Sony is a BIG company, huge enough to be considered a part of The Man.
Sony is primarily a foreign company, so they won't get a free pass. However, the majority way these things usually work out is one or more politically ladder-climbing motivated Attorney Generals sue Sony "on behalf of the people" or somesuch hollow excuse. The proceedings drag on at a glacial legal-system pace, bad PR fades out of the public eye, and eventually AG announces an out of court "settlement" between company and the State. Said settlement money goes straight into State's coffers, never to be seen or heard about again.
All in the end, you are still out $18 for a dodgy CD disc and stuck with a rootkit infecting your PC.
When you buy a console from MS, think of it from this perspective - they don't lose $126, but rather recoup $400 towards a $526 loss.
When you sell something for less than it costs to make, its a loss. They are not writing-down unsold inventory, these are going out of the gate at a $126 loss per unit.
Let me put this another way... I didn't care much for the original Xbox when it came out. It was big, kinda ugly, and the games were very derivative. The best Xbox games the first couple of years were available on other platforms, too. Even Halo came out for the PC. It was literally this year that I became interested in Xbox. Turns out they have built-in ethernet and make good media players. I bought two. I've also bought a few games, but all from the used aisle. That means, despite the cash I've outlaid for the used games and the (new in box) consoles, MS has never recouped their loss on my two Xboxes. They've subsidized my Xboxes at their expense.
With the new Xbox costing more than ever, and games running $60 each, you can bet that if and when I get a 360 unit, I'll still be shopping that used game aisle. How is Microsoft going to make up the difference? Wait for the guy next to me to buy 32 games new in shrink wrap?
The worst model has a reported failure rate of almost 30%! Yet somehow Apple seems to still be doing well, people still want to buy iPods.
But iPod scroll wheels are not failing at those levels brand new within minutes out of the box.
Based on various polls around the 'net (for some semblence of fairness I won't use any single one) Xbox 360 appears to be crashing/breaking at levels of 12-16% on the first day of use. That is double digit product failure of a brand-new flagship product for Microsoft, and certainly beyond their claim of "a few problem units". Of course the press is going to be all over it, especially after all the ridiculous hype leading up to the release date.
I haven't seen a product perform this badly since the notorious Sharper Image Steam Wizard.
It seems most people think that this new technology would be a bad thing? The largest complaint I've seen so far is: "What if I lose the disk?"
It's even more silly an argument when you think about current backups schemes.
If you're current system spans several discs... "What if I lose a disc?" -- Answer: Well, you're still pretty screwed.
I use tape... "What if I lose the tape?" -- Answer: Well, you're still pretty screwed.
I use redundant mirrored RAID drives, and swap them out periodically for archival, "What if I lose a HDD?" -- Answer: Well... you get the idea.
The fact that your entire backup can fit on one disc doesn't really change the main issues of backups. In fact, I'd think a single disc is much easier to make sure the backup actually runs and finishes (especially for un-attended backup) and can be easily duplicated to a second 'backup backup' disc.
There are also good things to be said about leaving the past behind, and not keeping the same physical form factor.
Personally, I'd prefer if they started making these ultra-dense storage formats smaller. The big pain for me is doing a backup to removable media to store off-site (used to be CD, nowadays DVD) and being able to easily carry it around. A 3-inch format would fit better in a pocket and would still hold probably half at 150Gig.
I know making the disc bigger is the easiest way to holding more data. But once it's not a "convenient" size which won't even fit in a PC drive bay, you may as well take the plunge and make it even more larger. I can imagine a multi-terabyte version on a stack of 18-inch platters much like the old (removable) "hard disks" in 1970's mainframes, with handles on top and everything.
It's a shame you got modded down as a troll. I actually agree with you to a certain extent - I'd fear the alternate reality where Apple was able to take the microcomputer crown instead of Microsoft.
That said, I'm not sure I would write off Apple products completely. They make and in the past have made some great stuff. LaserWriter II comes to mind. Similarly, Microsoft also occasionally comes out with some nice things (I've used Microsoft mice for years). I guess the morale is caveat empor.
