The video game industry and media are not like other medias, this is particularly with regard to things like Previews and Reviews. As he mentions video game magazines are 1/3 or more filled with previews. Having worked in the print side of the video game media in the past I can tell you that you can't say anything negative about a product in a "preview" without being complained at by marketing managers, product managers and PR people all of whom will threaten to withdraw advertising or support from your publication if you continue to do so since the game is only a preview. Similarly relationships with game companies are always tense, generally speaking games are ranked on a scale of 5-10 not 1-10. A game rated 5 is as good as being ranked 0 since the average game (use gamerankings.com which indexes magazine and large website reviews as an example) gets around a 7. The reason this is the case has a lot to do with the fact that if a company comes back to you as a reviewer (or your editor) and says "We're upset our game was given score X" your editor can always say "Well, 5 out of ten is average" when in reality it's not.
The community of BeOS loyalists just keeps shrinking it seems. I was reading on a popular BeOS news site that Microsoft hired some former Be programmers to work on Windows sound. Now trolltech has one of the co-creators of the BeOS. It really makes me wonder how much longer the small user base of BeOS users will last, especially since Zeta hasn't taken off due to its price.
While I agree with a lot of what is being said one statement is wrong.
CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's Electronics and other major consumer electronics retailers do not offer Linux pre-loaded PCs for sale.
The Frys Electronics near me in Downers Grove Illinois sells Linux pre-loaded PCs, while they're the bottom of the lineup "Great Quality" brand machines they do sell them.
It depends in the area and quite frankly in certain cases the age of the users. Yahoo! seems to have an older (in terms of age) user base than does AIM. Also I've noticed in certain areas one client is more popular than others. I was part of a now defunct web based chat system that had a large number of users from a few towns in Indiana (not that I am from there) which spread via word of mouth, a large majority of them seem to have migrated over to Yahoo! messenger (there is a way on the now defunct site to share contact info with other ex-users so they can get in contact with you). In my experience AIM is far more popular, but Yahoo! has a user base as well.
They reffered to the cable modem as a Be Box, sounds very similar to the title given out to the original BeOS systems which was known as a BeBox. Just another way to confuse everyone but the super geeky.
Developers are already familiar with.NET and Visual Studio, and Microsoft has proven to be easy to develop for with the previous generation. Microsoft doesn't ever let you get that close to the hardware, so developers should be more worried about what they can do rather than how difficult it is, but the platform will probably be flexible enough.
Not the developers that would be able to change the outcome for Microsoft. They DESPERATELY need substancially improved Japanese third party support. And most of them aren't standardized on PC game development to the degree that US and European developers are.
Perhaps, but none of that will matter if Microsoft wrangles up enough third parties. Since they want badly to crack this market, they will be willing enough to make concessions to gain whatever lead they can. Microsoft has proven that they can compete, and (in the PC market as well) they have proven to be willing to do whatever it takes for market share, as they tend to lock in their customers.
The initial grab doesn't matter, keeping users in one place is where they are most likely to make their money. This will be Microsoft's toughest challenge, but where there's a will, there's a way.
Unfortunately, as mentioned above the third parties that Microsoft has had difficulty luring into developing for their platform are Japanese third parties. If Microsoft were the dominant game console company then releasing ahead of Sony and Nintendo would be a smart move. But this isn't like the PC industry where they can use their market share in one secter to lead them to victory in another, Japanese developers are still the dominant power in the console realm, and until Microsoft can lure substancially more Japanese developers to their side, it will be an unwinnable battle. Using Microsoft APIs did little help the original Xbox (or for that matter the Dreamcast with its DirectX implementation) in luring third parties, and I don't see any reason this will change with Xbox 2.
Well, I agree and I disagree, There is a great window of opportunity open, but Microsoft is putting it out of reach in a lot of ways as well.
The first problem is that Microsoft is rushing the market early, historically speaking this hasn't worked in the console industry. In the 32-bit era, 3DO, Atari and even Commodore started things off by releasing their platforms in 1993. While consumers were excited about new systems, many had within the past two years just bought 16-bit systems and only enthuists were looking to buy a new system. The 3DO had a large number of third party support, unfortunately by the time consumers were ready to buy new consoles (1995 or so domestically), developers were already settled on Saturn and Playstation development rather than the 3DO. In what seemed like an advantage by getting in the market early, the 3DO pushed itself out of the competitve market.
