You can either automate your home the way you want to and use the best tool for the job, or you can bash your head against the wall and try to use open source stuff that pales in comparison.
I use my computer as a tool, it's not a religion, so I'll use what works best.
If you're trying to make a case study about how Linux can automate your home -- have at it.
With MS launching Office for the web, I think OO.o's enhancement rates are going to pale in comparison to the 'free' price (and premium price) for businesses to run Office on the web.
Sorry, but it's not just about the *documents* any more. It's about sharing information, about collaboration, about versioning -- all which MS has positioned themselves for. OO.O is fighting the last generation war, and still losing.
I do look forward to the new version though, if I need a simple word processor for my mom it will work while I wait on Office on the web.
I think most people accept the idea of getting an undergraduate degree. For me as a person who can 'hire', I don't look at a degree as any sign of information, or intelligence -- I look at it as a sign of dedication and an ability to stick with something and finish it. As I often tell people, what you learned in college is already 4 years out of date. Granted, I hire for technical positions so it doesn't apply universally.
Postgrad degrees honestly, have a diminishing return. PHD students are diminishing, and gladly for the VERY smart and outlandish people (my brother is one) they get full rides to school because they spent so much time 'preparing' for grad school. Other people don't. So the 'next generation' of scholars is going to thin out, while people like my brother will be able to command a great salary because he's in an ever shrinking field of academia. The problem multiplies, as fewer scholars = fewer teachers = more demand = higher university rates for those who CAN teach.
To boot, we don't generally VALUE those PHDs or advanced degrees. Why bother with a PHD, or MD, when you can make more money in less time getting a finance degree, and playing with other people's money, walking away with big bonuses and not worrying about long term affects because your reimbursement is right now. The emphasis we as a society put on the 'finance' field is greatly alluring, even in a down economy because you have people making millions by moving numbers around in Excel (I worked Wall Street on a hedge fund as a BA, I did the manipulations). Personally, I'd love to see more doctors (especially as our healthcare needs increase), more teachers, etc -- but our society doesn't seem to value those people and thus, we are left with the biggest part of our economy pumped into "defense" and now bailouts for people that got rich already and screwed the economy up.
I don't know the answer, but I am sure the path we are on is wrong. That said, my student loans are about $70k right now, but they are privatized and pegged to the prime rate, which for the last few years has been far better than what the government is offering. And for those who think you can write off interest -- it's only to a certain point. You can't write it ALL off if you paid $8000+ (like I have for many years) in interest only payments.
Right now Nokia has the biggest share of market for phones because their phones are high quality. This is echoed by results in Japan and Asia where users continually buy Nokia because they can beat the living shit out of the phone and still make a call.
Symbian is a piece of crap. It always was, and it never really evolved much. It's right down there with Windows Mobile. And the iPhone OSX is probably the best OS out there. Sure, Android is open source -- but how has that benefitted it so far? Look at the quality of the product -- it sucks. It may evolve, but it's not taking on strides like the mention to Firefox in TFA, and there's no reason to assume that Nokia is going to get a huge bump from just the benefit of O/S.
As I heard many years ago, an O/S project and closed source project can be about the same quality, as long as the number of focused eyes are reviewing the code per iteration. Firefox has a great community behind it which is why the benefit of being O/S helps, but look at Android -- fully open source, still sucks. iPhone's software is the easiest to use and has propogated the most thus far.
I am not sold on the benefit of open source for a variety of applications, and mobile development is yet another. Firefox has it working because it offers up a better browser with more options than IE ever did -- so the community is great. Android is another "also ran" in the mobile market, and if Nokia put Windows Mobile (yuck) on their phones they'd still be #1 in the world. Goes to show, that open source alone isn't going to make a huge difference.
It will be nice to take a peek at the underlying structure though.
I mean, I am not going to stand here and say one language or platform is better than another, but this article is disingenuous at best.
