I don't think that there is really much of a reason not to push 1080p if it can run smoothly at that resolution- but I don't think it's a huge deal yet either. While a lot of the larger sets are starting to run at 1080p, I haven't personally seen anything less than 36" that runs 1080p. While I'm certain that there are gamers who are playing games on these larger sets, I think that there are still a lot of people, like me, who are playing on mid-sized screens that don't to 1080p yet. (as a side note, anyone know of an HDTV that will do 1080p and is in the 24 inch range? I keep my games set up in my office and I don't have room for anything bigger 24"-ish, but I would like to have a "true" HD display.)
I think that the biggest drawback to having 1080 on the xbox 360 will be storage space on the disk for textures. IIRC games running at 720 have already started to hit the limits of the capacity of a single DVD- and while disk switching will work for some games, I don't think it's a general purpose solution.
If this data is comming from a survey I took a while ago which had similar questions, it was a web survey that gets emailed to you when you create a playstation network account with the PS3.
I suggest you read books 5 and 6, and to a lesser extent 4. What you point out is pretty heavily used in the first three books, and a bit in book 4 as well. By the end of book 4 and during 5 and 6 however, things definitely begin to change. Harry still wins for the most part, but it becomes less about serendipity and hidden powers, and more about paying the price for good. There is a scene early on in book 6 where harry confronts malfoy, and ends up petrified on the floor with a broken nose from malfoy stomping his face in. Not to mention the deaths of Sirius and Dumbledore.
Actually, it's the last book because since the beginning of the series, she planned on making 1 book for each of the seven years at Hogwarts.
I don't think that it's fair to criticize the fans of the series. There are certainly people who are fans of the series who are young, or who are older and not well read, but there are also many people who are well read and can appreciate the stories.
As for the comments regarding the plotlines being predictable, the series does make use of a number of themes that are common to the fantasy genre, and certainly in retrospect it is easy to see how the plot has followed those common themes. I think this applies especially to the large thematic arches of the series. There are, however, surprising and interesting subplots that can be enjoyed.
The thing is though, even these subplots are not exceptionally intricate, and I do not think that the series is meant to be read like a standard mystery or thriller, where you spend the book trying to figure out who done it, where, how and why. The series isn't really about telling a new story and trying to figure that story out. I think that the real strength of the series is it's implementation of common fantasy themes. To use the cliche`, it's about the journey, not the destination. Reading the Harry Potter series is about seeing how these traditional events unfold in a certain time and place. The author understand that, and focuses on those elements of the story- creating a vibrant living world with three-dimensional characters and exploring how these recurring themes effect them and the world they live in.
It is perfectly fair to not like the series, but don't completely dismiss it or the people who enjoy it.
Actually, selling the PS3s hurts the bottom line less than not selling them, since they are already producing them. Basically, it costs then $x to make a PS3, and they sell it for $y (where $x > $y). They still lose money in the end, but they lose less money by selling the systems than by having them sitting on the shelves.
I've also heard the 30 titles thing floating about. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but there is something else to consider as well: mindshare. Even if sony never makes back the cost of selling the PS3 for the first six months, it might be worth it to them, if hardcore gamers snatch up the systems at that point, and get the casual gamers excited about the system. The (larger number of) casual gamers can then go buy the system in a year or so, when sony isn't taking as much of a loss on the system, and they will have to buy fewer games/movies/etc each to be profitable customers for Sony.
I would imagine that this would be great not only to allow them to study up on opposing players tactics, but also to give them something entertaining to do while they are supposed to be playing baseball.
every once in a while if I can't remember the spelling of a URL I'll type it into google for the handy spell checking, since google usually does a good job of popping up what I meant- especially if it's a site I only visit rarely and I remember that the URL is spelled funny, but I don't remember in what way it's spelled funny. Better than giving another hit to sleezy people squatting on typo domain names.
I also agree that it's terrible that some people think that this is just the way to navigate "teh intarnets", rather than something that is done occasionally for a specific reason.
I see this complaint all the time, but if something is already modded funny (which doesn't give karma) can't you just mod it underrated- which will give karma and not change the label? That's what I generally do if something is funny enough to be worth karma, or largely funny but also insightful.
