Let me get this straight. The Wii, and less than half the price, has only sold about twice as many units as PS3s? Sony's doing better than I thought actually. And wait a minute, the PS3 has sold about 1/4 to 1/3 as many units as 360's despite having been on the market a year less? Not bad at all.
Glad everyone can do math around here when the Playstation Sux0rz articles come up.
Now that that's over with, I'm still waiting for all the nay-sayers claiming that the PS3 is 'overpriced' to realize that its actually competitively priced for what it is (ignoring titles and exclusives for the moment). A blu-ray player, media center, wireless capable, bluetooth enabled high definition gaming system (did I miss anything?).
Again, assuming the games you want are/will be available for it and the movies you want to watch are on BD, it is an excellent value for the money.
The XBox is also a great value right now, but only because there are more titles available. In straight features, I don't believe it is, especially if you factor in paying for Live Gold, but that's just me.
HDMI does not require the use of HDCP. Being compatible with it does not mean turning on Copyright protection features.
HDMI can carry much higher bandwidth audio than optical or coax digital audio cables can right now, like TrueHD and uncompressed 7.1 PCM.
HDMI can share live display capability information (like that nice monitor detection you have on your VGA-based PC).
HDMI allows for better colour depth (higher bit per pixel values) and deeper blacks and brigther whites, combined with displays capable of these. This means displays can keep getting better and looking nicer and having richer colour because the capacity is already 'in the wire' so to speak.
Maybe because, like Apple and several other high-tech companies, Sony makes an effort to make interesting new hardware on a regular basis and its interesting to see how well it does? I don't give a !@# if Sony Music shipped rootkit software on CDs, Sony Electronics has an excellent reputation for making high quality products and their high profile makes them a random target more often than not.
I get more of a kick out of all the tech sites going on about PS3s being on store shelves and not selling well enough... last I checked, the PS3 outsold the PS2 in the same time period (similar stat to the current story) and is more or less exactly the same price when you adjust for inflation. People need to get over their prejudice issues and use facts more often.
I've quite enjoyed how the 'estimating time remaining' message doesn't go away before the operation is done in some cases even though its taking over 10 seconds to copy a file.
Incidentally, copying from a Samba share over the network seems fairly snappy, but I haven't measured it, I don't personally own a Vista machine; it was a client's.
Current versions of HDMI are capable of outputting more bits per pixel than component video as well as a wider range of blacks and whites (that is, more shades, and darker black and brighter white too). It is also capable of carrying the higher bandwidth audio feeds that won't work over optical (or even coax) digital audio connectors. This matters if the system in question can output 7.1 uncompressed (or higher) which wouldn't work without HDMI cables to carry the signal.
Dolby Digital 5.1 sounds very good for now, and dts sounds even better to my ears (and most other people I have over to listen) but I'm not convinced most people have the hardware (speakers / speaker wire / amp / pre-amp) to appreciate the quality difference of uncompressed PCM yet.
PS, I don't believe the 360 can output uncompressed PCM at any rate, but I figured I'd be thorough re: HDMI.
Personally I was offended by the outdated references to Sudbury's super stack. I grew up in Sudbury in the early 80's and remember the stack being upgraded with chemical sweepers and then the new tech super-hot smelters. INCO Sudbury's emissions actually dropped to below the new targets by the 90's before it was mandated to do so. Yes, it has a history of having polluted heavily, but I don't see anyone bringing up major chemicals dumped in the environment for the sake of getting us the current electrical grid (wire insulation, transformer contents, etc. in the same era as Sudbury was a major polluter).
At any rate, the article was poorly written, overly focussed on the battery issue and didn't cite any hard numbers. I can't believe this got Slashdotted...
I was at a conference for a subset of our customer base as a vendor and a competitor who is deeply in bed with Microsoft had brought along a Microsoft Evangelist with a tablet PC equipped with SQL server to show off how 'cool' all things Microsoft are.
