I always thought Microsoft made a bit of a branding error when it came to naming their mobile OS. "WinCE" just invites all kinds of negative associations, and stories like this one just add to the painful image.
Yep -- proving once again that history goes in cycles even as it progresses, in line with the overarching wavicle nature of the universe. Next up: Bell bottoms, and leg warmers -- this time, together!
And Ryan Gavin isn't the head of Ryan Gavin isn't the head of IE, Dean Hachamovitch is.
Wow, so Dean Hachamovitch is the head of Ryan Gavin, as well as the head of IE? And you thought Zaphod had it bad. That must be pretty confusing. Maybe that's why the summary got a bit muddled.
I dunno, if they can grow human ears on the backs of mice, I don't know why it wouldn't be possible to grow a keyboard together with a spare set of hands, or find a way to grow hands out of a keyboard.
Potentially kinda kinky, though. I'm not sure I want to think too much about where you'd go with that.
I have a sizable existing library of MP3 files. Would it be worth the trouble to transcode these into Ogg? Would this process be problematically lossy? And will iPods will play Ogg files? (This last is curiosity; I don't use iTunes, so it's not too much trouble to wipe my iPod and put something in it that plays Oggs.)
In all honest ignorance and curiosity, how so, aside from the patent legal issues? Are the file sizes smaller? Is playback processor load less? Is playback quality at a set sampling rate audibly better? Etc., etc.
It's the "gene patent pool", or "GPP". Soon to offer you your very own "Gene Patent License", or "GPL", so you can "open source" yourself. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Provided, of course, that you agree to these teensy weensy conditions in the fine print, and pay our nominal licensing fee...
I think you're onto something there, and the recent tie-up with Netflix is a step in that direction. I have no idea whether any Hulu or YouTube Wii apps are in the works, but something along those lines would make sense as a logical progression following the Netflix service offering.
It seems a bit like Wii is to the other consoles, as Apple is to commodity computers, only with different fan dynamics and less boutique (i.e. high-end) pricing. I mean this in terms of Nintendo going for a slicker, more polished, "just works" approach that allows non-techies to get in on the game (please forgive the pun). The PS3 and XBox make certain assumptions about their user bases that ultimately restricts the types of people that are likely to get and use one (or both) of these consoles -- much like with commodity PCs, the user needs to know certain things ahead of time, or at least be unafraid of diving in and learning them, in order to make the most of the experience. Nintendo appears to be taking the approach of lowest-common-denominator, not in terms of shovelware (though lord knows there's plenty of it), but in terms of UI, in order to target a much broader market. Whether this strategy works in the long run remains to be seen.
lmao... what the hell? Are you actually doubting that AMERICA'S INTERWABZ INFRASTRUCTURE isn't capable of handling people downloading a bunch of console titles?
I think perhaps you misunderstand me, but then, re-reading my previous post, I didn't put it very well. I'm not saying that everyone does not have adequate broadband, but rather that not everyone does have adequate broadband. Not everyone in Nintendo's potential target market has the needed access to download a whole console title in a reasonable amount of time, what with folks in rural areas sometimes only able to get dial-up here in the US, where we seem to lack any national plan for internet infrastructure. And now that I think of it, there are other markets that Nintendo sells to that have unfavorable internet operating constraints, such as Australia, where apparently bandwidth is quite limited and rather expensive. With that in mind, I'm not sure if going download-only would be attractive to Nintendo if it also means losing a sizable chunk of the potential market for Wii titles -- hence my additional comment that I suppose it would work okay if the games could be bought both online and in disc form.
Hmmm....I live in California, so maybe I've had an unusual experience or something, but I've never had trouble downloading DVD-size files on my consoles. You can get 360 games in pure digital form. Ditto for PS2 games on the PS3...so I don't see why the Wii wouldn't be capable of providing that (unless Nintendo's infrastructure wasn't up to it).
You're right, downloading DVDs-worth of content isn't impossible these days. My thought wasn't that such bandwidth is completely unavailable, but rather that it is spotty, what with folks in rural areas sometimes only able to get dial-up here in the US, where we seem to lack any national plan for internet infrastructure. With that in mind, I'm not sure if going download-only would be attractive to Nintendo if it also means losing a sizable chunk of the Wii's potential market.
