Once upon a time, it was really no contest between Macs and PCs. Macs had this user-friendly graphical interface, and Windows had this half-assed imitation. But over the years, Windows got better, Intel machines got faster and cheaper, and Mac hardware and software stagnated, until Windows systems, while still a bit awkward and less elegant than Macs, were pretty close, and faster and cheaper. Using a Mac was a matter of choosing esthetics over performance.
And then OSX came along. I've been using OSX for awhile, and with each version it's gotten a bit better, but I still had an idea that the relative status of Macs and Windows systems was about the same.
And then my sister asked me to set up her new Dell. What a pain! I had gotten used to the way almost nothing bogs down Mac OS X. You can be doing almost anything--even applying a system update--and you can switch to another application and go about your business. When you install and update Mac OS X, you generally have to reboot the system twice, three times at most, to get it absolutely up to date. Most application installs do not require a reboot. Installing Windows XP was a horrible exercise in frustration. I think I had to reboot over a dozen times to get the system and applications up to date. It was an all day affair. Not to mention having to install and update the virus software that is necessary to prevent a non-sophisticated user of a Windows system from getting completely overrun with infections and spyware.
Even after installing it, it seemed slow and clunky. And this is not in comparison to some super-duper G5, but to my old 800 MHz G4 Powerbook. Now I'm sure that new 2.6 GHz Dell would smoke my Powerbook in any number of benchmarks. But routine things like windows redraws just seemed so slow. And most of the standard software seemed so clumsily designed.
Let's assume that the hard drive cost is only half of that price. So we're talking putting a 200$ hard drive (the 20 GB version), in a console which will sell for less than that hard drive alone. How stupid is that?
Compared to what?
Assuming that the parts cost of the iPod's hard drive alone is half the retail price of the entire unit, even though the iPod has been a huge money maker for Apple and the entire unit probably has a markup over parts in excess of 100%?
Or assuming that the parts cost of a mini-HD will still be that high by the time the XBox2 is released (the new mini-iPods are already down to $249)?
Or comparing that to the price of a console that is expected to sell (at introduction) below cost?
It might. I dunno, I never owned a PS1. But why don't we wait until a bit closer to the deadline before we simply *declare* that the XBox library is vastly inferior to the PS1 library, or at least until the XBox has been out for an equal amount of time as the PS1.
Reality check: The PS1 was out for a decade before the PS2 was released. It accumulated a library of about a thousand games.
I didn't really understand what nVidia was talking about when they said the games used their shading technology. Isn't that all hidden behind Direct3d?
Yes, but presumably they have some proprietary technology involved. So if Microsoft substitutes another shader, games won't look quite the same. And since designers of XBox1 games presumably optimized their titles to get the best possible results from the existing shaders, any change in shader behavior is likely to be for the worse.
I remember for years mom griping about how all these games she had already bought for us were useless on our new system.
Yes, it's really the parents who are the target, because the kid knows better than to say, "I'm not going want to play the $500 worth of old games that you gave me ever again, anyway." On the other hand, the XBox is aimed at an older market, so it may be less of an issue.
So you seriously believe that by the time the XBox2 is released, the XBox's library will match in quantity and quality the library the PS1 had when the PS2 came out?
The choice is pretty obvious. This was a major selling point for the PS2, especially since it enhanced a few lacking aspects of PS1 games, and the PS3 is supposed to have comparable enhancements (load time was a big one, I recall).
In reality, people almost never want to play the previous generation games on their new console. But when they buy the new console, "I can use it play all the old games" is one of those lies people tell themselves to convince themselves to buy an expensive new system with a limited games library. However, it may be less of an advantage for Microsoft. The PS1 had a huge library of quality games. The XBox just has a handful.
The problem here is that the list is so massive, there's actually almost no point to it. There's no plot descriptions whatsoever attached to the list, just a link to elsewhere.
