Which, I understand, is kind of their job. But why can't they praise themselves - and provide actual evidence to justify that praise - instead?
What it comes off like is they're running scared. It feels like they've got nothing but pre-rendered stuff and a past track-record of overpromising and underdelivering and now they keep on just saying shit like "ours is sooooooo much better. Reeeeeeealllly better. Soooooooo. Muuuuuuuuch. Beeeeeeeeeter!" and waving their hands around nonsense numbers and specs.
Personally, this amount of hot air and handwaving with *zero* real data to back it up at this point is making me think there are some real problems with the PS3 that they're hoping they can hype over.
Of course, everyone's hyping their stuff - but, in the case of the original XBox, I really feel that they lived up to what they promised and delivered a damn fine system - so (ironic, isn't it?) I guess I trust them a little more than Sony who lied their asses off, didn't live up to what they promised, even if they did deliver a nice console.
Definitely agree on that - just trying to think of Altivec optimized apps, and it seems like the "big" ones already exist for x86 and run well.
And, really if something *needs* that kind of optimization, it *will* be rewritten to work on the new stuff. If the market is there, and one assumes that it would be since it was there for the original stuff.
My initial response was to add another aspect to your response to the original question, rather than a negation of your comment - I agree with what you've said, for sure.
Personally, I'd love to see more competition for desktop PC's - whether it be x86 vs. PPC or whatever - but I think it would be unlikely that Apple would make both Intel and PPC based Macs for the long term, and I think if they switched back to just using IBM chips they'd suffer a lot from users who get confused as to why they keep doing this.
The reason I don't see them manufacturing both kinds of Mac long term is that it would be a return to the "too many Macs" era of the Scully reign. I could see them offering highly specialized PPC machines for certain setups - maybe one optimized to really crank out animation, but suffering performance hits with more generalized computing tasks - but I can't see them doing this in any big way.
But I hope I'm wrong - because I really do think it's good that there be robust and widespread alternatives to x86.
Apple loved to pull Phil Schiller onstage to do side-by-side speed tests showing how much faster in real life the G4s and G5s were than their Pentium equivalents. Was that so much BS?
Not really. But, how many things REALLY take such advantage of Altivec that its worth keeping it around?
G5's may have been hot shit when they were first released. And, if the roadmap that IBM and Apple initially thought they could hit were accurate, G5 would still be hot shit.
But IBM couldn't hit their marks, couldn't handle the production, and basically that means that in the near-term G5 would definitely start lagging, and long-term would likely to lag simply because Intel is so flipping *huge*.
So, it's not that G5 wasn't great - it's just that there were problems arising that would make it much less competitive over time.
2 hours of changes and no time for extensive QA and pretty much all the other stuff that would be involved in a port and release.
Just because they got it to compile does NOT mean that it was a flawless port, ready to ship.
Also, there's the customer to think of. I'd be *mighty* pissed if I bought a G5 and then a month later they pull the switch on me, claiming that these new machines will have better perfomance etc. This way, customers can make an informed decision.
In fact, I think it's rather admirable of Apple to do this - they are *clearly* shooting sales of current gen systems in the foot (who wants to buy this stuff when the new things are right around the corner?) but they are giving their customers fair warning.
For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what the fuck they were talking about. My work? x is obviously 4. You'd have to be a retard not to get it, right? What "work" is there to show? They said "No, show that you're dividing both sides by 5" and I was just baffled - well it's OBVIOUS that both sides need to be divided by 5! Do people really need to be *told* that?
Then they tossed up a quadratic equation on the board, and suddenly I saw the value of showing my work - namely that sometimes you will be dealing with problems that aren't as obvious as turning.25 into a fraction, and there you go, you'll need a method.
Personally, I work best with a practical approach - giving me "real" problems to solve rather than things that are too easy helps greatly because I don't wind up resenting the use of a seemingly pointless technique when the answer is obvious.
When I was teaching my nephew math, I always started him off with non-obvious problems so he'd *have* to learn this stuff inside and out. It seems to have worked - he's now an associate professor in the mathematics/compsci department of a rather nice university.
