You're moderated as funny, but I work in an office of licensed electrical engineers. Practically every other job I've ever had included the title "Engineer", but here I'm a "Computer Programmer"... never mind that the P.E.'s are entirely reliant on the computer programs they use to do any and all actual engineering.
Calling myself an engineer around here would result in nothing but pointless arguments.
The FCC isn't forcing broadcasters to transmit in HD only(yet). They're forcing them to transimit in digital only which is very different.
If you have to buy either a decoder or a new TV to view that digital channel, it's not really very different to the consumer. It's especially not different when the fact is that the vast majority of stations will transmit at least one HD channel, and the set-top boxes will receive those.
If you want off-the-air broadcasts, you'll have to get a tuner. If you get a tuner, you'll have a tuner capable of outputting HD content that your TV doesn't display properly. In this scenario, anyone who can afford to will want to buy an HD display, so despite the fact that you are technically correct, the parent's point that a whole lot of people will upgrade their TV is also true.
Then again, who do you know that gets their TV over-the-air? I suppose the vast majority use cable or satellite, and actually won't have a lot of incentive to upgrade as a result. Hmmm.
But now people can more quickly discern an application by variations in window style... and that certainly works in favor of Expose.
I've been grasping for a *reason* for the difference between these applications... that's actually the main thing that bugs me. I'm not sure I so much mind applications having different basic looks so much as long as there is a *reason*. I've never heard a reason for these differences that made sense to me.
Safari is just plain ol' Brushed Metal, it's different from regular-look-and-feel Cocoa apps because um, it's supposed to be used only for apps that mimic a 'physical device', like I guess an eBook reader or IM-capable phone or MP3 player ? Enough text has been wasted wondering if that makes sense, I won't repeat it here.
Mail looks different because it has this new thing I think they're calling a Unified Toolbar, where a tool bar and title bar are combined ( why? what's the benefit, I can drag the window by grabbing between toolbar buttons, what's that? ).
Now, I don't personally like either of those things, and I find the justifications for them pretty thin, but... what about iTunes? Why does it look different? It has pointier corners and a different skin/gradient, why exactly? The only reason I could think of before now was that it's sharing code with the PC version and as such isn't *really* a Cocoa app in the same way as the other apps, and has started to get a slightly different look... but that's just a theory, I have no idea. Maybe it's prepping for a look-and-feel we'll see with the Intel switch, or maybe Apple just wants it's most important application ever to Look Different(TM).
So your theory about these being different for distinction in Expose makes a *little* sense, and I thought maybe you were onto something for a minute... except that they're all pretty minor differences, really, that are likely to be lost when the window is so much smaller. I'm looking more at the contents of the window in Expose, not the border and toolbar so much. So while it's an interesting theory, I'm guessing that the difference has less to do with Expose and more to do with UI Guidelines being viewed more as flexible guidelines, not as very important rules to always follow... and the differences are due to an 'evolution' in programming tools and freedom given to individual project divisions within Apple, more than anything else. While UI Guidelines are still important, maybe now the religion is about progress and features, not UI guidelines.
The differences are still annoying, at least to a seasoned Apple user and programmer. You just look at it, and you think, "what is going on HERE?" Pick something and stick with it! Geesh!
The Steve (as opposed to The Woz) does fight for perfection, but he also fights hard for rapid development, early deployment, and lots and lots of features.
That's extremely insightful, you don't work with the man, do you ?
My recollection of briefly working for Steve involves a meeting with a group of 8 engineers where he pretty well had everyone convinced that they could, in a few months' time, fully test an entire OS and extensive application suite, on new hardware, while writing a couple of never-before-imagined applications. In short, we were all going to pull off some miracles, pretty much because of a Steve pep talk. It's great to have inspired engineers, and sometimes people can pull of miracles, but that's a scary way to develop products on a schedule and a budget.
My biggest beef with OS X software ( aside from the Finder, which just needs a *complete* re-write ) is the recent lack of UI consistency. Try this : launch Safari, Mail, and iTunes ( most recent versions, in OS X 10.4 ). Check out the look of the windows... are any of them the same? Not really, they're all slightly different-looking... and iTunes looks like no other OS X app ever !