Leaving aside issues like "nobody cares how cool it looks -- does it work properly and reliably?", the entertaining part of my one day was showing off how many things my Newton MessagePad 120 I'd bothered bringing along could do that the tablet could not... after which the Evangelist in question switched topics to programming languages and unified APIs and such.
When I asked him how he could brag about unified APIs when a large segment of the MSDN documentation is incorrect, he shrugged. Then I asked if he'd ever used Python. At least Microsoft is 'supporting' Python now:-)
It does yes, but the steering wheel feature in Call of Duty 3 is pretty cool (if only throttle were better positioned) and shaking it to do melee attacks is also intuitive.
Her cause isn't noble. Basically, she wants to ensure that parents have the right to beat their kids.
Au contraire, I'd like to point out that those of us who've had any dealings with child services and related agencies must feel some sympathy toward what she's trying to accomplish.
I agree that she's not going about it well and her general attitude really does not foster kindness toward her cause, but there is something to be said for having a high regard for the law. If you bother reading her site, you'll notice that a large number of her recommendations are designed to keep child services honest, not to take advantage of your children.
For example: don't allow your children to be strip searched, don't allow a search of your home without a warrant, etc. These are perfectly reasonable, and draconian child protection persons with no rights inside my home (or my child's pants) should be kept outside. Proper investigations of inappropriate behaviour by parents should be investigated within the law, and there I agree with her.
People who think this isn't necessary information have yet to have their own rights abused or considered the consequences of a society that no longer respects personal rights, especially that to fair trials and proper investigation practices. But by all means, move to Iran if you prefer totalitarianism.
Legalistically speaking, you break the law every time you read a website since your web browser makes a copy of that site both for display and for caching. Those copies are definitely illegal in most countries unless you have express permission of the original author to make them.
Oh yeah, laws don't work like that. Any judge around would look at you cock-eyed and say "so why'd you put in on the Internet exactly?" That's like demanding nobody copy down your information off an advertising poster.
Your own behaviour as the Copyright owner contributes to how others' actions will be interpreted.
What I've written to the contact E-mail given on the website in question:
While I'm very glad you run the website you run and understand the concept of what you're trying to accomplish, I'm very dismayed by the approach you've taken to preventing "copies" of your website.
I can't for one understand why you haven't simply taken the simple step of using a 'robots.txt' file to mark your page not for indexing or caching (although that would result in very few web hits for people searching for the content).
Also, you do realize that every single web browser reading your website makes an instant copy on the hard disk of the user, thus essentially violating the web site's "license" agreement as it appears on the front page? As a result I cannot in good conscience read any of the rest of your website's content.
Proxy servers, web caches, web accelerator software and every web browser known to me all instantly violate your website's Copyright rules and I would take them to mean you either do not wish anyone to have access to your content (obviously not true) or you have misunderstood how websites work and ought to be controlled (please contact a good web service provider or web designer to work out appropriate tools for you).
I really miss some of the 'good old' game studios like Origin. They made fantastic games and tried to push the envelope in story telling, plot and self-directed game play as well as graphics and sound capabilities.
Stupid question maybe, but why would this be distributed as a firmware update and not as a downloadable 'game' from the Playstation(R)Network Store?
I can understand (and have commented before on the need for) a firmware update to add 'applications' or some such option to the XMB for non-game software, but I can't see that the software itself should require this distribution method.
That's bull. As I understand it, the PS3 has reached current sales numbers faster than the PS2 did. Just because they're losing some potential sales due to price doesn't necessarily justify a price cut.
Check back to the gamecube era and see what Nintendo had to say about that. Then Xbox Live becomes a success and see there, the Wii copies it.
I have yet to figure out all the fanboiism over the Wii. Everything on the Wii is copycat. The system itself isn't really any different in hardware to the Gamecube (which was a huge flop) but they added the power glove...
The Wiimote original? Please, I seen that stuff done in the arcades for years and even in the form of addon controllers. Nintendo watched what worked, noted what didn't, improved on it and then used it. Same as it copied online play.