It's a blunder by the consulting company, and maybe the software they found wasn't up to snuff. They found one that is. Whether it's open source or not is irrelevant. Whether it's.NET or not is irrelevant.
If I posted a story about a.NET app replacing a traditionally open source software role, would that be an indictment of open source? No.
And no more than it is an indictment against.NET.
With that said, I find.NET pretty easy to work with (and I'm far from a programmer) but it's relatively easy and the object model is simple to follow even for novices like me. I delve more into Powershell stuff for admin tasks, but it's nice to see that the same model I can apply to VB or C#.
It's really not that bad a platform to develop on, but if this article helps you to believe that -- hey, feel free. It's usually in the developer's hand to deliver you a good product, not the platform itself.
In this case neither had the disease though. Obviously, they can't expose the individuals to the disease purposely.
My problem with the random assignment is that you have no way of measuring whether one group had more risky sex or not. So you aren't measuring whether the drug works at all, because if by chance, Group A just had less risky sex and Group B had more, the chances are obviously higher for Group B to get infected. Thus, the measurement of the drug preventing the disease is skewed.
I don't know how to do it 'better', the only way to do that is to get people to willingly have sex with those with HIV and see how it works out, but obviously that's immoral and unethical and just plain mean, so the only way to measure seems to be the way they conducted -- unfortunately without capturing their sexual behaviors and whether they had sex with HIV infected people, the ultimate result of this study seems pointless to me, at least.
I understand the principle behind the randomization, but if you aren't accounting for their propensity to engage in risky behavior that would get them the disease, how does a vaccine get tested in that instance?
I mean ultimately, all you proved is that group B is more likely to get HIV than group A. I have seen random studies done plenty of times, so to avoid bias, but this avoids bias and avoid accuracy too.
I'm not saying they purposely took more risk, I'm just saying it may have just so happened to be that way, that the group with the placebo took more risk than the one with the regular drug.
IE5 at its time, was great compared to Netscape. MS has a lot of internal resources, many of which are currently working on the Windows Mobile 7 OS. When that task completes, they will move on.
Right now the big allure is HTML5 support and some other things. The average internet user doesn't know what "Chrome" is, much less the Chrome plugin, and unless it's pre-installed on the OS, they won't EVER know. They just know that "E" on the desktop gives them internet.
Keep in mind, there are still a LOT of people running IE6, Windows XP SP1, and other outdated software. They won't update any time soon, either, until their PC dies or is totally unusable. Google is hoping that their cloud services will be a great offering and replace what the desktop OS traditionally does, and they create a fast and neat browser that hooks into their services like Gears or Wave or whatever -- and guess what? Nobody is going to use it for a LONG TIME.
HTML5 is still in draft stages, and it will likely be years before there's any progress made to confirm it. The video standard is still up in the air, so nobody knows anything yet on that front, and Google already 'supports' it. Well, they support their interpretation of it. I'm hoping for Ogg myself:)
I have no doubt, that when push comes to shove and MS starts getting a real threat that makes a mark on their bottom line due to HTML5, or more adoption or education on consumers, they will make a paradigm shift. Who would have thought that the OS after Vista would come out so quickly, and be so great (Windows 7)? But they did it, and I have no doubt they will do it again with IE, and do it yet again with Windows Mobile. But that's the nice thing, Google in this fight makes it competitive, and competition is good for all of us as consumers.
Another indie company out there, making an overly ambitious PvP game in a fantasy setting, is pretty much the antithesis of what 'indy developers' should look like.
They announced a beta whereby, you would pay for the whole game up front, and they'd let you into what they called a "staged beta", where most features weren't "turned on" (or what people really believe, is that they aren't even developed).
I had high hopes for that game, but unfortunately it's going to wind up as a steaming pile of shit. I am looking forward to Global Agenda now.