This same mistake was repeated by Sega with the Dreamcast. The Saturn failed to succeed outside of Japan (where it had become THE enthuisist platform) and Sega decided that they would prepare a new more powerful platform, catering more to the North American market. Sega released the Dreamcast a full year and a half ahead of Sony in Japan, and just over a year in the US. While a year advantage seemed like a lot. Sega's releasing the Dreamcast early resulted in their system being underpowered, so many developers decided against concurrent Dreamcast and PS2 development. It also resulted in Sega upsetting consumers who had bought the Saturn released only four years earlier (with most consumers buying it a year or two later) and rushing to release another console.
By releasing the Xbox 2 early Microsoft is going to have a lot of trouble getting developers to standardize on their platform over the cell based PS3 (and ultimately Nintendo's next system). While they will have an edge on the market in terms of time, there will likely be a lot of upset consumers who are upset that the Xbox 1 died a fast death while Nintendo and Sony are still quite actively supporting their platforms released in the same time frame.
There are a lot of hurdles for Microsoft to overcome, and a lot of negatives to their plan as well.
Some of his video game predictions are preaching the obvious. For example, his prediction about Sony "delaying" the Playstation 3. Sony doesn't intend to relesae their next system this year domestically. It's possible although unlikely the Playstation 3 will be released in Japan this year. But it's more than likely to be released in Japan in March 2006 (just before the end of the fiscal year) and in North America the following Fall. He also claimed the Xbox 2 was delayed which is fascinating since like the Playstation 3, it was never planned to be released in 2004, even Microsoft is sharp enough to realize that releasing a followup platform three years after the release of their last system is a disaster in the making.
Some users are, just because the MPAA claims copyright over something doesn't totally validate their copyright. If I tape a movie or television show off of broadcast TV and redistribute it without profitting from it, in many countries that's perfectly legal.
It's definitely a US phenonemon. I'm in the US and almost all of my international contacts are on ICQ, MSN, or Yahoo! Messenger. However Almost everyone I talk to in the US has an AIM name (though some use more than one messenging service like I do). In the US (and it appears Canada, though there seems to be a high ICQ penetration there as well), AIM is definitely the overwhelming standard for messenging and nothing even comes remotely close. With that the only client I think is "better" in terms of features as you mentioned regarding switching would be Yahoo! Messenger, and the problem with Yahoo is that the non-windows clients for the program are severely lacking the features of its windows counterpart requring people to look for obscure buggy third party clients to add fuctionality not present in the crippled Unix versions.
Well, the same situation goes for Linux, BSDs (not including OSX in this statement) and a lot of other operating systems. And it's not just because of their substancially smaller market shares either(though it certainly doesn't hurt either). Windows obviously has a number of design flaws, and deployment of patches to consumers (and for that matter large organizations) is a problem, and until Microsoft can come up with a more complete way to solve this problem, it will always be an issue. From the ground level up there are fundamental problems with the way windows was designed, and as we've all learned, the security through obscurity approach is not an effective one.
Well for the time being those Linspire/ Lindows machines are from Fry's Electronics own OEM called "Great Quality". It seems to me they're just using surplus parts for the machines then occasionally advertising them for 100.00 to draw people in the store, still it's quite effective.
As someone else here mentioned, Frys Electronics has held specials for their "Great Quality" machines, running Lindows/Linspire for 100.00 on several occasions.
It depends on the chipset, the Nvidia, and AMD proper based chipsets are usually a lot less buggy, but it seems like 75% of people using AMD based systems are running the cheaper VIA chipsets which have generally have problems.
It depends on what you're working with, a lot of the suggestions on installing it at home and messing around are quite frankly more effective than taking any class, provided it is for desktop use only. If you plan to learn Apache, or various mail system administration look into formal training like what is offered by the Linux Professional Instute at http://www.LPI.org
Red Hat offers nice training but in a lot of ways they teach skills that are related specificly to utilties used only or primarily by their distribution which can be a problem if you plan to use other products in the future.
Well, I think it would best to start small, I have no artistic talent in the visual sense whatsoever, and while I have a background in journalism, my legalese is severely lacking to adequetely write up goals and agendas. But I have decided to start a Yahoo group, and if enough people are interested in helping from there we can start a site and move on.
When I was writing that post I was thinking about what I could do, but like many of the other people here, I'm just a poor college student with minimal funds and time to spend, however, if enough people put their free time (myself included) towards organizing something we can start a new trend.
Since your suggestion of the name techrally was taken for a Yahoo! Group, I came up with OpenTechnology meaning opening up technology rather than closing it via legal restrictions (this as opposed to the open in open source).
