Microsoft is not trying to lock the console makers out, they are trying to establish XNA is the operating system for all of them. They want XNA to basically be like Windows for consoles (operating system and development platform.) They don't need to lock out any computer makers, because they almost all come with Windows (for example Apple isn't locked out, they just don't use Windows for their machines.) Their idea is to do the same thing with video game consoles.
This is their true 'master plan' for the video game industry. Not to become #1 in console sales (not that they're not trying), but to become the dominant software platform in the industry.
They tout a lot of benefits, such as all console becoming compatible, etc. But the flip side of this would be that the console makers lose all their clout and differentiation from the others, as they would all become box makers more or less, just like PC makers today.
There are benefits and disadvantages for consumers in such a scenario (I prefer the current system to a MS-dominated one), but there are huge benefits to Microsoft.
There's some differentiation between PC's, but not that much. Much less than GameCube vs. PS2 vs. XBox...
Indeed, command-shift-n creates a new folder. Mac OS X has much better and consistent keyboard shortcuts, ironic since Apple introduced the mouse to the masses.
Portable video devices have been a very limited market. I think one of the main reasons is that the current devices use the 'library' model that has been so successful for music. However, it is completely wrong for video. People listen to music albums over and over, but video is typically watched once or twice, and then that's it. Only gadget geeks want to bother ripping Spider-Man 2 to Divx so they can watch it on their Creative video player.
Apple could dramatically change things by coming out with the Tivo iPod, which automatically updates with all your Tivo'd content. Sitcoms, news, last night's SportsCenter- those are the things that people would actually watch on a portable video player. Plus, there would actually be an application to justify the 100+ GB iPods we will be seeing in a couple of years.
Apple would then leave everyone else in the dust (again.) But I guess it's a moot point if that rumor was bogus...
I don't think Britney Spears is the best example. In a sense you could say Britney Spears was an excellently conceived and developed product for her intended market (top 40 pop music.) I don't underestimate the power of marketing (it's actually my job), but it's not immune to the quality and relevance of the product or service itself.
I don't think Google was so highly advertised. Can the old supplant the new? I think that's exactly what Google did.
I think for most people, it's just a matter of what you're used to. When I switched to Mac the first thing I did was buy a 2-button mouse. I later bought an iBook, and it never dawns upon me that my iBook should be any different than it is now. I don't think right-clicking on a trackpad is difficult, but it is nice having that big button below the trackpad. Ironically, the thing I like best about OSX is the consistent keyboard shortcuts across programs.
I think complete novices may be better served by a single-button mouse (although most learn and move into the second category of casual users.)
Casual users could probably go either way, and will get acclimated to either method (and there is always the option of getting a 2-button mouse.) They're able to do what they need to do, but probably don't use much in the way of keyboard commands, etc. to speed up their computer use.
Power users in most cases seem to prefer the 2-button setup, and perhaps a a scroll wheel and extra side buttons. They are proficient enough that they've optimized a specific setup with as many shortcuts as possible, so a change to a single-button mouse would impact their workflow. But the only ones who really have anything to get worked up about are notebook users who would like a 2 button trackpad. The rest can get a 2-button mouse. Who cares what Steve Jobs thinks either way?
The one thing about Super Bowl advertising is that it is the only advertising that is an event unto itself (did I say that right?)
I think there is an opportunity for a new company to use the Super Bowl to launch something. I mean, you could buy a million cheap radio spots and technically reach the same number of people with less money, but not create nearly as much impact (at least that's my guess, I've never run an ad in the Super Bowl.) But more often, it's a bigger company that launches something new- the Mac, Crystal Pepsi, etc.
But you better have something big and memorable to match your ad venue, besides just the fact that you are running a Super Bowl ad (and that you created a really catchy or funny ad.) I think that these companies got confused- they thought just running a Super Bowl ad would instantly make them 'big time', even if they actually had nothing noteworthy to sell or promote. Another poster mentioned what happened after the Computers.com ad, I can't imagine how those guys felt after they generated almost none of the response they bet their farm on.
So, to summarize, here's the 4 step plan to become as rich as Bill Gates:
1. Develop something totally new and cool that people will need or crave.
2. Develop cool or funny TV commercial.
3. Advertise on the Super Bowl.
4. Watch the orders roll in!
It's not complicated, but as another poster pointed out it's not shown very well either. We get this text in the beginning about who's who, and this takes the place of having to show any context of what is happening.