The difference between brushed metal and standard windows was annoying and unnecessary enough, but what is the rationalization for those three Apple-authored applications having such different looks ? Who needs 4 different styles of window dressing on a single machine? They're making Windows look like the platform with UI consistency, WTF is going on at Apple with these differing looks for different apps ?
I think some of the very worst software comes from hardware manufacturers. HP printers for instance
The software for their scanners makes their printer software look fantastic. It's that bad... when it's available. We bought a nice HP scanner partly because it would "soon" support OS X. Over a year later, nothing. Eventually, they did release what they billed as an "OS X" version of the package... which required Classic to install (!) , and didn't have many of the features of the Classic version, and crashes on top of that.
It's too bad, HP used to be a quality company staffed by professional engineers.
My first clue that something was wrong with this was in the article summary... since when is AJAX considered a "Microsoft technology" ? If there's a defining AJAX app, isn't it Google Maps ? Is there some Microsoft AJAX app or developer kit I should be aware of ?
I'm going to have to disagree with something you've said, though:
we all need to evolve past the "You are looking at a flat page" ideology.
Why ? Flat pages are very useful for documents. Hyperlinks are great for linking documents. "Plain old web pages" remain, IMHO, the most useful aspect of this thing we now call "the web"... cool apps like Google Maps are cool and all, but they'd be just as cool ( probably cooler ) outside of a browser. Requiring a high-speed connection and robust ( or even particular ) Javascript implementation on the client side just to view your web page is what doesn't make sense, at least to me.
Then again, maybe I'm just getting old, but back in the day, we just had static web pages and forms, and we liked it!
What if you, as an iTunes buyer were allowed to sell your copy of a song you purchased on an iTunes auction market. It's DRMed, so if you did go through the iTunes marketplace, Apple should be able to enforce the proper rights on the song and transfer them to the new owner (please ignore the burning to CD loophole for a second, this is merely an academic exercise).
I'm not sure you need to *really* ignore the burning to CD loophole. I mean, it's not like you can burn to a CD and then turn that AIFF or MP3 file into a Fairplay DRMed iTunes Marketplace track- not only do you not have the licensing encoder, but the re-encoded song isn't going to be byte-for-byte what you originally purchased ( the "non-stolen" ) verison. Selling a repackaged song like that, you'd likely get caught, and most people wouldn't even think to do it.
Sure you could always buy a song, burn CDs of it, then sell it back, but then you're stealing music ( since you don't own your original to the 'backup' you've kept ). If you're going to do that, you might as well just copy a friend's disc ( or a stranger's disc off of the network ). The honest folk who use iTunes Music Store and the like typically won't do that... unless they think the music just isn't worth it to them... which is where your plan breaks down. It's not a typical market; if the product starts getting too expensive, suddenly people start making their own ( at zero cost ), and the price is going to float back down to where the consumer feels comfortable buying again.
There's something else that's different, here, though, something that everyone seems to be missing. Any such market-based pricing can't ignore actual, phsical media sales. If the model is so good, why doesn't it work for CDs? Are popular CDs more expensive? No? They're usually less expensive, aren't they? Are resold used CDs, even in perfect condition, as expensive as music companies price new discs ? No? Interesting... perhaps CDs are too expensive, then, and since 99 cents a song aproximates CD prices, maybe it's too much as well, *especially* for popular songs, which should be *cheaper* than unpopular ones... as they are even in the brick-and-mortar stores.
Let's face it, short of creating artificial shortages ( by not cranking out CDs and not selling digital copies, something like Disney does with movies ), or charging higher-than-true-market prices, companies with cheap publishing costs and fixed development costs simply aren't able to justify charging a lot for product once development costs are covered. Once a band's recording and promotion are paid for, there's not much reason for the price of their music to be even 99 cents a song, really... it should be cheaper, and *really* popular music should be used promotionally, given away nearly free ( think radio ) by labels, to lure people into checking out their other offerings.
Eventually, maybe the labels will accept the reality of what I'm going to term the 'low-end theory of publishing', not that the product is low-end, but that the publishing cost is so low that it drives the price of popular items down.
Yes, but all of that can happen if they just make Front Row available as a Mac application... maybe part of the next iLife package. All those photos and music are also going to need space as well.