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OpenTechnology/
The group is completely open to anyone with a Yahoo! account who wants to join. Let's try to get organized and see what we can accomplish.
Ugh, the horrible typos on the title line of my other post are just horrendous. I really wish I could edit it, this is what happens when you use a slow laptop that can't keep up with your typing speed and it's 1:00 AM.
I know a lot of people agree with this, and many people have started petitions and things like that, but we in the "tech" community really need to organize a continuing and consistant lobbyist group to take on the ridiculous and continuing legislation being pushed by many large corporations and organizations who look out for their own interests over technological innovation.
It's time we stand up and make our point realized that it isn't the governments job, to create legislation to protect antiquated business systems such as those in place for some of the parties involved with pushing the induce act.
Too many people, not just general consumers but media types fail to understand simple things like fair use with regard to copyrighted materials for example, that would allow even copyrighted material to LEGALLY be transmitted via a peer to peer system for example. Just because something is copyrighted doesn't necessarily make any re-distribution of it criminal or piracy. But the RIAA doesn't want you to know that, and thus most people don't. This link from Groklaw should explain a lot of this.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200402050 05057966&query=RIAA+
It's time to take action and start lobbying for ourselves. Let others know the legal truths, and don't allow the rules to be changed around us any longer!
It's innovation in the sense that it's something new to the console industry, Rather than just develop a next generation GameBoy to go head to head with Sony's PSP, Nintendo decided to go in a different direction which is where the innovation comes in, the touch screen can add something new to games, as can have two screens, one to watch football on and a second screen to call plays, or one screen to go through a dungeon another to see your position on the map. I really think there a lot of great ideas that the combination can bring out, and a lot of novel concepts can be introduced.
I agree with the basic "this isn't proof" argument. But the reality is that there isn't nearly as many people playing online console games as you might think. Microsoft infamously inflated their Xbox live subsriber numbers by adding in gamers who signed up for the free Xbox live that was included with some new games. The PS2 online play also isn't doing quite as well as one might imagine. While at populat gamestores like EBgames or Gamestop that have a very hardcore and bleeding edge customer base, online games might seem like they're "all the rage", as it stands right now it isn't particularly profitable for companies releasing them. Here in the US less than 1/3 of households have broadband, there is still another generation to go before online play on consoles really takes off, and even then, it isn't really innovative. Playing against live opponents has been around a while (the Sega Saturn had a licensed netlink system with special netlink enabled games that allowed you to dial up opponents, in fact even the Atari Jaguar had a modem to dial up people as well, and look at how far online gaming took the Sega Dreamcast). While online console gaming appeals to those on the bleeding edge, or PC gamers who prefer to play titles on a TV, it has not been particularly successful thus far with the more mainstreamed oriented consumer market that is console gaming.
The one thing that makes Nintendo stand out above other companies is innovation, as long as their company continues to find new ways to entertain, as Nintendo often does their products will continue to have their place in the market. As much as people initially criticized it the Nintendo Dual Screen looks great and the touch screen features seem like the step in the right direction towards changing the way we play games. As time goes on the number of new genre's and innovations throughout the industry continues to deteroriate. And it's good to see that Nintendo is continuing with their ideas of new ideas in the industry. Having worked on the media side of the gaming industry for many years and only recently retiring from it due to a lack of interest in games (and the lack of significant income from doing so), I strongly agree that the generation of 20s and 30s gamers that have made the industry grow strong is becoming less and less interested in video games and only by creating new and innovative games, rather than cookie cutter rip-offs and sequels can the video game industry continue to thrive.
This isn't totally new news, the change in architecture and video chips prevents backwards compatibility between the Xbox and the Xbox 2. People in the games industry have known about this for a while.
With regard to the PS2 backward compatibility. I play PSone games on my PS2 all the time, backwards compatibility has a lot to do with building your platform, it's also a lot of the reason the GameBoy is so dominant, a brand new Game Boy Advance SP can play 15 year old black and white game boy games. And the Playstation 3 will likely have PSone and PS2 emulation built into it as well.
Dillo is a good choice for a light browser, obviously it doesn't have the features of a Gecko based browser (or for that matter KHTML) but for basic web surfing it's quite effective.
The main suites of programs are always going to grow larger, to make up for it on a slow machine, run a small UI with minimalist programs to make up for it.