I have heard rumblings of a 'new title' in the works in the MMO space for you guys, but I am curious to see if there's a tilt towards a more PvP oriented MMO, instead of WOW which is decidedly PvE with the greatest content available for raiding, quests, etc. Since WOW has a big issue with regards to 'gear' and the ability in combat, I wonder if you are settling or thinking about your next MMO with player skill in mind, at least with a greater emphasis than 'gear' like WOW has.
This trend can only last for so long. While Macs have a certain appeal to them that is aesthetic, their usability has not gone up in the enterprise, nor in the home market. They dominate the audio video editing because of their software, but beyond that... they don't (to me) offer a hell of a lot. And their architecture needs only a few targetted viruses (see Pwn2Own) competition before they lose that propoganda campaign that assumes Macs are more secure than Windows.
Was super fast, had a bunch of benefits, and at the end, nobody wants to program for it. Sure, people do it, but if you read folks like Carmack who prefer Xbox programming than PS3 simply because it's easier to program in, it makes you wonder about the utility of all this new architecture when the development tools aren't mature to support it.
That said, I'm far from a programmer so I can't make any assumptions about this -- but all I can say is I wonder how it will play out, either like Cell or like Intel. I have no idea.
I'm not looking for innovation in Starcraft 2, but I think we may see some things expanded on that will be nice. And I love Starcraft to this day, so the logical extension is Starcraft 2:)
SOASE looks great from what I've heard, haven't gotten to trying it yet. Now that it's bargain bin I may give it a shot.
But again, all the games you're mentioning are years old. This year unfortunately, wasn't that great. That's what the link was all about:)
They don't all have to be like that. Mortal Online is a rehash of an older MMO, Starcraft is yet another RTS. I'm an avid CS:Source player as well.
I'm just saying that developers seem to have no motivation to TRY. Bioshock was good because they gave you one part of the puzzle -- a great story. Most games don't even have that. Hitman does, Thief did, Max Payne did. It made their games fun to play.
I'm sure I'll enjoy lots of games, SF4 is a game I do enjoy but I do get bored of it too. But paying $60 bucks for a game that is pretty much a carbon copy of Street Fighter 2, with a few new characters? It's ridiculous.
I can be entertained doing anything, but understand that there will be a point of stagnation in the gaming industry if all they want to do is repackage and resell the same old shit. Occasionally I'll buy it, for nostalgic purposes like Street Fighter 4, but most times I'll pass it over because the price doesn't match the benefit any longer. It's easier just to replay a game you already played because it's the same thing. When the triple A titles are shooters that are marginally different than older titles, then the gaming industry needs to know that innovation is what people are looking for. I know repackaging the same game works for a while, but when people catch on it's not going to fly. That's why I'm playing TF2, CSS, and Starcraft right now rather than buying anything else.
Look at the Wii for an example. It innovated, it sold like hotcakes and still is. Zelda is another game with a great story, sells like hotcakes.
If you build it, they will come.
And yes, I'm a tough critic but if they want my money they better try harder too. If you're an easy sell then you're exactly the reason we get shitty games on a regular basis.
Street Fighter 4 is the same game it was, just a bit newer. I own it, but it's not revolutionary. It's just another Street Fighter. Fun for sure, but it gets boring with the unlock system they have, and Xbox Live matchups are retarded because it breaks all the time.
Left 4 Dead I love, but again -- that's a bit older now. It has some things that make it pretty unique, but with only 4 campaigns to play... it gets boring quickly also. There's also no fluid story to it, which would have been nice to have as well, given the fact that it's about a zombie infestation kind of like that movie, 30 days later.
Haven't played Aztaka but I'll take a look.
Command and Conquer... ever since they dropped Kari Wuhrer and her huge boobs for Tanya, I lost interest. I loved the original Red Alert though, but again -- it's a rehash of a typical RTS. I find Starcraft far more engaging to this day.