I have never, ever, EVER found myself in a situation where I said "Gosh, I really wish I hadn't learned how to do !"
I have, however, found myself (unfortunately more often than I'd like) in a situation where I have said "Damn, I really wish I *had* learned how to do !"
People should learn to do things both on their own and when they've got all kinds of resources. That way, if they are ever in a situation where they can't just go look up the answer, they'll be covered. And when they are in a situation where they don't have time to figure it out on their own, they know where to look to get the answer.
I teach adult career changers. In the first half of my course, I require the students to figure out everything on their own instead of looking for a pre-existing example. In the second half, I encourage them to find already existing solutions - that way I know that my students can handle whatever comes their way.
And I hire people for a consulting firm. When I interview, one of the key things I look for is how they go about solving problems. I don't want someone who's first choice is to reinvent the wheel, but when we *do* need that wheel invented, I want to know they have the tools they need to get on it.
How is the parent insightful? If anything, it's the exact opposite of insightful.
Saying "Oh, we shouldn't study things, it makes them less fun" is counter to intellectual curiosity and really, implies that there would be no *value* in studying the comics.
Further, it completely ignores the idea that the people who don't want to study it or approach it from an academic standpoint don't have to. Don't want the "magic" spoiled for you? Then don't pay attention to the studies. Isn't freedom grand?
So, how about modding it "Quick and poorly thought out attempt to get a first post"? How about modding it "Exactly the kind of close-minded bullshit that many of us here come to/. to avoid"?
One of the big issues with PC games being buggy and having issues is because of the staggering array of hardware people have and strange behaviors and interactions between those various components. I imagine that this kind of thing takes up a marked amount of development time, and probably harms sales - if I read that XYZ game is a bug-ridden piece of shit often enough, I'm not likely to buy it.
One of the big advantages console game development is a fixed target - the developers know exactly what the specs are, the tricks of the hardware etc. While I have seen bugs in console games, I'd say they're the exception, rather than the rule.
Macintoshes are somewhere in between - the basic hardware is going to be a fixed target, with the only obvious differences being processor speed, memory, HD size, and video card. Everything else is (within certain boundaries) pretty much the same across all macs of a given generation.
So, to me, this says that it may be possible that macs might be MUCH easier to develop for than their PC counterparts - certainly, it'll be easier to port highly-optimized apps (which I'd say games count as, what with the performance demands of many) over more quickly. Moreover, the gaming experience will tend to be less of a hassle.
I think, once Mac marketshare gets above a certain point (and I can only think the switch to Intel will help drive that), developers will be more willing to do timely Mac ports of games. And, once word of mouth spreads about the (likely) more robust gaming experience on a Mac, I see market share growing quite a bit more - nice feedback loop.
Imagine - 5 years from now people might think of Macintosh as the preferred gaming platform.
You may be right - it might be a shorter timeframe. I think, in this case, though, that the specs of the XBox 360 are a larger jump from the PC specs these days than the original XBox was - at least, I don't remember really being wowed at the time, and I am a bit more impressed with the new stuff.
So let's say 12 months to 3 years max before this stuff is old hat.
Patches, new maps, new content, "free" downloadable games, networked game information, user-created mods, my own soundtracks to replace the in-game music, and probably dozens of other things that I can't think of now, but will seem to be no-brainers in 2-3 years.
Lastly, as to your point about the specs on the consoles... Yeah, they sound awesome *now* but then again, so did the XBox specs when it was released. 2-3 years in, PCs will have faster RAM, better video cards, other expansions that the consoles don't (Physics card? AI card?) and so on.
Consoles are great because they let you just game and get on with it - you don't have to dick around with drivers etc. But PC's are great because they don't stay static for 5 years at a shot and then get a quantum-leap overhaul to the latest and greatest.
Personally, I love consoles for games because they're rather plug-and-play and I never have to wonder if some peripheral or card I've got will work with it - but to say that they are the alpha and omega is just not correct.