Slashdot Mirror
The video game industry and media are not like other medias, this is particularly with regard to things like Previews and Reviews. As he mentions video game magazines are 1/3 or more filled with previews. Having worked in the print side of the video game media in the past I can tell you that you can't say anything negative about a product in a "preview" without being complained at by marketing managers, product managers and PR people all of whom will threaten to withdraw advertising or support from your publication if you continue to do so since the game is only a preview. Similarly relationships with game companies are always tense, generally speaking games are ranked on a scale of 5-10 not 1-10. A game rated 5 is as good as being ranked 0 since the average game (use gamerankings.com which indexes magazine and large website reviews as an example) gets around a 7. The reason this is the case has a lot to do with the fact that if a company comes back to you as a reviewer (or your editor) and says "We're upset our game was given score X" your editor can always say "Well, 5 out of ten is average" when in reality it's not.
I think it's real http://www.bedoper.com/bedoper/2005/32.htm Take a look.
The community of BeOS loyalists just keeps shrinking it seems. I was reading on a popular BeOS news site that Microsoft hired some former Be programmers to work on Windows sound. Now trolltech has one of the co-creators of the BeOS. It really makes me wonder how much longer the small user base of BeOS users will last, especially since Zeta hasn't taken off due to its price.
While I agree with a lot of what is being said one statement is wrong. CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's Electronics and other major consumer electronics retailers do not offer Linux pre-loaded PCs for sale. The Frys Electronics near me in Downers Grove Illinois sells Linux pre-loaded PCs, while they're the bottom of the lineup "Great Quality" brand machines they do sell them.
It depends in the area and quite frankly in certain cases the age of the users. Yahoo! seems to have an older (in terms of age) user base than does AIM. Also I've noticed in certain areas one client is more popular than others. I was part of a now defunct web based chat system that had a large number of users from a few towns in Indiana (not that I am from there) which spread via word of mouth, a large majority of them seem to have migrated over to Yahoo! messenger (there is a way on the now defunct site to share contact info with other ex-users so they can get in contact with you). In my experience AIM is far more popular, but Yahoo! has a user base as well.
They reffered to the cable modem as a Be Box, sounds very similar to the title given out to the original BeOS systems which was known as a BeBox. Just another way to confuse everyone but the super geeky.
Developers are already familiar with .NET and Visual Studio, and Microsoft has proven to be easy to develop for with the previous generation. Microsoft doesn't ever let you get that close to the hardware, so developers should be more worried about what they can do rather than how difficult it is, but the platform will probably be flexible enough.
Not the developers that would be able to change the outcome for Microsoft. They DESPERATELY need substancially improved Japanese third party support. And most of them aren't standardized on PC game development to the degree that US and European developers are.
Perhaps, but none of that will matter if Microsoft wrangles up enough third parties. Since they want badly to crack this market, they will be willing enough to make concessions to gain whatever lead they can. Microsoft has proven that they can compete, and (in the PC market as well) they have proven to be willing to do whatever it takes for market share, as they tend to lock in their customers.
The initial grab doesn't matter, keeping users in one place is where they are most likely to make their money. This will be Microsoft's toughest challenge, but where there's a will, there's a way.
Unfortunately, as mentioned above the third parties that Microsoft has had difficulty luring into developing for their platform are Japanese third parties. If Microsoft were the dominant game console company then releasing ahead of Sony and Nintendo would be a smart move. But this isn't like the PC industry where they can use their market share in one secter to lead them to victory in another, Japanese developers are still the dominant power in the console realm, and until Microsoft can lure substancially more Japanese developers to their side, it will be an unwinnable battle. Using Microsoft APIs did little help the original Xbox (or for that matter the Dreamcast with its DirectX implementation) in luring third parties, and I don't see any reason this will change with Xbox 2.
Well, I agree and I disagree, There is a great window of opportunity open, but Microsoft is putting it out of reach in a lot of ways as well.
The first problem is that Microsoft is rushing the market early, historically speaking this hasn't worked in the console industry. In the 32-bit era, 3DO, Atari and even Commodore started things off by releasing their platforms in 1993. While consumers were excited about new systems, many had within the past two years just bought 16-bit systems and only enthuists were looking to buy a new system. The 3DO had a large number of third party support, unfortunately by the time consumers were ready to buy new consoles (1995 or so domestically), developers were already settled on Saturn and Playstation development rather than the 3DO. In what seemed like an advantage by getting in the market early, the 3DO pushed itself out of the competitve market.
