Hey! The AnonymousSonyTroll is back! Nice to see those basically copy/paste rants again! It'd been a few articles since I'd seen you post this stuff. Nice to see you are still around as I was starting to get worried something happened to you.
But isn't Nintendo "trying" a new control system? As it hasn't even been released yet I'm not sure what else he should say. Give them kudos for doing?
I think its great they are trying a new controller as the basic control pad hasn't had any major changes since the original Nintendo. There have been some changes in shape, some extra buttons, vibrating, etc but nothing really revolutionary (more evolutionary) Though motion/positioning control systems have been produced before, its never been as a primary control system for a console like this. It has great potential, but we just don't know how it will all turn out yet so "try" does seem pretty fitting.
A person I know had a manager that was a proud Liberal Democrat and he was a jerk when it came to taking vacation.
Oh yeah, well a person I know had a manager that was a proud Conservative Republican and was later arrested for brutally sexually molesting more than a half-dozen children!
Sorry, I know two trolls don't make a right! Just couldn't help myself.
Now its obviously impossible to say what the NSA's capabilities really are, but there are encryption technologies which I'm sure could at least tax the NSA's ability a little bit (probably quite a lot). Now if there were just a handful of these cell phones being used, the NSA could (probably) handle that and decrypt them. However, if they became widely used (millions in use) I'd think it'd be too much for the NSA even with fairly weak encryption. They'd have to only bother trying to decrypt those that REALLY seem suspicous (for some set of criteria).
The really interesting question is this. Will the US government allow them to be imported? Now as I'm sure most of you know there are laws about exporting encryption technology from the US (though they are basically ignored now as everyone who leaves the country with a laptop probably has at least a few pieces of hardware/software which would actually fall foul of the law so it isn't really practiacl to enforce any longer). These laws were initially to ensure "those people" couldn't get access to strong encryption technology and thus make the NSA's job too difficult. It'll be interesting to see if import of these devices are now allowed as it seems "those people" have actually become the US governments own citizens over the last few years.
Well, I'm sure it wasn't meant to be literal. Just another/. comment of "Hey! I like and you saying anything negitive at all about it makes me feel bad! Stop it!". You know, fanboy stuff;-)
By only giving them free software, we give them the ability to make changes, to adapt the technology to their needs. It also gives them an entrance into the IT market
I'd agree with most of that but see no need for the "only" part. Give them OSS. However, I'd think the goal of such a project would be to expose them to technology. The more you can expose them to, the better of they are. If they want to make changes, etc and learn how to do all that then great they can do that with the OSS provided, but I don't see how you can argue that they'd be better prepared to enter the IT market by ignoring a huge segment of if (closed source is still the vast majority of the IT market). The choice doesn't need to be exclusive, you can give them both. Heck, if available for free (and available for the OS) I'd say you should ship it with MS software as well since thats the most used software in the world. If you want to help them, than give them as much as you can including stuff that will give them experience with the most popular technologies in the world. If its not so much about helping them, but more about proving a point or pushing your personal views, well then thats different.
The latest worldwide sales numbers are 1.7 million after six months.
Wow, where do you get your numbers from?;-) The confirmed numbers were 1.5 million sold (not shipped) in 2005 (so just over a month not 6 months). All of the later numbers I've been able to find are in MS's financial statements, but those tend to reference number shipped not sold. All other numbers are pretty much speculation, but the last somewhat solid numbers for units sold was something like 3.3 million through April (I think.. it was either March or April). Anyway, you are WAY off;-)
The backwards compatibility thing... well your retarded. Here is the list of original games supported on the 360 through March (and more added all the time). The only original xbox game I have which doesn't currently work is Morrowwind (and I have close to 50).
Manufacturing defects are still rampant with the consensus putting the failure rate at 15-20 percent with huge numbers of people on their third, fourth, and fifth 360 units.
And the most troubling is reports from 360 developers complaining about the graphics system which seems like it was never designed to handle 720p but instead 480p.
Have any reputable links to back up either of those made up issues? Didn't think so. Sorry for feeding the troll! I was just a bit board.
I've never understood comparing how many PS2s are selling now compared to how many 360s are selling now. The markets for them at this time are completely different, the prices are completely different, and the library of games are completely different. Just seems a VERY strange comparison.