The most important reason why I avoid any Microsoft-products when possible is that whenever there are problems, it's never Microsoft's fault.
And instead of fixing the problem, Microsoft (plus fanboys) start to play the blame-game and fingerpointing.
As the original poster (OP), I'm certainly no MS fanboy. This early Xbox-2 or 260 or 360 or 480 or whatever it is hasn't garnered much interest for me, except for some amusement factor at the release problems. However, a PSU problem while stupid and frustrating for early adopters it doesn't necessarily take away from the actual 360 design. In fact, the external PSU in this case may be a boon for MS, because its much easier to replace than taking the entire console apart.
Maybe some PSU supplier screwed up, however it's Microsoft's oblitgation to do the quality-control of the end-product, so they should have never shipped these units.
True enough, and this is an indication that MS was more worried about pushing these out to the market as fast as possible rather than QA. I hardly think Microsoft wants a looming PR nightmare for a flagship product(especially right before the holiday shopping season), but I can totally see their endemic lack of quality assurance rearing its ugly head. IN contrast, Nintendo has historically been a bastion of good quality, where they _never want a customer to have a bad out-of-box experience with their products.
It certainly shows the difference between the two competitors.
As for the dust -by -summer issue, well it is interesting to note that the Xbox360 only has a 90-day warranty which will be expired on these early units by then.
There seems to be varying power supplies, and you can even tell the difference from slight alterations of shape and color. It is shaping up that the 'bad' Xbox units seem to (at least partially) be because of bad PSUs. I know I've had flakey PCs because of rickety PSUs.
There was a posting on xbox-scene from a group who managed to get two of the pre-ordered Xbox units. Getting back home, they hooked up all the cables and power and viola -- bad Xbox 360. So they opened the other box, leaving all the existing plugs and wires into the TV and all in place, put the new XBox unit on the existing wires and viola -- bad Xbox 360. (They admit they were freaked that they may have had *two* broken Xbox 360s out of the gate.) The 'other' PSU made the Xbox work fine, even when tested on both console units. They mention there are slight variations in the two PSU designed.
So, it really appears that one of Microsofts PSU suppliers screwed up. With multiple PSU suppliers, It would also help explain why some people complain their XBox 360 is "loud" or has a lot of "fan noise" and others claim it is pretty quiet. This may not explain away every Xbox360 problem, but it sure seems reasonable.
Currently, they seem to be genuinely competing on merit.
They are competing on development platform. After Sony's decision to make the PS2 worlds more difficult to program (than PS1), Microsoft has been using their programming tools to woo developers. And when you have the developers, you have the games (and the market). It's really much like their method in the PC world. In his interviews, you can bite the edge of your lip imagining J.Allard waving his arms jumping around shouting DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS.
(Side note: Although Nintendo is consistently profitable, one of the big concerns is how many projects and development houses have dropped GameCube support, questioning their abilty to grab any market next time around with Revolution.)
Also, Microsoft is trying desperately to form ongoing revenue streams. Xbox Live proved they could create a working game network, although the adoption rate is still rather low (I've seen numbers around 2-million subscribers, or about 10% of total Xboxes). The New And Improved XboxLive has been developed around purchasing... want a new costume for your character, pay a little. Want a new level for your game, pay a little more. Everything about The New XboxLive seems to hint at extracting money/credits from your account. I'm not sure the public will bite, but this is the direction they seem to be taking. Anyway, I'm sure they are willing to sell the box at a loss and try to make it up through 'additional fees' elsewhere, including the license on each game.
they need to get eg 15 years "frozen". after all, corporations legally are persons. they should face the same punishments.
That's part of the point I was trying to make. Corporations aren't people and they can't go to prison. In fact, they are artificial entities so they deserve neither the same rights nor privledges of the citizens. The biggest problem is that nobody in power wants to "harm business" so they effectively do nothing. A few fines here and there, but usually the fines are far less than what companies were able to get away with. Hell, look at the re-settlements the tobacco industry has been able to pull off, or the Wall Street firms who jilted so many investors and got effectively slaps on the wrist. All this has led to big business being "more" than a plain citizen.