FYI, there are what appear to be well-known hacks which allow you to install Front Row on any ol' Macintosh. You should be able to find them doing a web search ( I'm too old to just say 'google' )...
I'm sure the designers prefer to think of it as "two buttons and a circle"... I recently had a chance to play with one, and although you're right about the number of buttons it has, after reading your post I first thought "it didn't really have that many buttons, did it ?", I just remembered a menu button and a play/pause control group.
See, the problem is this thing has too many features. Volume up, volume down, change selection left, change selection right, play/pause, menu... that's just too many functions!!
My mother-in-law still won't be able to figure it out.
How is this different from a website that just streams you video? Media center... yeah right. I'll keep my TiVos.
Um... you watch it in the living room, select it with a remote that also lets you get all all of your music and photos?
I am certainly not getting rid of *my* TiVo any time soon ( they'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands *after* giving me something better and cheaper ), but I do see some value in *easily* being able to view photos and listen to music from my computer using a remote in my living room.
Really, not a lot about what's covered here is new, it's just packaged in a more-convenient-than-ever form... typical Apple style.
Of course, it's all the typical speculation. January is soon enough, anyone with anything to do should wait and worry about it then.
Also, I've heard rumblings that the Blu-ray drives that Sony might incorporate into the PS3 might have slower data transfer speeds than their DVD brothers. If that is the case, the load times might be oppressive.
Wow do I find that hard to believe... unless they're talking about DVD-ROM data read rates, and even then, they can't be that much slower, can they?
If it is less likely for the customers to buy thier old DVD movies again, is there anything to be gained by a hard push for the media?
I think they're looking long-term, where there will be a lot of replacement buying, as well as competing with broadband alternatives that don't yet exist ( and won't likely be HD )... they may also be thinking about making more per disc, at least initially. Having a new format means selling more product... how much more really doesn't matter much, does it?
Thanks for the insightful and interesting writing-gig comments...
Sure, some will want HD movies for their HD living rooms, but I can't imagine many people paying so much extra for the equipment and the media when they are satisfied with what they have.
Then again, I didn't believe anyone would buy a UMD movie for $20. I've been wrong before.
Well, people with money are funny that way... the HD content folks are looking ahead to a time when most people have HD displays in their living rooms. Over-the-air standard definition broadcasts *will* actually stop soon, HD display prices are ( finally! ) starting to really drop, and even cable and satellite operators are starting to get their HD delivery capability in place. We haven't hit the HD tipping point yet, but we'll see it in the next two-to-five years.
Your average family won't be replacing their old DVDs even after they get HD sets and HD DVD/Blu-ray players, but they'll be buying new media in HD, and people will likely eventually replace some of their more high-end-cinematic favorites with HD versions, much as they replaced their tape collections. Not en masse, but they will buy new copies here and there, depending on budget and tastes.
I actually see the Sony strategy of offering Blu-ray in the PS3 as an acknowledgment of the fact that plenty of people, at least initially, won't be willing to spend a lot of money on 'just a better DVD player'. I think they're actually counting on that mindset to give Blu-ray the boost over HD-DVD that they need... and I think they're smart like a fox.
Trust me. It is not that hard to get published. If I can do it, you can do it.
Ha, you know what ? I don't doubt it for a second. I even have publishing world connections, what am I thinking? I guess I'm thinking that writing isn't going to get me the big bucks... am I wrong? Should I write prose instead of code?
At least the Nintendo handhelds are still relatively cheap to develop for. Hopefully some smaller firms can survive there. Who knows, maybe Live Arcade or the Revolution will support the smaller guys. Nintendo execs talk about a broad price range for the Rev every so often, and Xbox Live arcade seems to have worked for at least one developer.
Very astute point ! Here's the rub though: the smaller developer and more limited shops have to recognize their limitations as a business. Overextending yourself as a business and betting the farm on an expensive project is risky... so, like the article says, companies making big games ( like companies making big-budget movies ) take considerable risk... a situation that will inevitably cause some companies ( and sadly, their employees ) some grief. Still, it's not as if there won't be opportunity in the industry... game software companies are just going to have to be smart to do well.
um, that's a desktop disk, peripherals, USB devices, and GPU... and motherboard, not that it matters. They picked them ( well, everything but the mobo ) to match their previously benchmarked desktop system. If you were to actually build a laptop, the total system draw would very likely end up being less... heck, probably that GPU is a good percentage of the power draw.