They need to focus on making the current console more attractive.
They've just recently announced that the base package will come with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort, with the included Wiimote now coming equipped with the Wii Motion Plus by default. Linky.
A simple external storage device for downloadable games would be the next real logical step for them.
The old Wii (got mine 3~4 years ago) already comes with a slot for an SD card, and these come in GB sizes these days. Sticking a 2GB card in my Wii's slot gives me a huge amount of room to store downloaded games from the online Wii store.
With an external harddrive/network adapter combination device (wired network should have been standard to start), they could then run a HUGE marketing campaign to get people to start buying the games online instead of in the stores.
Ah. I see you're talking about selling disc-based games online instead, not just the current WiiWare and Virtual Console online offerings. That might fly in Europe, but I wonder if US infrastructure is really up for that? I suppose it would work okay if the games could be bought both online and in disc form. Part of Nintendo's reticence to offer full disc games online might also have to do with control -- I haven't tried popping a Wii disc into a PC, but if the discs use a proprietary data format (non-ISO), or even just if the games require the presence of the disc, it would offer one extra layer of protection against cracks. Disc presence is a bugaboo for PC games, but for a console, it's just expected. I'm not sure if Nintendo (or Sony or MS, for that matter) would be all too willing to give that up.
(wired network should have been standard to start)
The Wii console is able to connect to the Internet through its built-in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi or through a USB-to-Ethernet adapter, with both methods allowing players to access the established Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service.
Admittedly, requiring a USB-Ethernet adapter for wired connectivity is a bit of a barrier, but the option does exist.
And, FWIW, I know of a number of people who have not yet gotten a Wii, who are thinking of doing so now that the Netflix partnership is up and running. And I've found that Netflix via our Wii seems to work better than via our MacBook laptop -- I don't know what they changed in the streaming algorithms, but we seldom see buffering problems on the Wii vs. pretty common on the laptop, and the resolution looks better on the Wii as well, less pixelated. YMMV, and all that.
So, a Wii 2 would do nothing more than introduce new hardware which they would have to try and get into everyone's homes where there is still so much more to be done with the Wii before it's "old and crappy".
I agree, wholeheartedly. Part of what made the Wii work so well competition-wise is that it brought something truly novel to the table. I have trouble imagining what the next big novel development would be, but that's the thing about real novelty -- it's new.:) Maybe 3D? That would depend on TV technology, so probably not. Maybe some funky new control scheme? That might open up a whole can of lawsuit worms, but who knows? It's fun thinking about, and anticipating, and it's fun playing the current Wii to, so there you go.
With cockblockers like this Verison CEO we'll have the internet set back a decade.
As the GP notes, it's already happened. When I left Japan in summer 2005, the slowest speed I could possibly get was around 24MBps, for a whopping $30/month ($20/month for the first three months). I have no idea what the minimum ISP offering is there now, but I'm sure it beats the pants off anything I could get here in USia. For that matter, here in Seattle, I get around 1.5MBps, for substantially more than $30/month... <sigh.>
<----------
Main Entry: flaunt
Function: verb
Etymology: perhaps of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse flana to rush around
Date: 1566
intransitive verb
1 : to display or obtrude oneself to public notice <a great flaunting crowd — Charles Dickens>
2 : to wave or flutter showily <the flag flaunts in the breeze>
transitive verb
1 : to display ostentatiously or impudently : parade <flaunting his superiority>
2 : to treat contemptuously <flaunted the rules — Louis Untermeyer> (see note)
synonyms see show
---------->
The word you're looking for here is flout:
<----------
Main Entry: flout
Function: verb
Etymology: probably from Middle English flouten to play the flute, from floute flute
Date: 1551
transitive verb
: to treat with contemptuous disregard : scorn <flouting the rules>
intransitive verb
: to indulge in scornful behavior
synonyms see scoff
---------->
Note: It seems enough folks have confused flout and flaunt that the two are increasingly conflated, as noted in the second transitive definition for flaunt above. M-W includes a usage note at the bottom of the entry for flaunt describing this. (However, it's also worth noting that some of their examples as given indicate possible confusion by M-W's own editorial staff.)