To stop the corruption, we have to be willing to act harshly and actively dissolve "bad" companies. I guarantee if we rescind a few articles of incorporation, it'll snap all the others into line.
You also have to worry about the LEAF (law enforcement acceptance factor). In some countries, case mods for a PC are deemed much more legitimate than modchips for a console.
I suppose it depends on where you live. But the beauty of the Xbox (original) is you can software-mod it (softmod). A cheap used copy of MechAssault or Splinter Cell and an Action Replay is all the physical junk in your hand you need to put linux on the Xbox. The rest is just a software download which forces a buffer overflow in the game and install your mod. I don't see why anyone would pay money for either a pre-hacked Xbox nor a modchip, when it is so easy to do it yourself. And this way it is your own equipment.
There are several GUI launchers that have been customized for launching emulators.
I meant for the kids. Well, I suppose for me, too. Some of the launchers/menus for a linux'ed Xbox are very simple, pretty much just copy the discs to the harddrive and it pops up in the menu selector. And most software has a unique logo which they can rely on to pick the game they want to play.
But how did you copy the ROM images from your Super NES and Sega Genesis cartridges so that you could use them with your modded Xbox console?
You'd need an old GameDoctor or the like. There used to be an import place nearby that sold all this junk (also carried the excellent Hori joysticks for Playstation). Alas, he went outta business years ago. I guess they weren't all that popular here. There's a fella in the UK who I think still sell them off his website. http://www.robwebb.clara.co.uk/shop/
Unfortunately, the elusive quest to find that rare game isn't the same anymore because of eBay, and because there are so many places online to find the dumps.
How much better at emulation is an Xbox than, say, my 866 MHz PC with a USB gamepad and TV-out?
Depends on what your goals are. In my case I need high WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor), and a PC by the TV doesn't have much WAF. Also a single Xbox which can emulate and play a bunch of other console's games has much higher WAF than a clutter of multiple consoles, controllers, and wires cluttered everywhere.
As for performance it's probably similar to your PC. Xbox uses a 733MHz Celeron with a very capable vNidia GPU. But it also connects right to the TV and uses familiar gamepad controllers. I had thought about a cheap media PC, but Xbox is so cheap it didn't seem worth it. I did have to spend $25 on an Action Replay (and $8 on a used MechAssault) to do the softmod. Anyway, for most things its a heck of a lot better than my poor maligned Dreamcast, plus it plays some nice Xbox games. XBMC is a surprisingly robust media player, and if your Xbox is connected to the network you can load video and audio files from the computer in the den.
With a new hard drive (at extra cost, of course) I've found I can copy Xbox discs to folders on the HDD and Unleash dashboard finds them automagically. This is *great* if you have kids, and there is finally a fair share of E-rated stuff out there. I'd say nicer than a computer simply because a menu is simpler than navigating an OS GUI.
SNES emulation is flawless (except the A,B,X,Y buttons on Xbox are reversed from the old SNES pad), Genesis seems fine. Playstation (PSone) emulation is pretty good, but a big caveat is the Xbox drive won't load the games directly -- you need to make a disc image and load it onto the Xbox HDD. Your PC is probably a bit better in that regard. After doing the gyrations to get the PSone images onto the Xbox most things work ok with tweaking: Kids love Spyro the Dragon, Bob the Builder, Motor Toon Grand Prix and even the original Soul Blade(a little choppy); Parappa the Rapper works but the timing is off and hard to complete the levels (kids don't seem to care, though). There are lists online which indicate what games work and which don't.
Regardless of Microsoft's "plans", they will find that the consumer elecronics business is _not as easy to dominate as the arena of PC software. Their biggest competitor (Sony) is a veteran of consumer electronics and is having all sorts of financial problems -- ironically, people point to the Playstation division as Sony's sole saving grace. In fact, Microsoft is already finding out because J.Allard's original plan was for the Xbox1 to be turning at least a tiny profit by this point. Instead, they dumped a bunch of money into a new design and rushed it to market.