Like how does a major Jedi like Dooku end up turning to the dark side? Why doesn't anyone see this coming? Why can't anyone feel a "disturbance" in the Force (in general, the Jedi seem to have all the psychic ability of Madame Cleo. When something bad happens they just furrow their brow and sit there.) Why do we really care?
I guess my main problem is that none of it seems really plausible in any way. Lucas can do good guy/bad guy fine- Darth Vader wears BLACK and breathes OMINOUSLY and STRANGLES his underlings without hesitation, thus he is EVIL and must be stopped. Luke is INNOCENT and GOOD, and Leah is PURE and GOOD too (they both wear WHITE), let's hope they WIN!
But Lucas is lost with anything that requires subtlety and a deft touch. I could list some examples but they're pretty much self-evident in the prequel movies. It's a shame, because I think the underlying story actually has (had) potential.
I bought a G3 iMac DV for $150 on EBay, added some RAM, and fired up Panther. It actually worked pretty good, but would chug on my 6 MP digital photos.
A week later, I bought an eMac refurb for only $550 from Apple.com (I sold my PC, as well as the iMac on EBay for a profit.) I bought a DVD burner for $50, and a 120 GB hard drive for $60. My PC was kinda old and worked fine for me, so it doesn't matter that it's not a G5. Later I'm going to overclock it to 1.6 Ghz to get a little peppier performance anyway.
...and all you will get is nice dark-toned photos from him fron the "Bad" days.
Halo AI was one of the big factors for me
on
Halo 2 Reviews
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· Score: 1
Halo is one of the few video games I have actually finished, mainly due to the AI. Granted I don't have that much FPS experience, but Halo is one of the few games where I actually felt like I was fighting a squad of enemies. Each battle feels different and unique. And yes, the game doesn't really shine until you play on the hardest or second-hardest difficulty level. Lower than that, and the enemies feel more like your basic FPS target practice.
Obviously you can play multi-player if you want tough opponents, but multi-player is simply a much different experience than a single-player campaign, you lose most if not all of the immersion and story.
Besides that, it was a very well-polished game with great graphics for a XBox launch title. The game was certainly rushed, but the finished product was very complete considering the circumstances. When Halo was shown for the first time at E3, that demo level (Silent Cartographer?) was in fact the ONLY level they had completed up to that point. And that was a scant 6 months before the game was released! Although I can see how some are a bit jaded with the game (or just flat-out didn't like it), I think to claim that Halo is ALL hype is completely overblown.
He posted this link to his server a few pages up, it worked for me about 5 minutes ago and is pretty fast-
http://www.tomservo.net/etc/vid/starwars3teaser.mo v
This link has the whole trailer. A little choppy but pretty good.
I for one actually am kinda jazzed after seeing the trailer. FWIW, I hated Ep. 1 and tolerated Ep. 2.
But it still happened, I think that's the larger issue. If it wasn't that particular hitch, it would've been another.
I'm not certain if the XBox copy protection scheme itself has been cracked, but it has certainly been bypassed. So again, the end result is that the original purpose of the DRM is circumvented.
The most surprising thing of all out of this fiasco for Winer and the bloggers is that Winer apparently had no idea suddenly pulling the plug without warning would upset some people-
Such slams had Winer shaking his head.
"This thing has been blown so far out of proportion," he said. "It's just unbelievable to me."
Very few could have predicted the Pistons would win in 5, but anyone with half a brain could see the response coming from this. Apparently he still is having a hard time coming to grips with it, I'm not sure why. He's not some corporate suit who doesn't even know what a blog is.
If he had actually anticipated this, he could have provided some sort of warning a couple of months in advance. Then people who wanted backups could have done so, without a mad rush of traffic over a short period of time.
He of course had no obligation to do this, but that would have been the much smarter thing.
(Of course, if there was some sudden serious medical emergency then that could preclude everything.)
Reading over the explanation page, it does not seem that the generic browser page has that -30px setting, ONLY the Opera browser. For example, when they identified the browser as 'Oprah' (generic unknown browser), it did not get the wonky style sheet.