I appreciate these annual summaries. I'm sure that you'll find many reviews of these books in last year's issues of Locus, if you want the details. Locus is mainly a review journal.
Heavy on "Lit'rature" and not much on books to be read for fun or entertainment.
I haven't read many of the books on the list, but your characterization certainly doesn't apply to Jon Courtenay Grimwood's highly entertaining "Fellaheen."
I don't see why we need a new custom controller port on every new generation of console
Controller technology and design has advanced pretty rapidly, so it's hardly surprising that manufacturers of older hardware failed to anticipate the demands of modern controllers (e.g. multiple analog sticks and controllers, voice input). Perhaps controller design has finally reached a level of maturity where a stable controller interface will be reasonable.
The PS2 sucessfully tackled the backward compatibility issue by including an actual PS1 CPU in the system.
This is undoubtedly the safest and most reliable approach, and by the time the XBox2 comes out, will probably add negligibly to the cost of the system.
The marketing tactics employed in commercials are aimed at your irrational mind rather than the rational mind. Most commercials are not intended to "entertain" you, they are designed to get you to make an impuse decision and buy the product.
The fact that you choose to look at the commercial does not make your buying decision more or less rational. In practice, however, it seems likely that people are more likely to be influenced by ads that they watch than by ads that they don't watch.
So, if you are skipping the commercials, TiVo knows it and could sell this aggregate info to advertisers. The result could either be fewer companies wanting to pay for nobody to watch their ads OR more companies putting ads INSIDE the show
Or companies developing commercials that are entertaining enough that I choose to watch them. I'll bet people are far more likely to remember a product if they choose to watch the commercial than if they just sit there passively.
MSG is tasteless. Add to my experiment "taste a crystal of MSG to verify that it has no taste of its own".
That used to be believed. But in fact, it has been shown to interact with taste receptors on the tongue. So it has sort of a subliminal taste that is perceived as an enhancement in the flavor of food. Actually, salt at low levels does exactly the same thing. Very low levels of salt are not perceived as salty, but simply as enhanced taste of whatever you are eating. The difference is that MSG does not seem to support that an intense "MSG-alone" flavor the way salt does. I'm not sure why this is the case; perhaps it is simply a matter of receptor density. And from an evolutionary point of view, there is no particular hazard associated with natural foods containing too much glutamate, whereas too much salt (e.g. drinking seawater) is dangerous. So it makes sense that your taste system might be more capable of generating a "too much salt" signal than a "too much glutamate" signal.
Good point, except that you can verify the "pleasure" with a simple experiment: Try some food with and without MSG, see wich one has a more pleasing taste (Irecommend soup, or soy sauce. You can find sauce with or without MSG if you look hard enough). Make sure there is not only no MSG, but also none of the tricky names MSG hides under: Soy proteins and hydrogenated soy proteins (soy need not be mentioned).
This is purely a matter of flavor, with MSG acting specifically at flavor receptors present on the tongue, so it has nothing to do with glutamate acting as a neurotransmitter in the brains pleasure or reward pathways. Sugar and salt also produce a more pleasing taste, yet neither of them plays any role as neurotransmitters in brain reward pathways.
It is also a neurotransmitter of pleasure wich is linked to addiction. In studies of cocaine addiction, it was found that after repeated intake (it takes more than one shot to become and addict, it was found that the production of glutamate showed a sudden spike right before the signs of physical addiction developped.
It may not be so much a matter of pleasure as of learning. Becoming addicted is a kind of learning process--an association is made between an action and an outcome (pleasure). Blocking glutamate receptors interferes with many kinds of learning. I'm not sure what you mean about physical addiction...cocaine addiction is mainly behavioral, but it is presumed that this reflects physical changes in the brain, very likely to glutamate receptors.
There are also glutamate receptors in the retina...
The retina is best thought of as part of the brain. There are glutamate receptors throughout the central nervous system--it is the primary excitatory neurotransmitter used by the brain.
