No, we became GODS when we gained the ability to make the blind see, the lame walk, and raise the dead. We have been GODS for quite some time. We are just becoming more powerful GODS.
At this point, there is little point in supporting any other output than HDMI. $100 monitors support it. All new TVs support it.
More interesting would be if they went back to solid state for distributing games. I hacked my Wiis because while I am find with optical media as my master copy, I don't use optical media for daily use. It is unsuitable for that purpose. With the price of SD cards these days, they could make SD the standard media format, and if they built the system to support USB SD card readers, it would remove much of the need for hacking the system, as being able to have a dozen carts left plugged into your system would largely eliminate the hassle of disk swapping, and SD cards would remove the concern over scratching disks.
It would also future proof against any size restrictions. Just ship 2 SD cards, and if things get really big, ship one SD card for authorization, and a USB hard drive for all of the data.
That's funny, because the PS3 and 360 are the first consoles that I have skipped. The online lockdown was what drove me away. In my home we still play 2600, Nes, C64, you name it. We usually keep the current generation systems plugged into TVs in the living room and family room, and then have 1 or 2 older systems on on each of the two TVs.
The online shackles that are becoming the norm means that using the the systems after they are no longer the current generation continued functionality becomes less and less likely. I'm just not interested in renting my consoles, even if it is on a 5 year lease.
I'm not buying the phone and tablets market is going to kill consoles. I know a lot of people that play games on their phones and tablets. I don't know anyone that has given up a DS in exchange for one. Some people like me have added them to the mix. Some people don't care about games enough to carry around a dedicated system, so are new customers, not customers taken from the dedicated hand held. Solitaire was by far the PC game that was played by the most people. Virtually every single person with a PC played it. That does not mean it took over PC gaming. People played it because it was their, but when they went looking for a game, Solitaire wasn't what they were looking for. The same applies to phones.
Just look at the big hit of the phone gaming market. Angry Birds. Sure, it is entertaining. Yes, I have played it. It would be lost in a sea of just as good or better games on the DS. The reason it gets so much press is that it is an actually playable fun game on the phone, and that it is just that rare to find a decent game there. The phones have crappy interfaces for most video games. There are certain types of games that work with a touch screen, but there are lots that don't. Covering your screen with your fingers just doesn't make a good interface for things that are real time.
Of course, if more phone manufacturers were to start offering better controllers for the phones, we could see the same convergence that we saw with the PDA and phone market. With the current crop of phones, that isn't happening though.
As for the Next Wii. Whether it is a good idea or not will depend on several factors. Presumably, the Wii2 would have better graphics than the PS3 and 360. Certainly 1920x1080 is as good as it will be, and any future PS or Xbox will not do higher resolution, as the TV will be the limiting factor, so there is no reason that anyone should need to down rez for any future Nintendo console. Looking at sales, Nintendo clearly made the right choice in reducing cost by not going HD before the TVs were mainstream. If Nintendo gets 2 years on a Wii2 before a future PS or Xbox gets release, they may have enough of a market lead that Sony and MS just can't compete. If the Wii2 is more powerful than the PS3 and Xbox360, and is only ~$100 more expensive, it will either sweep the next gen market for lack of competition, or it will force Sony and MS to excellent their release plans. Rushing their systems to market could lead to half baked systems that further help Nintendo.
So, my conclusion would be the exact opposite as yours. My impression is that if Nintendo is basically ready to release their next system, they are in a very strong position compared to MS and Sony. It means that they will likely be defining the market with Sony and MS playing catch up.
It isn't exactly a predecessor, but the GC could play GBA games. They sold an adapter for the cartridge to plug in. The SNES could also play GB and GBC games.
If your paying $0.04/kWh, YOU probably shouldn't be installing PV panels. You probably SHOULD be buying an all electric car though. Whereas, here in CA where the cost starts at $0.12/kWh and can quickly climb to a tier that costs greater than $0.40/kWh, PV makes a lot of sense, and all electric cars don't.
There are companies in CA that will issue you a loan for the cost of the panels that is less than the cost of buying the equivalent electricity from PG&E.
Since I was a kid, wind farms brought a smile to my face. Not because of the power concerns, but because they are giant art exihbits. If they didn't do anything useful, people would rave about how cool they are and declare them "Art". A wind farm is basically a field full of giant pinwheels. How cool is that!
I complain about spelling and grammar 'Nazis' because they are always hypocrites. 100% of the times that I have called them on it, and carried the conversation long enough, they have made a spelling or grammar mistake. Why? Because sometimes people make spelling and grammar mistakes.
I just searched, and the going rate for Mario Kart DS is ~$25 used. That game is not worth $100 for a 4 player game. It also doesn't cover the half dozen other multiplayer games that he likes to play.
Even better would be is if you didn't need a second game disk to play multi-player. I don't know a single person that played multi-player on their GB or GBA, even though the systems were technically capable. Nobody wanted to buy 2 of the carts to play 1 game. The DS on the other hand, I see people playing multi-player all the time. We have 4 of them in my house, and only 3 people. My son picks up multi-player games all the time. He sees another kid with a DS, and next thing you know they are playing multi-player.