Sorry, Wiimote now is it? Yeah. I had one, its called the Nintendo power glove. It had the little thing on the TV even. It used radio frequencies though, and had more buttons on it. Unfortunately, doing 3D processing on those consoles was very slow so engaging games were few and far between using a power glove.
This is not originality on Nintendo's part. Microsoft deserves very little credit for their online presence either after having spent years playing HEAT.net myself (look it up if you don't know what it is, think Sega).
Online gaming is good. Communities are fun. Customizability appeals to some people, showing off appeals to others, just chatting to others.
Of course, all of these talks boil down to the same question: is the PS3 worth $600? I would've spent more than $600 on a PC that could play the same games at the same framerates, so yes in fact, it is. It also lets me watch my downloaded high definition content on my TV and home theater surround. It is also simple enough for my 5 year old to use at home (yes, she does). It has quite high wife approval factor too, and that eject button is really neat;-)
Read a little Marcinko in your spare time to see how he felt about the US' intelligence abilities for special forces in the 70's. Its quite entertaining at times.
Special forces would of course love to have perfect intel even now, and I'm sure if you found a couple guys at the bar talking about recent excursions, they'd handily admit how often things go FUBAR based on bad intel (even without admitting which ops these might be).
I use SquidGuard at work to block all the listed spyware companies and nothing more really. I've configured it to give users an HTML or image result from our internal server stating why the site/image has been blocked and who to contact if they think its an error (myself). So far, I'm the only person who's actually complained about it (to myself). It works very well and catches those laptops that get brought home, filled with garbage and then plugged back into the LAN trying to fetch various spyware utilities remotely.
Yes actually, they do. You have to pay extra for software support, but they do in fact offer Windows and Office support. I can't attest to how good it is as I've never needed such a thing however.
Dell is all about the selection and support. You can get what you want and you can get them to come fix it on-site for you, and that's why I recommend them to people who live in little towns without good tech support -- pay for the on-site support package and have Dell send a tech to your home or business to fix the problem for you for 3, 4 or 5 years.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me get this straight. The Wii, and less than half the price, has only sold about twice as many units as PS3s? Sony's doing better than I thought actually. And wait a minute, the PS3 has sold about 1/4 to 1/3 as many units as 360's despite having been on the market a year less? Not bad at all.
Glad everyone can do math around here when the Playstation Sux0rz articles come up.
Disclaimer: I own a PS3
Now that that's over with, I'm still waiting for all the nay-sayers claiming that the PS3 is 'overpriced' to realize that its actually competitively priced for what it is (ignoring titles and exclusives for the moment). A blu-ray player, media center, wireless capable, bluetooth enabled high definition gaming system (did I miss anything?).
Again, assuming the games you want are/will be available for it and the movies you want to watch are on BD, it is an excellent value for the money.
The XBox is also a great value right now, but only because there are more titles available. In straight features, I don't believe it is, especially if you factor in paying for Live Gold, but that's just me.
I'm so sick of the anti-HDMI people.
HDMI does not require the use of HDCP. Being compatible with it does not mean turning on Copyright protection features.
HDMI can carry much higher bandwidth audio than optical or coax digital audio cables can right now, like TrueHD and uncompressed 7.1 PCM.
HDMI can share live display capability information (like that nice monitor detection you have on your VGA-based PC).
HDMI allows for better colour depth (higher bit per pixel values) and deeper blacks and brigther whites, combined with displays capable of these. This means displays can keep getting better and looking nicer and having richer colour because the capacity is already 'in the wire' so to speak.
Next troll?
Maybe because, like Apple and several other high-tech companies, Sony makes an effort to make interesting new hardware on a regular basis and its interesting to see how well it does? I don't give a !@# if Sony Music shipped rootkit software on CDs, Sony Electronics has an excellent reputation for making high quality products and their high profile makes them a random target more often than not.
