Kudos indeed - and I notice that few people seem to have picked up on the fact that the remote no longer comes with the 40GB one, another of the cost-cutting measures to enable dropping the price point by $100?
Are they really prepared for this? Assuming that the movies are compressed down to 600-700MB, what happens when the 'latest blockbuster' is released an everyone tries to download it at once. Few companies can cope with bombardments of this nature, and Tivo would have to have an awful lot of capital ready for an investment of this size.
The worst that would happen though, is that MS would strip the player from the windows CD.
People would still be able to download it from their website for free, just as they have with every successive recent version of WMP.
True, a lot of consumers wouldn't realise and wouldn't bother - at least not until websites and files started telling them that they needed WMP to play the file they're trying to view, but I'd hardly say that it would be a disaster.
Probably in a similar way to other email services, there will be a maximum size to attachments.
Even if it was set at double the size of competitors, that would still only be about 10MB - how many people are seriously going to back up their hard drives in 10MB chunks?
I thought MS would have been quicker than this - after all mycokemusic and others have been using MS's wma format to do this for a while already.
However, since all new PC's will probably have a desktop shortcut to the site under 'download music here' (or some similar title) then MS will give themselves a legup over the competition.
This can't do IBM's reputation much good - fortunately for them the damage should be minimised since they no longer sell hard disks directly (so little loss of business)
You misunderstand - I wouldn't normally be interested in a remake of King Kong, because I wouldn't have thought anyone could do it without turning it into a comedy or effects-laden waste of time.
The fact that Jackson has said he'll do it means that he thinks he can make something of it, and given what he managed to do with LOTR I'm happy to take him at his word.
Fanboy is a term I use to describe people who are oblivious to the obvious faults of their 'fandom', and if King Kong turns out to be awful then I may well reconsider my opinion.
Jackson has earned himself a chance in my eyes, not my undying devotion!
The LOTR movies have all earned their respective awards easily. Peter Jackson managed to do the impossible and consistently improve over each 'instalment', despite the fact that each instalment was acclaimed by audiences and critics alike.
I wouldn't normally be interested in King Kong, but Jackson has earned enough of my respect for me to go see it no matter what any critics say about it.
No-one has said that the CLI has to go away. MS Windows CLI may not be as full-featured and may be hidden in the depths of the start menu now, but its never disappeared.
What we need is for the CLI to not be essential, and for a GUI to be available to the end-user for most if not all tasks.
They're specifically marketing this as a 'new' type of gaming medium, and they're working on a GC and a GBA successor at the same time as this. Whilst the GBA successor might have backwards compatibility its unlikely that this machine will, as strictly speaking the GBA isn't actually a forerunner to it.
Nintendo also claim that this won't compete with the GBA and GC for marketshare - somehow I don't believe them on that one.
The problem though (for the XBox at least) is that the XBox is subsidised.
The idea is that they sell you a pretty powerful PC/console at a loss, and hope to recoup that money via the profit margins on games.
Given the amount that MS were losing on every XBox sold (hell, they were losing money when it first came out, and then they knocked down the price within weeks) then its understandable that they'd be concerned when people bought it with little to no intention of buying the games for it.
Nintendo is in a slightly different situation, as currently they actually make a profit on sales of Gamecubes. They might not be as bothered by people taking them apart, especially due to the extra protection against piracy that their disc format gives them.
It's a well known phenomenon, called ostentation.
Pricing something higher can make it more desirable to many, despite what the product is actually worth.
Of course, any product is only worth what someone will pay for it anyway.
For every man hour of time that's put into 'protecting' their work, there's a thousand man-hour's worth of effort that will freely be contributed from the "public" to try and break it.
All encryption like this can and will be broken over time, the only way to beat it seems to be for the companies to try and repeatedly adapt and stay one step ahead.
Unfortunately that's very expensive and can't be maintained for long.
Regardless of your stance on the argument of p2p, this is the way it looks like continuing for the near future.
BitTorrent's rise in popularity is at least partly due to the way it has been accepted by many download sites as a way of easing pressure on their bandwidth.
I've downloaded quite a few patches and trailers using BitTorrent legally.