Requiring each player to pay full price for a single game is a major problem for multi-player.
Genres have their own great writers, but they're just not the same as literature.
This statement simply makes no sense.
Sci-fi IS literature. Saying that this or that written story isn't literature is no different than other subject snobs that say this or that OS isn't a "real OS", this or that isn't are "real computer", or this or that isn't "real music". All these statement show a distinct lack of understanding of the subject matter.
That has been made more painfully clear to me recently. My 6 year old son, (now 7) joined a book club a few months before his birthday. When discussing the books that would be on the agenda, our suggestions of age appropriate books like "The Magic Tree House" series were dismissed because the other parents wanted it to be more focused on "good literature". They were suggesting books like Moby Dick. This is for a group of readers between the ages of 6 and 8. What was decided was that each month, "the kids" would take a turn at picking the book for that month. While we are making our son read the books himself, it has become blatantly obvious, that not one single book has been read by even one of the other children. It turns out that all of the other kids parents are at best buying them "books on tape" or renting them the movie adaptations of the books.
This month they are doing "Tom Sawyer". This is not what would be called an easy read for a teen ager or even many adults. My son is doing it, but with great effort. The other parents are just renting the movies or cartoons. Then patting themselves on the back for exposing their kids to great "liturature". It is sad.
So, they are saying that T-Mobile is 8 years ahead of them in network upgrades? Sounds like AT&T can only be a disaster if they are 8 years behind the 4th run carrier in a 4 carrier market.
It is not an old and poor argument. It is just pointing out the flaw in the system, and the logic the "depriving royalty payments is stealing" argument, which IS an old and poor argument.
Copyright is simply an attempt at a pragmatic solution for a social engineering project. For the most part it isn't an inherently bad idea. If the question of copyright is placed in a Good/Evil context, it false pretty squarely in the "Evil" category. If viewed from a pragmatic, "How can we make society work", it makes more sense. BUT, it only makes sense when taken to a certain point. The "copyright is stealing" crowed is just the flip said of the same coin as the "information wants to be free" crowd.
Maybe so, but I would take that statement a lot more seriously if you personal didn't use other peoples creative works without compensation on a daily basis.
Slashdot Mirror
No, we became GODS when we gained the ability to make the blind see, the lame walk, and raise the dead. We have been GODS for quite some time. We are just becoming more powerful GODS.
The discussion is about scientists. Environmental "scientists" being a different thing, much like a phrenology "scientist".
At this point, there is little point in supporting any other output than HDMI. $100 monitors support it. All new TVs support it.
More interesting would be if they went back to solid state for distributing games. I hacked my Wiis because while I am find with optical media as my master copy, I don't use optical media for daily use. It is unsuitable for that purpose. With the price of SD cards these days, they could make SD the standard media format, and if they built the system to support USB SD card readers, it would remove much of the need for hacking the system, as being able to have a dozen carts left plugged into your system would largely eliminate the hassle of disk swapping, and SD cards would remove the concern over scratching disks.
It would also future proof against any size restrictions. Just ship 2 SD cards, and if things get really big, ship one SD card for authorization, and a USB hard drive for all of the data.
That's funny, because the PS3 and 360 are the first consoles that I have skipped. The online lockdown was what drove me away. In my home we still play 2600, Nes, C64, you name it. We usually keep the current generation systems plugged into TVs in the living room and family room, and then have 1 or 2 older systems on on each of the two TVs.
The online shackles that are becoming the norm means that using the the systems after they are no longer the current generation continued functionality becomes less and less likely. I'm just not interested in renting my consoles, even if it is on a 5 year lease.
I'm not buying the phone and tablets market is going to kill consoles. I know a lot of people that play games on their phones and tablets. I don't know anyone that has given up a DS in exchange for one. Some people like me have added them to the mix. Some people don't care about games enough to carry around a dedicated system, so are new customers, not customers taken from the dedicated hand held. Solitaire was by far the PC game that was played by the most people. Virtually every single person with a PC played it. That does not mean it took over PC gaming. People played it because it was their, but when they went looking for a game, Solitaire wasn't what they were looking for. The same applies to phones.
Just look at the big hit of the phone gaming market. Angry Birds. Sure, it is entertaining. Yes, I have played it. It would be lost in a sea of just as good or better games on the DS. The reason it gets so much press is that it is an actually playable fun game on the phone, and that it is just that rare to find a decent game there. The phones have crappy interfaces for most video games. There are certain types of games that work with a touch screen, but there are lots that don't. Covering your screen with your fingers just doesn't make a good interface for things that are real time.
Of course, if more phone manufacturers were to start offering better controllers for the phones, we could see the same convergence that we saw with the PDA and phone market. With the current crop of phones, that isn't happening though.