If this Xbox360 crashing problem is widespread enough, these things are going to either be shunned by the market, or lose all their profit potential fixing them.
Today, Xbox 360's are selling for nearly $2,000 on ebay. Not even a package, just the system.
I think you'll discover that many of the Xbox 360's on eBay are not even the system.
Many are just scammers who plan on obtaining the machine (to ship out) sometime next week after the auctions are over. Probably just as well. With all the 0-feedback people winning these ridiculous bids, it is just vapor bids winning vapor consoles.
I bought an original Xbox not to play games on, but to use as a media device.
I agree, although I should point out that the original Xbox also works great as a game player -- an emulation game player. After sturggling for years waiting for the Dreamcast's SNES emulation to improve, I finally bought an Xbox and softmodded it. Now I have XBMC for tonnes of media playback, and some really nice SNES, Genesis, and even a few PSone games under emulation. All with just one gizmo cluttering under the television.
With a new dashboard (Unleash) and big hard drive, you can even set up a nice menu system the kids can pick and play what they want without messy cartridges or Discs. Until the new Xbox 360 can do all that, I can't even drum up a yawn for it.
More importantly if anything, he's certainly helped defuse the "gaming is bad" timebombs going off around the country. With the various State unconstitutional bans on games (sad to say, my home state of Michigan is one of them) and the accompanying rabid political feeding frenzy, hopefully Jack's antics will poke in the eye those trying to use this as a political platform and bring some common sense back to the masses.
I then realized that a corporation can't do prison time which is what we primarily do to settle criminal matters.
I just posted another reply and bears the same response:
It is time to start dissolving companies which act criminally.
So yeah, you can't put a company in prison. But it doesn't mean we should allow such an artificial entity to continue existing. Think of it as the Death Penalty for corporations.
Allowing people to hold shares in a company, vote on its future, and not be responsible when it does bad things in the name of money is not.
I've thought about this a lot lately, probably moreso than I should. I guess I'm officially old. But the solution that keeps coming up in my mind is actually pretty simple, although it would take actual guts of politicians and judges: Forcibly dissolve companies who either break the law or work against the public good.
Of course Wall Street would be totally against this ("think of the shareholders"). But without the corporate veil to hide behind, a whole lotta management would suddenly be personally liable for corporate crime. Also, all the underlings would leave and move on since there would no longer be an entity to collect revenue or issue paychecks. It wouldn't take too many of these actions to snap all the rest of companies in line, and would solve your dilemma of making 'moral choice' as much a priority as profits.
I have been unable to get the app working on any server I have setup. If the live server goes down we're toast because there is no dev box. The app relies on a horrific web of interconnected scripts, cron jobs, strange directories, and it even uses an older version of itself to perform some mysterious actions. I've got an image of the server's hard drive I can use to recover it from.
I don't know if you get email responses. But I just wanted to say this is just about the most amusing piece I've read in the past week. Sorry about your bout, and thanks for the smile.
I've owned the original AIW Radeon card, and it was OK for its time. Of course with DirectX 8 and 9 games, it would never work. So time came a couple years ago when TRON 2.0 was out plus Doom3 was around the corner and I needed an upgrade.
At that time, the 9800 was pretty well regarded. But, there was about 18 different versions of that chipset in various vidcards. Many of the (online) vendors had misleading specs or prices, a lot of cards were lesser 9800 XL cards but without mentioning the 'XL' part. After Christmas there was a nice price drop on the AIW9800 (which uses the superior 9800 'Pro' chipset) which made it competitive with a bunch of the non-TV cards. I was happy, and got a guaranteed part.
ATI only releases one AIW model per chipset, so you at least know exactly what you are getting in the box. That's how it worked with me, and I was very happy to knowingly get a 9800Pro for use with Doom3 and other newer games.