The PS2 was the fastest selling console ever upon release reaching 10 million in just under 13 months. Despite people waiting to see the other consoles before committing, supply issues, and all that the 360 is on pace to at least come very close to that. Not to say either is better but that seems a much more usable statisic. Compare them when they were both new, both the upper end machines available, both in the higher price ranges, and both with at least similar game libraries.
Yeah, the more I've looked into it the more it seems you may be right about the 360 not natively supporting it (would have sworn I saw that somewhere). Anyway, I can understand why Sony would get a lot more grief than MS. Sony is forcing you to buy they're next-gen DVD to get thier console. This ups your cost for something you may not even get the full use of in the case of the base model. At least MS has this as an option extra (which I'd guess nobody cares about and very few will buy).
I know (sure think I did at least) see this somewhere like arstechnica.com or something but cannot find it right now. However, here and here are some links at least referencing it. The first is an interview with Todd Holmdahl, Corporate Vice President of the Xbox Product Group at Microsoft so is solid, not sure about the second.
I think your overlooking why HDMI is and isn't important. HDMI is not needed for HD. The Xbox comes with HD component video. This will give you the same HD content and is MUCH more widely available on the HD TVs in circulation today. What HDMI is important for is the next-gen DVD DRM. There is a lot of back and forth on this as far as who will require what, but it is in the specs that the content providers can require HDMI in order to get the full HD resolution.
Now for the 360 this isn't an issue because it isn't a next-gen DVD player and thus is irrelevant. If the PS3 wants to sell itself as a next-gen DVD player than it damn well better support the next-gen DVD specs! As of now, its possible with the base PS3 unit that some content providers using Blu-ray will force your video to be displayed at a worse resolution because it doesn't provide HDMI.
In fact the 360 (both versions) does support HDMI, its just that the HDMI cable isn't included. My guess is it will come with the optional HD-DVD player when that is released or for that matter you can buy it now at many places on the web (the 360 HMDI cable not the HD-DVD player).
China admit that they were wrong, and i don't believe that's how the chinese government works.
I think that applies to just about every government. When was the last time you heard any government admit it was wrong. The only time this tends to happen is many years after the fact and even then you they won't really admit THEY were wrong. They always have some excuse or other person who the true blame lies with.
So you don't think letting users know there's a problem is helpful?
I think he's saying they can tell them there is a problem, but not tell them what the problem is. That seems a bit silly to me, but seems a popular view now-a-days. Personally, reguardless of what company it is I think it is thier responsibility to keep the product secure and anyone who finds a problem is free to tell whoever they want about it. I know this is "bad" now, but isn't that what we always used to do? But now there are bad people out there!!! We'll to me its much like the US today where people say we need to give up privacy for security except substitute knowledge for privacy. If you find a problem you are free to tell whom ever you want. Now proper eticate should be to at least also point it out to the person whose product it is, but I don't think you should be railed against even if you don't.
I realized analagies suck and this is a really bad and extreme one but consider: If you find there is a flaw in all cars which could cause them to spontaniously explode, should you have to wait until the car companies fix the problem before you tell anyone? The corporations will sure say you should and if you don't you'll ruin thier companies so thier friends in congress will tend to side with them and even make it illegal, but on principal I think telling people about problems is never bad.
You'll look long and hard for a slow-loading Google page. I suppose you could bloat your own. You won't find even PNGs, let alone blinking banners or flash.
Check out these if you haven't for awhile MSN and Yahoo. I don't think you'll see anything like your talking about.
I certainly love Google and thier practices, but I was just speaking about search technology and how they are basically identical (see my post to reply just before yours).
