The Broadcom MP4 decoder they use has a programmable decoder built into it, one of the abilities being you can throw any kind of picture subsampling you like. Apple probably have some stock IP bilinear filter for it. At 320x240, on a 2" screen, you won't be able to tell the difference between that and anything higher quality.
At least the amount of Pu-238 they use isn't big enough to support a self-sustaining chain reaction.
Basic effects;
* if the rocket explodes on launch, everyone within a 100 mile radius (mostly downwind) will get their recommended maximum radiation dose for the week.. on one day. But people living in houses with lots of Radon (which is something insane like 5% of the USA) get more than this anyway. It's not a disaster.
* if the probe his Mars like Beagle 2 did, the radioactive material hits Mars. Oh. Well, if you were searching for life (microbes), and it was out for a walk on the surface, you just pretty much killed it. However the solar radiation that hits Mars every damn day is much higher. If it was out on the surface it would no doubt be hardier than you could kill with a fine dusting of Pu-238.
So basically who gives a fuck? Only the BAN NUKLUAR POWAR idiots. Cheapest, cleanest, safest (in combination) form of energy and they want to ban it.
Like most DRM, you can either use it or you don't need to.
You can boot Vista and it will come with a more secure and stable userspace driver framework, better internets, and all that crap, there is a lot in it which is just "oh, nice" which makes it worth putting on a new system if only so you don't need to boot XP slipstreamed SP2 CD with all your drivers and spend a week tuning it and installing 3rd-party apps to bring it up to your spec. Vista is pretty much how I tuned my XP, out of the box.
XP and Vista Nothing Special (is it Home?) are going to be identically priced anyway, and MS will continue to support XP for everyone who really, really can't stand to use Vista for their rather spurious moralising about the ethics and theory of DRM.
However XP has all that DRM stuff loaded into it anyway:)
I run WMP11 on my XP box anyway. I already have the DRM.
All my MP3s worked fine on Vista anyway though, the same way they carried on working with XP after I put on the new media player. If you don't like the DRM, don't buy the music; boycotting the OS itself really won't change anyone's mind. Having no sales of the content that's protected, will.
Vista runs fine on a P4 laptop. I've run it on one of those lap-burning Dells with a Raden Mobility 9000 in it; you will never ever be able to enable Aero, but otherwise it's absolutely identical in speed to Windows XP.
Remmeber people said the same shit about XP - omg the new GUI is big and ugly and slow, my system won't support it. If you switch it to use Classic view and turn off the features in the Performance control panel, it runs exactly like 2000.
What you miss, is those new UI features. Are they really that important?
Well, then micropayments are perfect, but doesn't a Blu-ray disc cost a fortune to produce right now? It's not the highest volume media in the world compared to DVD or CD which are a thousand for a penny if you're Sony.
They'll sell it for the price of a movie, no doubt. What's that in dollars these days for a new BR movie? Who knows.. $24.99? Then you add on $20 worth of tracks, it's still dirt cheap.
Sony don't WANT a reseller market. If you are Sony you want people to buy games brand new.
The resale market kills their bottom line. There are plenty of strategies for keeping people buying new games (since Sony only gets money for one purchase of a new game, not anything for second-hand bin purchases)
Nintendo, since the Gamecube flopped, are probably going to bolster THEIR market by keeping Gamecube games rolling out. If you can make a tidy little Gamecube game that works on GC *and* Wii at the same time, two sets of consumers will buy it. If the game is cheap it won't be worth trading in or resale. You only get $5 for a $20 game, the stores resell it for $16 in the second-hand bin, you may as well buy the retail boxed, shiny copy with the manual not in tatters and the disc not scratched to shit, and in the EU, a valid Nintendo VIP Points card so you can download wallpapers, special MP3's (like I got with my Gameboy Advance) and other treats. It's worth the extra $3 to buy the new game, if you can do it.
Then you have great stuff like Twilight Princess being released for both, *ON WII LAUNCH DAY*. The N64 drought and nearly 18 months between consoles, then another 6 months for a decent game, kills their bottom line too. Sony; the Playstation 2 is still selling well, the Playstation was still selling well with the PS2 came out, the Playstation games market went on for 6 months hence.