I attend a group for parents of children with various conditions and disabilities (and adults who had/have conditions and disabilities) I have heard some of the parents of severely disabled children refer to it as "Going to Switzerland." As in:
You go to the travel agent, you book a wonderful trip to go to France, stay in Paris in a 4 star hotel, and you have it all planned out - a trip to the Louvre, shopping on Champs Elysees, restaurants, etc.
And then, when you get off of the plane you realize they took you to Switzerland instead. At first, you're shocked and outraged - this isn't where you wanted to be! And then you say "Well, I'm here, maybe I ought to look around." So you spend some time. No, it's not Paris - it's not where you'd hoped you would be, but maybe it isn't so bad and there are some things you learn about that you couldn't have learned in Paris. Sure, every once in awhile you'll wonder what might have been had you gone where you'd expected, but well... that's life.
I don't know that it should matter one way or another.
Being black is genetic, and black people are given equal protection under the law. This is a good thing.
Being hindu is a choice, and hindus are given equal protection under the law. This is a good thing.
Being gay is either genetic or a choice or some combination of those factors. As we protect both genetic and choice based "lifestyles" (or whatever you want to call these things), it ony makes sense that gay people ought to have equal protection under the law.
The only time that choice or genetics should not be protected is when it is a choice/genetic condition (i.e. certain psychiatric conditions that, untreated, can lead to violence) that causes harm to other people. Nobody but a bigot would make the case that a gay person is causing harm to people by having sex with same-sex partners.
What's really sad about all of this is that we just never seem to learn. There'll always be some group of people who is hated and feared and who does absolutely nothing to harm anyone, but eventually gets accepted. And then another group gets picked. Aren't people smart enough to see the pattern yet?
Rather a large difference between an empire and a corporation.
In the world of empires, vast wealth is only 1 (of many, many) important factors to stability.
In the world of corporations, vast wealth is 1 (of far, far fewer) important factors. The amount of money MSFT has is enough for it to be self-sustaining. They can invest in a diverse enough portfolio to survive *anything*. In fact, I daresay that after a certain threshold has been reached, the warchest is so huge that only epically stupid mismanagement (beyond the scope of anything that has ever happened in the business world), nuclear holocaust or governmental action (abolishing it or whatever) is likely to put it at risk.
There's no way in hell that any government worth its salt would abolish MSFT - every other business would see that as a sign that said government is going to massively punish success, and would drive business out of that nation.
And I doubt that Enron level scheming would ever actually happen - simply because the people at the helm of MSFT are so mind-bogglingly wealthy already that there would be no point to it. (And, just to pre-emptively address that "the money is the point in and of itself" responses: People who give away, collectively, BILLIONS of dollars to charity are clearly NOT going to fuck themselves up trying to steal a measly few MILLION).
So that leaves nuclear war - in which case, I think the headlines would read "We're Fucked" and not "Microsoft Out of Business." (Except here on/. where, I'm sure, the big bang would have been reported as "Explosion creates new universe - will it run Linux?")
God help me for knowing this, but: Lucas said he always wanted 3P0 to have a "scrap"/"thrown together" look about him, even when he'd been shined up and overhauled - so he keeps the silver leg through all the original 3 movies.
I *think* he kept it like that in these 3 too, but I can't remember.
I read a study once that showed that people performed better at certain "colder" temperatures - they were more mentally alert etc.
And then there's this study, which likely shows more detail than just "It got cold and they couldn't type well" - I bet it has a nice graph of the temperature range and error rate.
So, combine the two studies - colder (to a point) = more productive, and you now have a range with which to operate in. Depending on the potential increase in productivity for finding that sweet spot, it could be a rather nice return on the investment into such research.
XIII used cel shaded graphics to look very much like a comic book rather than just another FPS. World of Warcraft uses rather stylish graphics. I seem to remember a few games for the PS2 that were also cel shaded, though the games themselves sucked pretty hard, so I can't remember their names.
I'd love to see the user be able to tweak the rendering settings for their games - I'm imagining a game rendered with a Frank Miller Sin City style - hardcore noir.