Slashdot Mirror
Kudos indeed - and I notice that few people seem to have picked up on the fact that the remote no longer comes with the 40GB one, another of the cost-cutting measures to enable dropping the price point by $100?
Are they really prepared for this? Assuming that the movies are compressed down to 600-700MB, what happens when the 'latest blockbuster' is released an everyone tries to download it at once. Few companies can cope with bombardments of this nature, and Tivo would have to have an awful lot of capital ready for an investment of this size.
The worst that would happen though, is that MS would strip the player from the windows CD.
People would still be able to download it from their website for free, just as they have with every successive recent version of WMP.
True, a lot of consumers wouldn't realise and wouldn't bother - at least not until websites and files started telling them that they needed WMP to play the file they're trying to view, but I'd hardly say that it would be a disaster.
Probably in a similar way to other email services, there will be a maximum size to attachments. Even if it was set at double the size of competitors, that would still only be about 10MB - how many people are seriously going to back up their hard drives in 10MB chunks?
I thought MS would have been quicker than this - after all mycokemusic and others have been using MS's wma format to do this for a while already. However, since all new PC's will probably have a desktop shortcut to the site under 'download music here' (or some similar title) then MS will give themselves a legup over the competition.
This can't do IBM's reputation much good - fortunately for them the damage should be minimised since they no longer sell hard disks directly (so little loss of business)
You misunderstand - I wouldn't normally be interested in a remake of King Kong, because I wouldn't have thought anyone could do it without turning it into a comedy or effects-laden waste of time.
The fact that Jackson has said he'll do it means that he thinks he can make something of it, and given what he managed to do with LOTR I'm happy to take him at his word.
Fanboy is a term I use to describe people who are oblivious to the obvious faults of their 'fandom', and if King Kong turns out to be awful then I may well reconsider my opinion.
Jackson has earned himself a chance in my eyes, not my undying devotion!
The LOTR movies have all earned their respective awards easily. Peter Jackson managed to do the impossible and consistently improve over each 'instalment', despite the fact that each instalment was acclaimed by audiences and critics alike. I wouldn't normally be interested in King Kong, but Jackson has earned enough of my respect for me to go see it no matter what any critics say about it.
No-one has said that the CLI has to go away. MS Windows CLI may not be as full-featured and may be hidden in the depths of the start menu now, but its never disappeared. What we need is for the CLI to not be essential, and for a GUI to be available to the end-user for most if not all tasks.
They're specifically marketing this as a 'new' type of gaming medium, and they're working on a GC and a GBA successor at the same time as this. Whilst the GBA successor might have backwards compatibility its unlikely that this machine will, as strictly speaking the GBA isn't actually a forerunner to it.
Nintendo also claim that this won't compete with the GBA and GC for marketshare - somehow I don't believe them on that one.
The problem though (for the XBox at least) is that the XBox is subsidised. The idea is that they sell you a pretty powerful PC/console at a loss, and hope to recoup that money via the profit margins on games. Given the amount that MS were losing on every XBox sold (hell, they were losing money when it first came out, and then they knocked down the price within weeks) then its understandable that they'd be concerned when people bought it with little to no intention of buying the games for it. Nintendo is in a slightly different situation, as currently they actually make a profit on sales of Gamecubes. They might not be as bothered by people taking them apart, especially due to the extra protection against piracy that their disc format gives them.
It's a well known phenomenon, called ostentation. Pricing something higher can make it more desirable to many, despite what the product is actually worth. Of course, any product is only worth what someone will pay for it anyway.
For every man hour of time that's put into 'protecting' their work, there's a thousand man-hour's worth of effort that will freely be contributed from the "public" to try and break it. All encryption like this can and will be broken over time, the only way to beat it seems to be for the companies to try and repeatedly adapt and stay one step ahead. Unfortunately that's very expensive and can't be maintained for long. Regardless of your stance on the argument of p2p, this is the way it looks like continuing for the near future.
BitTorrent's rise in popularity is at least partly due to the way it has been accepted by many download sites as a way of easing pressure on their bandwidth. I've downloaded quite a few patches and trailers using BitTorrent legally.