Because the ones most likely to participate in stupid, overpriced ringtones are teenagers. Often, I would gather, teenagers on cellphone "family plans" or otherwise who never even see the bill at the end of the month.
These BTW are the same culprits who drive the text-messaging market, at $0.10 per note.
It does strike me that this is more of a fad, and once the general public is bored by stupid, overpriced ringtones there will be a big sucking sound for these revenues. Most sane people will get bored of specialized ringtones, and they certainly won't buy 10+ per month, unlike say iTunes.
I understand what you are saying, that the Mega Bloks (of old) are cheap crappy knockoffs. However, now as parent of my own kids, I've been impressed at how much improved the Mega Blok products have become. At the same time, I'm very distressed at how expensive and "specialized" a lot of the LEGO blocks have become -- so many of the LEGO pieces are no longer "bricks" but specially shaped or curved pieces. So, I've embraced the dark size of building blocks and have been purachasing a lot more Mega Blok products, lately.
Slashdot Mirror
Sony is primarily a foreign company, so they won't get a free pass. However, the majority way these things usually work out is one or more politically ladder-climbing motivated Attorney Generals sue Sony "on behalf of the people" or somesuch hollow excuse. The proceedings drag on at a glacial legal-system pace, bad PR fades out of the public eye, and eventually AG announces an out of court "settlement" between company and the State. Said settlement money goes straight into State's coffers, never to be seen or heard about again.
All in the end, you are still out $18 for a dodgy CD disc and stuck with a rootkit infecting your PC.
When you sell something for less than it costs to make, its a loss. They are not writing-down unsold inventory, these are going out of the gate at a $126 loss per unit.
Let me put this another way... I didn't care much for the original Xbox when it came out. It was big, kinda ugly, and the games were very derivative. The best Xbox games the first couple of years were available on other platforms, too. Even Halo came out for the PC.
It was literally this year that I became interested in Xbox. Turns out they have built-in ethernet and make good media players. I bought two.
I've also bought a few games, but all from the used aisle. That means, despite the cash I've outlaid for the used games and the (new in box) consoles, MS has never recouped their loss on my two Xboxes. They've subsidized my Xboxes at their expense.
With the new Xbox costing more than ever, and games running $60 each, you can bet that if and when I get a 360 unit, I'll still be shopping that used game aisle. How is Microsoft going to make up the difference? Wait for the guy next to me to buy 32 games new in shrink wrap?
But iPod scroll wheels are not failing at those levels brand new within minutes out of the box.
Based on various polls around the 'net (for some semblence of fairness I won't use any single one) Xbox 360 appears to be crashing/breaking at levels of 12-16% on the first day of use. That is double digit product failure of a brand-new flagship product for Microsoft, and certainly beyond their claim of "a few problem units". Of course the press is going to be all over it, especially after all the ridiculous hype leading up to the release date.
I haven't seen a product perform this badly since the notorious Sharper Image Steam Wizard.
It's even more silly an argument when you think about current backups schemes.
The fact that your entire backup can fit on one disc doesn't really change the main issues of backups. In fact, I'd think a single disc is much easier to make sure the backup actually runs and finishes (especially for un-attended backup) and can be easily duplicated to a second 'backup backup' disc.
Personally, I'd prefer if they started making these ultra-dense storage formats smaller. The big pain for me is doing a backup to removable media to store off-site (used to be CD, nowadays DVD) and being able to easily carry it around. A 3-inch format would fit better in a pocket and would still hold probably half at 150Gig.
I know making the disc bigger is the easiest way to holding more data. But once it's not a "convenient" size which won't even fit in a PC drive bay, you may as well take the plunge and make it even more larger. I can imagine a multi-terabyte version on a stack of 18-inch platters much like the old (removable) "hard disks" in 1970's mainframes, with handles on top and everything.
Perhaps he meant Quake 2 was seminal towards id's use of more than brown and green in the color palette.
It's a shame you got modded down as a troll. I actually agree with you to a certain extent - I'd fear the alternate reality where Apple was able to take the microcomputer crown instead of Microsoft.