Assasin's Creed has horrendous controls on the Xbox. You need 10 fingers on each hand to play that game, I feel like I'm a contortionist. It's a nice game, has some good visuals, but all in all -- it is reminiscent of "Thief" and "Hitman", and "Max Payne", games I enjoy on their own.
Again... I want different types of games, not the same game rehashed in a new way. RTSes have been done to death. When will somebody reinvent the genre? Maybe Blizzard with Starcraft 2... FPSes have been done to death also, I've played every iteration of them and they are largely the same.
Defcon for example, is a game that was NEVER done like it was. It was totally and utterly unique. Another one was Portal, which was amazing and fun, and challenging. I'm not saying that other games aren't fun -- most games are fun for a time, but they usually encompass newer technology to show you better versions of the same old thing. I'm looking for a game that encompasses new technology to do things that you've never seen done in a game.
Starcraft 2 I'm waiting on, Mortal Online (it's a rehash of Ultima Online in 3D, or so I hope it is), and Global Agenda which is really Team Fortress MMO. Aside from that, there's nothing on the brink of release that excites me. Maybe Rage from id Software, but I don't know when that's coming out. But id's games are usually tech demos anyway.
Plain and simple. The problem with developers is that they are confusing great technology with great games. They can go hand in hand, but largely speaking -- games need story, innovation, depth. I played Defcon a few years back and was amazed at what innovation was put into such a small game.
Too bad the only thing developers do is give us some form of a shooter lately, and change the graphics and call it amazing. Bioshock had a good story, but that was like 2 years ago already.
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You can either automate your home the way you want to and use the best tool for the job, or you can bash your head against the wall and try to use open source stuff that pales in comparison.
I use my computer as a tool, it's not a religion, so I'll use what works best.
If you're trying to make a case study about how Linux can automate your home -- have at it.
I prefer actually getting the job done.
With MS launching Office for the web, I think OO.o's enhancement rates are going to pale in comparison to the 'free' price (and premium price) for businesses to run Office on the web.
Sorry, but it's not just about the *documents* any more. It's about sharing information, about collaboration, about versioning -- all which MS has positioned themselves for. OO.O is fighting the last generation war, and still losing.
I do look forward to the new version though, if I need a simple word processor for my mom it will work while I wait on Office on the web.
I think most people accept the idea of getting an undergraduate degree. For me as a person who can 'hire', I don't look at a degree as any sign of information, or intelligence -- I look at it as a sign of dedication and an ability to stick with something and finish it. As I often tell people, what you learned in college is already 4 years out of date. Granted, I hire for technical positions so it doesn't apply universally.
Postgrad degrees honestly, have a diminishing return. PHD students are diminishing, and gladly for the VERY smart and outlandish people (my brother is one) they get full rides to school because they spent so much time 'preparing' for grad school. Other people don't. So the 'next generation' of scholars is going to thin out, while people like my brother will be able to command a great salary because he's in an ever shrinking field of academia. The problem multiplies, as fewer scholars = fewer teachers = more demand = higher university rates for those who CAN teach.
To boot, we don't generally VALUE those PHDs or advanced degrees. Why bother with a PHD, or MD, when you can make more money in less time getting a finance degree, and playing with other people's money, walking away with big bonuses and not worrying about long term affects because your reimbursement is right now. The emphasis we as a society put on the 'finance' field is greatly alluring, even in a down economy because you have people making millions by moving numbers around in Excel (I worked Wall Street on a hedge fund as a BA, I did the manipulations). Personally, I'd love to see more doctors (especially as our healthcare needs increase), more teachers, etc -- but our society doesn't seem to value those people and thus, we are left with the biggest part of our economy pumped into "defense" and now bailouts for people that got rich already and screwed the economy up.
I don't know the answer, but I am sure the path we are on is wrong. That said, my student loans are about $70k right now, but they are privatized and pegged to the prime rate, which for the last few years has been far better than what the government is offering. And for those who think you can write off interest -- it's only to a certain point. You can't write it ALL off if you paid $8000+ (like I have for many years) in interest only payments.