Thanks for the information. I knew I was a bit mixed up, but I didn't realize exactly how and to what extent. I was under the impression that it was less well accepted than it seems to be.
I don't have a link, but I do remember reading about this theory once before. The idea is that basically, instead of species evolving slowly over time into new species, speciation can occur rapidly (on a geological time scale) and then the new species will remain relatively stable until the next quick burst of change.
This was used to explain why there are so many "missing links" in species, as well as how certain things can evolve which may not have had an evolutionary advantage inbetween no trait and a fully developed trait (e.g. a fish developing legs may certainly prove advantageous, but having some sort of half-fin half-leg things may not, so the change must have happened quickly).
It's been a while since I've read anything about it, but it the theory seemed to be interesting, although the particular stuff that I read on it didn't seem all that science-y and made it sound more like a group of animals got together one day and all of a sudden decided to sprout legs/eyes/lungs/etc. As someone with no background in biology, paleontology, etc. it seemed like some interesting observations, but the explainations for them were not entirely scientific (as I said though, I've only read a couple of things on it, and this was years ago) and I'm not sure how widly it's accepted- or even considered a wrong theory but valid hypothesis within the scientific community.
this is kind of a tangent, but something that's always annoyed me. I wish vending machines had a "no change" option or something. It's really annoying when you really want a soda or something, and have no change, and the machine refuses to take a dollar because it want's exact change. There are lots of times I'd rather just lose the $0.40 in change back and get my damned soda.
Of course, the down side to that is that then they would simply set the machines to never give back change, then advertise soda for $0.60 when it's still effectively $1 since you won't get any change back.
Whatever happened to those vending machines that you can buy stuff from with your cell phone?
</rant>
I'll second this. I got a TI-89 in Highschool and used it through college. It's a great calculator, and will do pretty much anything that you would want to use a hand-held calculator (as opposed to something like Mathematica) for.
I'm also a fan of the TI series because there is good Linux support. If you are into programming, you can check out tigcc which will let you develop apps in C. I used this feature a lot during my stats courses.
The 89 also comes with some handy applications, like a basic spreadsheet, notes, flashcards, and a calendar and clock.
I got my Wii on launch, and got Elebits as soon as it was available. There seems to be a lot of hate for the game, but I think that it's pretty good. The game reminds me in a lot of ways of Katamari Damacy. It's a pretty simple premis, and the gameplay doesn't change much, but it's ok, because the game is really all about scale and interacting with the world, and the just plain bizzare at times. Even the graphics in Elebits remind me heavily of the style in Katamari Damacy.
Wario Ware never really appealed to me much though, and even less so on the Wii. It's not that I'm opposed to a collection of mini-games, per-se, but the problem is that I don't want to get up and go into the living room (all of my other consoles are in my office), get out my chair (I can't play the Wii on my couch comfortably, because of the angle between it and the TV, so I keep one of those fold-out camping chairs in the corner so I can set it up in front of the TV when I want to play Wii), set up the chair, turn on the TV, and boot up the Wii so I can play a couple of minigames for 10-15 minutes- in this case I think I'll stick with small downloadable PS3 and 360 games- or XMoto and Ksirtet. It might be good for multiplayer, but I don't have anyone to multiplayer with, so that nixes that aspect of it. Not to mention if I do have people over, I have Super Monkey Ball, which is a real game, and also has enough minigames to keep a party going for a while.
Personally, I'm hoping for fewer minigame collections, and more zelda type games for the Wii. I would love to see Resident Evil 4 for the Wii, and I think Metroid Prime 3 will be great as well.
Personally, I would like to use this to finish playing through Final Fantasy XII, and will probably use it to play through God of War II when it's released as well. If the PS3 will run all of my PSone and PS2 games, then why should I keep my PS2 taking up space on my desk, when I can free up that space and pass the PS2 along to someone who never got a chance to own one.
I haven't kept up extensively with what's available in japan, so I can't argue (except for calling Zelda a port, which I'm not sure is entirely true. It started out as a gamecube game, but was developed for a long time as a Wii game, and there are certainly some elements that I imagine were difficult to do on the GC version. If anything it's a dual platform game, where both platforms happen to be nintendo systems). Either way, I still seem to remember hearing that the 360 was picking up steam (although going from selling 1 console a month to 5 would be a 500% increase, and the console would still be effectively dead- so I guess that doesn't mean much).
fair enough, apparently quite a few people have enjoyed the game. Personally, I found it tedious. The levels all look the same, and are almost fractal-like in their repetition. Plus all the heroes seem to play exactly the same as well. It basically seems like the game could be completed using a naive path-finding algorithm and someone tapping "x" repeatedly for a few hours.