Overlap is the key there.
XBox Live games which are fun and small are another avenue (no boxes to make or stores to fill). The Nintendo Virtual Console is the same idea.
Sony have picked micropayments; and they have made the case with Gran Turismo which is a good case for it. People who buy Gran Turismo want to drive certain cars on certain tracks. If they get bored they can buy new ones. One thing people HATE is spending $50 on a game and then never attaining the car they really want; maybe they aren't that good at the game, and never earn enough points. This makes for a disappointing purchase. Remember, when you play GT and unlock all the cars, ALL THAT DATA STAYS ON YOUR CONSOLE TOO. On a memory card. If you put it in a second-hand bin at a game store, THE OTHER GUY HAS TO SPEND 90 HOURS WORKING FOR THE LIMITED EDITION LOTUS ESPRIT CAR AND THE TRACK HE WANTS. He paid less for it, but he has to work for it, still.
The niggle with GT's case is the price of the game; it should be sold cheaper and allowed to be customized to a reasonable point. Not a $60 with $20 of cars and tracks to buy later, but a $40 with $20 of cars and tracks to buy later. I also think they should have let people work and earn a LITTLE, it's always fun to get through some points of a game (maybe the ability to decal your car, or change the color), but I didn't see any of that.
$5bn divided by the 2005 estimate of population in California is $138 per person.
$138 which, over 3 years, may mean 2 PC's per person which cost $75 more because of the new power supply (however efficient) type and extra motherboard components and space required to downconvert 12V to 3.3V and 5V as well as all the other non-standard voltages motherboards require these days.
Is anyone gonna save money?
Global warming advocates might jump for joy at the lower energy production requirements but I object to the "it will save money" proposition.
It may even simplify motherboard design IN TIME, but a 12V->3.3/5V conversion for example for ITX boards is about $50 and measures about 5cm square at the best case. It would need a further $20 12V AC->DC converter brick to supply it with the 12V. These converters suck, they waste power. PicoPSU (http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl;jsessionid=ac112b1b1 f4340fd47ef50724f0d9820b6abe5efcfcb.e3eTaxmKbNaNe3 8LaNuNa3yLchn0n6jAmljGr5XDqQLvpAe?sc=8&category=13 &it=A&id=417) claims 96% efficiency for the conversion, but the brick is far from that.
Making a switch-mode ATX PSU that only throws out 12V would be a brick that doesn't waste power so much, but costs about the same; with a 12V line out. The motherboard then needs all the components from the PicoPSU (still around 5cm x 5cm of board space and $30 of components). Who's saving money here?
Neo: Whoa. Deja vu. Trinity: What did you just say? Neo: Nothing. Just had a little deja vu. Trinity: What happened? What did you see? Neo: A Slashdot article was on the index, and then I saw another that looked just like it. Trinity: How much like it? Was it the same article? Neo: It might have been. I'm not sure. What is it? Trinity: A deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when the editors are lazy.
Do you realise how hard it is to innovate when you're going bankrupt?:)
With a sound financial status and money rolling in, they can do whatever they damn well like, and even take some crazy risks with games, franchises and so on. A lot of people consider that Wind Waker was a risk; cutesy cell-shaded Zelda didn't gel with a lot of the fans. Maybe it didn't sell as many copies. Would they have done that if they really needed to make money off the franchise instead of try something a little new?
Personally I loved Wind Waker up to the point that it ran down the same path of every Zelda game (and most RPGs) which is to provide you with a great game up to the last 5%, and then make you play "running around a field for 8 days straight" or "sailing around the world for 8 days straight" before you can get to the last boss. I think it's a problem of having a great script and not pacing it properly; compare something like Metroid Prime 2 where you can go through the game and get all the weapons and artefacts fairly linearly, with a few diversions; you can see it but you can't get it, you know what weapon you need, you play the game some more, get that, and come straight back for it. At the end of the game when you get to the artefact temple you probably have all but one and just need a little hunt around.
Zelda Wind Waker.. guh.. you play the entire game picking everything up THEN it tells you to find a bazillion triforce parts which you had no ability to find before because the script says Tingle won't translate maps until a certain point, which you don't find out he even has that ability until well into your search. Infuriating. I never finished it, I just watched my little brother do it.