That said, I'm not sure I would write off Apple products completely. They make and in the past have made some great stuff. LaserWriter II comes to mind. Similarly, Microsoft also occasionally comes out with some nice things (I've used Microsoft mice for years). I guess the morale is caveat empor.
As the original poster (OP), I'm certainly no MS fanboy. This early Xbox-2 or 260 or 360 or 480 or whatever it is hasn't garnered much interest for me, except for some amusement factor at the release problems.
However, a PSU problem while stupid and frustrating for early adopters it doesn't necessarily take away from the actual 360 design. In fact, the external PSU in this case may be a boon for MS, because its much easier to replace than taking the entire console apart.
True enough, and this is an indication that MS was more worried about pushing these out to the market as fast as possible rather than QA. I hardly think Microsoft wants a looming PR nightmare for a flagship product(especially right before the holiday shopping season), but I can totally see their endemic lack of quality assurance rearing its ugly head.
IN contrast, Nintendo has historically been a bastion of good quality, where they _never want a customer to have a bad out-of-box experience with their products.
It certainly shows the difference between the two competitors.
As for the dust -by -summer issue, well it is interesting to note that the Xbox360 only has a 90-day warranty which will be expired on these early units by then.
There seems to be varying power supplies, and you can even tell the difference from slight alterations of shape and color. It is shaping up that the 'bad' Xbox units seem to (at least partially) be because of bad PSUs. I know I've had flakey PCs because of rickety PSUs.
There was a posting on xbox-scene from a group who managed to get two of the pre-ordered Xbox units. Getting back home, they hooked up all the cables and power and viola -- bad Xbox 360. So they opened the other box, leaving all the existing plugs and wires into the TV and all in place, put the new XBox unit on the existing wires and viola -- bad Xbox 360. (They admit they were freaked that they may have had *two* broken Xbox 360s out of the gate.) The 'other' PSU made the Xbox work fine, even when tested on both console units. They mention there are slight variations in the two PSU designed.
So, it really appears that one of Microsofts PSU suppliers screwed up. With multiple PSU suppliers, It would also help explain why some people complain their XBox 360 is "loud" or has a lot of "fan noise" and others claim it is pretty quiet. This may not explain away every Xbox360 problem, but it sure seems reasonable.
They are competing on development platform. After Sony's decision to make the PS2 worlds more difficult to program (than PS1), Microsoft has been using their programming tools to woo developers. And when you have the developers, you have the games (and the market). It's really much like their method in the PC world. In his interviews, you can bite the edge of your lip imagining J.Allard waving his arms jumping around shouting DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS.
(Side note: Although Nintendo is consistently profitable, one of the big concerns is how many projects and development houses have dropped GameCube support, questioning their abilty to grab any market next time around with Revolution.)
Also, Microsoft is trying desperately to form ongoing revenue streams. Xbox Live proved they could create a working game network, although the adoption rate is still rather low (I've seen numbers around 2-million subscribers, or about 10% of total Xboxes). The New And Improved XboxLive has been developed around purchasing... want a new costume for your character, pay a little. Want a new level for your game, pay a little more. Everything about The New XboxLive seems to hint at extracting money/credits from your account. I'm not sure the public will bite, but this is the direction they seem to be taking.
Anyway, I'm sure they are willing to sell the box at a loss and try to make it up through 'additional fees' elsewhere, including the license on each game.
That's part of the point I was trying to make. Corporations aren't people and they can't go to prison. In fact, they are artificial entities so they deserve neither the same rights nor privledges of the citizens. The biggest problem is that nobody in power wants to "harm business" so they effectively do nothing. A few fines here and there, but usually the fines are far less than what companies were able to get away with. Hell, look at the re-settlements the tobacco industry has been able to pull off, or the Wall Street firms who jilted so many investors and got effectively slaps on the wrist. All this has led to big business being "more" than a plain citizen.
To stop the corruption, we have to be willing to act harshly and actively dissolve "bad" companies. I guarantee if we rescind a few articles of incorporation, it'll snap all the others into line.