I agree that the consoles should focus on first and foremost delivering an awesome gameplay experience, with no compromises.
But, I want my console to play DVDs because they can do so without compromising the gameplay requirement, and because I dislike having more boxes when I can have fewer.
I'm passionate about gaming. Like, berserk soccer fan passionate.
The only non-console platform I can really get my gaming fix for is Windows. I've got a box running FC3 that I use for stuff like being productive and for some games (Cedega isn't half bad, though I do have to muck about more than I'd like to get things working more often than not) but for gaming, my XP box is what I use 99.99% of the time, and it works really well for that.
Do I *like* Windows? No. But it does let me do what I want to do - play games.
Really, the platform is irrelevant - I'll use whatever the right tool is for a given job, and for gaming, Windows is currently the right tool.
ANYWAY - if my story were to be used for this thing, I have no doubt that it would come out like this:
"I'm passionate about games... [edit] Windows lets me to what I really want to do: play games."
I doubt anyone would ever say "I love windows and want to have XP's love-child!" but people would say "I love th at Windows lets me do blah-de-blah."
It isn't like people at MSFT don't know that OO.o can do stuff like this, and I think he'd be fired for fucking up the presentation by not doing this rather than pretending that reality is different than it is.
Give me a normal looking person in jeans and a t-shirt who clearly feels comfortable and enjoys where they are and has something honest and interesting to say ANYDAY over a stupidly-clad smile-bot who's only interest is in getting a paycheck.
Really, why don't they just get someone who adds real value to staff the booth as opposed to just stand around and be animate furniture? Or, hell - just admit that they're playing on the sex urges and hire escorts, giving away a free romp every hour?
Why is an all-at-once replacement differend from one that's done piece-by-piece? What is the mechanism that makes it different? Is there some kind of "imprinting" that the other cells have done? What's the time-frame? How long must a cell/part have been part of "you" before it is considered to be part of you at this point? How is a replacement over 7 years different from one over 7 seconds or 7 hours or 7 of any arbitrary unit?
I don't know the answers to any of those questions, and I don't know of anyone who does have answers that are anything other than wild ass guesses and personal beliefs.
Now, certainly it seems to make intuitive sense that "continuity" of some sort is important - but then again, many things that seem intuitive to us are not even remotely correct.
The number of people who didn't buy the previous generation is larger than the number of people who did buy one. If you don't do backwards compatibility, you're missing out on a LOT of sales of older titles to people who are just getting into this generation.
I got a PS2, but had not bought a console prior - no PS1. However, because the PS2 could play PS1 games, I wound up buying quite a few of them because, despite having older graphics, they really had quite good gameplay.
For the 360, backwards compatibility would give Microsoft an excellent chance to gain ground vs. Sony. For someone on the fence about whether to get a 360 or not, being able to point at a large library of games (even older ones) is nothing to sneeze at.
That said, I don't think backwards compatibility will make or break a console, but I do think it's rather more important for the reasons outlined above than just some "phrase that the uninformed consumer likes to hear."
"If you are already an Xbox Live subscriber through the original Xbox system, you can continue to play against gamers who are on Live through Xbox 2--as long as they are playing a current generation Xbox game.
Xbox Live is an online gaming service that works across both the current Xbox system and the future Xbox 2. You will be able to play online and compete against others across both consoles. If you are playing an Xbox game on Live you will be able to compete against people playing that same game on Xbox 2."
That language is pretty clear: you will be able to play online and compete against others across both consoles (Play, not just sharing a friends list). For that to be true, the 360 would have to be able to play 1st generation titles.
However, it doesn't necessarily mean there will be backwards compatibility: I could see them (foolishly) trying to get people to re-buy the 1st gen games by re-compiling and re-releasing them for the 360. Or giving users a choice - try and run your old version, but get no support when it crashes/freezes, or pay $$$ to get the new "guaranteed" version of the game.
