The car manufacturers do this, at least with the stereo on a regular basis. A large number of GM vehicles are like this already. If you have a GM vehicle in which the warning chimes (key in ignition, headlights on, etc) come out of the car speakers instead a dedcated speaker in the dash, you're going to be spending a lot more money to replace the radio in it. The car accessories shop I used to work in sold the necessary modules for $100. That was in addition to the normal installation fee, and a $95 premium over the normal wiring kits. If you tried to hardwire it without the modules, you'd not only loose all door chime functions, but also On-Star (if it was present in the car), and possibly other things. I know at least some models sent airbag signals through the module.
Point is, a manufacturer has absolutely no obligation to make something moddable. As long as they don't claim it is moddable in a particular way, they can make it as closed as they desire and there's nothing you can do about it.
How many of those things you mentioned actually require more power than you have now? Maybe the extra VM-Ware sessions and a speed boost for Photoshop. Are you really trying to say you need the latest greatest to run Openoffice and Firefox? The reality is the only reason 99% of computer owners outside of the server market upgrades these days is to play games, and it's hard to argue for the economics of a computer upgrade based on that.
To upgrade my system now, I'd need a new motherboard, CPU, and video card at a minimum. That would easily cost me over $500, and that would only be for gaming. I have no other reason to do so, because my current system can easily run multiple instances of everything else I use it for, at once. I browse the web, do light wordprocessing, print and edit picture, etc.
Don't try to go on and on about the requirement for an HDTV either, because it simply isn't. I have an HDTV and it looks remarkable, but I have played my 360 on SDTV's and it's far and away better than anything in the previous generation, and, just to use your argument, my HDTV can be used for other things. I can even watch TV and movies on it.
As for your final point, that versitility comes at a price. With a console, I know that when I buy they game, it will just play. No fiddling with settings or dealing with choppy framerates or poor performance because my PC isn't quite up to spec, or, even worse, the spec on the box is too low. I just put the disc in and play.
By default, they do have a bra of sorts on that I believe is just part of the texture. It's a simple matter to change that to a continuous skin tone texture.
I think much of the confusion from those unfamiliar with the inner workings of the industry is due to the way many games (and I'm assuming Oblivion as one) does character modeling. You can take a basic character model and layer different layers of clothing on top, it would be relatively easy for someone to slightly modify a texture, put it on an existing model, and call it a topless female. Sure, the model was already there, but it wasn't because they were putting nude females in. It was just there because it was easier to take that model and put different types of clothing models on that it was to make different models for each and every character in the game with a different shirt.
Pointing to that as an example of ill intent by Bethseda is just flat-out irresponsible by those who are arguably supposed to be industry insiders.
A couple of uncles of mine run an AM station in the small town I grew up in. In the early 90's, they had to replace their transmitter, and from a price standpoint, a stereo transmitter was only marginally more expensive than a monaural transmitter, so chose a stereo transmitter (Motorola C-QUAM I think). They don't regret it, but the only people that got any benefit out of it were people who had GM vehicles with Delco sound systems back in the early 90's. Most of those radios had AM stereo support. A few years ago, they had transmitter trouble and had to get it repaired, they didn't repair the stereo section. It was going to cost extra to repair a part of the transmitter with no real benefit to any of the their listeners. They blame the FCC for not enacting forced adoption, as with UHF and FM.
On an offtopic sidenote, digital terrestrial radio is the next big potential gain for AM. Investors all over the country are buying small AM radio stations with the hopes that digital radio will bring the AM spectrum back into prominence. Early indications seem to be promising, with a digital AM signal being greater than FM quality, and there is only a single standard, but only time will tell how strong adoption is.
It's not that easy. You want dedicated bandwidth you have to pay for it. Your service agreement states that the listed bandwidth is the maximum attainable and that you may not always fully get the advertised rates. I worked for a year at an independently owned and operated cable ISP in a small town, a job I just left a month ago. We had around 1000 customers when I left. We were over 50 miles from the nearest data CO. Data services were oppressively expensive for us. When I first started we were paying over $600 a megabit for dedicated data service by T1. The ISP currently still has a 4.5 Mbps T1 circuit at that rate. In October of last year, we entered an agreement with another area ISP to go in together on a T3 circuit. We went into a business agreement with a direct competitor just so we could get our bandwidth costs down. The cost on that line is $235 a megabit, terminating at the other ISP, and going last mile to us by fiber. Our share of the line was 15 Mbps dedicated.
Bottom line, no one in town, save a select few, would have been willing to pay for dedicated bandwidth. It wasn't that we didn't have the capability, it was that no one is willing to pay. Total cost after factoring in a transport/service fee and a small profit margin would have easily tipped $300 a megabit for cable modem service. The only solution is oversubscribing, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the situation of the individual ISP.