Right now Nokia has the biggest share of market for phones because their phones are high quality. This is echoed by results in Japan and Asia where users continually buy Nokia because they can beat the living shit out of the phone and still make a call.
Symbian is a piece of crap. It always was, and it never really evolved much. It's right down there with Windows Mobile. And the iPhone OSX is probably the best OS out there. Sure, Android is open source -- but how has that benefitted it so far? Look at the quality of the product -- it sucks. It may evolve, but it's not taking on strides like the mention to Firefox in TFA, and there's no reason to assume that Nokia is going to get a huge bump from just the benefit of O/S.
As I heard many years ago, an O/S project and closed source project can be about the same quality, as long as the number of focused eyes are reviewing the code per iteration. Firefox has a great community behind it which is why the benefit of being O/S helps, but look at Android -- fully open source, still sucks. iPhone's software is the easiest to use and has propogated the most thus far.
I am not sold on the benefit of open source for a variety of applications, and mobile development is yet another. Firefox has it working because it offers up a better browser with more options than IE ever did -- so the community is great. Android is another "also ran" in the mobile market, and if Nokia put Windows Mobile (yuck) on their phones they'd still be #1 in the world. Goes to show, that open source alone isn't going to make a huge difference.
It will be nice to take a peek at the underlying structure though.
An indictment of .NET?
I mean, I am not going to stand here and say one language or platform is better than another, but this article is disingenuous at best.
It's a blunder by the consulting company, and maybe the software they found wasn't up to snuff. They found one that is. Whether it's open source or not is irrelevant. Whether it's .NET or not is irrelevant.
If I posted a story about a .NET app replacing a traditionally open source software role, would that be an indictment of open source? No.
And no more than it is an indictment against .NET.
With that said, I find .NET pretty easy to work with (and I'm far from a programmer) but it's relatively easy and the object model is simple to follow even for novices like me. I delve more into Powershell stuff for admin tasks, but it's nice to see that the same model I can apply to VB or C#.
It's really not that bad a platform to develop on, but if this article helps you to believe that -- hey, feel free. It's usually in the developer's hand to deliver you a good product, not the platform itself.
Unless you're doing audio or video editing, and that's not because of the OS, but the software.
When they can make over 6 figures easily, with private company perks and bonuses working outside the government.
If the DHS wants qualified people, they need to pay a competitive salary. Of course, u
In this case neither had the disease though. Obviously, they can't expose the individuals to the disease purposely.
My problem with the random assignment is that you have no way of measuring whether one group had more risky sex or not. So you aren't measuring whether the drug works at all, because if by chance, Group A just had less risky sex and Group B had more, the chances are obviously higher for Group B to get infected. Thus, the measurement of the drug preventing the disease is skewed.
I don't know how to do it 'better', the only way to do that is to get people to willingly have sex with those with HIV and see how it works out, but obviously that's immoral and unethical and just plain mean, so the only way to measure seems to be the way they conducted -- unfortunately without capturing their sexual behaviors and whether they had sex with HIV infected people, the ultimate result of this study seems pointless to me, at least.
I understand the principle behind the randomization, but if you aren't accounting for their propensity to engage in risky behavior that would get them the disease, how does a vaccine get tested in that instance?
I mean ultimately, all you proved is that group B is more likely to get HIV than group A. I have seen random studies done plenty of times, so to avoid bias, but this avoids bias and avoid accuracy too.
I'm not saying they purposely took more risk, I'm just saying it may have just so happened to be that way, that the group with the placebo took more risk than the one with the regular drug.
That's why the whole setup is bogus.
They gave the vaccine to people who didn't have aids in two groups, and then looked at who got aids after 3 years.
It could just be that people on the placebo took more risks than the people who didn't which is why it is a statistical outlier.
This is the most ridiculously published study I've ever seen, but if they are looking for funding, I guess it's a good way to get it.