It may or may not be crap, and certainly some people enjoy it, but it's defintely not a system seller, and certainly not a game that I can see large swaths of PS3 owners congregating outside of gamestop to buy.
There are people who are interested in the PS3 as a (relatively) cheap development platform. The primary reason that I got one was to be able to play around with the Cell processor (Of course, I also quite enjoy console games). I know a few other people who got one for the same reason.
The problem is, as you said, it's a miniscule fraction of the market. These people don't help sony out at all (they take a loss on the system, and never recoup it in selling games/bluray movies) and it doesn't help the game publishers(it inflates the potential customer base. There are X ps3s in the wild, but only Y% of people who own PS3s will actually buy games).
The thing is, the ps3 isn't competing against what the 360 had 3 months after its launch, it's competing against what the 360 has available right now.
Maybe the games I listed aren't doing great in japan, but the Wii seems to be pretty popular in japan as well as in the US, so something must have people there buying it (they have better virtual console choices than the US, so maybe that's it)
The PS3 has an anoerxic game library, and all of the big name titles that were system sellers for the PS2 are a year or two away, or no longer exclusive (Gamespot has rumors that MGS4 will be out on the 360).
Of course, early adopters are often willing to buy a console on the promise of what will eventually be available (I did)- but there is a large secondary market to consider. There are a lot of people who like games, and are interesting in getting a next gen system, but will make decisions based largely on their experiences playing the systems at their friends houses. When the PS3 doesn't have any games to offer up those experiences, then people will focus on the 360 or wii, which they have played good games on.
I think that the price doesn't have quite as much to do with the (lack of) adoption of the PS3 as people seem to think. The biggest problem seems to be that the system doesn't have any friggen games worth a crap.
I have a PS3, and I only have 3 games for it (Resistance: Fall of Man, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Genji:Days of the Blade), and two of them are absolute and utter crap (Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Genji:Days of the Blade), and one of those isn't even an exclusive (Marvel Ultimate Alliance). Compared to the Wii, which has been getting great games at a fairly good clip (Zelda, Elebits, Wario Ware, Metal Slug Anthology, Super Monkey Ball) or the 360, which has had a year to get some good games.(Kameo, Oblivion, Dead Rising, Gears of War- all system sellers)
I would like to see the PS3 do well (after spending that much money on it, I would say I have a vested interest) - but c'mon sony, not many people are going to buy these things just to be able to install Linux on it!
I've used open courseware for a while now to do a few different courses. My University degree was informative, but there were certainly bits of information I missed out on. More importantly, since I graduated from school several months ago, it's been easy to get into the habbit of not thinking too much outside of work, so going through some of the material on OCW has been good for keeping me sharp and learning new things.
The biggest problem that I've found is that the quality varies wildly. Some courses, like the intro to algorithms course, have videos of all lectures, as well as MP3 versions, course notes, etc. I find these really helpful since I'm more of an audio learner than a video learner and do better with a lecture to watch.
Other courses are well fleshed out with PDFs and slideshows, which are still a great way to get information.
The problem is some courses have only one or two lectures out of the entire course available, or are missing key lectures.
I think that the OCW initiative is a great idea, and has been well implemented for some courses. I hope to see them get all of the courses up to par with the top quality ones.
I think that people are sort of exaggerating the unique experiences that can be had on the Wii a bit. Don't get me wrong, it's an absolutely FANTASTIC system, but the only really unique game that I've seen for it is Elebits (which, for some reason I can't quite explain, reminds me of Katamari Damacy). Granted, there are some other good games, Zelda is of course the big system seller for the "hard core" audience, and Super Monkey Ball, with all of it's mini games, seems to be popular among the less hard core crowd, but over all, they aren't radically different from anything else out there.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think that there is really much of a reason not to push 1080p if it can run smoothly at that resolution- but I don't think it's a huge deal yet either. While a lot of the larger sets are starting to run at 1080p, I haven't personally seen anything less than 36" that runs 1080p. While I'm certain that there are gamers who are playing games on these larger sets, I think that there are still a lot of people, like me, who are playing on mid-sized screens that don't to 1080p yet. (as a side note, anyone know of an HDTV that will do 1080p and is in the 24 inch range? I keep my games set up in my office and I don't have room for anything bigger 24"-ish, but I would like to have a "true" HD display.)