As for the Next Wii. Whether it is a good idea or not will depend on several factors. Presumably, the Wii2 would have better graphics than the PS3 and 360. Certainly 1920x1080 is as good as it will be, and any future PS or Xbox will not do higher resolution, as the TV will be the limiting factor, so there is no reason that anyone should need to down rez for any future Nintendo console. Looking at sales, Nintendo clearly made the right choice in reducing cost by not going HD before the TVs were mainstream. If Nintendo gets 2 years on a Wii2 before a future PS or Xbox gets release, they may have enough of a market lead that Sony and MS just can't compete. If the Wii2 is more powerful than the PS3 and Xbox360, and is only ~$100 more expensive, it will either sweep the next gen market for lack of competition, or it will force Sony and MS to excellent their release plans. Rushing their systems to market could lead to half baked systems that further help Nintendo.
So, my conclusion would be the exact opposite as yours. My impression is that if Nintendo is basically ready to release their next system, they are in a very strong position compared to MS and Sony. It means that they will likely be defining the market with Sony and MS playing catch up.
It isn't exactly a predecessor, but the GC could play GBA games. They sold an adapter for the cartridge to plug in. The SNES could also play GB and GBC games.
I have met very few Liberals who were liberal.
If your paying $0.04/kWh, YOU probably shouldn't be installing PV panels. You probably SHOULD be buying an all electric car though. Whereas, here in CA where the cost starts at $0.12/kWh and can quickly climb to a tier that costs greater than $0.40/kWh, PV makes a lot of sense, and all electric cars don't.
There are companies in CA that will issue you a loan for the cost of the panels that is less than the cost of buying the equivalent electricity from PG&E.
That's pretty good since I pay $0.32/kwh, and have paid as much as $0.48/kwh.
Since I was a kid, wind farms brought a smile to my face. Not because of the power concerns, but because they are giant art exihbits. If they didn't do anything useful, people would rave about how cool they are and declare them "Art". A wind farm is basically a field full of giant pinwheels. How cool is that!
I complain about spelling and grammar 'Nazis' because they are always hypocrites. 100% of the times that I have called them on it, and carried the conversation long enough, they have made a spelling or grammar mistake. Why? Because sometimes people make spelling and grammar mistakes.
I refute that claim of being a scam by pointing out that stereoscopy is how human see 3D.
Many don't.
I just searched, and the going rate for Mario Kart DS is ~$25 used. That game is not worth $100 for a 4 player game. It also doesn't cover the half dozen other multiplayer games that he likes to play.
Even better would be is if you didn't need a second game disk to play multi-player. I don't know a single person that played multi-player on their GB or GBA, even though the systems were technically capable. Nobody wanted to buy 2 of the carts to play 1 game. The DS on the other hand, I see people playing multi-player all the time. We have 4 of them in my house, and only 3 people. My son picks up multi-player games all the time. He sees another kid with a DS, and next thing you know they are playing multi-player.
Requiring each player to pay full price for a single game is a major problem for multi-player.
There was a time when nobody had indoor toilets or electricity to their homes too. I'll pass.
Genres have their own great writers, but they're just not the same as literature.
This statement simply makes no sense.
Sci-fi IS literature. Saying that this or that written story isn't literature is no different than other subject snobs that say this or that OS isn't a "real OS", this or that isn't are "real computer", or this or that isn't "real music". All these statement show a distinct lack of understanding of the subject matter.
That has been made more painfully clear to me recently. My 6 year old son, (now 7) joined a book club a few months before his birthday. When discussing the books that would be on the agenda, our suggestions of age appropriate books like "The Magic Tree House" series were dismissed because the other parents wanted it to be more focused on "good literature". They were suggesting books like Moby Dick. This is for a group of readers between the ages of 6 and 8. What was decided was that each month, "the kids" would take a turn at picking the book for that month. While we are making our son read the books himself, it has become blatantly obvious, that not one single book has been read by even one of the other children. It turns out that all of the other kids parents are at best buying them "books on tape" or renting them the movie adaptations of the books.
This month they are doing "Tom Sawyer". This is not what would be called an easy read for a teen ager or even many adults. My son is doing it, but with great effort. The other parents are just renting the movies or cartoons. Then patting themselves on the back for exposing their kids to great "liturature". It is sad.
So, they are saying that T-Mobile is 8 years ahead of them in network upgrades? Sounds like AT&T can only be a disaster if they are 8 years behind the 4th run carrier in a 4 carrier market.
It is not an old and poor argument. It is just pointing out the flaw in the system, and the logic the "depriving royalty payments is stealing" argument, which IS an old and poor argument.
Copyright is simply an attempt at a pragmatic solution for a social engineering project. For the most part it isn't an inherently bad idea. If the question of copyright is placed in a Good/Evil context, it false pretty squarely in the "Evil" category. If viewed from a pragmatic, "How can we make society work", it makes more sense. BUT, it only makes sense when taken to a certain point. The "copyright is stealing" crowed is just the flip said of the same coin as the "information wants to be free" crowd.
Maybe so, but I would take that statement a lot more seriously if you personal didn't use other peoples creative works without compensation on a daily basis.
Exactly, which is why viewing "depriving someone, somewhere of a royalty payment" as stealing is silly.
Not buying MY book deprives me of a royalty payment too. Not being interested in it in any way shape of form doesn't change that.
It amazes me that Apple users would think that the only time they are not connected to a network is when driving.