And it's important to note that both current and previous versions of Opera rendered the correct HTML/CSS just fine, so this wasn't a matter of MS not keeping up to date with Opera upgrades.
So for whatever reason, the MSN page was set up to specifically feed Opera users a CSS that did not work. Everyone else BUT Opera got the default CSS (which Opera renders perfectly)
The explanation given on that Wikipedia page you mentioned does not jibe with the technical details provided on the Opera page. Opera is not just making a bunch of sweeping claims, they do back it up with details.
There may be a non-'evil empire' explanation for this, but no one has provided a good one that suitably takes into account all of the details.
Maybe it is urban legend, but we all keep hearing about the number of years after which gasoline would be unavailable. No matter how inaccurate that claim is, the current gas prices do seem an indicator of that:-
Does that mean that 2 years ago there was plenty of oil, and just now there isn't? We may very well be on the verge of running out, but I don't think there's too much of a correlation with current prices and worldwide supply of oil. From what I understand, current prices are impacted moreso by high demand. Of course, that can also create the same problem of demand being greater than supply, but that's different than oil just running out.
Adjusted for inflation, it's still cheaper than it was in during the oil crisis in the 1970's:
Allowing for inflation, prices are about half those during the oil price shock that followed the 1979 Iranian revolution. Crude averaged $78 a barrel during 1980 when adjusted for inflation to 2002 prices, according to oil major BP. Crude in money of the day averaged $35.69 a barrel in 1980, BP said.
This seems like a bunch of self-serving PR BS to tout their "innovative" new handheld. Wow, a year ago there was nothing wrong with the GBA, now gaming is at the edge of a crisis so you better buy the innovative Nintendo DS instead of the Sony PSP or gaming will die!!!
I think these attempts at innovation by Nintendo have more to do with internal company factors than truly revolutionizing the state of gaming. Like pushing the revolutionary GBA-Gamecube link, which IMO had more to do with Nintendo trying to leverage their handheld dominance in the console market (the results speak for themselves, maybe a couple of decent games, the rest being unlockable content that did nothing but force Gamecube owners to buy a GBA to play a Gamecube game.)
Nintendo sees the writing on the wall- they can't compete head-on with Sony and Microsoft (it's tough competing against a consumer electronics giant on one hand, and the Evil Empire on the other), so they are trying to change the game. Which is fine by me, it's just all the self-serving PR that annoys- Nintendo, the company that cares.
If Nintendo really wanted to innovate, they might have actually tried to enable online play with the Gamecube.
That being said, the Nintendo DS at least looks better and has some potential (but really so does the PSP to some degree). I look forward to seeing if any DS games are able to capitalize on the new hardware and really offer truly significantly new gameplay experiences. If those games don't come out, the DS dual-screen and touchscree will be all for naught, leaving the PSP with the significant hardware advantage.
Yeah, this was the funniest part of the MSNBC story-
It might be difficult to convince Lucas to go along with it, but if necessary Lucas could probably be tricked by telling him that Joseph Campbell is waiting with a documentary crew to massage Lucas' ego by interviewing him about his wonderful mythic imagination. When Lucas shows up, knock him out, encase him in a block of frozen carbonite and put him out of the way somewhere until the movie is out in theaters.
That's why this news is particularly disappointing. B&N was rolling out Cometa for $15 a month unlimited, $5 for 24 hours. That's half of what Starbucks/ TMobile charges. In SoCal there are enough B&N's that I would consider the monthly fee.
Starbucks could've locked down the coffee shop market even more had they gone with a cheaper provider (not that they really needed to). Well, at least this gives local, independent coffee shops a chance at competing by offering free Wifi. I wonder if Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf is going to do something chainwide-
There's an existing similar program called X1 Search (www.x1.com). It also indexes your hard drive, but it's not free.
It's actually a product from Idealab, that $1 trillion dollar internet uber-incubator. I think this is all they have left (well this and goto.com). Too bad a better company just came out with a better product that will be free...
Alta Vista Search was great, although I found myself not using it as much as I thought I would. I still have the latest version, but it only goes up to Win 98.
Thanks for the reply. I'm a little unclear about whether Opera 6 renders MSN.com correctly. From here, I get the impression that Opera 6 does not render MSN.com correctly either due to the CSS it is receiving. Opera 6 still seems to be getting the "site.css" file that screws up Opera 7.