No, the reason why bacteria have not covered the world is because there are limited resources for growth. Populations are self-limiting to resource constraints.
Give me a break. It is quite possible for microorganisms to live and grow on sunlight, water, and air. Those resources aren't going to become limiting anytime soon. So it should be possible, in principle for a nanotechnological simulated organism to do the same.
On the other hand, it's a bit premature to worry about grey goo at this point, considering how primitive our nanotech really is. It's as if the people building the first assembly lines at the start of the industrial revolution were worrying about the world being taken over by Terminators.
Because that is what MSG is, a drug. It induces pleasure, its addictive (it makes me sick and I can't stop myself from eating it, I'm definatly addicted to that shit).
Glutamate is a lot of things. It is an amino acid, found in essentially all protein. Injected into the nervous system at high concentrations, it can be toxic, but it is also a neurotransmitter that is critical for learning.
Some people have adverse effects after eating it, but for most it merely enhances the taste of food. It is now known to be one of the fundamental flavors for which the tongue has receptors, along with salty, sour, sweet, and bitter, but it was recently discovered that the tongue also carries specific glutamate taste receptors.
It is truly a wonderful and amazing thing that you can buy a mechanically and electronically sophisticated device like a VCR for 50 bucks (have you looked inside? those things look like they were designed by Rube Goldberg). However, the conversion of the VCR into a disposable item (why fix it, when the whole machine costs less than the time it would take a skilled tech to open it up and look inside?) has had some unfortunate consequences:
1) Technology frozen about 10 years ago. Can you believe that most VCRs still have a memory of maybe 8 events or so? There is no reason why a VCR couldn't come with scheduling software as sophisticated as a TiVo--except that then they'd have to charge more than 50 bucks for the thing.
2) Quality control and design shot to hell. Who complains when it breaks down in a couple of years. I cost almost nothing, anyway? And if you want a decent remote, take the money you saved and spend a few bucks for an add-on.
3) Good ones almost impossible to find. Quality VCRs are still manufactured by hard-core VCR manufacturers like JVC, but good luck finding one of them at Best Buy--you'll need a specialty retailer. And be prepared to pay almost as much, if not more, than you would have paid for less features a decade ago.
Now, the same thing is happening to DVD players. I was scanning Best Buy the other day, and quality players were basically absent. Extra money doesn't buy you better quality--just gimmick features like a turntable or (the latest thing!) a VCR built into the same box. Of course, the good ones can still be found at the high-end audio/video stores, but the price gap is huge (or, more accurately, they haven't dropped much as the bottom end has come down).
Yes, the early iMac and some of the Powerbooks are exceptions to the general rule of Macs being simple to upgrade. I just bought two 256 MB RAM chips to upgrade an iMac to 512 MB, but I haven't installed them yet. It looks a lot like upgrading a G3 powerbook, which I've found to be a bit tricky. Online dealers like OtherWorld Computing will provide accurate info on what a Mac can take (which is often more than Apple's Specs say, which frequently don't take account of newer chips) and will sell you chips guaranteed to work in your model. Another useful reference is LowEndMac
Oddly enough, this suggests that people intuitively place a realistic valuation on their personal information. There is really little value to somebody in knowing that you are average, because average data is generally readily available, and will be the default assumption in the absence of better information about you. So the distinguishing information about you--the ways in which you deviate from the norm--are the most valuable thing that you have to sell.
Since it uses virtual memory, OS X doesn't require a lot of memory to run. But it really speeds up when you feed it RAM, up to about a gig or so. Many of the older Macs that people think are too slow to run OS X are just slow because of the limited RAM. Load them up with now-cheap RAM, and they get a lot snappier.
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The idea that the universe is the product of the combinatorial effects of different combinations of events seems neither unique nor unexpected.
Pretty much any idea, if expressed sufficiently broadly and vaguely, will seem "neither unique nor unexpected."