This same mistake was repeated by Sega with the Dreamcast. The Saturn failed to succeed outside of Japan (where it had become THE enthuisist platform) and Sega decided that they would prepare a new more powerful platform, catering more to the North American market. Sega released the Dreamcast a full year and a half ahead of Sony in Japan, and just over a year in the US. While a year advantage seemed like a lot. Sega's releasing the Dreamcast early resulted in their system being underpowered, so many developers decided against concurrent Dreamcast and PS2 development. It also resulted in Sega upsetting consumers who had bought the Saturn released only four years earlier (with most consumers buying it a year or two later) and rushing to release another console.
By releasing the Xbox 2 early Microsoft is going to have a lot of trouble getting developers to standardize on their platform over the cell based PS3 (and ultimately Nintendo's next system). While they will have an edge on the market in terms of time, there will likely be a lot of upset consumers who are upset that the Xbox 1 died a fast death while Nintendo and Sony are still quite actively supporting their platforms released in the same time frame.
There are a lot of hurdles for Microsoft to overcome, and a lot of negatives to their plan as well.
Some of his video game predictions are preaching the obvious. For example, his prediction about Sony "delaying" the Playstation 3. Sony doesn't intend to relesae their next system this year domestically. It's possible although unlikely the Playstation 3 will be released in Japan this year. But it's more than likely to be released in Japan in March 2006 (just before the end of the fiscal year) and in North America the following Fall. He also claimed the Xbox 2 was delayed which is fascinating since like the Playstation 3, it was never planned to be released in 2004, even Microsoft is sharp enough to realize that releasing a followup platform three years after the release of their last system is a disaster in the making.
Some users are, just because the MPAA claims copyright over something doesn't totally validate their copyright. If I tape a movie or television show off of broadcast TV and redistribute it without profitting from it, in many countries that's perfectly legal.
It's definitely a US phenonemon. I'm in the US and almost all of my international contacts are on ICQ, MSN, or Yahoo! Messenger. However Almost everyone I talk to in the US has an AIM name (though some use more than one messenging service like I do). In the US (and it appears Canada, though there seems to be a high ICQ penetration there as well), AIM is definitely the overwhelming standard for messenging and nothing even comes remotely close. With that the only client I think is "better" in terms of features as you mentioned regarding switching would be Yahoo! Messenger, and the problem with Yahoo is that the non-windows clients for the program are severely lacking the features of its windows counterpart requring people to look for obscure buggy third party clients to add fuctionality not present in the crippled Unix versions.
Well, the same situation goes for Linux, BSDs (not including OSX in this statement) and a lot of other operating systems. And it's not just because of their substancially smaller market shares either(though it certainly doesn't hurt either). Windows obviously has a number of design flaws, and deployment of patches to consumers (and for that matter large organizations) is a problem, and until Microsoft can come up with a more complete way to solve this problem, it will always be an issue. From the ground level up there are fundamental problems with the way windows was designed, and as we've all learned, the security through obscurity approach is not an effective one.
I'd try Knoppix-STD but I'm paranoid about getting a virus!
Well for the time being those Linspire/ Lindows machines are from Fry's Electronics own OEM called "Great Quality". It seems to me they're just using surplus parts for the machines then occasionally advertising them for 100.00 to draw people in the store, still it's quite effective.
As someone else here mentioned, Frys Electronics has held specials for their "Great Quality" machines, running Lindows/Linspire for 100.00 on several occasions.
It depends on the chipset, the Nvidia, and AMD proper based chipsets are usually a lot less buggy, but it seems like 75% of people using AMD based systems are running the cheaper VIA chipsets which have generally have problems.
It depends on what you're working with, a lot of the suggestions on installing it at home and messing around are quite frankly more effective than taking any class, provided it is for desktop use only. If you plan to learn Apache, or various mail system administration look into formal training like what is offered by the Linux Professional Instute at http://www.LPI.org Red Hat offers nice training but in a lot of ways they teach skills that are related specificly to utilties used only or primarily by their distribution which can be a problem if you plan to use other products in the future.
Well, I think it would best to start small, I have no artistic talent in the visual sense whatsoever, and while I have a background in journalism, my legalese is severely lacking to adequetely write up goals and agendas. But I have decided to start a Yahoo group, and if enough people are interested in helping from there we can start a site and move on.
When I was writing that post I was thinking about what I could do, but like many of the other people here, I'm just a poor college student with minimal funds and time to spend, however, if enough people put their free time (myself included) towards organizing something we can start a new trend.
