That doesnt play games or doesnt use the living room for other none than sitting and having a good conversation. Or like you building huge architectures made out of ABS;) Not that its such a bad idea...:)
But the gaming industry doesn't attack a small niche... If it were it wouldn't be the 20 billion dollar a year industry it is, and 20 billion a year is a shitload of money... You know how much money Electronics Arts (The largest publisher of games) did last year? they did from 8-9 Billion Dollars. Game engines are getting better and better, i bet you didnt know either that movie producers like James Cameron, Steven Spielburg and Peter Jackson used gaming engines to stage how a scene would look in a movie (I think spielburg lic. the halflife 2 source engine for one of the new movies to check how a complex scene would look rather than pre-rendering it in a huge server farm). Or how games are what most power users use to benchmark a PC to see if it's good for anything. If it doesnt run Doom 3 it's a POS...
Computer games have become an industry as big and as profitable as any other, inclusive every year its doubling it's numbers and it is comparable right now to the profit some of the largest playmakers in the market, like Microsoft. Microsoft makes around 1 billion per month that is roughly 12 billion a year and Electronic Arts made 8-9 billion? That is only a 3billion dollar difference, which is not a large difference if we putting it side by side. There is a lot of more people playing than working hon...:)
So to answer your last question:
What will the Xbox do for my living room?:-)?
Well alone it will only look good, more or less like a piece of modern art, but if you sum it a TV, you can in addition to playing games own the VCR of the future because with Xbox 360 you can record TV Shows, music and a lot more. It becomes the entertainment hub in your home. Then again maybe you are not a TV person:)
PS: You have great creative talent with the LEGO stuff.
Ever since I got my Gmail, I got a new interest in reading e-mail again. One thing I think Google should offer with Gmail is to have some sort of Calendar or contact base accesible from the web and synchronizable with PDA's, Phones, ical on mac or entourage... I think if they did that would make me a very happy individual.:)
People have the false pretention that when Microsoft entered the Console business they would have been outright the #1 system period. I think they did a great job considering the fact they outdid GameCube and nintendo was a good competitor but if you look at the numbers, although Sony has a strong lead in the sales and number of consoles out there, right now the Xbox 1 as it is, is outselling the PS2. Now why is this happening? Well I think its because microsoft pulled something out of the hat that Sony doesn't even has clear how to even compete against it, and that is Xbox Live. No other game company, including Sony or Nintendo have a comparable system right now that offers the great alternatives for gaming that Live offers to the Xbox Fanbase. And it is the one single product that microsoft has that has 2 years of solid experience in it, and for sony/nintendo to catch up they are going to seriously have to invest big bucks.
Sure, the console has not received the best welcome from fans and future buyers, because no one really understands why is microsoft is hurrying up to launch a new system when their "old" system is doing so well. This means for most of us that have 2 xbox consoles that in a year or less our consoles will be outdated, so imagine how pissed some people can be. But knowing what I know about Xbox Live and how the system will revolutionize console online gaming as we know it, I know its the winning element Microsoft has that neither competition has and it will be the one thing that will bring the new Xbox a solid base.
I think that speculating on this event without hard facts is simply trolling. Like I said before, Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar corporation. They are not going to disappear, immediately, but their immediate downfall will be the Longhorn OS. Mark my words... its written all over it.
To answer the anonymous coward's port; I think you are wrong and I think the developer you "spoke" to is biased and so are you. Let me explain:
Number 1. The new Xbox Hardware is everything but pathetic. From a computing look, they are running a really impressive piece of hardware. 3 Processors of 3ghz each dual core? Come on not even apple has Dual Core CPU's in their Power Macs, and have you seen the results of the benchmarks AMD is having with their Opteron class CPU's crunching numbers how they are doing. That is just 1 CPU. 3 CPU's that each handles a group of process is going to really elevate the amount of things you can do on that little ugly white box (yes ill give it to you, it looks ugly... looks like a martha stewart thing...).
Number 2. Sony has never talked about their console and much less nintendo. But I think that jumping forward to a Wireless everything console was one of the things I noticed as a wide eye opener. Microsoft is trully delivering an interesting piece of hardware.
Number 3. The development platform, FYI and that of your developer is touted to be one of the easiest ones to develope considering the Playstation developer foundation is a pain in the ass and the nintendo one is practically unknown... I think its linux but i am not pretty sure. One thing microsoft has given developers is an excellent toolset called XNA, which I think your developer friend should take a quick look at.
Last but not least, Number 4: Xbox Live. Which like I told you before, its the one product neither Sony nor Nintendo really have. And in that field Microsoft is a winner. They had all of these thoughts of what Xbox live would be and they did it. And now with the new generation console showing itself up soon, a new generation of Xbox Live will be born to feed the new generation of console player.
please donot misunderstand me. This is just speculation, since the competition is very tough, but I think that in this department Microsoft will do really good, better fare than it will do when Longhorn launches.