At least, not yet.
IE5 at its time, was great compared to Netscape. MS has a lot of internal resources, many of which are currently working on the Windows Mobile 7 OS. When that task completes, they will move on.
Right now the big allure is HTML5 support and some other things. The average internet user doesn't know what "Chrome" is, much less the Chrome plugin, and unless it's pre-installed on the OS, they won't EVER know. They just know that "E" on the desktop gives them internet.
Keep in mind, there are still a LOT of people running IE6, Windows XP SP1, and other outdated software. They won't update any time soon, either, until their PC dies or is totally unusable. Google is hoping that their cloud services will be a great offering and replace what the desktop OS traditionally does, and they create a fast and neat browser that hooks into their services like Gears or Wave or whatever -- and guess what? Nobody is going to use it for a LONG TIME.
HTML5 is still in draft stages, and it will likely be years before there's any progress made to confirm it. The video standard is still up in the air, so nobody knows anything yet on that front, and Google already 'supports' it. Well, they support their interpretation of it. I'm hoping for Ogg myself :)
I have no doubt, that when push comes to shove and MS starts getting a real threat that makes a mark on their bottom line due to HTML5, or more adoption or education on consumers, they will make a paradigm shift. Who would have thought that the OS after Vista would come out so quickly, and be so great (Windows 7)? But they did it, and I have no doubt they will do it again with IE, and do it yet again with Windows Mobile. But that's the nice thing, Google in this fight makes it competitive, and competition is good for all of us as consumers.
And I am typing this on Firefox, so go figure :)
Another indie company out there, making an overly ambitious PvP game in a fantasy setting, is pretty much the antithesis of what 'indy developers' should look like.
They announced a beta whereby, you would pay for the whole game up front, and they'd let you into what they called a "staged beta", where most features weren't "turned on" (or what people really believe, is that they aren't even developed).
I had high hopes for that game, but unfortunately it's going to wind up as a steaming pile of shit. I am looking forward to Global Agenda now.
I have heard rumblings of a 'new title' in the works in the MMO space for you guys, but I am curious to see if there's a tilt towards a more PvP oriented MMO, instead of WOW which is decidedly PvE with the greatest content available for raiding, quests, etc. Since WOW has a big issue with regards to 'gear' and the ability in combat, I wonder if you are settling or thinking about your next MMO with player skill in mind, at least with a greater emphasis than 'gear' like WOW has.
Thanks!
This trend can only last for so long. While Macs have a certain appeal to them that is aesthetic, their usability has not gone up in the enterprise, nor in the home market. They dominate the audio video editing because of their software, but beyond that... they don't (to me) offer a hell of a lot. And their architecture needs only a few targetted viruses (see Pwn2Own) competition before they lose that propoganda campaign that assumes Macs are more secure than Windows.
Either way, time will tell.
Was super fast, had a bunch of benefits, and at the end, nobody wants to program for it. Sure, people do it, but if you read folks like Carmack who prefer Xbox programming than PS3 simply because it's easier to program in, it makes you wonder about the utility of all this new architecture when the development tools aren't mature to support it.
That said, I'm far from a programmer so I can't make any assumptions about this -- but all I can say is I wonder how it will play out, either like Cell or like Intel. I have no idea.
It shouldnt' have been a sequel, but that's a whole different argument.
I'm not looking for innovation in Starcraft 2, but I think we may see some things expanded on that will be nice. And I love Starcraft to this day, so the logical extension is Starcraft 2 :)
SOASE looks great from what I've heard, haven't gotten to trying it yet. Now that it's bargain bin I may give it a shot.
But again, all the games you're mentioning are years old. This year unfortunately, wasn't that great. That's what the link was all about :)
Same for Starcraft 2 for me -- I'm just hoping for more in the future :)
They don't all have to be like that. Mortal Online is a rehash of an older MMO, Starcraft is yet another RTS. I'm an avid CS:Source player as well.