The people who know for sure are under NDA to not say, but if I had to bet ?
Hell yea. This is the Macintosh Intel laptop chip that's been planned all along. Will it be for the PowerBook, or iBook, or might it show up in the Mac mini first ? Those are the only *real* questions regarding the Yonah.
The only reason I think this might show up in the iBook is that they said "low end machines" would be updated first, but I can't imagine the iBook would get these and the PowerBook wouldn't... hmmm...
Maybe if more Christians took more of a stand and told people to stop swearing, drinking, screwing around or watching porn the society at large would be more courteous, have less drunk drivers, and broken marriages.
Hold on just a minute. We're talking about VIDEO GAMES. Not any of that other stuff. There are laws about that other stuff, actually. You can be cited for creating a disturbance if you even so much as swear loudly enough and frequently enough in a public place.
But we're talking about something similar to reading a book or watching a movie, not something you do on the street. Ok, maybe if a game is pornographic ( really? Where do you buy that game? ) and on a PSP or something, that's a problem, but it's one *already covered by a law* if you're out in public.
Also, and *PAY ATTENION*, this is key... have you heard of something called "FREEDOM" ? It's a word bandied about a lot these days, but it does actually mean something. It means that sometimes, people will do, say, read, think and otherwise express things that you don't like. Oppose their ability to do those things, and you are, in fact, opposing freedom. Christians, true Christians, should look to history and see what the censorship and suppression of expression and thought has done to Christians in the past ( I'm thinking about lions here... )... real Christians go for that "hate the sin, love the sinner" thing, and know something about forgiveness and reform.
People make mistakes. Giving them the opportunity to do so is what life ( and freedom ) is all about.
*Tell* people that *you believe* what they're doing is wrong all you like, that's fine. *Prevent* people from having the freedom to screw things up, and yes, you may actually be a fascist. It's a thin line, really. Watch it.
To get retailers to start carding everybody for games?
Um, do the do that for DVDs ? If yes, then you have a point. If no, then you're asking to hold games to a higher standard, and I'm going to ask why.
Reality is that the NIMF are right-wing wackos...
on
The ESRB Gets An 'F'
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· Score: 1, Flamebait
and when I say that I mean *extreme* right-wing wackos. They are the U.S. equivalent of the Taliban, except ( as far as we know ) they aren't heavily armed, just heavily funded.
True, normal Christians are done a great disservice by these extremists who pretend to speak for them. We should all applaud the ESRB for calling them out on their socio-political agenda.
Actually, I feel a little bad for lumping the NIMF in with a lot of right-wingers, many of whom are really *fiscal* conservatives but would prefer *less* government involvement in our lives, not more... the NIMF wants a nanny state that polices the morals of grown adults and children alike... and when they can't force the government to step in ( usually due to these annoying "rights" people insist on ), they lobby business to do it for them.
Really, culture and social values should be taugh by PARENTS, and the NIMF should find something more useful to do than trying to censor entertainment and media. Maybe feeding the hungry, if they're such good Christians.
People use the 'code should be self documenting' excuse because they are lazy and don't want to take the time to actually write documentation.
Amen, brother, though that could be "lazy or don't have time"
too often I feel like I don't have time, or tell myself "I'm just prototyping here and will comment it later, I'm not showing this to anyone else yet" which is a mistake, because later I have a mass of code with no comments that need them, and you just won't write useful comments that way.
I've found there are two types of comments which are important. First there's the comment you should write before starting a block of code- the one that talks about what it needs to do. The second type of comment is the one you write somewhere in-line, which talks about how and possibly why something non-obvious is being done.
Mostly I've found that if you're thinking you don't have enough time to write comments for your code, it's an indication that you're spending too much time writing comments for slashdot.