Once upon a time, it was really no contest between Macs and PCs. Macs had this user-friendly graphical interface, and Windows had this half-assed imitation. But over the years, Windows got better, Intel machines got faster and cheaper, and Mac hardware and software stagnated, until Windows systems, while still a bit awkward and less elegant than Macs, were pretty close, and faster and cheaper. Using a Mac was a matter of choosing esthetics over performance.
And then OSX came along. I've been using OSX for awhile, and with each version it's gotten a bit better, but I still had an idea that the relative status of Macs and Windows systems was about the same.
And then my sister asked me to set up her new Dell. What a pain! I had gotten used to the way almost nothing bogs down Mac OS X. You can be doing almost anything--even applying a system update--and you can switch to another application and go about your business. When you install and update Mac OS X, you generally have to reboot the system twice, three times at most, to get it absolutely up to date. Most application installs do not require a reboot. Installing Windows XP was a horrible exercise in frustration. I think I had to reboot over a dozen times to get the system and applications up to date. It was an all day affair. Not to mention having to install and update the virus software that is necessary to prevent a non-sophisticated user of a Windows system from getting completely overrun with infections and spyware.
Even after installing it, it seemed slow and clunky. And this is not in comparison to some super-duper G5, but to my old 800 MHz G4 Powerbook. Now I'm sure that new 2.6 GHz Dell would smoke my Powerbook in any number of benchmarks. But routine things like windows redraws just seemed so slow. And most of the standard software seemed so clumsily designed.
And I realized...the old days are back.
Let's assume that the hard drive cost is only half of that price. So we're talking putting a 200$ hard drive (the 20 GB version), in a console which will sell for less than that hard drive alone. How stupid is that?
Compared to what?
Assuming that the parts cost of the iPod's hard drive alone is half the retail price of the entire unit, even though the iPod has been a huge money maker for Apple and the entire unit probably has a markup over parts in excess of 100%?
Or assuming that the parts cost of a mini-HD will still be that high by the time the XBox2 is released (the new mini-iPods are already down to $249)?
Or comparing that to the price of a console that is expected to sell (at introduction) below cost?
It might. I dunno, I never owned a PS1. But why don't we wait until a bit closer to the deadline before we simply *declare* that the XBox library is vastly inferior to the PS1 library, or at least until the XBox has been out for an equal amount of time as the PS1.
Reality check: The PS1 was out for a decade before the PS2 was released. It accumulated a library of about a thousand games.
I didn't really understand what nVidia was talking about when they said the games used their shading technology. Isn't that all hidden behind Direct3d?
Yes, but presumably they have some proprietary technology involved. So if Microsoft substitutes another shader, games won't look quite the same. And since designers of XBox1 games presumably optimized their titles to get the best possible results from the existing shaders, any change in shader behavior is likely to be for the worse.
I remember for years mom griping about how all these games she had already bought for us were useless on our new system.
Yes, it's really the parents who are the target, because the kid knows better than to say, "I'm not going want to play the $500 worth of old games that you gave me ever again, anyway." On the other hand, the XBox is aimed at an older market, so it may be less of an issue.
the 5200 could run 2600 games with an adapter
If memory serves, the 5200's "adaptor" was basically a 2600 that you plugged into the 5200's cartridge slot.
there will be a much larger library by that time
So you seriously believe that by the time the XBox2 is released, the XBox's library will match in quantity and quality the library the PS1 had when the PS2 came out?
The choice is pretty obvious. This was a major selling point for the PS2, especially since it enhanced a few lacking aspects of PS1 games, and the PS3 is supposed to have comparable enhancements (load time was a big one, I recall).
In reality, people almost never want to play the previous generation games on their new console. But when they buy the new console, "I can use it play all the old games" is one of those lies people tell themselves to convince themselves to buy an expensive new system with a limited games library. However, it may be less of an advantage for Microsoft. The PS1 had a huge library of quality games. The XBox just has a handful.