I'm just saying that developers seem to have no motivation to TRY. Bioshock was good because they gave you one part of the puzzle -- a great story. Most games don't even have that. Hitman does, Thief did, Max Payne did. It made their games fun to play.
I'm sure I'll enjoy lots of games, SF4 is a game I do enjoy but I do get bored of it too. But paying $60 bucks for a game that is pretty much a carbon copy of Street Fighter 2, with a few new characters? It's ridiculous.
I can be entertained doing anything, but understand that there will be a point of stagnation in the gaming industry if all they want to do is repackage and resell the same old shit. Occasionally I'll buy it, for nostalgic purposes like Street Fighter 4, but most times I'll pass it over because the price doesn't match the benefit any longer. It's easier just to replay a game you already played because it's the same thing. When the triple A titles are shooters that are marginally different than older titles, then the gaming industry needs to know that innovation is what people are looking for. I know repackaging the same game works for a while, but when people catch on it's not going to fly. That's why I'm playing TF2, CSS, and Starcraft right now rather than buying anything else.
Look at the Wii for an example. It innovated, it sold like hotcakes and still is. Zelda is another game with a great story, sells like hotcakes.
If you build it, they will come.
And yes, I'm a tough critic but if they want my money they better try harder too. If you're an easy sell then you're exactly the reason we get shitty games on a regular basis.
I've heard good things, but it's barely released right now. I'm going to wait until after the teething period on that one.
Street Fighter 4 is the same game it was, just a bit newer. I own it, but it's not revolutionary. It's just another Street Fighter. Fun for sure, but it gets boring with the unlock system they have, and Xbox Live matchups are retarded because it breaks all the time.
Left 4 Dead I love, but again -- that's a bit older now. It has some things that make it pretty unique, but with only 4 campaigns to play... it gets boring quickly also. There's also no fluid story to it, which would have been nice to have as well, given the fact that it's about a zombie infestation kind of like that movie, 30 days later.
Haven't played Aztaka but I'll take a look.
Command and Conquer... ever since they dropped Kari Wuhrer and her huge boobs for Tanya, I lost interest. I loved the original Red Alert though, but again -- it's a rehash of a typical RTS. I find Starcraft far more engaging to this day.
Assasin's Creed has horrendous controls on the Xbox. You need 10 fingers on each hand to play that game, I feel like I'm a contortionist. It's a nice game, has some good visuals, but all in all -- it is reminiscent of "Thief" and "Hitman", and "Max Payne", games I enjoy on their own.
Again... I want different types of games, not the same game rehashed in a new way. RTSes have been done to death. When will somebody reinvent the genre? Maybe Blizzard with Starcraft 2... FPSes have been done to death also, I've played every iteration of them and they are largely the same.
Defcon for example, is a game that was NEVER done like it was. It was totally and utterly unique. Another one was Portal, which was amazing and fun, and challenging. I'm not saying that other games aren't fun -- most games are fun for a time, but they usually encompass newer technology to show you better versions of the same old thing. I'm looking for a game that encompasses new technology to do things that you've never seen done in a game.
Starcraft 2 I'm waiting on, Mortal Online (it's a rehash of Ultima Online in 3D, or so I hope it is), and Global Agenda which is really Team Fortress MMO. Aside from that, there's nothing on the brink of release that excites me. Maybe Rage from id Software, but I don't know when that's coming out. But id's games are usually tech demos anyway.
Most of the games that are coming out, suck.
Plain and simple. The problem with developers is that they are confusing great technology with great games. They can go hand in hand, but largely speaking -- games need story, innovation, depth. I played Defcon a few years back and was amazed at what innovation was put into such a small game.
Too bad the only thing developers do is give us some form of a shooter lately, and change the graphics and call it amazing. Bioshock had a good story, but that was like 2 years ago already.
For Windows?