The original page explaining the whole debacle only specifically talks about Opera 7, so I can't tell whether Opera 6 worked or not at that point. If it did, then your explanation is completely valid and it would seem to be a innocent error. If not, then there would be no reason for MS to specifically check for Opera if it wasn't going to bother testing compatibility (since the regular MSIE content actually renders fine!)
Also, there is no "fallback code". When the UA "Oprah" is used, it is sent the same CSS as the MSIE content.
Opera renders that content just fine, it only has problems with the CSS that is specifically sent to UA "Opera":
The culprit is in the "-30px" value set on the margin property. This value instructs Opera7 to move list elements 30 pixels to the left of its parent. That is, Opera7 is explicitly instructed to move content off the side of its container thus creating the impression that there is something wrong with Opera7.
Such a stunt by Microsoft would seem too stupid to believe, so I'm willing to consider the possibility that Microsoft just made a mistake. But your explanation does not fit what is going on.
If what you are saying is true, then why do user agent "Opera" and user agent "Oprah" get different files?
If Microsoft simply didn't bother testing Opera compatibility due to its low market share, then why does the MSN HTML code check for user agent "Opera", and specifically send it different files than the fallback Netscape 4.7 HTML?
Your explanation is interesting, but doesn't make complete sense. The point is that Opera gets specific files that are different from both MSIE content, and the generic fallback content.
Slashdot Mirror
This is their true 'master plan' for the video game industry. Not to become #1 in console sales (not that they're not trying), but to become the dominant software platform in the industry.
They tout a lot of benefits, such as all console becoming compatible, etc. But the flip side of this would be that the console makers lose all their clout and differentiation from the others, as they would all become box makers more or less, just like PC makers today.
There are benefits and disadvantages for consumers in such a scenario (I prefer the current system to a MS-dominated one), but there are huge benefits to Microsoft. There's some differentiation between PC's, but not that much. Much less than GameCube vs. PS2 vs. XBox...
Indeed, command-shift-n creates a new folder. Mac OS X has much better and consistent keyboard shortcuts, ironic since Apple introduced the mouse to the masses.
I heard its the next big thing!!
Portable video devices have been a very limited market. I think one of the main reasons is that the current devices use the 'library' model that has been so successful for music. However, it is completely wrong for video. People listen to music albums over and over, but video is typically watched once or twice, and then that's it. Only gadget geeks want to bother ripping Spider-Man 2 to Divx so they can watch it on their Creative video player.
Apple could dramatically change things by coming out with the Tivo iPod, which automatically updates with all your Tivo'd content. Sitcoms, news, last night's SportsCenter- those are the things that people would actually watch on a portable video player. Plus, there would actually be an application to justify the 100+ GB iPods we will be seeing in a couple of years.
Apple would then leave everyone else in the dust (again.) But I guess it's a moot point if that rumor was bogus...
I don't think Google was so highly advertised. Can the old supplant the new? I think that's exactly what Google did.
I think complete novices may be better served by a single-button mouse (although most learn and move into the second category of casual users.)
Casual users could probably go either way, and will get acclimated to either method (and there is always the option of getting a 2-button mouse.) They're able to do what they need to do, but probably don't use much in the way of keyboard commands, etc. to speed up their computer use.
Power users in most cases seem to prefer the 2-button setup, and perhaps a a scroll wheel and extra side buttons. They are proficient enough that they've optimized a specific setup with as many shortcuts as possible, so a change to a single-button mouse would impact their workflow. But the only ones who really have anything to get worked up about are notebook users who would like a 2 button trackpad. The rest can get a 2-button mouse. Who cares what Steve Jobs thinks either way?
I think there is an opportunity for a new company to use the Super Bowl to launch something. I mean, you could buy a million cheap radio spots and technically reach the same number of people with less money, but not create nearly as much impact (at least that's my guess, I've never run an ad in the Super Bowl.) But more often, it's a bigger company that launches something new- the Mac, Crystal Pepsi, etc.