The problem here is that the list is so massive, there's actually almost no point to it. There's no plot descriptions whatsoever attached to the list, just a link to elsewhere.
I appreciate these annual summaries. I'm sure that you'll find many reviews of these books in last year's issues of Locus, if you want the details. Locus is mainly a review journal.
Heavy on "Lit'rature" and not much on books to be read for fun or entertainment.
I haven't read many of the books on the list, but your characterization certainly doesn't apply to Jon Courtenay Grimwood's highly entertaining "Fellaheen."
I don't see why we need a new custom controller port on every new generation of console
Controller technology and design has advanced pretty rapidly, so it's hardly surprising that manufacturers of older hardware failed to anticipate the demands of modern controllers (e.g. multiple analog sticks and controllers, voice input). Perhaps controller design has finally reached a level of maturity where a stable controller interface will be reasonable.
Well, first of all, it's heavy.
Yeah, just look at all those people staggering around under the weight of their iPods.
The PS2 sucessfully tackled the backward compatibility issue by including an actual PS1 CPU in the system.
This is undoubtedly the safest and most reliable approach, and by the time the XBox2 comes out, will probably add negligibly to the cost of the system.
The marketing tactics employed in commercials are aimed at your irrational mind rather than the rational mind. Most commercials are not intended to "entertain" you, they are designed to get you to make an impuse decision and buy the product.
The fact that you choose to look at the commercial does not make your buying decision more or less rational. In practice, however, it seems likely that people are more likely to be influenced by ads that they watch than by ads that they don't watch.
So, if you are skipping the commercials, TiVo knows it and could sell this aggregate info to advertisers. The result could either be fewer companies wanting to pay for nobody to watch their ads OR more companies putting ads INSIDE the show
Or companies developing commercials that are entertaining enough that I choose to watch them. I'll bet people are far more likely to remember a product if they choose to watch the commercial than if they just sit there passively.
MSG is tasteless. Add to my experiment "taste a crystal of MSG to verify that it has no taste of its own".
That used to be believed. But in fact, it has been shown to interact with taste receptors on the tongue. So it has sort of a subliminal taste that is perceived as an enhancement in the flavor of food. Actually, salt at low levels does exactly the same thing. Very low levels of salt are not perceived as salty, but simply as enhanced taste of whatever you are eating. The difference is that MSG does not seem to support that an intense "MSG-alone" flavor the way salt does. I'm not sure why this is the case; perhaps it is simply a matter of receptor density. And from an evolutionary point of view, there is no particular hazard associated with natural foods containing too much glutamate, whereas too much salt (e.g. drinking seawater) is dangerous. So it makes sense that your taste system might be more capable of generating a "too much salt" signal than a "too much glutamate" signal.
Good point, except that you can verify the "pleasure" with a simple experiment: Try some food with and without MSG, see wich one has a more pleasing taste (Irecommend soup, or soy sauce. You can find sauce with or without MSG if you look hard enough). Make sure there is not only no MSG, but also none of the tricky names MSG hides under: Soy proteins and hydrogenated soy proteins (soy need not be mentioned).
This is purely a matter of flavor, with MSG acting specifically at flavor receptors present on the tongue, so it has nothing to do with glutamate acting as a neurotransmitter in the brains pleasure or reward pathways. Sugar and salt also produce a more pleasing taste, yet neither of them plays any role as neurotransmitters in brain reward pathways.
It is also a neurotransmitter of pleasure wich is linked to addiction. In studies of cocaine addiction, it was found that after repeated intake (it takes more than one shot to become and addict, it was found that the production of glutamate showed a sudden spike right before the signs of physical addiction developped.
It may not be so much a matter of pleasure as of learning. Becoming addicted is a kind of learning process--an association is made between an action and an outcome (pleasure). Blocking glutamate receptors interferes with many kinds of learning. I'm not sure what you mean about physical addiction...cocaine addiction is mainly behavioral, but it is presumed that this reflects physical changes in the brain, very likely to glutamate receptors.