... last I checked, the PS3 outsold the PS2 in the same time period (similar stat to the current story) and is more or less exactly the same price when you adjust for inflation. People need to get over their prejudice issues and use facts more often.
I get more of a kick out of all the tech sites going on about PS3s being on store shelves and not selling well enough
Brand new Vista laptop running Home Pro connected to our FC6 stock Samba server no problem first time yesterday. Hope that answers your question.
I've quite enjoyed how the 'estimating time remaining' message doesn't go away before the operation is done in some cases even though its taking over 10 seconds to copy a file.
Incidentally, copying from a Samba share over the network seems fairly snappy, but I haven't measured it, I don't personally own a Vista machine; it was a client's.
Since it has a hardware upscaler, I'd be surprised if it doesn't.
... I bought a PS3 so I could watch Blu-Ray movies with 7.1 uncompressed audio :-). I do wish the PS3 upscaled however.
I don't however own one
Current versions of HDMI are capable of outputting more bits per pixel than component video as well as a wider range of blacks and whites (that is, more shades, and darker black and brighter white too). It is also capable of carrying the higher bandwidth audio feeds that won't work over optical (or even coax) digital audio connectors. This matters if the system in question can output 7.1 uncompressed (or higher) which wouldn't work without HDMI cables to carry the signal.
Dolby Digital 5.1 sounds very good for now, and dts sounds even better to my ears (and most other people I have over to listen) but I'm not convinced most people have the hardware (speakers / speaker wire / amp / pre-amp) to appreciate the quality difference of uncompressed PCM yet.
PS, I don't believe the 360 can output uncompressed PCM at any rate, but I figured I'd be thorough re: HDMI.
Personally I was offended by the outdated references to Sudbury's super stack. I grew up in Sudbury in the early 80's and remember the stack being upgraded with chemical sweepers and then the new tech super-hot smelters. INCO Sudbury's emissions actually dropped to below the new targets by the 90's before it was mandated to do so. Yes, it has a history of having polluted heavily, but I don't see anyone bringing up major chemicals dumped in the environment for the sake of getting us the current electrical grid (wire insulation, transformer contents, etc. in the same era as Sudbury was a major polluter).
...
At any rate, the article was poorly written, overly focussed on the battery issue and didn't cite any hard numbers. I can't believe this got Slashdotted
I was at a conference for a subset of our customer base as a vendor and a competitor who is deeply in bed with Microsoft had brought along a Microsoft Evangelist with a tablet PC equipped with SQL server to show off how 'cool' all things Microsoft are.
... after which the Evangelist in question switched topics to programming languages and unified APIs and such.
:-)
Leaving aside issues like "nobody cares how cool it looks -- does it work properly and reliably?", the entertaining part of my one day was showing off how many things my Newton MessagePad 120 I'd bothered bringing along could do that the tablet could not
When I asked him how he could brag about unified APIs when a large segment of the MSDN documentation is incorrect, he shrugged. Then I asked if he'd ever used Python. At least Microsoft is 'supporting' Python now
It does yes, but the steering wheel feature in Call of Duty 3 is pretty cool (if only throttle were better positioned) and shaking it to do melee attacks is also intuitive.
Au contraire, I'd like to point out that those of us who've had any dealings with child services and related agencies must feel some sympathy toward what she's trying to accomplish.
I agree that she's not going about it well and her general attitude really does not foster kindness toward her cause, but there is something to be said for having a high regard for the law. If you bother reading her site, you'll notice that a large number of her recommendations are designed to keep child services honest, not to take advantage of your children.
For example: don't allow your children to be strip searched, don't allow a search of your home without a warrant, etc. These are perfectly reasonable, and draconian child protection persons with no rights inside my home (or my child's pants) should be kept outside. Proper investigations of inappropriate behaviour by parents should be investigated within the law, and there I agree with her.
People who think this isn't necessary information have yet to have their own rights abused or considered the consequences of a society that no longer respects personal rights, especially that to fair trials and proper investigation practices. But by all means, move to Iran if you prefer totalitarianism.