I suppose it depends on where you live. But the beauty of the Xbox (original) is you can software-mod it (softmod). A cheap used copy of MechAssault or Splinter Cell and an Action Replay is all the physical junk in your hand you need to put linux on the Xbox. The rest is just a software download which forces a buffer overflow in the game and install your mod. I don't see why anyone would pay money for either a pre-hacked Xbox nor a modchip, when it is so easy to do it yourself. And this way it is your own equipment.
I meant for the kids. Well, I suppose for me, too. Some of the launchers/menus for a linux'ed Xbox are very simple, pretty much just copy the discs to the harddrive and it pops up in the menu selector. And most software has a unique logo which they can rely on to pick the game they want to play.
You'd need an old GameDoctor or the like. There used to be an import place nearby that sold all this junk (also carried the excellent Hori joysticks for Playstation). Alas, he went outta business years ago. I guess they weren't all that popular here. There's a fella in the UK who I think still sell them off his website. http://www.robwebb.clara.co.uk/shop/
Unfortunately, the elusive quest to find that rare game isn't the same anymore because of eBay, and because there are so many places online to find the dumps.
Depends on what your goals are. In my case I need high WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor), and a PC by the TV doesn't have much WAF. Also a single Xbox which can emulate and play a bunch of other console's games has much higher WAF than a clutter of multiple consoles, controllers, and wires cluttered everywhere.
As for performance it's probably similar to your PC. Xbox uses a 733MHz Celeron with a very capable vNidia GPU. But it also connects right to the TV and uses familiar gamepad controllers. I had thought about a cheap media PC, but Xbox is so cheap it didn't seem worth it. I did have to spend $25 on an Action Replay (and $8 on a used MechAssault) to do the softmod. Anyway, for most things its a heck of a lot better than my poor maligned Dreamcast, plus it plays some nice Xbox games. XBMC is a surprisingly robust media player, and if your Xbox is connected to the network you can load video and audio files from the computer in the den.
With a new hard drive (at extra cost, of course) I've found I can copy Xbox discs to folders on the HDD and Unleash dashboard finds them automagically. This is *great* if you have kids, and there is finally a fair share of E-rated stuff out there. I'd say nicer than a computer simply because a menu is simpler than navigating an OS GUI.
SNES emulation is flawless (except the A,B,X,Y buttons on Xbox are reversed from the old SNES pad), Genesis seems fine. Playstation (PSone) emulation is pretty good, but a big caveat is the Xbox drive won't load the games directly -- you need to make a disc image and load it onto the Xbox HDD. Your PC is probably a bit better in that regard. After doing the gyrations to get the PSone images onto the Xbox most things work ok with tweaking: Kids love Spyro the Dragon, Bob the Builder, Motor Toon Grand Prix and even the original Soul Blade(a little choppy); Parappa the Rapper works but the timing is off and hard to complete the levels (kids don't seem to care, though). There are lists online which indicate what games work and which don't.
Regardless of Microsoft's "plans", they will find that the consumer elecronics business is _not as easy to dominate as the arena of PC software. Their biggest competitor (Sony) is a veteran of consumer electronics and is having all sorts of financial problems -- ironically, people point to the Playstation division as Sony's sole saving grace. In fact, Microsoft is already finding out because J.Allard's original plan was for the Xbox1 to be turning at least a tiny profit by this point. Instead, they dumped a bunch of money into a new design and rushed it to market.
If this Xbox360 crashing problem is widespread enough, these things are going to either be shunned by the market, or lose all their profit potential fixing them.
I think you'll discover that many of the Xbox 360's on eBay are not even the system.
Many are just scammers who plan on obtaining the machine (to ship out) sometime next week after the auctions are over. Probably just as well. With all the 0-feedback people winning these ridiculous bids, it is just vapor bids winning vapor consoles.