BTW, don't talk about Google Earth like that, your just asking for people to tell you all about how Microsoft released TerraServer to do the same thing (yes without the Web2.0 yumminess) almost a decade before Google even existed;-)
Here are a list of the 8 top results for "explosive materials" on each of the three big guys (google, live (MSN), yahoo (if I say "NA" it means it wasn't amoung the top 8):
www.isis-online.org/ (6 on google, 6 on live, 3 and 4 on yahoo (since they put pages from same domain as seperate entry)
en.wikipedia.org (1 on google, 1 on yahoo, NA on live (they really do need to give much more priority to wikipedia as it is now so useful)
www.space-rockets.com (4 on google, 1 on live, NA on yahoo)
remtc.com/ (5 on google, 2 on live, NA on Yahoo)
www.nap.edu/ (7 on google, 4 on live, NA on yahoo)
www.jobinyvon.com/(NA on google, 3 on live, 2 on yahoo)
www.nti.org/ NA on google, 7 on live, 6 on yahoo)
Besides those listed the remainder were unique to each site (google had 3 unique to it, live had 2 unique to it, and yahoo had 3 unique to it). Now I'm not qualified in the subjet of "explosive materials" to say how relevant each site is or isn't, but with the number of sites available to choose from it pretty amazing how similar the result lists are.
People can agrue all day which site is better (and if you'd argue Google is the best then I'd agree), but it doesn't make much sense to pretend one has some magic formula thats simply out of the grasp of the others. And also, while you agrue you cannot just throw money at a problem and get results with these "hard" problems I say that you can't promise results by throwing money at it but you can certainly increase your odds. If you have limited funds you have to choose the most promising of the ideas to actually move forward and test. The more funds you have to work toward a result the more ideas you can try out and see how they actually work. When it comes to testing these ideas on the scale of something as large as indexing and searching the web we are talking millions of dollars just to get the real tests started. Money does help.
I actually disagree with the premise that "search is hard". Search at its core is exceedingly simple. Scaling this can get a bit tricky, but that has really already been solved by all current major search engines. The hard part I assume you mean is the filtering and ranking of results. Even that isn't some magic vodoo anymore. There are many well known tools accomplishing this. From from more complex topics like Bayesian filtering, to simple use of web statistics, and even "trust measures" (if the New York Times has a direct link to a domains page than that domain is probably reputable, etc). Search as it is today really isn't rocket science. Now web page spammers are always trying to circumvent these algorithims to get thier pages posted higher, but the always changing nature of this makes this just a big a problem for established search providers as start-ups basically.
Now I default to Google and personally prefer Google, but there are certainly times I cannot find what I'm looking for so go to another engine and find it easily (the reverse is also true in many cases). The point is, there isn't some huge technological advantage any one of the big three search providers have over the others at this point. I wouldn't want to say they are all equal, but I'd certainly feel safe they are all very similar in results.
I could probably switch to Yahoo or MSN search tomorrow and not really notice the difference. The biggest issue at this point is the brand. Google has a big lead in that most people are just used to using it and of course "googling" being in the vernacular doesn't hurt. What is required to take that leadership position is either going to be one of the other engines have a major break through on the tech side to be able to offer a superior search (not likely at least in the short term) or they will have to do lots of advertising, partnering, etc, etc to get thier service in the public concience as much or more than Google's. And this is where MS$ money comes in. They are VERY good at the business of tech. They have a history of making great partnership deals which REALLY boost thier products and of course the ability (cash) to basically have every commerical ever on TV be an ad for MSN search if they so choose doesn't hurt.
Thats exactly my point! You cannot count something as adding $X value to a device unless everyone wants the function that adds that value and its worth that much to them. Thus the saying the Blu-Ray adds $X in value just doesn't make sense just like saying the MC Extender function adds $X value
Now I completly agree about the Divx issue, that is a real pain in the ass! However, I have learned to deal with it (hopefully that will be addressed but I doubt it). However, I used to use MythTV and though I really thought it was cool and liked it but the wife forced me to get rid of it after a couple weeks. She just couldn't deal with it. Now using XP Media center and media center extenders, she says its the best thing I've ever done around the house (and I've built a pretty automated house). Its Tivo easy to use (only took the wife like 1/2 hour to learn everything it could do and thats saying something;-). I now have a headless server in my office as my media server and that streams media to every TV in the house (via media center exteners) so every TV has Tivo functionality at the push of a button, streams TV everywhere, streams all my movies anywhere at the touch of a button (thanks for all those PirateBay;-), steams internet readio everywhere with another button, streams on-demand internet TV everywhere (MTV, Comedy Central, etc, etc and more added all the time for those times when the Sat is having problems with reception during a storm). All the cool functionality aside, nothing beats the ease of use all with very simple remote controls even the wife can easily handle.
The only think I really miss about Myth is the DivX issue and all things considered its not that big a deal to convert the movies as a one time thing for each movie.