Legalistically speaking, you break the law every time you read a website since your web browser makes a copy of that site both for display and for caching. Those copies are definitely illegal in most countries unless you have express permission of the original author to make them.
Oh yeah, laws don't work like that. Any judge around would look at you cock-eyed and say "so why'd you put in on the Internet exactly?" That's like demanding nobody copy down your information off an advertising poster.
Your own behaviour as the Copyright owner contributes to how others' actions will be interpreted.
I really miss some of the 'good old' game studios like Origin. They made fantastic games and tried to push the envelope in story telling, plot and self-directed game play as well as graphics and sound capabilities.
Stupid question maybe, but why would this be distributed as a firmware update and not as a downloadable 'game' from the Playstation(R)Network Store?
I can understand (and have commented before on the need for) a firmware update to add 'applications' or some such option to the XMB for non-game software, but I can't see that the software itself should require this distribution method.
Anyone able to shed light on this?
I initially thought that might be how IBM would deal with the SCO situation. The court case has probably cost them more in the long run.
Yes, its offtopic, but you could always Google it.
I found some adapters that would seem to do what you want.
That's bull. As I understand it, the PS3 has reached current sales numbers faster than the PS2 did. Just because they're losing some potential sales due to price doesn't necessarily justify a price cut.
Thank you for that. You've alleviated my having to rant about it too.
That said, check over your shoulder when you change lanes please. I'm sick and tired of people who think their mirrors are all they need to drive.
If you can't look over your shoulder to see what's in the other lane, don't change lanes (or don't drive).
I have yet to figure out all the fanboiism over the Wii. Everything on the Wii is copycat. The system itself isn't really any different in hardware to the Gamecube (which was a huge flop) but they added the power glove
Sorry, Wiimote now is it? Yeah. I had one, its called the Nintendo power glove. It had the little thing on the TV even. It used radio frequencies though, and had more buttons on it. Unfortunately, doing 3D processing on those consoles was very slow so engaging games were few and far between using a power glove.
This is not originality on Nintendo's part. Microsoft deserves very little credit for their online presence either after having spent years playing HEAT.net myself (look it up if you don't know what it is, think Sega).
Online gaming is good. Communities are fun. Customizability appeals to some people, showing off appeals to others, just chatting to others.
Of course, all of these talks boil down to the same question: is the PS3 worth $600? I would've spent more than $600 on a PC that could play the same games at the same framerates, so yes in fact, it is. It also lets me watch my downloaded high definition content on my TV and home theater surround. It is also simple enough for my 5 year old to use at home (yes, she does). It has quite high wife approval factor too, and that eject button is really neat
It actually rips and encodes CDs to the hard drive quite quickly. A few short minutes to a disc, with online title lookup support of course.
I've been ripping discs to it using AAC quite happily in fact.
Read a little Marcinko in your spare time to see how he felt about the US' intelligence abilities for special forces in the 70's. Its quite entertaining at times.
Special forces would of course love to have perfect intel even now, and I'm sure if you found a couple guys at the bar talking about recent excursions, they'd handily admit how often things go FUBAR based on bad intel (even without admitting which ops these might be).
I use SquidGuard at work to block all the listed spyware companies and nothing more really. I've configured it to give users an HTML or image result from our internal server stating why the site/image has been blocked and who to contact if they think its an error (myself). So far, I'm the only person who's actually complained about it (to myself). It works very well and catches those laptops that get brought home, filled with garbage and then plugged back into the LAN trying to fetch various spyware utilities remotely.
Yes actually, they do. You have to pay extra for software support, but they do in fact offer Windows and Office support. I can't attest to how good it is as I've never needed such a thing however.
Dell is all about the selection and support. You can get what you want and you can get them to come fix it on-site for you, and that's why I recommend them to people who live in little towns without good tech support -- pay for the on-site support package and have Dell send a tech to your home or business to fix the problem for you for 3, 4 or 5 years.