1.8 Billion SOFTWARE, 200+ Million PS1+PS2s...
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100 Million PS2s Shipped
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· Score: 4, Interesting
so, how much does it pay to be a slashdot editor, because I'm sure I'd actually read the linked article and check the story for obvious errors before submitting it ( yea, I'll be modded down, but isn't that what an "editor" is supposed to do? Half the damn posts here are about the story's "1.86 billion hardware" mistake... )
Anyway, a key point here is ( or should be ) that there have been 1.86 *billion* Sony Playstation game disks sold. If the PS3 is backwards-compatible, that's a lot of people who have a lot of games they can *already* play on that system.
Another key point is that the PS2 is going to continue to be sold for some time, and is easily the most successful console of all time, selling 100 million in 5 years and still going strong. I know people who will be getting thier *first* PS2 this Christmas, and believe me, they aren't thinking of it as a console near the end of it's life. I expect the PSone to be phased out sometime after the introduction of the PS3, but the PS2 is going to be around for a while yet.
Slashdot Mirror
You're moderated as funny, but I work in an office of licensed electrical engineers. Practically every other job I've ever had included the title "Engineer", but here I'm a "Computer Programmer"... never mind that the P.E.'s are entirely reliant on the computer programs they use to do any and all actual engineering.
Calling myself an engineer around here would result in nothing but pointless arguments.
That's telecom for you...
If you have to buy either a decoder or a new TV to view that digital channel, it's not really very different to the consumer. It's especially not different when the fact is that the vast majority of stations will transmit at least one HD channel, and the set-top boxes will receive those.
If you want off-the-air broadcasts, you'll have to get a tuner. If you get a tuner, you'll have a tuner capable of outputting HD content that your TV doesn't display properly. In this scenario, anyone who can afford to will want to buy an HD display, so despite the fact that you are technically correct, the parent's point that a whole lot of people will upgrade their TV is also true.
Then again, who do you know that gets their TV over-the-air? I suppose the vast majority use cable or satellite, and actually won't have a lot of incentive to upgrade as a result. Hmmm.
Bad idea.
You'll have to change this sooner or later. Changing it sooner is better.
You can feel free to ignore this good advice, but it *is* good advice; even Microsoft thinks you should ditch ActiveX.
Is that humor, or flamebait? It can be so difficult to tell...
how bad does software have to get before people finally start to not use it?
Yea, why DO people use JavaScript anyway ? But seriously, people are still using Windows, so... I guess the answer is "really, really bad".
;-)
Humor, people, humor!
I've been grasping for a *reason* for the difference between these applications... that's actually the main thing that bugs me. I'm not sure I so much mind applications having different basic looks so much as long as there is a *reason*. I've never heard a reason for these differences that made sense to me.
Safari is just plain ol' Brushed Metal, it's different from regular-look-and-feel Cocoa apps because um, it's supposed to be used only for apps that mimic a 'physical device', like I guess an eBook reader or IM-capable phone or MP3 player ? Enough text has been wasted wondering if that makes sense, I won't repeat it here.
Mail looks different because it has this new thing I think they're calling a Unified Toolbar, where a tool bar and title bar are combined ( why? what's the benefit, I can drag the window by grabbing between toolbar buttons, what's that? ).
Now, I don't personally like either of those things, and I find the justifications for them pretty thin, but... what about iTunes? Why does it look different? It has pointier corners and a different skin/gradient, why exactly? The only reason I could think of before now was that it's sharing code with the PC version and as such isn't *really* a Cocoa app in the same way as the other apps, and has started to get a slightly different look... but that's just a theory, I have no idea. Maybe it's prepping for a look-and-feel we'll see with the Intel switch, or maybe Apple just wants it's most important application ever to Look Different(TM).
So your theory about these being different for distinction in Expose makes a *little* sense, and I thought maybe you were onto something for a minute... except that they're all pretty minor differences, really, that are likely to be lost when the window is so much smaller. I'm looking more at the contents of the window in Expose, not the border and toolbar so much. So while it's an interesting theory, I'm guessing that the difference has less to do with Expose and more to do with UI Guidelines being viewed more as flexible guidelines, not as very important rules to always follow... and the differences are due to an 'evolution' in programming tools and freedom given to individual project divisions within Apple, more than anything else. While UI Guidelines are still important, maybe now the religion is about progress and features, not UI guidelines.