Slashdot Mirror
Which, I understand, is kind of their job. But why can't they praise themselves - and provide actual evidence to justify that praise - instead?
What it comes off like is they're running scared. It feels like they've got nothing but pre-rendered stuff and a past track-record of overpromising and underdelivering and now they keep on just saying shit like "ours is sooooooo much better. Reeeeeeealllly better. Soooooooo. Muuuuuuuuch. Beeeeeeeeeter!" and waving their hands around nonsense numbers and specs.
Personally, this amount of hot air and handwaving with *zero* real data to back it up at this point is making me think there are some real problems with the PS3 that they're hoping they can hype over.
Of course, everyone's hyping their stuff - but, in the case of the original XBox, I really feel that they lived up to what they promised and delivered a damn fine system - so (ironic, isn't it?) I guess I trust them a little more than Sony who lied their asses off, didn't live up to what they promised, even if they did deliver a nice console.
Definitely agree on that - just trying to think of Altivec optimized apps, and it seems like the "big" ones already exist for x86 and run well.
And, really if something *needs* that kind of optimization, it *will* be rewritten to work on the new stuff. If the market is there, and one assumes that it would be since it was there for the original stuff.
My initial response was to add another aspect to your response to the original question, rather than a negation of your comment - I agree with what you've said, for sure.
Personally, I'd love to see more competition for desktop PC's - whether it be x86 vs. PPC or whatever - but I think it would be unlikely that Apple would make both Intel and PPC based Macs for the long term, and I think if they switched back to just using IBM chips they'd suffer a lot from users who get confused as to why they keep doing this.
The reason I don't see them manufacturing both kinds of Mac long term is that it would be a return to the "too many Macs" era of the Scully reign. I could see them offering highly specialized PPC machines for certain setups - maybe one optimized to really crank out animation, but suffering performance hits with more generalized computing tasks - but I can't see them doing this in any big way.
But I hope I'm wrong - because I really do think it's good that there be robust and widespread alternatives to x86.
Not really. But, how many things REALLY take such advantage of Altivec that its worth keeping it around?
G5's may have been hot shit when they were first released. And, if the roadmap that IBM and Apple initially thought they could hit were accurate, G5 would still be hot shit.
But IBM couldn't hit their marks, couldn't handle the production, and basically that means that in the near-term G5 would definitely start lagging, and long-term would likely to lag simply because Intel is so flipping *huge*.
So, it's not that G5 wasn't great - it's just that there were problems arising that would make it much less competitive over time.
2 hours of changes and no time for extensive QA and pretty much all the other stuff that would be involved in a port and release.
Just because they got it to compile does NOT mean that it was a flawless port, ready to ship.
Also, there's the customer to think of. I'd be *mighty* pissed if I bought a G5 and then a month later they pull the switch on me, claiming that these new machines will have better perfomance etc. This way, customers can make an informed decision.
In fact, I think it's rather admirable of Apple to do this - they are *clearly* shooting sales of current gen systems in the foot (who wants to buy this stuff when the new things are right around the corner?) but they are giving their customers fair warning.
How is this a bad thing?
You remind me of me when I was learning algebra.
.25 into a fraction, and there you go, you'll need a method.
5x=20. Show your work.
For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what the fuck they were talking about. My work? x is obviously 4. You'd have to be a retard not to get it, right? What "work" is there to show? They said "No, show that you're dividing both sides by 5" and I was just baffled - well it's OBVIOUS that both sides need to be divided by 5! Do people really need to be *told* that?
Then they tossed up a quadratic equation on the board, and suddenly I saw the value of showing my work - namely that sometimes you will be dealing with problems that aren't as obvious as turning
Personally, I work best with a practical approach - giving me "real" problems to solve rather than things that are too easy helps greatly because I don't wind up resenting the use of a seemingly pointless technique when the answer is obvious.
When I was teaching my nephew math, I always started him off with non-obvious problems so he'd *have* to learn this stuff inside and out. It seems to have worked - he's now an associate professor in the mathematics/compsci department of a rather nice university.