There are also glutamate receptors in the retina...
The retina is best thought of as part of the brain. There are glutamate receptors throughout the central nervous system--it is the primary excitatory neurotransmitter used by the brain.
No, the reason why bacteria have not covered the world is because there are limited resources for growth. Populations are self-limiting to resource constraints.
Give me a break. It is quite possible for microorganisms to live and grow on sunlight, water, and air. Those resources aren't going to become limiting anytime soon. So it should be possible, in principle for a nanotechnological simulated organism to do the same.
On the other hand, it's a bit premature to worry about grey goo at this point, considering how primitive our nanotech really is. It's as if the people building the first assembly lines at the start of the industrial revolution were worrying about the world being taken over by Terminators.
Because that is what MSG is, a drug. It induces pleasure, its addictive (it makes me sick and I can't stop myself from eating it, I'm definatly addicted to that shit).
Glutamate is a lot of things. It is an amino acid, found in essentially all protein. Injected into the nervous system at high concentrations, it can be toxic, but it is also a neurotransmitter that is critical for learning.
Some people have adverse effects after eating it, but for most it merely enhances the taste of food. It is now known to be one of the fundamental flavors for which the tongue has receptors, along with salty, sour, sweet, and bitter, but it was recently discovered that the tongue also carries specific glutamate taste receptors.
It is truly a wonderful and amazing thing that you can buy a mechanically and electronically sophisticated device like a VCR for 50 bucks (have you looked inside? those things look like they were designed by Rube Goldberg). However, the conversion of the VCR into a disposable item (why fix it, when the whole machine costs less than the time it would take a skilled tech to open it up and look inside?) has had some unfortunate consequences:
1) Technology frozen about 10 years ago. Can you believe that most VCRs still have a memory of maybe 8 events or so? There is no reason why a VCR couldn't come with scheduling software as sophisticated as a TiVo--except that then they'd have to charge more than 50 bucks for the thing.
2) Quality control and design shot to hell. Who complains when it breaks down in a couple of years. I cost almost nothing, anyway? And if you want a decent remote, take the money you saved and spend a few bucks for an add-on.
3) Good ones almost impossible to find. Quality VCRs are still manufactured by hard-core VCR manufacturers like JVC, but good luck finding one of them at Best Buy--you'll need a specialty retailer. And be prepared to pay almost as much, if not more, than you would have paid for less features a decade ago.
Now, the same thing is happening to DVD players. I was scanning Best Buy the other day, and quality players were basically absent. Extra money doesn't buy you better quality--just gimmick features like a turntable or (the latest thing!) a VCR built into the same box. Of course, the good ones can still be found at the high-end audio/video stores, but the price gap is huge (or, more accurately, they haven't dropped much as the bottom end has come down).
Yes, the early iMac and some of the Powerbooks are exceptions to the general rule of Macs being simple to upgrade. I just bought two 256 MB RAM chips to upgrade an iMac to 512 MB, but I haven't installed them yet. It looks a lot like upgrading a G3 powerbook, which I've found to be a bit tricky. Online dealers like OtherWorld Computing will provide accurate info on what a Mac can take (which is often more than Apple's Specs say, which frequently don't take account of newer chips) and will sell you chips guaranteed to work in your model. Another useful reference is LowEndMac
Oddly enough, this suggests that people intuitively place a realistic valuation on their personal information. There is really little value to somebody in knowing that you are average, because average data is generally readily available, and will be the default assumption in the absence of better information about you. So the distinguishing information about you--the ways in which you deviate from the norm--are the most valuable thing that you have to sell.
Since it uses virtual memory, OS X doesn't require a lot of memory to run. But it really speeds up when you feed it RAM, up to about a gig or so. Many of the older Macs that people think are too slow to run OS X are just slow because of the limited RAM. Load them up with now-cheap RAM, and they get a lot snappier.