Who made that rule? You don't need to move the console to play it, and if you are moving it, you are not playing it. How often do you hear about someone designing for a situation that is totally outside of normal operational parameters? You should be able to expect your users to read the warnings in the manual and follow them. That's why they are there.
Many people don't realize that a very large percentage of new celestial bodies are discovered by amateur astronomers with only small scopes, or even no scopes at all. Professionals, when working professionally, tend to focus on particular spots in the sky, studying a single object to learn everything they can about it. Amateurs, on the other hand, look at objects all over the night sky, and are more likely to see an object not previously charted. These discoveries are then focused on by the professionals to pour over with the large scopes and do the big science on, but it's always nice to see an amateur get his/her due in the discovery of a new object.
Rather than completely changing gears, why don't you change focus in something you already know? I worked in a hospital IT department for over 2 years, and several, perhaps 25%, of my co-workers had transferred to IT from clinical professions. We had nurses, a respritory therapist, and a lab tech to name a few. They had no formal education in the CS/IS field, but did have an inside track due to their prior experience in the industry.
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Point is, a manufacturer has absolutely no obligation to make something moddable. As long as they don't claim it is moddable in a particular way, they can make it as closed as they desire and there's nothing you can do about it.
To upgrade my system now, I'd need a new motherboard, CPU, and video card at a minimum. That would easily cost me over $500, and that would only be for gaming. I have no other reason to do so, because my current system can easily run multiple instances of everything else I use it for, at once. I browse the web, do light wordprocessing, print and edit picture, etc.
Don't try to go on and on about the requirement for an HDTV either, because it simply isn't. I have an HDTV and it looks remarkable, but I have played my 360 on SDTV's and it's far and away better than anything in the previous generation, and, just to use your argument, my HDTV can be used for other things. I can even watch TV and movies on it.
As for your final point, that versitility comes at a price. With a console, I know that when I buy they game, it will just play. No fiddling with settings or dealing with choppy framerates or poor performance because my PC isn't quite up to spec, or, even worse, the spec on the box is too low. I just put the disc in and play.
By default, they do have a bra of sorts on that I believe is just part of the texture. It's a simple matter to change that to a continuous skin tone texture.
Pointing to that as an example of ill intent by Bethseda is just flat-out irresponsible by those who are arguably supposed to be industry insiders.
A couple of uncles of mine run an AM station in the small town I grew up in. In the early 90's, they had to replace their transmitter, and from a price standpoint, a stereo transmitter was only marginally more expensive than a monaural transmitter, so chose a stereo transmitter (Motorola C-QUAM I think). They don't regret it, but the only people that got any benefit out of it were people who had GM vehicles with Delco sound systems back in the early 90's. Most of those radios had AM stereo support. A few years ago, they had transmitter trouble and had to get it repaired, they didn't repair the stereo section. It was going to cost extra to repair a part of the transmitter with no real benefit to any of the their listeners. They blame the FCC for not enacting forced adoption, as with UHF and FM. On an offtopic sidenote, digital terrestrial radio is the next big potential gain for AM. Investors all over the country are buying small AM radio stations with the hopes that digital radio will bring the AM spectrum back into prominence. Early indications seem to be promising, with a digital AM signal being greater than FM quality, and there is only a single standard, but only time will tell how strong adoption is.
Bottom line, no one in town, save a select few, would have been willing to pay for dedicated bandwidth. It wasn't that we didn't have the capability, it was that no one is willing to pay. Total cost after factoring in a transport/service fee and a small profit margin would have easily tipped $300 a megabit for cable modem service. The only solution is oversubscribing, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the situation of the individual ISP.
Who made that rule? You don't need to move the console to play it, and if you are moving it, you are not playing it. How often do you hear about someone designing for a situation that is totally outside of normal operational parameters? You should be able to expect your users to read the warnings in the manual and follow them. That's why they are there.
Many people don't realize that a very large percentage of new celestial bodies are discovered by amateur astronomers with only small scopes, or even no scopes at all. Professionals, when working professionally, tend to focus on particular spots in the sky, studying a single object to learn everything they can about it. Amateurs, on the other hand, look at objects all over the night sky, and are more likely to see an object not previously charted. These discoveries are then focused on by the professionals to pour over with the large scopes and do the big science on, but it's always nice to see an amateur get his/her due in the discovery of a new object.
Rather than completely changing gears, why don't you change focus in something you already know? I worked in a hospital IT department for over 2 years, and several, perhaps 25%, of my co-workers had transferred to IT from clinical professions. We had nurses, a respritory therapist, and a lab tech to name a few. They had no formal education in the CS/IS field, but did have an inside track due to their prior experience in the industry.