But you better have something big and memorable to match your ad venue, besides just the fact that you are running a Super Bowl ad (and that you created a really catchy or funny ad.) I think that these companies got confused- they thought just running a Super Bowl ad would instantly make them 'big time', even if they actually had nothing noteworthy to sell or promote. Another poster mentioned what happened after the Computers.com ad, I can't imagine how those guys felt after they generated almost none of the response they bet their farm on.
So, to summarize, here's the 4 step plan to become as rich as Bill Gates:
1. Develop something totally new and cool that people will need or crave.
2. Develop cool or funny TV commercial.
3. Advertise on the Super Bowl.
4. Watch the orders roll in!
Too bad everyone forgot step 1!
Like how does a major Jedi like Dooku end up turning to the dark side? Why doesn't anyone see this coming? Why can't anyone feel a "disturbance" in the Force (in general, the Jedi seem to have all the psychic ability of Madame Cleo. When something bad happens they just furrow their brow and sit there.) Why do we really care?
I guess my main problem is that none of it seems really plausible in any way. Lucas can do good guy/bad guy fine- Darth Vader wears BLACK and breathes OMINOUSLY and STRANGLES his underlings without hesitation, thus he is EVIL and must be stopped. Luke is INNOCENT and GOOD, and Leah is PURE and GOOD too (they both wear WHITE), let's hope they WIN!
But Lucas is lost with anything that requires subtlety and a deft touch. I could list some examples but they're pretty much self-evident in the prequel movies. It's a shame, because I think the underlying story actually has (had) potential.
I bought a G3 iMac DV for $150 on EBay, added some RAM, and fired up Panther. It actually worked pretty good, but would chug on my 6 MP digital photos.
A week later, I bought an eMac refurb for only $550 from Apple.com (I sold my PC, as well as the iMac on EBay for a profit.) I bought a DVD burner for $50, and a 120 GB hard drive for $60. My PC was kinda old and worked fine for me, so it doesn't matter that it's not a G5. Later I'm going to overclock it to 1.6 Ghz to get a little peppier performance anyway.
...and all you will get is nice dark-toned photos from him fron the "Bad" days.
Halo is one of the few video games I have actually finished, mainly due to the AI. Granted I don't have that much FPS experience, but Halo is one of the few games where I actually felt like I was fighting a squad of enemies. Each battle feels different and unique. And yes, the game doesn't really shine until you play on the hardest or second-hardest difficulty level. Lower than that, and the enemies feel more like your basic FPS target practice.
Obviously you can play multi-player if you want tough opponents, but multi-player is simply a much different experience than a single-player campaign, you lose most if not all of the immersion and story.
Besides that, it was a very well-polished game with great graphics for a XBox launch title. The game was certainly rushed, but the finished product was very complete considering the circumstances. When Halo was shown for the first time at E3, that demo level (Silent Cartographer?) was in fact the ONLY level they had completed up to that point. And that was a scant 6 months before the game was released! Although I can see how some are a bit jaded with the game (or just flat-out didn't like it), I think to claim that Halo is ALL hype is completely overblown.
He posted this link to his server a few pages up, it worked for me about 5 minutes ago and is pretty fast- http://www.tomservo.net/etc/vid/starwars3teaser.mo v
This link has the whole trailer. A little choppy but pretty good.
I for one actually am kinda jazzed after seeing the trailer. FWIW, I hated Ep. 1 and tolerated Ep. 2.
...from Gupta. I bet he could tell us how the new consoles are really shaping up!
I'm not certain if the XBox copy protection scheme itself has been cracked, but it has certainly been bypassed. So again, the end result is that the original purpose of the DRM is circumvented.
The most surprising thing of all out of this fiasco for Winer and the bloggers is that Winer apparently had no idea suddenly pulling the plug without warning would upset some people- Such slams had Winer shaking his head. "This thing has been blown so far out of proportion," he said. "It's just unbelievable to me." Very few could have predicted the Pistons would win in 5, but anyone with half a brain could see the response coming from this. Apparently he still is having a hard time coming to grips with it, I'm not sure why. He's not some corporate suit who doesn't even know what a blog is. If he had actually anticipated this, he could have provided some sort of warning a couple of months in advance. Then people who wanted backups could have done so, without a mad rush of traffic over a short period of time. He of course had no obligation to do this, but that would have been the much smarter thing. (Of course, if there was some sudden serious medical emergency then that could preclude everything.)
