yeah, right), but soon were buying games either for themselves or their kids. Conversely, I would never have coughed up $500 for just a Bluray player but since it came with the PS3, I've started purchasing and renting Bluray titles.
I think next year will probably determine how much of a success/failure PS3 will become. 360 has a lead of about 6 million units sold but I don't think that directly makes much difference, considering the market between the two consoles is somewhere around 150 million units. I think the bigger issues are what alignments game developers make over the next year or so and what difference Bluray makes for the PS3. Price, of course, will also make a difference.
Not the best examples since you can also run GIMP and perform non-gaming tasks on PS3 under linux.
Only if you misinterpret the statistics. Why are PS3 game sales lower than the others on the chart you linked? Because the PS3 has a smaller install base. Why does it have a smaller install base? WRT the 360, it's because the PS3 was released a year later. If you go back to vgchartz and look at weekly sales, you'll see that the PS3 currently is selling about 30% fewer units that the other consoles (and this is shortly after Orange Box and Halo 3 were released for the 360). So if you're still claiming that no one is buying PS3s "in any real volume", then I guess you're really saying that none of the current gen consoles are selling.
Oh, OK. Then I guess they've just been cutting costs for fun. And Microsoft didn't lose billions of dollars on the original XBox.
Probably not. Sony has been selling PS3s at a loss (and probably still are). They make up the loss through games sales. Until unit production costs drop below sale price, selling units for pure research is not "a better deal" for Sony, since there are no associated game & peripheral sales to recoup their losses.
I agree. Supposedly, somewhere between 60-75 percent of college students change majors at least once. Which makes me wonder whether these high school majors help students to pick the right college major the first time or whether it provides them even less of a general education so that they will be even less prepared when they do switch majors in college.
According to TFA, different districts have different implementations of the program. Some have hundreds of majors from which to choose. Others have a few (e.g., 7) career tracks that are more general. I'm curious just how specialized these programs are and how easily students are allowed to switch majors/tracks. While I think it is harmful to try to lock students into career paths so early, it could be helpful if it actually gave students more freedom to explore different options options to help them make better major selections for college. And for those not going on to college, it could give those that are motivated a chance to develop trade skills before entering the work force.
I'm well aware that percentages can be used to emphasize or deemphasize differences. What I take issue with is your remark that Sony's statement is "a good example of using percentages to hide actual statistics", when you have no basis for claiming that they are engaged in some kind of subterfuge. Using percentages is a reasonable way to indicate change and it is done all the time in situations where people are trying to provide objective indications of growth or decline. Take a look at how annual stock & mutual fund performance is reported.
BTW, if you take a look at the weekly tallies at vgchartz.com, they look pretty consistent with what Sony reported. Sampling of different retailers can easily account for the difference.
And how is that using percentages to hide actual statistics? Do you have some basis for claiming that sales did not increase by 113%? If sales only went up by 13%, then they are either mistaken or they are lying. There's nothing "hidden" in the quoted comment.
The first interpretation you provide is correct for the quote given. The second interpretation is incorrect(it would be correct if someone said sales increased 13%). There's no ambiguity.
There are still good PS1&2 games out there. And rather than dusting off the old PS2 when you want to play them, the PS3 can upscale them for HD (with optional smoothing).
That's some nice trolling there. And funny how you contradict your earlier post, claiming that Sony can only profit by selling fewer consoles. Selling units at a loss is pretty common for new consoles (although I'm guessing you already knew that). If you don't want all the features of a PS3, obviously you shouldn't buy it but to say that it isn't "value for money" is just ridiculous.
It is certainly not a definitive indicator but it is current and available. To give you a non-American retailer, the German Amazon site currently ranks PS3 at #14 in the games section. The highest ranked XBox360 was #381. Of course, it would be nice to know where the 360 would rank if you combined sales from all models. If anyone could post stats/ranks for other retailers, I would be interested to see how they compare.
Not sure why you think retailers specializing in video games are particularly relevant. I think what's more relevant is which retailers sell the most games/consoles. According to this article (which cites NDP) from 2004, WalMart was the top game retailer.
How about here, here, or directly from Take-Two.
Yes, thanks for the correction.
No, Amazon is not an outlier. Your NDP numbers are old. See this post.
The Amazon numbers may be tiresome but at least they are current. The problem with your NDP numbers is that the most recent numbers you show are for June - before the PS3 price cut, before E3, and before the public acknowledgment of the $1 Billion RRoD debacle. Speaking of which, NDP states that as of two weeks after the price cut, PS3 sales were up 135% at Sony's top 5 retailers.