BTW--of what use is HD-DVD/BlueRay? Why do I need it? Regular DVDs have been doing just fine. I can even make my own DVDs.
The problem is they don't use enough space (data wise). VERY few people will really even notice the extra pixels and even fewer care about it. The problem is with so many people getting broadband, thier big money makers are in danger. No I'm not talking about piracy, but the sell of the physical DVDs. With broadband connection even today it isn't a big deal to download a full DVD. They REALLY don't want the old model of going to a store and buying a a DVD to go away. Somehow going to the store and leaving with a physical copy seems not so bad for the $20-$40 they charge, but when you just download it... well it seems like at bit steap. Eventually an iTunes type service would pop up and offer downloads for a fraction of the price and kill the physical DVD business. Even though there are expenses for them in the manufature and distribution of the physical media, they use such a crazy markup on it they'd lose tons of money if that wasteful step was removed.
These next-gen DVDs require enough space that it isn't really practical do download (at least for now). I'm hoping people just live happily with thier DVDs and let these stupid next-gen formats die, but eventually the corporate masters will stop making regular DVD players and force these DRM ridden formats on us. Oh well.... rant over.
If you want to play that game, since the 360 also doubles as a Media Center Extender and those sell for $250 then even if you buy the $200 HD-DVD (has price for this even been announced?) its "value" is actually still $50 cheaper.
See that doesn't really make sense does it?
I am actually going to buy a second 360 (core this time) though because I need a second MC Extender, so I'll pay $50 extra and have a spare game console if I need it.
I don't know about that as the Euro has mildly raised against the Yen in the last 120 days, but they are still being charged 600 Euro. Actually, its an interesting view to make:
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Hey! The AnonymousSonyTroll is back! Nice to see those basically copy/paste rants again! It'd been a few articles since I'd seen you post this stuff. Nice to see you are still around as I was starting to get worried something happened to you.
Glad to see you back at it! Keep trollin brother!
But isn't Nintendo "trying" a new control system? As it hasn't even been released yet I'm not sure what else he should say. Give them kudos for doing?
I think its great they are trying a new controller as the basic control pad hasn't had any major changes since the original Nintendo. There have been some changes in shape, some extra buttons, vibrating, etc but nothing really revolutionary (more evolutionary) Though motion/positioning control systems have been produced before, its never been as a primary control system for a console like this. It has great potential, but we just don't know how it will all turn out yet so "try" does seem pretty fitting.
A person I know had a manager that was a proud Liberal Democrat and he was a jerk when it came to taking vacation.
Oh yeah, well a person I know had a manager that was a proud Conservative Republican and was later arrested for brutally sexually molesting more than a half-dozen children!
Sorry, I know two trolls don't make a right! Just couldn't help myself.
Now its obviously impossible to say what the NSA's capabilities really are, but there are encryption technologies which I'm sure could at least tax the NSA's ability a little bit (probably quite a lot). Now if there were just a handful of these cell phones being used, the NSA could (probably) handle that and decrypt them. However, if they became widely used (millions in use) I'd think it'd be too much for the NSA even with fairly weak encryption. They'd have to only bother trying to decrypt those that REALLY seem suspicous (for some set of criteria).
The really interesting question is this. Will the US government allow them to be imported? Now as I'm sure most of you know there are laws about exporting encryption technology from the US (though they are basically ignored now as everyone who leaves the country with a laptop probably has at least a few pieces of hardware/software which would actually fall foul of the law so it isn't really practiacl to enforce any longer). These laws were initially to ensure "those people" couldn't get access to strong encryption technology and thus make the NSA's job too difficult. It'll be interesting to see if import of these devices are now allowed as it seems "those people" have actually become the US governments own citizens over the last few years.