The differences are still annoying, at least to a seasoned Apple user and programmer. You just look at it, and you think, "what is going on HERE?" Pick something and stick with it! Geesh!
That's extremely insightful, you don't work with the man, do you ?
My recollection of briefly working for Steve involves a meeting with a group of 8 engineers where he pretty well had everyone convinced that they could, in a few months' time, fully test an entire OS and extensive application suite, on new hardware, while writing a couple of never-before-imagined applications. In short, we were all going to pull off some miracles, pretty much because of a Steve pep talk. It's great to have inspired engineers, and sometimes people can pull of miracles, but that's a scary way to develop products on a schedule and a budget.
My biggest beef with OS X software ( aside from the Finder, which just needs a *complete* re-write ) is the recent lack of UI consistency. Try this : launch Safari, Mail, and iTunes ( most recent versions, in OS X 10.4 ). Check out the look of the windows... are any of them the same? Not really, they're all slightly different-looking... and iTunes looks like no other OS X app ever !
The difference between brushed metal and standard windows was annoying and unnecessary enough, but what is the rationalization for those three Apple-authored applications having such different looks ? Who needs 4 different styles of window dressing on a single machine? They're making Windows look like the platform with UI consistency, WTF is going on at Apple with these differing looks for different apps ?
The software for their scanners makes their printer software look fantastic. It's that bad... when it's available. We bought a nice HP scanner partly because it would "soon" support OS X. Over a year later, nothing. Eventually, they did release what they billed as an "OS X" version of the package... which required Classic to install (!) , and didn't have many of the features of the Classic version, and crashes on top of that.
It's too bad, HP used to be a quality company staffed by professional engineers.
IIRC, they tried to patent the *smell* of strawberries, and ( just recently, like last week ) were denied.
Thanks for that. i keep forgetting. Probably on purpose. It sucked then, too ;-)
Humor, people, humor!
My first clue that something was wrong with this was in the article summary... since when is AJAX considered a "Microsoft technology" ? If there's a defining AJAX app, isn't it Google Maps ? Is there some Microsoft AJAX app or developer kit I should be aware of ?
I'm going to have to disagree with something you've said, though :
we all need to evolve past the "You are looking at a flat page" ideology.
Why ? Flat pages are very useful for documents. Hyperlinks are great for linking documents. "Plain old web pages" remain, IMHO, the most useful aspect of this thing we now call "the web"... cool apps like Google Maps are cool and all, but they'd be just as cool ( probably cooler ) outside of a browser. Requiring a high-speed connection and robust ( or even particular ) Javascript implementation on the client side just to view your web page is what doesn't make sense, at least to me.
Then again, maybe I'm just getting old, but back in the day, we just had static web pages and forms, and we liked it!
I'm not sure you need to *really* ignore the burning to CD loophole. I mean, it's not like you can burn to a CD and then turn that AIFF or MP3 file into a Fairplay DRMed iTunes Marketplace track- not only do you not have the licensing encoder, but the re-encoded song isn't going to be byte-for-byte what you originally purchased ( the "non-stolen" ) verison. Selling a repackaged song like that, you'd likely get caught, and most people wouldn't even think to do it.
Sure you could always buy a song, burn CDs of it, then sell it back, but then you're stealing music ( since you don't own your original to the 'backup' you've kept ). If you're going to do that, you might as well just copy a friend's disc ( or a stranger's disc off of the network ). The honest folk who use iTunes Music Store and the like typically won't do that... unless they think the music just isn't worth it to them... which is where your plan breaks down. It's not a typical market; if the product starts getting too expensive, suddenly people start making their own ( at zero cost ), and the price is going to float back down to where the consumer feels comfortable buying again.
There's something else that's different, here, though, something that everyone seems to be missing. Any such market-based pricing can't ignore actual, phsical media sales. If the model is so good, why doesn't it work for CDs? Are popular CDs more expensive? No? They're usually less expensive, aren't they? Are resold used CDs, even in perfect condition, as expensive as music companies price new discs ? No? Interesting... perhaps CDs are too expensive, then, and since 99 cents a song aproximates CD prices, maybe it's too much as well, *especially* for popular songs, which should be *cheaper* than unpopular ones... as they are even in the brick-and-mortar stores.