I think that the biggest drawback to having 1080 on the xbox 360 will be storage space on the disk for textures. IIRC games running at 720 have already started to hit the limits of the capacity of a single DVD- and while disk switching will work for some games, I don't think it's a general purpose solution.
If this data is comming from a survey I took a while ago which had similar questions, it was a web survey that gets emailed to you when you create a playstation network account with the PS3.
I suggest you read books 5 and 6, and to a lesser extent 4. What you point out is pretty heavily used in the first three books, and a bit in book 4 as well. By the end of book 4 and during 5 and 6 however, things definitely begin to change. Harry still wins for the most part, but it becomes less about serendipity and hidden powers, and more about paying the price for good. There is a scene early on in book 6 where harry confronts malfoy, and ends up petrified on the floor with a broken nose from malfoy stomping his face in. Not to mention the deaths of Sirius and Dumbledore.
Actually, it's the last book because since the beginning of the series, she planned on making 1 book for each of the seven years at Hogwarts.
I don't think that it's fair to criticize the fans of the series. There are certainly people who are fans of the series who are young, or who are older and not well read, but there are also many people who are well read and can appreciate the stories.
As for the comments regarding the plotlines being predictable, the series does make use of a number of themes that are common to the fantasy genre, and certainly in retrospect it is easy to see how the plot has followed those common themes. I think this applies especially to the large thematic arches of the series. There are, however, surprising and interesting subplots that can be enjoyed.
The thing is though, even these subplots are not exceptionally intricate, and I do not think that the series is meant to be read like a standard mystery or thriller, where you spend the book trying to figure out who done it, where, how and why. The series isn't really about telling a new story and trying to figure that story out. I think that the real strength of the series is it's implementation of common fantasy themes. To use the cliche`, it's about the journey, not the destination. Reading the Harry Potter series is about seeing how these traditional events unfold in a certain time and place. The author understand that, and focuses on those elements of the story- creating a vibrant living world with three-dimensional characters and exploring how these recurring themes effect them and the world they live in.
It is perfectly fair to not like the series, but don't completely dismiss it or the people who enjoy it.
Actually, selling the PS3s hurts the bottom line less than not selling them, since they are already producing them. Basically, it costs then $x to make a PS3, and they sell it for $y (where $x > $y). They still lose money in the end, but they lose less money by selling the systems than by having them sitting on the shelves.
I've also heard the 30 titles thing floating about. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but there is something else to consider as well: mindshare. Even if sony never makes back the cost of selling the PS3 for the first six months, it might be worth it to them, if hardcore gamers snatch up the systems at that point, and get the casual gamers excited about the system. The (larger number of) casual gamers can then go buy the system in a year or so, when sony isn't taking as much of a loss on the system, and they will have to buy fewer games/movies/etc each to be profitable customers for Sony.
I would imagine that this would be great not only to allow them to study up on opposing players tactics, but also to give them something entertaining to do while they are supposed to be playing baseball.
every once in a while if I can't remember the spelling of a URL I'll type it into google for the handy spell checking, since google usually does a good job of popping up what I meant- especially if it's a site I only visit rarely and I remember that the URL is spelled funny, but I don't remember in what way it's spelled funny. Better than giving another hit to sleezy people squatting on typo domain names.
I also agree that it's terrible that some people think that this is just the way to navigate "teh intarnets", rather than something that is done occasionally for a specific reason.
I see this complaint all the time, but if something is already modded funny (which doesn't give karma) can't you just mod it underrated- which will give karma and not change the label? That's what I generally do if something is funny enough to be worth karma, or largely funny but also insightful.
Thanks for the information. I knew I was a bit mixed up, but I didn't realize exactly how and to what extent. I was under the impression that it was less well accepted than it seems to be.
I don't have a link, but I do remember reading about this theory once before. The idea is that basically, instead of species evolving slowly over time into new species, speciation can occur rapidly (on a geological time scale) and then the new species will remain relatively stable until the next quick burst of change.