One possibly useful mnemonic is to think of flaunt as a flag waving, and to think of flout as getting out of something.
As I just posted in reply to man_of_mr_e, I stand corrected. Thank you for your post.
This leads me to wonder if this pattern holds true in other cultures as well? The basic premise seems to be based on a certain kind of (hopefully white) lie by those requesting budget allocations, and an implicit assumption by upper management that no one's budget requests can be trusted at face value. While I'm reasonably sure that this basic pattern holds true to some degree for most of human organizational budgetary behaviour, I wonder to what degree things change between cultures? Something to ponder anyway.
Your points are all good ones. At the same time, it is also important to note that the Munich changeover is happening as part of a public government process. This changes the dynamic substantially.
In the private sector, the idea is to come in under budget, and the savings can (potentially) be counted towards profit -- meaning more power and prestige to the person in charge of the project.
In the public sector, the idea is to use all of the budget (or even more if possible), and this can be used to justify asking for more money in the next budget cycle -- meaning more power and prestige to the person in charge of the project.
The politics of budget appropriation results in a very different modus operandi. Consequently, budget overruns in any public enterprise cannot be taken as proof that the enterprise itself is inherently expensive.
-----
Note that this applies to how projects are handled *internally* to an organization. When the project is external, a private company selling its services for example may often find ways of coming in over *someone else's* budget, because this means getting more money.
I had dinner the other day at a sushi place here in Redmond, and wound up sitting next to four Microsoft folks. In the course of conversation, I asked if Microsoft ever had an "eat your own dogfood" kind of policy, and they all rolled their eyes and said yes, and described the fun of moving to Office 2007 and the joys of losing email access, sometimes for days at a time.
Second-hand info (well, third-hand for readers of this post), to be sure, but it seems with no problems is not the whole truth of the matter.
Slashdot Mirror
I had the wrong Steve in mind, making for a very different "Hi, I'm a Mac" commercial...
Cheers,
I always thought Microsoft made a bit of a branding error when it came to naming their mobile OS. "WinCE" just invites all kinds of negative associations, and stories like this one just add to the painful image.
Cheers,
Yep -- proving once again that history goes in cycles even as it progresses, in line with the overarching wavicle nature of the universe. Next up: Bell bottoms, and leg warmers -- this time, together!
Whee!
Cheers,
Wow, so Dean Hachamovitch is the head of Ryan Gavin, as well as the head of IE? And you thought Zaphod had it bad. That must be pretty confusing. Maybe that's why the summary got a bit muddled.
Cheers,
Well, I, for one, am busy trying to figure out where the light blue bananas are...
Cheers,
The quick-drying kind, that's useful for custom-fitting a pair of "shoes".
Cheers,
I dunno, if they can grow human ears on the backs of mice, I don't know why it wouldn't be possible to grow a keyboard together with a spare set of hands, or find a way to grow hands out of a keyboard.
Potentially kinda kinky, though. I'm not sure I want to think too much about where you'd go with that.
Cheers,
Good to know, thank you for the reply.
I have a sizable existing library of MP3 files. Would it be worth the trouble to transcode these into Ogg? Would this process be problematically lossy? And will iPods will play Ogg files? (This last is curiosity; I don't use iTunes, so it's not too much trouble to wipe my iPod and put something in it that plays Oggs.)
Cheers,
In all honest ignorance and curiosity, how so, aside from the patent legal issues? Are the file sizes smaller? Is playback processor load less? Is playback quality at a set sampling rate audibly better? Etc., etc.
Cheers,
It's the "gene patent pool", or "GPP". Soon to offer you your very own "Gene Patent License", or "GPL", so you can "open source" yourself. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Provided, of course, that you agree to these teensy weensy conditions in the fine print, and pay our nominal licensing fee...
(I'm not sure if this is funny, or depressing.)
Cheers,
So, does "Shatner" then mean, "one who shats? Or "one who shattens"?
Ba dum, ...
Cheers,
... but smell worse.