I have never, ever, EVER found myself in a situation where I said "Gosh, I really wish I hadn't learned how to do !"
I have, however, found myself (unfortunately more often than I'd like) in a situation where I have said "Damn, I really wish I *had* learned how to do !"
People should learn to do things both on their own and when they've got all kinds of resources. That way, if they are ever in a situation where they can't just go look up the answer, they'll be covered. And when they are in a situation where they don't have time to figure it out on their own, they know where to look to get the answer.
I teach adult career changers. In the first half of my course, I require the students to figure out everything on their own instead of looking for a pre-existing example. In the second half, I encourage them to find already existing solutions - that way I know that my students can handle whatever comes their way.
And I hire people for a consulting firm. When I interview, one of the key things I look for is how they go about solving problems. I don't want someone who's first choice is to reinvent the wheel, but when we *do* need that wheel invented, I want to know they have the tools they need to get on it.
How is the parent insightful? If anything, it's the exact opposite of insightful.
/. to avoid"?
Saying "Oh, we shouldn't study things, it makes them less fun" is counter to intellectual curiosity and really, implies that there would be no *value* in studying the comics.
Further, it completely ignores the idea that the people who don't want to study it or approach it from an academic standpoint don't have to. Don't want the "magic" spoiled for you? Then don't pay attention to the studies. Isn't freedom grand?
So, how about modding it "Quick and poorly thought out attempt to get a first post"? How about modding it "Exactly the kind of close-minded bullshit that many of us here come to
One of the big issues with PC games being buggy and having issues is because of the staggering array of hardware people have and strange behaviors and interactions between those various components. I imagine that this kind of thing takes up a marked amount of development time, and probably harms sales - if I read that XYZ game is a bug-ridden piece of shit often enough, I'm not likely to buy it.
One of the big advantages console game development is a fixed target - the developers know exactly what the specs are, the tricks of the hardware etc. While I have seen bugs in console games, I'd say they're the exception, rather than the rule.
Macintoshes are somewhere in between - the basic hardware is going to be a fixed target, with the only obvious differences being processor speed, memory, HD size, and video card. Everything else is (within certain boundaries) pretty much the same across all macs of a given generation.
So, to me, this says that it may be possible that macs might be MUCH easier to develop for than their PC counterparts - certainly, it'll be easier to port highly-optimized apps (which I'd say games count as, what with the performance demands of many) over more quickly. Moreover, the gaming experience will tend to be less of a hassle.
I think, once Mac marketshare gets above a certain point (and I can only think the switch to Intel will help drive that), developers will be more willing to do timely Mac ports of games. And, once word of mouth spreads about the (likely) more robust gaming experience on a Mac, I see market share growing quite a bit more - nice feedback loop.
Imagine - 5 years from now people might think of Macintosh as the preferred gaming platform.
You may be right - it might be a shorter timeframe. I think, in this case, though, that the specs of the XBox 360 are a larger jump from the PC specs these days than the original XBox was - at least, I don't remember really being wowed at the time, and I am a bit more impressed with the new stuff.
So let's say 12 months to 3 years max before this stuff is old hat.
I need a bigger HD for gaming to save:
Patches, new maps, new content, "free" downloadable games, networked game information, user-created mods, my own soundtracks to replace the in-game music, and probably dozens of other things that I can't think of now, but will seem to be no-brainers in 2-3 years.
Lastly, as to your point about the specs on the consoles... Yeah, they sound awesome *now* but then again, so did the XBox specs when it was released. 2-3 years in, PCs will have faster RAM, better video cards, other expansions that the consoles don't (Physics card? AI card?) and so on.
Consoles are great because they let you just game and get on with it - you don't have to dick around with drivers etc. But PC's are great because they don't stay static for 5 years at a shot and then get a quantum-leap overhaul to the latest and greatest.
Personally, I love consoles for games because they're rather plug-and-play and I never have to wonder if some peripheral or card I've got will work with it - but to say that they are the alpha and omega is just not correct.