I agree, although I should point out that the original Xbox also works great as a game player -- an emulation game player. After sturggling for years waiting for the Dreamcast's SNES emulation to improve, I finally bought an Xbox and softmodded it. Now I have XBMC for tonnes of media playback, and some really nice SNES, Genesis, and even a few PSone games under emulation. All with just one gizmo cluttering under the television.
With a new dashboard (Unleash) and big hard drive, you can even set up a nice menu system the kids can pick and play what they want without messy cartridges or Discs. Until the new Xbox 360 can do all that, I can't even drum up a yawn for it.
Bwahahaha! So, basically somebody who got their Xbox "360" for free doesn't even want it!
Yeah, I'll probably blow my karma for this post. But I can't possibly be the only one scratching their head about this whole super overhyped thing.
More importantly if anything, he's certainly helped defuse the "gaming is bad" timebombs going off around the country. With the various State unconstitutional bans on games (sad to say, my home state of Michigan is one of them) and the accompanying rabid political feeding frenzy, hopefully Jack's antics will poke in the eye those trying to use this as a political platform and bring some common sense back to the masses.
I just posted another reply and bears the same response:
It is time to start dissolving companies which act criminally.
So yeah, you can't put a company in prison. But it doesn't mean we should allow such an artificial entity to continue existing. Think of it as the Death Penalty for corporations.
I've thought about this a lot lately, probably moreso than I should. I guess I'm officially old. But the solution that keeps coming up in my mind is actually pretty simple, although it would take actual guts of politicians and judges:
Forcibly dissolve companies who either break the law or work against the public good.
Of course Wall Street would be totally against this ("think of the shareholders"). But without the corporate veil to hide behind, a whole lotta management would suddenly be personally liable for corporate crime. Also, all the underlings would leave and move on since there would no longer be an entity to collect revenue or issue paychecks. It wouldn't take too many of these actions to snap all the rest of companies in line, and would solve your dilemma of making 'moral choice' as much a priority as profits.
I don't know if you get email responses. But I just wanted to say this is just about the most amusing piece I've read in the past week. Sorry about your bout, and thanks for the smile.
I've owned the original AIW Radeon card, and it was OK for its time. Of course with DirectX 8 and 9 games, it would never work. So time came a couple years ago when TRON 2.0 was out plus Doom3 was around the corner and I needed an upgrade.
At that time, the 9800 was pretty well regarded. But, there was about 18 different versions of that chipset in various vidcards. Many of the (online) vendors had misleading specs or prices, a lot of cards were lesser 9800 XL cards but without mentioning the 'XL' part. After Christmas there was a nice price drop on the AIW9800 (which uses the superior 9800 'Pro' chipset) which made it competitive with a bunch of the non-TV cards. I was happy, and got a guaranteed part.
ATI only releases one AIW model per chipset, so you at least know exactly what you are getting in the box. That's how it worked with me, and I was very happy to knowingly get a 9800Pro for use with Doom3 and other newer games.
Because the ones most likely to participate in stupid, overpriced ringtones are teenagers. Often, I would gather, teenagers on cellphone "family plans" or otherwise who never even see the bill at the end of the month.
These BTW are the same culprits who drive the text-messaging market, at $0.10 per note.
It does strike me that this is more of a fad, and once the general public is bored by stupid, overpriced ringtones there will be a big sucking sound for these revenues. Most sane people will get bored of specialized ringtones, and they certainly won't buy 10+ per month, unlike say iTunes.
I understand what you are saying, that the Mega Bloks (of old) are cheap crappy knockoffs. However, now as parent of my own kids, I've been impressed at how much improved the Mega Blok products have become. At the same time, I'm very distressed at how expensive and "specialized" a lot of the LEGO blocks have become -- so many of the LEGO pieces are no longer "bricks" but specially shaped or curved pieces. So, I've embraced the dark size of building blocks and have been purachasing a lot more Mega Blok products, lately.
Which I think is the point of the previous post. They are mutually exclusive ... You can't claim both copyright and patent on one thing.
This is the big lie and concern with all these software companies trying to secure patents (and succeeding) to various computer software.