Cheers,
Mandragora would be the better spelling. (Click the link to see why.)
Cheers,
I think you're onto something there, and the recent tie-up with Netflix is a step in that direction. I have no idea whether any Hulu or YouTube Wii apps are in the works, but something along those lines would make sense as a logical progression following the Netflix service offering.
It seems a bit like Wii is to the other consoles, as Apple is to commodity computers, only with different fan dynamics and less boutique (i.e. high-end) pricing. I mean this in terms of Nintendo going for a slicker, more polished, "just works" approach that allows non-techies to get in on the game (please forgive the pun). The PS3 and XBox make certain assumptions about their user bases that ultimately restricts the types of people that are likely to get and use one (or both) of these consoles -- much like with commodity PCs, the user needs to know certain things ahead of time, or at least be unafraid of diving in and learning them, in order to make the most of the experience. Nintendo appears to be taking the approach of lowest-common-denominator, not in terms of shovelware (though lord knows there's plenty of it), but in terms of UI, in order to target a much broader market. Whether this strategy works in the long run remains to be seen.
Cheers,
I think perhaps you misunderstand me, but then, re-reading my previous post, I didn't put it very well. I'm not saying that everyone does not have adequate broadband, but rather that not everyone does have adequate broadband. Not everyone in Nintendo's potential target market has the needed access to download a whole console title in a reasonable amount of time, what with folks in rural areas sometimes only able to get dial-up here in the US, where we seem to lack any national plan for internet infrastructure. And now that I think of it, there are other markets that Nintendo sells to that have unfavorable internet operating constraints, such as Australia, where apparently bandwidth is quite limited and rather expensive. With that in mind, I'm not sure if going download-only would be attractive to Nintendo if it also means losing a sizable chunk of the potential market for Wii titles -- hence my additional comment that I suppose it would work okay if the games could be bought both online and in disc form.
Cheers,
You're right, downloading DVDs-worth of content isn't impossible these days. My thought wasn't that such bandwidth is completely unavailable, but rather that it is spotty, what with folks in rural areas sometimes only able to get dial-up here in the US, where we seem to lack any national plan for internet infrastructure. With that in mind, I'm not sure if going download-only would be attractive to Nintendo if it also means losing a sizable chunk of the Wii's potential market.
Cheers,
They've just recently announced that the base package will come with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort, with the included Wiimote now coming equipped with the Wii Motion Plus by default. Linky.
The old Wii (got mine 3~4 years ago) already comes with a slot for an SD card, and these come in GB sizes these days. Sticking a 2GB card in my Wii's slot gives me a huge amount of room to store downloaded games from the online Wii store.
Ah. I see you're talking about selling disc-based games online instead, not just the current WiiWare and Virtual Console online offerings. That might fly in Europe, but I wonder if US infrastructure is really up for that? I suppose it would work okay if the games could be bought both online and in disc form. Part of Nintendo's reticence to offer full disc games online might also have to do with control -- I haven't tried popping a Wii disc into a PC, but if the discs use a proprietary data format (non-ISO), or even just if the games require the presence of the disc, it would offer one extra layer of protection against cracks. Disc presence is a bugaboo for PC games, but for a console, it's just expected. I'm not sure if Nintendo (or Sony or MS, for that matter) would be all too willing to give that up.
From the Wikipedia article:
Admittedly, requiring a USB-Ethernet adapter for wired connectivity is a bit of a barrier, but the option does exist.
And, FWIW, I know of a number of people who have not yet gotten a Wii, who are thinking of doing so now that the Netflix partnership is up and running. And I've found that Netflix via our Wii seems to work better than via our MacBook laptop -- I don't know what they changed in the streaming algorithms, but we seldom see buffering problems on the Wii vs. pretty common on the laptop, and the resolution looks better on the Wii as well, less pixelated. YMMV, and all that.
I agree, wholeheartedly. Part of what made the Wii work so well competition-wise is that it brought something truly novel to the table. I have trouble imagining what the next big novel development would be, but that's the thing about real novelty -- it's new. :) Maybe 3D? That would depend on TV technology, so probably not. Maybe some funky new control scheme? That might open up a whole can of lawsuit worms, but who knows? It's fun thinking about, and anticipating, and it's fun playing the current Wii to, so there you go.