So maybe, also (getting to the point now) with a little more money and some higher development budgets and more time to mess around, they can get this right too:)
One thing that struck me as odd though. Why did they flip Twilight Princess for Wii? Isn't it a little odd to make the entire game backwards and Link right handed, so most people who use the controller can swing with their right hand, when there are obviously a great number of left-handed potential users out there? Are they just gonna have to buy the Gamecube version and use the Classic controller?:D
I have a CRT HDTV. It's big, bright and clear and fun but a little fuzzy if you want to do PC stuff on it. Playing movies and games though is a fucking dream.
It supports a bewildering choice of resolutions; not because it's got them all, but because it's so few. 480i. 480p. 1080i. It was sooo cheap (less than $300 at Thanksgiving last year)
I don't see why I would want 1080p; the 1080i mode is rock solid stable and has nice contrast. What I want is 720i or 720p support on my fucking TV, so I can buy a games console that runs in there or knock my PC resolution down to a readable level:(
GDC isn't E3 though; E3 is for journalists first and foremost. Big COME LOOK AT OUR SHIT demo show where everyone spends 25% of the game development time and budget making a demo for 3 days, wasting resources.
GDC is for GAME DEVELOPERS. There are as many lectures and talks and so on which serve the purposes of mapping out the course of game development as there are silly little demos on games. Journalists come in because they would throw a fit if it was totally closed, but also because they offer some good input on games - and how to get good review scores of course.. I think Matt Cassamasinansansaisanas from IGN made a good blog post on this subject;
Well, past experience (Gamecube) said $200 would be a cute price point.
But think of what you got with the GC - a console, and a power brick and a controller and a video cable. Not much at the end of the day. What do you get in the Wii box? A console, power brick, controller, nunchuck adapter, sensor bar, bundled game (I think we all expected a demo disc at least to test the controller out on some little games) plus all the extra features inside the console itself - wireless ethernet would be the primary one.
Simple business math says that you can't release something that has MORE in it than something you previously sold, for the same or less. It just doesn't seem right to consumers.. that there is a catch, a play, something odd going on.
No doubt Nintendo will nix the bundle after a while (when there are 150+ titles instead of just 20), make some small cost reductions on parts and through simple economies of scale buying parts - and it WILL retail at $200 or less by next christmas. It will still be cheaper than the XBox360 and Playstation 3, and Nintendo will luckily still be making a profit on it. Yay.
EVERYONE said it was going to be $250. It came true! WTF?
Maybe if you are a delusional idiot would you think they might sell it for $150, and to be fair, I had a small delusional idiot hope that it might be $200 like the Gamecube, but that didn't for one second knock away the reality that it would more than likely launch at $250.
I opted out of the TV that had two. Most of Sony's nice new XBR TVs have two. But I got mine for $350 (a 32" CRT Toshiba) the last time Black Friday rolled around.
It does have 3 component inputs, 3 S-Video inputs, optical audio in and out though, for people who only have a DVI + optical player, or want to use other devices.
The trick with the Playstation 3 is it replaces - pretty much - every other device that you have that's got HDMI output anyway. Your PS3 *and* your upsampling DVD player? But the PS3 *IS* an upsampling DVD player!!!
Slashdot Mirror
I got my half-pi discount on Amazon on a lot of stuff, and I wanna keep using it!
You mean I have to give this up because of all you privacy nuts?
He never quits fucking whining does he?
What is he scared of, that one of his rants will piss Intel off and they will revoke OpenBSD's right to use the firmware blobs?
I think that's it.
As long as it's not Keith Chegwin, we'll all be fine.
Naked Jungle was just toooo much.
http://www.broadcom.com/products/Cellular/Mobile-M ultimedia-Processors/BCM2722
The Broadcom MP4 decoder they use has a programmable decoder built into it, one of the abilities being you can throw any kind of picture subsampling you like. Apple probably have some stock IP bilinear filter for it. At 320x240, on a 2" screen, you won't be able to tell the difference between that and anything higher quality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon#Occurrence
:)
Wikipedia says 1 in 15, I make that 6%. Close enough. Caveat lector
In response to that then, I'll change it:
:D
* Someone in Florida will have a nasty headache when it hits them in the head
* Some microbe in Mars will be very, very squished
I think the consequences are equally serious and therefore equally irrelevant
At least the amount of Pu-238 they use isn't big enough to support a self-sustaining chain reaction.