And it's important to note that both current and previous versions of Opera rendered the correct HTML/CSS just fine, so this wasn't a matter of MS not keeping up to date with Opera upgrades.
So for whatever reason, the MSN page was set up to specifically feed Opera users a CSS that did not work. Everyone else BUT Opera got the default CSS (which Opera renders perfectly)
The explanation given on that Wikipedia page you mentioned does not jibe with the technical details provided on the Opera page. Opera is not just making a bunch of sweeping claims, they do back it up with details.
There may be a non-'evil empire' explanation for this, but no one has provided a good one that suitably takes into account all of the details.
Does that mean that 2 years ago there was plenty of oil, and just now there isn't? We may very well be on the verge of running out, but I don't think there's too much of a correlation with current prices and worldwide supply of oil. From what I understand, current prices are impacted moreso by high demand. Of course, that can also create the same problem of demand being greater than supply, but that's different than oil just running out.
Adjusted for inflation, it's still cheaper than it was in during the oil crisis in the 1970's:
Allowing for inflation, prices are about half those during the oil price shock that followed the 1979 Iranian revolution. Crude averaged $78 a barrel during 1980 when adjusted for inflation to 2002 prices, according to oil major BP. Crude in money of the day averaged $35.69 a barrel in 1980, BP said.
Is he doing this to be ironic? Who knows, it's still funny as hell.
I think these attempts at innovation by Nintendo have more to do with internal company factors than truly revolutionizing the state of gaming. Like pushing the revolutionary GBA-Gamecube link, which IMO had more to do with Nintendo trying to leverage their handheld dominance in the console market (the results speak for themselves, maybe a couple of decent games, the rest being unlockable content that did nothing but force Gamecube owners to buy a GBA to play a Gamecube game.)
Nintendo sees the writing on the wall- they can't compete head-on with Sony and Microsoft (it's tough competing against a consumer electronics giant on one hand, and the Evil Empire on the other), so they are trying to change the game. Which is fine by me, it's just all the self-serving PR that annoys- Nintendo, the company that cares.
If Nintendo really wanted to innovate, they might have actually tried to enable online play with the Gamecube.
That being said, the Nintendo DS at least looks better and has some potential (but really so does the PSP to some degree). I look forward to seeing if any DS games are able to capitalize on the new hardware and really offer truly significantly new gameplay experiences. If those games don't come out, the DS dual-screen and touchscree will be all for naught, leaving the PSP with the significant hardware advantage.
Starbucks could've locked down the coffee shop market even more had they gone with a cheaper provider (not that they really needed to). Well, at least this gives local, independent coffee shops a chance at competing by offering free Wifi. I wonder if Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf is going to do something chainwide-
There's an existing similar program called X1 Search (www.x1.com). It also indexes your hard drive, but it's not free.
It's actually a product from Idealab, that $1 trillion dollar internet uber-incubator. I think this is all they have left (well this and goto.com). Too bad a better company just came out with a better product that will be free...
Alta Vista Search was great, although I found myself not using it as much as I thought I would. I still have the latest version, but it only goes up to Win 98.
The original page explaining the whole debacle only specifically talks about Opera 7, so I can't tell whether Opera 6 worked or not at that point. If it did, then your explanation is completely valid and it would seem to be a innocent error. If not, then there would be no reason for MS to specifically check for Opera if it wasn't going to bother testing compatibility (since the regular MSIE content actually renders fine!)
Thanks
Opera renders that content just fine, it only has problems with the CSS that is specifically sent to UA "Opera":
The culprit is in the "-30px" value set on the margin property. This value instructs Opera7 to move list elements 30 pixels to the left of its parent. That is, Opera7 is explicitly instructed to move content off the side of its container thus creating the impression that there is something wrong with Opera7.
Such a stunt by Microsoft would seem too stupid to believe, so I'm willing to consider the possibility that Microsoft just made a mistake. But your explanation does not fit what is going on.
If Microsoft simply didn't bother testing Opera compatibility due to its low market share, then why does the MSN HTML code check for user agent "Opera", and specifically send it different files than the fallback Netscape 4.7 HTML?
Your explanation is interesting, but doesn't make complete sense. The point is that Opera gets specific files that are different from both MSIE content, and the generic fallback content.