Cheers,
As the GP notes, it's already happened . When I left Japan in summer 2005, the slowest speed I could possibly get was around 24MBps, for a whopping $30/month ($20/month for the first three months). I have no idea what the minimum ISP offering is there now, but I'm sure it beats the pants off anything I could get here in USia. For that matter, here in Seattle, I get around 1.5MBps, for substantially more than $30/month... <sigh.>
Cheers,
Add the modern caveat that Corporations == People, and I'm right there with you.
PR firm Murray Hill runs for office.
Cheers,
I'm curious here -- what exactly do you mean by And yes they are entitled?
I'm genuinely curious what you meant.
Cheers,
Neato, so they're busy waving around a copy of the law, and / or bragging about it? :)
From Merriam-Webster:
<----------
Main Entry: flaunt
Function: verb
Etymology: perhaps of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse flana to rush around
Date: 1566
intransitive verb
1 : to display or obtrude oneself to public notice <a great flaunting crowd — Charles Dickens>
2 : to wave or flutter showily <the flag flaunts in the breeze>
transitive verb
1 : to display ostentatiously or impudently : parade <flaunting his superiority>
2 : to treat contemptuously <flaunted the rules — Louis Untermeyer> (see note)
synonyms see show
---------->
The word you're looking for here is flout:
<----------
Main Entry: flout
Function: verb
Etymology: probably from Middle English flouten to play the flute, from floute flute
Date: 1551
transitive verb
: to treat with contemptuous disregard : scorn <flouting the rules>
intransitive verb
: to indulge in scornful behavior
synonyms see scoff
---------->
Note: It seems enough folks have confused flout and flaunt that the two are increasingly conflated, as noted in the second transitive definition for flaunt above. M-W includes a usage note at the bottom of the entry for flaunt describing this. (However, it's also worth noting that some of their examples as given indicate possible confusion by M-W's own editorial staff.)
One possibly useful mnemonic is to think of flaunt as a flag waving, and to think of flout as getting out of something.
Cheers,
So, let me guess, they're going up against Rutan et al for the next X Prize? Cool!
Cheers,
As I just posted in reply to man_of_mr_e, I stand corrected. Thank you for your post.
This leads me to wonder if this pattern holds true in other cultures as well? The basic premise seems to be based on a certain kind of (hopefully white) lie by those requesting budget allocations, and an implicit assumption by upper management that no one's budget requests can be trusted at face value. While I'm reasonably sure that this basic pattern holds true to some degree for most of human organizational budgetary behaviour, I wonder to what degree things change between cultures? Something to ponder anyway.
Cheers,
Pardon, but I have to jump in here.
Your points are all good ones. At the same time, it is also important to note that the Munich changeover is happening as part of a public government process. This changes the dynamic substantially.
In the private sector, the idea is to come in under budget, and the savings can (potentially) be counted towards profit -- meaning more power and prestige to the person in charge of the project.
In the public sector, the idea is to use all of the budget (or even more if possible), and this can be used to justify asking for more money in the next budget cycle -- meaning more power and prestige to the person in charge of the project.
The politics of budget appropriation results in a very different modus operandi. Consequently, budget overruns in any public enterprise cannot be taken as proof that the enterprise itself is inherently expensive.
-----
Note that this applies to how projects are handled *internally* to an organization. When the project is external, a private company selling its services for example may often find ways of coming in over *someone else's* budget, because this means getting more money.
Cheers,
Anecdote, correlation, all the usual caveats.
I had dinner the other day at a sushi place here in Redmond, and wound up sitting next to four Microsoft folks. In the course of conversation, I asked if Microsoft ever had an "eat your own dogfood" kind of policy, and they all rolled their eyes and said yes, and described the fun of moving to Office 2007 and the joys of losing email access, sometimes for days at a time.
Second-hand info (well, third-hand for readers of this post), to be sure, but it seems with no problems is not the whole truth of the matter.
Just sayin'.
Cheers,