Basic effects;
* if the rocket explodes on launch, everyone within a 100 mile radius (mostly downwind) will get their recommended maximum radiation dose for the week.. on one day. But people living in houses with lots of Radon (which is something insane like 5% of the USA) get more than this anyway. It's not a disaster.
* if the probe his Mars like Beagle 2 did, the radioactive material hits Mars. Oh. Well, if you were searching for life (microbes), and it was out for a walk on the surface, you just pretty much killed it. However the solar radiation that hits Mars every damn day is much higher. If it was out on the surface it would no doubt be hardier than you could kill with a fine dusting of Pu-238.
So basically who gives a fuck? Only the BAN NUKLUAR POWAR idiots. Cheapest, cleanest, safest (in combination) form of energy and they want to ban it.
In other news: Samus Aran gets job lifting old patients into chairs during lull in Space Pirate activity.
Like most DRM, you can either use it or you don't need to.
:)
You can boot Vista and it will come with a more secure and stable userspace driver framework, better internets, and all that crap, there is a lot in it which is just "oh, nice" which makes it worth putting on a new system if only so you don't need to boot XP slipstreamed SP2 CD with all your drivers and spend a week tuning it and installing 3rd-party apps to bring it up to your spec. Vista is pretty much how I tuned my XP, out of the box.
XP and Vista Nothing Special (is it Home?) are going to be identically priced anyway, and MS will continue to support XP for everyone who really, really can't stand to use Vista for their rather spurious moralising about the ethics and theory of DRM.
However XP has all that DRM stuff loaded into it anyway
I run WMP11 on my XP box anyway. I already have the DRM.
All my MP3s worked fine on Vista anyway though, the same way they carried on working with XP after I put on the new media player. If you don't like the DRM, don't buy the music; boycotting the OS itself really won't change anyone's mind. Having no sales of the content that's protected, will.
Vista runs fine on a P4 laptop. I've run it on one of those lap-burning Dells with a Raden Mobility 9000 in it; you will never ever be able to enable Aero, but otherwise it's absolutely identical in speed to Windows XP.
Remmeber people said the same shit about XP - omg the new GUI is big and ugly and slow, my system won't support it. If you switch it to use Classic view and turn off the features in the Performance control panel, it runs exactly like 2000.
What you miss, is those new UI features. Are they really that important?
Well, then micropayments are perfect, but doesn't a Blu-ray disc cost a fortune to produce right now? It's not the highest volume media in the world compared to DVD or CD which are a thousand for a penny if you're Sony.
They'll sell it for the price of a movie, no doubt. What's that in dollars these days for a new BR movie? Who knows.. $24.99? Then you add on $20 worth of tracks, it's still dirt cheap.
Perfect perfect purrrrfect
*miaus*
Sony don't WANT a reseller market. If you are Sony you want people to buy games brand new.
The resale market kills their bottom line. There are plenty of strategies for keeping people buying new games (since Sony only gets money for one purchase of a new game, not anything for second-hand bin purchases)
Nintendo, since the Gamecube flopped, are probably going to bolster THEIR market by keeping Gamecube games rolling out. If you can make a tidy little Gamecube game that works on GC *and* Wii at the same time, two sets of consumers will buy it. If the game is cheap it won't be worth trading in or resale. You only get $5 for a $20 game, the stores resell it for $16 in the second-hand bin, you may as well buy the retail boxed, shiny copy with the manual not in tatters and the disc not scratched to shit, and in the EU, a valid Nintendo VIP Points card so you can download wallpapers, special MP3's (like I got with my Gameboy Advance) and other treats. It's worth the extra $3 to buy the new game, if you can do it.
Then you have great stuff like Twilight Princess being released for both, *ON WII LAUNCH DAY*. The N64 drought and nearly 18 months between consoles, then another 6 months for a decent game, kills their bottom line too. Sony; the Playstation 2 is still selling well, the Playstation was still selling well with the PS2 came out, the Playstation games market went on for 6 months hence.