This was used to explain why there are so many "missing links" in species, as well as how certain things can evolve which may not have had an evolutionary advantage inbetween no trait and a fully developed trait (e.g. a fish developing legs may certainly prove advantageous, but having some sort of half-fin half-leg things may not, so the change must have happened quickly).
It's been a while since I've read anything about it, but it the theory seemed to be interesting, although the particular stuff that I read on it didn't seem all that science-y and made it sound more like a group of animals got together one day and all of a sudden decided to sprout legs/eyes/lungs/etc. As someone with no background in biology, paleontology, etc. it seemed like some interesting observations, but the explainations for them were not entirely scientific (as I said though, I've only read a couple of things on it, and this was years ago) and I'm not sure how widly it's accepted- or even considered a wrong theory but valid hypothesis within the scientific community.
this is kind of a tangent, but something that's always annoyed me. I wish vending machines had a "no change" option or something. It's really annoying when you really want a soda or something, and have no change, and the machine refuses to take a dollar because it want's exact change. There are lots of times I'd rather just lose the $0.40 in change back and get my damned soda.
Of course, the down side to that is that then they would simply set the machines to never give back change, then advertise soda for $0.60 when it's still effectively $1 since you won't get any change back.
Whatever happened to those vending machines that you can buy stuff from with your cell phone?
</rant>
I'll second this. I got a TI-89 in Highschool and used it through college. It's a great calculator, and will do pretty much anything that you would want to use a hand-held calculator (as opposed to something like Mathematica) for.
I'm also a fan of the TI series because there is good Linux support. If you are into programming, you can check out tigcc which will let you develop apps in C. I used this feature a lot during my stats courses.
The 89 also comes with some handy applications, like a basic spreadsheet, notes, flashcards, and a calendar and clock.
They don't make the TI-92 anymore, but the new version of the 89 has all of the features and power of the 92, without the qwerty keypad.
yeah, what I think would be particularly awesome though would be to use the wiimote to aim when you raise your weapon in RE4.
I got my Wii on launch, and got Elebits as soon as it was available. There seems to be a lot of hate for the game, but I think that it's pretty good. The game reminds me in a lot of ways of Katamari Damacy. It's a pretty simple premis, and the gameplay doesn't change much, but it's ok, because the game is really all about scale and interacting with the world, and the just plain bizzare at times. Even the graphics in Elebits remind me heavily of the style in Katamari Damacy.
Wario Ware never really appealed to me much though, and even less so on the Wii. It's not that I'm opposed to a collection of mini-games, per-se, but the problem is that I don't want to get up and go into the living room (all of my other consoles are in my office), get out my chair (I can't play the Wii on my couch comfortably, because of the angle between it and the TV, so I keep one of those fold-out camping chairs in the corner so I can set it up in front of the TV when I want to play Wii), set up the chair, turn on the TV, and boot up the Wii so I can play a couple of minigames for 10-15 minutes- in this case I think I'll stick with small downloadable PS3 and 360 games- or XMoto and Ksirtet. It might be good for multiplayer, but I don't have anyone to multiplayer with, so that nixes that aspect of it. Not to mention if I do have people over, I have Super Monkey Ball, which is a real game, and also has enough minigames to keep a party going for a while.
Personally, I'm hoping for fewer minigame collections, and more zelda type games for the Wii. I would love to see Resident Evil 4 for the Wii, and I think Metroid Prime 3 will be great as well.
Personally, I would like to use this to finish playing through Final Fantasy XII, and will probably use it to play through God of War II when it's released as well. If the PS3 will run all of my PSone and PS2 games, then why should I keep my PS2 taking up space on my desk, when I can free up that space and pass the PS2 along to someone who never got a chance to own one.
I should have specified, as a cheap development/testing platform for the Cell processor.