Well, I'm sure it wasn't meant to be literal. Just another /. comment of "Hey! I like and you saying anything negitive at all about it makes me feel bad! Stop it!". You know, fanboy stuff ;-)
By only giving them free software, we give them the ability to make changes, to adapt the technology to their needs. It also gives them an entrance into the IT market
I'd agree with most of that but see no need for the "only" part. Give them OSS. However, I'd think the goal of such a project would be to expose them to technology. The more you can expose them to, the better of they are. If they want to make changes, etc and learn how to do all that then great they can do that with the OSS provided, but I don't see how you can argue that they'd be better prepared to enter the IT market by ignoring a huge segment of if (closed source is still the vast majority of the IT market). The choice doesn't need to be exclusive, you can give them both. Heck, if available for free (and available for the OS) I'd say you should ship it with MS software as well since thats the most used software in the world. If you want to help them, than give them as much as you can including stuff that will give them experience with the most popular technologies in the world. If its not so much about helping them, but more about proving a point or pushing your personal views, well then thats different.
The latest worldwide sales numbers are 1.7 million after six months.
;-) The confirmed numbers were 1.5 million sold (not shipped) in 2005 (so just over a month not 6 months). All of the later numbers I've been able to find are in MS's financial statements, but those tend to reference number shipped not sold. All other numbers are pretty much speculation, but the last somewhat solid numbers for units sold was something like 3.3 million through April (I think.. it was either March or April). Anyway, you are WAY off ;-)
Wow, where do you get your numbers from?
The backwards compatibility thing... well your retarded. Here is the list of original games supported on the 360 through March (and more added all the time). The only original xbox game I have which doesn't currently work is Morrowwind (and I have close to 50).
Manufacturing defects are still rampant with the consensus putting the failure rate at 15-20 percent with huge numbers of people on their third, fourth, and fifth 360 units. And the most troubling is reports from 360 developers complaining about the graphics system which seems like it was never designed to handle 720p but instead 480p.
Have any reputable links to back up either of those made up issues? Didn't think so. Sorry for feeding the troll! I was just a bit board.
I've never understood comparing how many PS2s are selling now compared to how many 360s are selling now. The markets for them at this time are completely different, the prices are completely different, and the library of games are completely different. Just seems a VERY strange comparison.
The PS2 was the fastest selling console ever upon release reaching 10 million in just under 13 months. Despite people waiting to see the other consoles before committing, supply issues, and all that the 360 is on pace to at least come very close to that. Not to say either is better but that seems a much more usable statisic. Compare them when they were both new, both the upper end machines available, both in the higher price ranges, and both with at least similar game libraries.
Yeah, the more I've looked into it the more it seems you may be right about the 360 not natively supporting it (would have sworn I saw that somewhere). Anyway, I can understand why Sony would get a lot more grief than MS. Sony is forcing you to buy they're next-gen DVD to get thier console. This ups your cost for something you may not even get the full use of in the case of the base model. At least MS has this as an option extra (which I'd guess nobody cares about and very few will buy).
I know (sure think I did at least) see this somewhere like arstechnica.com or something but cannot find it right now. However, here and here are some links at least referencing it. The first is an interview with Todd Holmdahl, Corporate Vice President of the Xbox Product Group at Microsoft so is solid, not sure about the second.
I think your overlooking why HDMI is and isn't important. HDMI is not needed for HD. The Xbox comes with HD component video. This will give you the same HD content and is MUCH more widely available on the HD TVs in circulation today. What HDMI is important for is the next-gen DVD DRM. There is a lot of back and forth on this as far as who will require what, but it is in the specs that the content providers can require HDMI in order to get the full HD resolution.
Now for the 360 this isn't an issue because it isn't a next-gen DVD player and thus is irrelevant. If the PS3 wants to sell itself as a next-gen DVD player than it damn well better support the next-gen DVD specs! As of now, its possible with the base PS3 unit that some content providers using Blu-ray will force your video to be displayed at a worse resolution because it doesn't provide HDMI.
In fact the 360 (both versions) does support HDMI, its just that the HDMI cable isn't included. My guess is it will come with the optional HD-DVD player when that is released or for that matter you can buy it now at many places on the web (the 360 HMDI cable not the HD-DVD player).
China admit that they were wrong, and i don't believe that's how the chinese government works.
I think that applies to just about every government. When was the last time you heard any government admit it was wrong. The only time this tends to happen is many years after the fact and even then you they won't really admit THEY were wrong. They always have some excuse or other person who the true blame lies with.
So you don't think letting users know there's a problem is helpful?