I attend a group for parents of children with various conditions and disabilities (and adults who had/have conditions and disabilities) I have heard some of the parents of severely disabled children refer to it as "Going to Switzerland." As in:
You go to the travel agent, you book a wonderful trip to go to France, stay in Paris in a 4 star hotel, and you have it all planned out - a trip to the Louvre, shopping on Champs Elysees, restaurants, etc.
And then, when you get off of the plane you realize they took you to Switzerland instead. At first, you're shocked and outraged - this isn't where you wanted to be! And then you say "Well, I'm here, maybe I ought to look around." So you spend some time. No, it's not Paris - it's not where you'd hoped you would be, but maybe it isn't so bad and there are some things you learn about that you couldn't have learned in Paris. Sure, every once in awhile you'll wonder what might have been had you gone where you'd expected, but well... that's life.
I don't know that it should matter one way or another.
Being black is genetic, and black people are given equal protection under the law. This is a good thing.
Being hindu is a choice, and hindus are given equal protection under the law. This is a good thing.
Being gay is either genetic or a choice or some combination of those factors. As we protect both genetic and choice based "lifestyles" (or whatever you want to call these things), it ony makes sense that gay people ought to have equal protection under the law.
The only time that choice or genetics should not be protected is when it is a choice/genetic condition (i.e. certain psychiatric conditions that, untreated, can lead to violence) that causes harm to other people. Nobody but a bigot would make the case that a gay person is causing harm to people by having sex with same-sex partners.
What's really sad about all of this is that we just never seem to learn. There'll always be some group of people who is hated and feared and who does absolutely nothing to harm anyone, but eventually gets accepted. And then another group gets picked. Aren't people smart enough to see the pattern yet?
Rather a large difference between an empire and a corporation.
/. where, I'm sure, the big bang would have been reported as "Explosion creates new universe - will it run Linux?")
In the world of empires, vast wealth is only 1 (of many, many) important factors to stability.
In the world of corporations, vast wealth is 1 (of far, far fewer) important factors. The amount of money MSFT has is enough for it to be self-sustaining. They can invest in a diverse enough portfolio to survive *anything*. In fact, I daresay that after a certain threshold has been reached, the warchest is so huge that only epically stupid mismanagement (beyond the scope of anything that has ever happened in the business world), nuclear holocaust or governmental action (abolishing it or whatever) is likely to put it at risk.
There's no way in hell that any government worth its salt would abolish MSFT - every other business would see that as a sign that said government is going to massively punish success, and would drive business out of that nation.
And I doubt that Enron level scheming would ever actually happen - simply because the people at the helm of MSFT are so mind-bogglingly wealthy already that there would be no point to it. (And, just to pre-emptively address that "the money is the point in and of itself" responses: People who give away, collectively, BILLIONS of dollars to charity are clearly NOT going to fuck themselves up trying to steal a measly few MILLION).
So that leaves nuclear war - in which case, I think the headlines would read "We're Fucked" and not "Microsoft Out of Business." (Except here on
God help me for knowing this, but: Lucas said he always wanted 3P0 to have a "scrap"/"thrown together" look about him, even when he'd been shined up and overhauled - so he keeps the silver leg through all the original 3 movies.
I *think* he kept it like that in these 3 too, but I can't remember.
I read a study once that showed that people performed better at certain "colder" temperatures - they were more mentally alert etc.
And then there's this study, which likely shows more detail than just "It got cold and they couldn't type well" - I bet it has a nice graph of the temperature range and error rate.
So, combine the two studies - colder (to a point) = more productive, and you now have a range with which to operate in. Depending on the potential increase in productivity for finding that sweet spot, it could be a rather nice return on the investment into such research.
Not quite as obvious now, is it?
There are many games that do just this.
XIII used cel shaded graphics to look very much like a comic book rather than just another FPS. World of Warcraft uses rather stylish graphics. I seem to remember a few games for the PS2 that were also cel shaded, though the games themselves sucked pretty hard, so I can't remember their names.
I'd love to see the user be able to tweak the rendering settings for their games - I'm imagining a game rendered with a Frank Miller Sin City style - hardcore noir.