Overlap is the key there.
XBox Live games which are fun and small are another avenue (no boxes to make or stores to fill). The Nintendo Virtual Console is the same idea.
Sony have picked micropayments; and they have made the case with Gran Turismo which is a good case for it. People who buy Gran Turismo want to drive certain cars on certain tracks. If they get bored they can buy new ones. One thing people HATE is spending $50 on a game and then never attaining the car they really want; maybe they aren't that good at the game, and never earn enough points. This makes for a disappointing purchase. Remember, when you play GT and unlock all the cars, ALL THAT DATA STAYS ON YOUR CONSOLE TOO. On a memory card. If you put it in a second-hand bin at a game store, THE OTHER GUY HAS TO SPEND 90 HOURS WORKING FOR THE LIMITED EDITION LOTUS ESPRIT CAR AND THE TRACK HE WANTS. He paid less for it, but he has to work for it, still.
The niggle with GT's case is the price of the game; it should be sold cheaper and allowed to be customized to a reasonable point. Not a $60 with $20 of cars and tracks to buy later, but a $40 with $20 of cars and tracks to buy later. I also think they should have let people work and earn a LITTLE, it's always fun to get through some points of a game (maybe the ability to decal your car, or change the color), but I didn't see any of that.
Power conversion circuits cost a lot of money.
1 f4340fd47ef50724f0d9820b6abe5efcfcb.e3eTaxmKbNaNe3 8LaNuNa3yLchn0n6jAmljGr5XDqQLvpAe?sc=8&category=13 &it=A&id=417)
$5bn divided by the 2005 estimate of population in California is $138 per person.
$138 which, over 3 years, may mean 2 PC's per person which cost $75 more because of the new power supply (however efficient) type and extra motherboard components and space required to downconvert 12V to 3.3V and 5V as well as all the other non-standard voltages motherboards require these days.
Is anyone gonna save money?
Global warming advocates might jump for joy at the lower energy production requirements but I object to the "it will save money" proposition.
It may even simplify motherboard design IN TIME, but a 12V->3.3/5V conversion for example for ITX boards is about $50 and measures about 5cm square at the best case. It would need a further $20 12V AC->DC converter brick to supply it with the 12V. These converters suck, they waste power. PicoPSU (http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl;jsessionid=ac112b1b
claims 96% efficiency for the conversion, but the brick is far from that.
Making a switch-mode ATX PSU that only throws out 12V would be a brick that doesn't waste power so much, but costs about the same; with a 12V line out. The motherboard then needs all the components from the PicoPSU (still around 5cm x 5cm of board space and $30 of components). Who's saving money here?
It wasn't meant to be funny, though :(
:(
omg I think I am gonna cry
That reminds me of the Amnesia sketch from the Little Britain radio show..
Neo: Whoa. Deja vu.
Trinity: What did you just say?
Neo: Nothing. Just had a little deja vu.
Trinity: What happened? What did you see?
Neo: A Slashdot article was on the index, and then I saw another that looked just like it.
Trinity: How much like it? Was it the same article?
Neo: It might have been. I'm not sure. What is it?
Trinity: A deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when the editors are lazy.
Surprising?
:)
:)
:D
Do you realise how hard it is to innovate when you're going bankrupt?
With a sound financial status and money rolling in, they can do whatever they damn well like, and even take some crazy risks with games, franchises and so on. A lot of people consider that Wind Waker was a risk; cutesy cell-shaded Zelda didn't gel with a lot of the fans. Maybe it didn't sell as many copies. Would they have done that if they really needed to make money off the franchise instead of try something a little new?
Personally I loved Wind Waker up to the point that it ran down the same path of every Zelda game (and most RPGs) which is to provide you with a great game up to the last 5%, and then make you play "running around a field for 8 days straight" or "sailing around the world for 8 days straight" before you can get to the last boss. I think it's a problem of having a great script and not pacing it properly; compare something like Metroid Prime 2 where you can go through the game and get all the weapons and artefacts fairly linearly, with a few diversions; you can see it but you can't get it, you know what weapon you need, you play the game some more, get that, and come straight back for it. At the end of the game when you get to the artefact temple you probably have all but one and just need a little hunt around.