I think he's saying they can tell them there is a problem, but not tell them what the problem is. That seems a bit silly to me, but seems a popular view now-a-days. Personally, reguardless of what company it is I think it is thier responsibility to keep the product secure and anyone who finds a problem is free to tell whoever they want about it. I know this is "bad" now, but isn't that what we always used to do? But now there are bad people out there!!! We'll to me its much like the US today where people say we need to give up privacy for security except substitute knowledge for privacy. If you find a problem you are free to tell whom ever you want. Now proper eticate should be to at least also point it out to the person whose product it is, but I don't think you should be railed against even if you don't.
I realized analagies suck and this is a really bad and extreme one but consider: If you find there is a flaw in all cars which could cause them to spontaniously explode, should you have to wait until the car companies fix the problem before you tell anyone? The corporations will sure say you should and if you don't you'll ruin thier companies so thier friends in congress will tend to side with them and even make it illegal, but on principal I think telling people about problems is never bad.
Apparently your not visiting enough warez and shaddy porn sites. Get with it man! ;-)
It was Jeremy Reimer of arstechnica.com that made that claim, not MS.
You'll look long and hard for a slow-loading Google page. I suppose you could bloat your own. You won't find even PNGs, let alone blinking banners or flash.
;-)
Check out these if you haven't for awhile MSN and Yahoo. I don't think you'll see anything like your talking about.
I certainly love Google and thier practices, but I was just speaking about search technology and how they are basically identical (see my post to reply just before yours).
BTW, don't talk about Google Earth like that, your just asking for people to tell you all about how Microsoft released TerraServer to do the same thing (yes without the Web2.0 yumminess) almost a decade before Google even existed
Here are a list of the 8 top results for "explosive materials" on each of the three big guys (google, live (MSN), yahoo (if I say "NA" it means it wasn't amoung the top 8):
www.isis-online.org/ (6 on google, 6 on live, 3 and 4 on yahoo (since they put pages from same domain as seperate entry)
en.wikipedia.org (1 on google, 1 on yahoo, NA on live (they really do need to give much more priority to wikipedia as it is now so useful)
www.space-rockets.com (4 on google, 1 on live, NA on yahoo)
remtc.com/ (5 on google, 2 on live, NA on Yahoo)
www.nap.edu/ (7 on google, 4 on live, NA on yahoo)
www.jobinyvon.com/(NA on google, 3 on live, 2 on yahoo)
www.nti.org/ NA on google, 7 on live, 6 on yahoo)
Besides those listed the remainder were unique to each site (google had 3 unique to it, live had 2 unique to it, and yahoo had 3 unique to it). Now I'm not qualified in the subjet of "explosive materials" to say how relevant each site is or isn't, but with the number of sites available to choose from it pretty amazing how similar the result lists are.
People can agrue all day which site is better (and if you'd argue Google is the best then I'd agree), but it doesn't make much sense to pretend one has some magic formula thats simply out of the grasp of the others. And also, while you agrue you cannot just throw money at a problem and get results with these "hard" problems I say that you can't promise results by throwing money at it but you can certainly increase your odds. If you have limited funds you have to choose the most promising of the ideas to actually move forward and test. The more funds you have to work toward a result the more ideas you can try out and see how they actually work. When it comes to testing these ideas on the scale of something as large as indexing and searching the web we are talking millions of dollars just to get the real tests started. Money does help.
I actually disagree with the premise that "search is hard". Search at its core is exceedingly simple. Scaling this can get a bit tricky, but that has really already been solved by all current major search engines. The hard part I assume you mean is the filtering and ranking of results. Even that isn't some magic vodoo anymore. There are many well known tools accomplishing this. From from more complex topics like Bayesian filtering, to simple use of web statistics, and even "trust measures" (if the New York Times has a direct link to a domains page than that domain is probably reputable, etc). Search as it is today really isn't rocket science. Now web page spammers are always trying to circumvent these algorithims to get thier pages posted higher, but the always changing nature of this makes this just a big a problem for established search providers as start-ups basically.
Now I default to Google and personally prefer Google, but there are certainly times I cannot find what I'm looking for so go to another engine and find it easily (the reverse is also true in many cases). The point is, there isn't some huge technological advantage any one of the big three search providers have over the others at this point. I wouldn't want to say they are all equal, but I'd certainly feel safe they are all very similar in results.