Let's face it, short of creating artificial shortages ( by not cranking out CDs and not selling digital copies, something like Disney does with movies ), or charging higher-than-true-market prices, companies with cheap publishing costs and fixed development costs simply aren't able to justify charging a lot for product once development costs are covered. Once a band's recording and promotion are paid for, there's not much reason for the price of their music to be even 99 cents a song, really... it should be cheaper, and *really* popular music should be used promotionally, given away nearly free ( think radio ) by labels, to lure people into checking out their other offerings.
Eventually, maybe the labels will accept the reality of what I'm going to term the 'low-end theory of publishing', not that the product is low-end, but that the publishing cost is so low that it drives the price of popular items down.
FYI, there are what appear to be well-known hacks which allow you to install Front Row on any ol' Macintosh. You should be able to find them doing a web search ( I'm too old to just say 'google' )...
I'm sure the designers prefer to think of it as "two buttons and a circle"... I recently had a chance to play with one, and although you're right about the number of buttons it has, after reading your post I first thought "it didn't really have that many buttons, did it ?", I just remembered a menu button and a play/pause control group.
See, the problem is this thing has too many features. Volume up, volume down, change selection left, change selection right, play/pause, menu... that's just too many functions!!
My mother-in-law still won't be able to figure it out.
Um... you watch it in the living room, select it with a remote that also lets you get all all of your music and photos?
I am certainly not getting rid of *my* TiVo any time soon ( they'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands *after* giving me something better and cheaper ), but I do see some value in *easily* being able to view photos and listen to music from my computer using a remote in my living room.
Really, not a lot about what's covered here is new, it's just packaged in a more-convenient-than-ever form... typical Apple style.
Of course, it's all the typical speculation. January is soon enough, anyone with anything to do should wait and worry about it then.
Wow do I find that hard to believe... unless they're talking about DVD-ROM data read rates, and even then, they can't be that much slower, can they?
If it is less likely for the customers to buy thier old DVD movies again, is there anything to be gained by a hard push for the media?
I think they're looking long-term, where there will be a lot of replacement buying, as well as competing with broadband alternatives that don't yet exist ( and won't likely be HD )... they may also be thinking about making more per disc, at least initially. Having a new format means selling more product... how much more really doesn't matter much, does it?
Thanks for the insightful and interesting writing-gig comments...
Forget SP2, how many haven't updated to XP ??
Then again, I didn't believe anyone would buy a UMD movie for $20. I've been wrong before.
Well, people with money are funny that way... the HD content folks are looking ahead to a time when most people have HD displays in their living rooms. Over-the-air standard definition broadcasts *will* actually stop soon, HD display prices are ( finally! ) starting to really drop, and even cable and satellite operators are starting to get their HD delivery capability in place. We haven't hit the HD tipping point yet, but we'll see it in the next two-to-five years.
Your average family won't be replacing their old DVDs even after they get HD sets and HD DVD/Blu-ray players, but they'll be buying new media in HD, and people will likely eventually replace some of their more high-end-cinematic favorites with HD versions, much as they replaced their tape collections. Not en masse, but they will buy new copies here and there, depending on budget and tastes.
I actually see the Sony strategy of offering Blu-ray in the PS3 as an acknowledgment of the fact that plenty of people, at least initially, won't be willing to spend a lot of money on 'just a better DVD player'. I think they're actually counting on that mindset to give Blu-ray the boost over HD-DVD that they need... and I think they're smart like a fox.
Trust me. It is not that hard to get published. If I can do it, you can do it.
Ha, you know what ? I don't doubt it for a second. I even have publishing world connections, what am I thinking? I guess I'm thinking that writing isn't going to get me the big bucks... am I wrong? Should I write prose instead of code?
At least the Nintendo handhelds are still relatively cheap to develop for. Hopefully some smaller firms can survive there. Who knows, maybe Live Arcade or the Revolution will support the smaller guys. Nintendo execs talk about a broad price range for the Rev every so often, and Xbox Live arcade seems to have worked for at least one developer.