Zelda Wind Waker.. guh.. you play the entire game picking everything up THEN it tells you to find a bazillion triforce parts which you had no ability to find before because the script says Tingle won't translate maps until a certain point, which you don't find out he even has that ability until well into your search. Infuriating. I never finished it, I just watched my little brother do it.
So maybe, also (getting to the point now) with a little more money and some higher development budgets and more time to mess around, they can get this right too
One thing that struck me as odd though. Why did they flip Twilight Princess for Wii? Isn't it a little odd to make the entire game backwards and Link right handed, so most people who use the controller can swing with their right hand, when there are obviously a great number of left-handed potential users out there? Are they just gonna have to buy the Gamecube version and use the Classic controller?
> it probably has something to do with an elitist attitude.
:D
Or some kind of toxic fumes coming off them?
The only problem is that a 1080p CRT doesn't exist; unless you go for rear projection kind of stuff..
y /eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-S tart?ProductSKU=KD34XBR970&Dept=tvvideo&CategoryNa me=tv_34to36TVs
However Sony make some bloody nice ones that do 1080i;
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinit
I have a CRT HDTV. It's big, bright and clear and fun but a little fuzzy if you want to do PC stuff on it. Playing movies and games though is a fucking dream.
:(
It supports a bewildering choice of resolutions; not because it's got them all, but because it's so few. 480i. 480p. 1080i. It was sooo cheap (less than $300 at Thanksgiving last year)
I don't see why I would want 1080p; the 1080i mode is rock solid stable and has nice contrast. What I want is 720i or 720p support on my fucking TV, so I can buy a games console that runs in there or knock my PC resolution down to a readable level
GDC isn't E3 though; E3 is for journalists first and foremost. Big COME LOOK AT OUR SHIT demo show where everyone spends 25% of the game development time and budget making a demo for 3 days, wasting resources.
GDC is for GAME DEVELOPERS. There are as many lectures and talks and so on which serve the purposes of mapping out the course of game development as there are silly little demos on games. Journalists come in because they would throw a fit if it was totally closed, but also because they offer some good input on games - and how to get good review scores of course.. I think Matt Cassamasinansansaisanas from IGN made a good blog post on this subject;
http://blogs.ign.com/Matt-IGN/2006/08/25/29138/
Well, past experience (Gamecube) said $200 would be a cute price point.
But think of what you got with the GC - a console, and a power brick and a controller and a video cable. Not much at the end of the day. What do you get in the Wii box? A console, power brick, controller, nunchuck adapter, sensor bar, bundled game (I think we all expected a demo disc at least to test the controller out on some little games) plus all the extra features inside the console itself - wireless ethernet would be the primary one.
Simple business math says that you can't release something that has MORE in it than something you previously sold, for the same or less. It just doesn't seem right to consumers.. that there is a catch, a play, something odd going on.
No doubt Nintendo will nix the bundle after a while (when there are 150+ titles instead of just 20), make some small cost reductions on parts and through simple economies of scale buying parts - and it WILL retail at $200 or less by next christmas. It will still be cheaper than the XBox360 and Playstation 3, and Nintendo will luckily still be making a profit on it. Yay.
EVERYONE said it was going to be $250. It came true! WTF?
Maybe if you are a delusional idiot would you think they might sell it for $150, and to be fair, I had a small delusional idiot hope that it might be $200 like the Gamecube, but that didn't for one second knock away the reality that it would more than likely launch at $250.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/
Search for Kill-A-Watt.
It will track the consumption of a device (or even a breakout block with 4 sockets, with this thing in the wall) over a period of time.
The alternative is replace the power distribution box in your house so you can monitor each room's usage.
I opted out of the TV that had two. Most of Sony's nice new XBR TVs have two. But I got mine for $350 (a 32" CRT Toshiba) the last time Black Friday rolled around.
It does have 3 component inputs, 3 S-Video inputs, optical audio in and out though, for people who only have a DVI + optical player, or want to use other devices.
The trick with the Playstation 3 is it replaces - pretty much - every other device that you have that's got HDMI output anyway. Your PS3 *and* your upsampling DVD player? But the PS3 *IS* an upsampling DVD player!!!