I could probably switch to Yahoo or MSN search tomorrow and not really notice the difference. The biggest issue at this point is the brand. Google has a big lead in that most people are just used to using it and of course "googling" being in the vernacular doesn't hurt. What is required to take that leadership position is either going to be one of the other engines have a major break through on the tech side to be able to offer a superior search (not likely at least in the short term) or they will have to do lots of advertising, partnering, etc, etc to get thier service in the public concience as much or more than Google's. And this is where MS$ money comes in. They are VERY good at the business of tech. They have a history of making great partnership deals which REALLY boost thier products and of course the ability (cash) to basically have every commerical ever on TV be an ad for MSN search if they so choose doesn't hurt.
impartial
I don't think that word means what you think it means Mr. Yahoo.
Thats exactly my point! You cannot count something as adding $X value to a device unless everyone wants the function that adds that value and its worth that much to them. Thus the saying the Blu-Ray adds $X in value just doesn't make sense just like saying the MC Extender function adds $X value
;-). I now have a headless server in my office as my media server and that streams media to every TV in the house (via media center exteners) so every TV has Tivo functionality at the push of a button, streams TV everywhere, streams all my movies anywhere at the touch of a button (thanks for all those PirateBay ;-), steams internet readio everywhere with another button, streams on-demand internet TV everywhere (MTV, Comedy Central, etc, etc and more added all the time for those times when the Sat is having problems with reception during a storm). All the cool functionality aside, nothing beats the ease of use all with very simple remote controls even the wife can easily handle.
Now I completly agree about the Divx issue, that is a real pain in the ass! However, I have learned to deal with it (hopefully that will be addressed but I doubt it). However, I used to use MythTV and though I really thought it was cool and liked it but the wife forced me to get rid of it after a couple weeks. She just couldn't deal with it. Now using XP Media center and media center extenders, she says its the best thing I've ever done around the house (and I've built a pretty automated house). Its Tivo easy to use (only took the wife like 1/2 hour to learn everything it could do and thats saying something
The only think I really miss about Myth is the DivX issue and all things considered its not that big a deal to convert the movies as a one time thing for each movie.
What I'm saying is just because you make your arguement in a somewhat aggressive fashion, it doesn't mean your argument is automatically flawed.
Also, here is a link to an article discussing a Supreme Court desision pretty much on point where Justice Scalia calls it extortion.
BTW--of what use is HD-DVD/BlueRay? Why do I need it? Regular DVDs have been doing just fine. I can even make my own DVDs.
The problem is they don't use enough space (data wise). VERY few people will really even notice the extra pixels and even fewer care about it. The problem is with so many people getting broadband, thier big money makers are in danger. No I'm not talking about piracy, but the sell of the physical DVDs. With broadband connection even today it isn't a big deal to download a full DVD. They REALLY don't want the old model of going to a store and buying a a DVD to go away. Somehow going to the store and leaving with a physical copy seems not so bad for the $20-$40 they charge, but when you just download it... well it seems like at bit steap. Eventually an iTunes type service would pop up and offer downloads for a fraction of the price and kill the physical DVD business. Even though there are expenses for them in the manufature and distribution of the physical media, they use such a crazy markup on it they'd lose tons of money if that wasteful step was removed.
These next-gen DVDs require enough space that it isn't really practical do download (at least for now). I'm hoping people just live happily with thier DVDs and let these stupid next-gen formats die, but eventually the corporate masters will stop making regular DVD players and force these DRM ridden formats on us. Oh well.... rant over.
So any aggressive arguement is by default flawed?
I think your own "Aw Shucks" G Dubya-syle thinking could have a devastating effect.
If you want to play that game, since the 360 also doubles as a Media Center Extender and those sell for $250 then even if you buy the $200 HD-DVD (has price for this even been announced?) its "value" is actually still $50 cheaper.
See that doesn't really make sense does it?
I am actually going to buy a second 360 (core this time) though because I need a second MC Extender, so I'll pay $50 extra and have a spare game console if I need it.
I don't know about that as the Euro has mildly raised against the Yen in the last 120 days, but they are still being charged 600 Euro. Actually, its an interesting view to make:
The high-end PS3 will cost 85,249 Yen in Europe
The high-end PS3 will cost 66,123 Yen in the US
I feel for you guys in Europe! Sorry!