Very astute point ! Here's the rub though: the smaller developer and more limited shops have to recognize their limitations as a business. Overextending yourself as a business and betting the farm on an expensive project is risky... so, like the article says, companies making big games ( like companies making big-budget movies ) take considerable risk... a situation that will inevitably cause some companies ( and sadly, their employees ) some grief. Still, it's not as if there won't be opportunity in the industry... game software companies are just going to have to be smart to do well.
um, that's a desktop disk, peripherals, USB devices, and GPU... and motherboard, not that it matters. They picked them ( well, everything but the mobo ) to match their previously benchmarked desktop system. If you were to actually build a laptop, the total system draw would very likely end up being less... heck, probably that GPU is a good percentage of the power draw.
Hell yea. This is the Macintosh Intel laptop chip that's been planned all along. Will it be for the PowerBook, or iBook, or might it show up in the Mac mini first ? Those are the only *real* questions regarding the Yonah.
The only reason I think this might show up in the iBook is that they said "low end machines" would be updated first, but I can't imagine the iBook would get these and the PowerBook wouldn't... hmmm...
Hold on just a minute. We're talking about VIDEO GAMES. Not any of that other stuff. There are laws about that other stuff, actually. You can be cited for creating a disturbance if you even so much as swear loudly enough and frequently enough in a public place.
But we're talking about something similar to reading a book or watching a movie, not something you do on the street. Ok, maybe if a game is pornographic ( really? Where do you buy that game? ) and on a PSP or something, that's a problem, but it's one *already covered by a law* if you're out in public.
Also, and *PAY ATTENION*, this is key... have you heard of something called "FREEDOM" ? It's a word bandied about a lot these days, but it does actually mean something. It means that sometimes, people will do, say, read, think and otherwise express things that you don't like. Oppose their ability to do those things, and you are, in fact, opposing freedom. Christians, true Christians, should look to history and see what the censorship and suppression of expression and thought has done to Christians in the past ( I'm thinking about lions here... ) ... real Christians go for that "hate the sin, love the sinner" thing, and know something about forgiveness and reform.
People make mistakes. Giving them the opportunity to do so is what life ( and freedom ) is all about.
*Tell* people that *you believe* what they're doing is wrong all you like, that's fine. *Prevent* people from having the freedom to screw things up, and yes, you may actually be a fascist. It's a thin line, really. Watch it.
Um, do the do that for DVDs ? If yes, then you have a point. If no, then you're asking to hold games to a higher standard, and I'm going to ask why.
True, normal Christians are done a great disservice by these extremists who pretend to speak for them. We should all applaud the ESRB for calling them out on their socio-political agenda.
Actually, I feel a little bad for lumping the NIMF in with a lot of right-wingers, many of whom are really *fiscal* conservatives but would prefer *less* government involvement in our lives, not more... the NIMF wants a nanny state that polices the morals of grown adults and children alike... and when they can't force the government to step in ( usually due to these annoying "rights" people insist on ), they lobby business to do it for them.
Really, culture and social values should be taugh by PARENTS, and the NIMF should find something more useful to do than trying to censor entertainment and media. Maybe feeding the hungry, if they're such good Christians.
Amen, brother, though that could be "lazy or don't have time"
too often I feel like I don't have time, or tell myself "I'm just prototyping here and will comment it later, I'm not showing this to anyone else yet" which is a mistake, because later I have a mass of code with no comments that need them, and you just won't write useful comments that way.
I've found there are two types of comments which are important. First there's the comment you should write before starting a block of code- the one that talks about what it needs to do. The second type of comment is the one you write somewhere in-line, which talks about how and possibly why something non-obvious is being done.
Mostly I've found that if you're thinking you don't have enough time to write comments for your code, it's an indication that you're spending too much time writing comments for slashdot.
Anyway, a key point here is ( or should be ) that there have been 1.86 *billion* Sony Playstation game disks sold. If the PS3 is backwards-compatible, that's a lot of people who have a lot of games they can *already* play on that system.
Another key point is that the PS2 is going to continue to be sold for some time, and is easily the most successful console of all time, selling 100 million in 5 years and still going strong. I know people who will be getting thier *first* PS2 this Christmas, and believe me, they aren't thinking of it as a console near the end of it's life. I expect the PSone to be phased out sometime after the introduction of the PS3, but the PS2 is going to be around for a while yet.