Since your suggestion of the name techrally was taken for a Yahoo! Group, I came up with OpenTechnology meaning opening up technology rather than closing it via legal restrictions (this as opposed to the open in open source).
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OpenTechnology/
The group is completely open to anyone with a Yahoo! account who wants to join. Let's try to get organized and see what we can accomplish.
Ugh, the horrible typos on the title line of my other post are just horrendous. I really wish I could edit it, this is what happens when you use a slow laptop that can't keep up with your typing speed and it's 1:00 AM.
I know a lot of people agree with this, and many people have started petitions and things like that, but we in the "tech" community really need to organize a continuing and consistant lobbyist group to take on the ridiculous and continuing legislation being pushed by many large corporations and organizations who look out for their own interests over technological innovation. It's time we stand up and make our point realized that it isn't the governments job, to create legislation to protect antiquated business systems such as those in place for some of the parties involved with pushing the induce act. Too many people, not just general consumers but media types fail to understand simple things like fair use with regard to copyrighted materials for example, that would allow even copyrighted material to LEGALLY be transmitted via a peer to peer system for example. Just because something is copyrighted doesn't necessarily make any re-distribution of it criminal or piracy. But the RIAA doesn't want you to know that, and thus most people don't. This link from Groklaw should explain a lot of this. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200402050 05057966&query=RIAA+
It's time to take action and start lobbying for ourselves. Let others know the legal truths, and don't allow the rules to be changed around us any longer!
It's innovation in the sense that it's something new to the console industry, Rather than just develop a next generation GameBoy to go head to head with Sony's PSP, Nintendo decided to go in a different direction which is where the innovation comes in, the touch screen can add something new to games, as can have two screens, one to watch football on and a second screen to call plays, or one screen to go through a dungeon another to see your position on the map. I really think there a lot of great ideas that the combination can bring out, and a lot of novel concepts can be introduced.
I agree with the basic "this isn't proof" argument. But the reality is that there isn't nearly as many people playing online console games as you might think. Microsoft infamously inflated their Xbox live subsriber numbers by adding in gamers who signed up for the free Xbox live that was included with some new games. The PS2 online play also isn't doing quite as well as one might imagine. While at populat gamestores like EBgames or Gamestop that have a very hardcore and bleeding edge customer base, online games might seem like they're "all the rage", as it stands right now it isn't particularly profitable for companies releasing them. Here in the US less than 1/3 of households have broadband, there is still another generation to go before online play on consoles really takes off, and even then, it isn't really innovative. Playing against live opponents has been around a while (the Sega Saturn had a licensed netlink system with special netlink enabled games that allowed you to dial up opponents, in fact even the Atari Jaguar had a modem to dial up people as well, and look at how far online gaming took the Sega Dreamcast). While online console gaming appeals to those on the bleeding edge, or PC gamers who prefer to play titles on a TV, it has not been particularly successful thus far with the more mainstreamed oriented consumer market that is console gaming.
The one thing that makes Nintendo stand out above other companies is innovation, as long as their company continues to find new ways to entertain, as Nintendo often does their products will continue to have their place in the market. As much as people initially criticized it the Nintendo Dual Screen looks great and the touch screen features seem like the step in the right direction towards changing the way we play games. As time goes on the number of new genre's and innovations throughout the industry continues to deteroriate. And it's good to see that Nintendo is continuing with their ideas of new ideas in the industry. Having worked on the media side of the gaming industry for many years and only recently retiring from it due to a lack of interest in games (and the lack of significant income from doing so), I strongly agree that the generation of 20s and 30s gamers that have made the industry grow strong is becoming less and less interested in video games and only by creating new and innovative games, rather than cookie cutter rip-offs and sequels can the video game industry continue to thrive.
This isn't totally new news, the change in architecture and video chips prevents backwards compatibility between the Xbox and the Xbox 2. People in the games industry have known about this for a while. With regard to the PS2 backward compatibility. I play PSone games on my PS2 all the time, backwards compatibility has a lot to do with building your platform, it's also a lot of the reason the GameBoy is so dominant, a brand new Game Boy Advance SP can play 15 year old black and white game boy games. And the Playstation 3 will likely have PSone and PS2 emulation built into it as well.
Dillo is a good choice for a light browser, obviously it doesn't have the features of a Gecko based browser (or for that matter KHTML) but for basic web surfing it's quite effective. The main suites of programs are always going to grow larger, to make up for it on a slow machine, run a small UI with minimalist programs to make up for it.