I agree that the consoles should focus on first and foremost delivering an awesome gameplay experience, with no compromises.
But, I want my console to play DVDs because they can do so without compromising the gameplay requirement, and because I dislike having more boxes when I can have fewer.
So you're thinking what, a week, two weeks tops?
I'm passionate about gaming. Like, berserk soccer fan passionate.
The only non-console platform I can really get my gaming fix for is Windows. I've got a box running FC3 that I use for stuff like being productive and for some games (Cedega isn't half bad, though I do have to muck about more than I'd like to get things working more often than not) but for gaming, my XP box is what I use 99.99% of the time, and it works really well for that.
Do I *like* Windows? No. But it does let me do what I want to do - play games.
Really, the platform is irrelevant - I'll use whatever the right tool is for a given job, and for gaming, Windows is currently the right tool.
ANYWAY - if my story were to be used for this thing, I have no doubt that it would come out like this:
"I'm passionate about games... [edit] Windows lets me to what I really want to do: play games."
I doubt anyone would ever say "I love windows and want to have XP's love-child!" but people would say "I love th at Windows lets me do blah-de-blah."
Why would he be fired?
It isn't like people at MSFT don't know that OO.o can do stuff like this, and I think he'd be fired for fucking up the presentation by not doing this rather than pretending that reality is different than it is.
Give me a normal looking person in jeans and a t-shirt who clearly feels comfortable and enjoys where they are and has something honest and interesting to say ANYDAY over a stupidly-clad smile-bot who's only interest is in getting a paycheck.
Really, why don't they just get someone who adds real value to staff the booth as opposed to just stand around and be animate furniture? Or, hell - just admit that they're playing on the sex urges and hire escorts, giving away a free romp every hour?
Why is an all-at-once replacement differend from one that's done piece-by-piece? What is the mechanism that makes it different? Is there some kind of "imprinting" that the other cells have done? What's the time-frame? How long must a cell/part have been part of "you" before it is considered to be part of you at this point? How is a replacement over 7 years different from one over 7 seconds or 7 hours or 7 of any arbitrary unit?
I don't know the answers to any of those questions, and I don't know of anyone who does have answers that are anything other than wild ass guesses and personal beliefs.
Now, certainly it seems to make intuitive sense that "continuity" of some sort is important - but then again, many things that seem intuitive to us are not even remotely correct.
The number of people who didn't buy the previous generation is larger than the number of people who did buy one. If you don't do backwards compatibility, you're missing out on a LOT of sales of older titles to people who are just getting into this generation.
I got a PS2, but had not bought a console prior - no PS1. However, because the PS2 could play PS1 games, I wound up buying quite a few of them because, despite having older graphics, they really had quite good gameplay.
For the 360, backwards compatibility would give Microsoft an excellent chance to gain ground vs. Sony. For someone on the fence about whether to get a 360 or not, being able to point at a large library of games (even older ones) is nothing to sneeze at.
That said, I don't think backwards compatibility will make or break a console, but I do think it's rather more important for the reasons outlined above than just some "phrase that the uninformed consumer likes to hear."
"If you are already an Xbox Live subscriber through the original Xbox system, you can continue to play against gamers who are on Live through Xbox 2--as long as they are playing a current generation Xbox game.
Xbox Live is an online gaming service that works across both the current Xbox system and the future Xbox 2. You will be able to play online and compete against others across both consoles. If you are playing an Xbox game on Live you will be able to compete against people playing that same game on Xbox 2."
That language is pretty clear: you will be able to play online and compete against others across both consoles (Play, not just sharing a friends list). For that to be true, the 360 would have to be able to play 1st generation titles.
However, it doesn't necessarily mean there will be backwards compatibility: I could see them (foolishly) trying to get people to re-buy the 1st gen games by re-compiling and re-releasing them for the 360. Or giving users a choice - try and run your old version, but get no support when it crashes/freezes, or pay $$$ to get the new "guaranteed" version of the game.