I haven't kept up extensively with what's available in japan, so I can't argue (except for calling Zelda a port, which I'm not sure is entirely true. It started out as a gamecube game, but was developed for a long time as a Wii game, and there are certainly some elements that I imagine were difficult to do on the GC version. If anything it's a dual platform game, where both platforms happen to be nintendo systems). Either way, I still seem to remember hearing that the 360 was picking up steam (although going from selling 1 console a month to 5 would be a 500% increase, and the console would still be effectively dead- so I guess that doesn't mean much).
fair enough, apparently quite a few people have enjoyed the game. Personally, I found it tedious. The levels all look the same, and are almost fractal-like in their repetition. Plus all the heroes seem to play exactly the same as well. It basically seems like the game could be completed using a naive path-finding algorithm and someone tapping "x" repeatedly for a few hours.
It may or may not be crap, and certainly some people enjoy it, but it's defintely not a system seller, and certainly not a game that I can see large swaths of PS3 owners congregating outside of gamestop to buy.
There are people who are interested in the PS3 as a (relatively) cheap development platform. The primary reason that I got one was to be able to play around with the Cell processor (Of course, I also quite enjoy console games). I know a few other people who got one for the same reason.
The problem is, as you said, it's a miniscule fraction of the market. These people don't help sony out at all (they take a loss on the system, and never recoup it in selling games/bluray movies) and it doesn't help the game publishers(it inflates the potential customer base. There are X ps3s in the wild, but only Y% of people who own PS3s will actually buy games).
The thing is, the ps3 isn't competing against what the 360 had 3 months after its launch, it's competing against what the 360 has available right now.
Maybe the games I listed aren't doing great in japan, but the Wii seems to be pretty popular in japan as well as in the US, so something must have people there buying it (they have better virtual console choices than the US, so maybe that's it)
The PS3 has an anoerxic game library, and all of the big name titles that were system sellers for the PS2 are a year or two away, or no longer exclusive (Gamespot has rumors that MGS4 will be out on the 360).
Of course, early adopters are often willing to buy a console on the promise of what will eventually be available (I did)- but there is a large secondary market to consider. There are a lot of people who like games, and are interesting in getting a next gen system, but will make decisions based largely on their experiences playing the systems at their friends houses. When the PS3 doesn't have any games to offer up those experiences, then people will focus on the 360 or wii, which they have played good games on.
I think that the price doesn't have quite as much to do with the (lack of) adoption of the PS3 as people seem to think. The biggest problem seems to be that the system doesn't have any friggen games worth a crap.
I have a PS3, and I only have 3 games for it (Resistance: Fall of Man, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Genji:Days of the Blade), and two of them are absolute and utter crap (Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Genji:Days of the Blade), and one of those isn't even an exclusive (Marvel Ultimate Alliance). Compared to the Wii, which has been getting great games at a fairly good clip (Zelda, Elebits, Wario Ware, Metal Slug Anthology, Super Monkey Ball) or the 360, which has had a year to get some good games.(Kameo, Oblivion, Dead Rising, Gears of War- all system sellers)
I would like to see the PS3 do well (after spending that much money on it, I would say I have a vested interest) - but c'mon sony, not many people are going to buy these things just to be able to install Linux on it!
I've used open courseware for a while now to do a few different courses. My University degree was informative, but there were certainly bits of information I missed out on. More importantly, since I graduated from school several months ago, it's been easy to get into the habbit of not thinking too much outside of work, so going through some of the material on OCW has been good for keeping me sharp and learning new things.
The biggest problem that I've found is that the quality varies wildly. Some courses, like the intro to algorithms course, have videos of all lectures, as well as MP3 versions, course notes, etc. I find these really helpful since I'm more of an audio learner than a video learner and do better with a lecture to watch.
Other courses are well fleshed out with PDFs and slideshows, which are still a great way to get information.
The problem is some courses have only one or two lectures out of the entire course available, or are missing key lectures.
I think that the OCW initiative is a great idea, and has been well implemented for some courses. I hope to see them get all of the courses up to par with the top quality ones.
I think that people are sort of exaggerating the unique experiences that can be had on the Wii a bit. Don't get me wrong, it's an absolutely FANTASTIC system, but the only really unique game that I've seen for it is Elebits (which, for some reason I can't quite explain, reminds me of Katamari Damacy). Granted, there are some other good games, Zelda is of course the big system seller for the "hard core" audience, and Super Monkey Ball, with all of it's mini games, seems to be popular among the less hard core crowd, but over all, they aren't radically different from anything else out there.
To apply the old saying about reading/modifying code to users:
It was hard to write, it should be hard to use.