I think Microsoft has gotten so big they can't handle their own success. This basically leads them to not being able to innovate because they have to invest all of their time to fix the one million errors their OS has or all the security issues. This was demonstrated when the SP2 rolled out. They literally put 75% of their company to fix windows XP.
Someone here said that Microsoft has become a dull and boring place, and I tend to believe it has. I think their engineers have lost the spice to create really cool things, because we can see that in the evolution of windows. Since Windows 95 we have seen the START taskbar... below. And the only differences are nicer graphics and more compatibility with hardware and games. That is basically it.
And frankly by the look of things, Longhorn is just looking to be a big fat white elephant. Longhorn will be Microsoft's downfall. Nothing the OS has is impressive, not glass, not Aero... basically its more gloatware... The only thing it had that was amazing, IMHO, was the WinFX foundation and that got ripped out.
But to say Microsoft entirely is doomed is an overstatement. While I think Microsoft's downfall will be the OS Longhorn, it will rise from the ashes with the new Xbox 360. I guess while they are not innovating on the Desktop they are doing it on the Living Room. So all is not lost for Microsoft.
In that sense the competition they are getting heavily from Apple will either put them on their toes or bring them to their knees, specially if more governments around the world choose to dump Microsoft for cheaper and better functioning Open Source solutions.
That is why I strongly believe Longhorn won't be the event they think it will be. The most important group of people that has to upgrade their systems and wont do it in the first 5yrs is the corporate sector. The consumer will prolly upgrade to Longhorn, but not that quickly as you think they can. Mostly because the hardware requirements to run LH with all the bells and whistles are short of obscene and your average PC comes with a Intel Video graphics card that sucks... But on the other hand, their innovative new Xbox 360 will do everything you wanted to do in the living room and will change the way the living room is. In that department SONY doesnt have a chance.
Everything that is important will happen this summer and by the end of the summer we are going to be well aware of who is winning the war of Microsoft vs The World.
because when something is released for one platform the other wants it. This is why we got emulators. Now, like it has been explained before, apple contrary to what most people say is in the business of hardware, or like steve jobs likes to say, the human interfacing business. If they did release for x86 (which would save me $500 asuming it happened now), then they would become in a software company, since their os would have to tackle all the videocards in the market, all the sound cards and so on and so forth.
I like any other would like to see OSX on a x86, but with solutions like the mac mini, i guess if that little thing holds, its a good investment.
i dont know how power pc/osx architecture runs... but i know 1gb of ram makes anything on any hardware just run:) I guess ill find out soonish. I know if you run WoW with only 256mb even on an imac g5 it runs choppy...
is the mac mini good enough to play World of Warcraft? That is my only phear... I can port all my work to mac happily but it would suck to just open windows to do some WoW.:P
After reading the shady background on Mr. Campbell, i bet he thought to himself, what a great idea would be to bring you the virii market share of Apple, towards Symantec. "How about I create a contest, that motivates all those unemployed hackers, some easy money... I'll pay $25K if to the first hacker that deploys a non harmfull virus, for two plain mac's on a network on the internet... (or something like that, you get my point...). I create the need, Symantec can pay me in shares because now I got them what they never had...
______________
Point is, that he asked for a non-harmful virus to be created. But what control he has on someone who is in it for the kick of just destroying an industry that is striving to bring us an electronic working environment that is finally free of all the shit and junk we get in the Windows environment most of us move on.
I have been a microsoft user since DOS, Windows 3.1, I have had my share of experience with everything, from OS/2, slackware, etc. The first program i install on my windows machine right after SP2, is the Antivirus. Why? Because i know the second i hook my system to the internet, i am going to get some weird shit running on my machine.
Recently my GF surprised me with a Valentines gift i never expected. I bet she just got tired of listening to me curse and whine when i got my windows pc fucked up with some weird shit...
She got me a Mac Mini. I hooked it up and it's bliss. Now I am not trying to patronise or start a flamewar. But I do enjoy working on my mac and not worrying about some virus to catch or some spyware, malware or other shit bothering my ass.
Do I run a huge risk running unprotected? Yeah maybe i am running a risk. But i am confident that in a very long time i wont need to worry about this. And when it happens well i guess i can deal for it.
What i cannot believe is that a company has a product that is little by little gaining market share because they are trully innovating (contrary to you bill, which the only innovation is adding nice gui effects to an os that has sucked since windows 3.1) that i know we all wish for (well except the linux users because they enjoy of that freedom as well), which is freedom of finally using our systems without worrying of a virus to come and fuck us up. And this guy just opened a door to encourage those virii writers to actuall ycreate something harmful.
Sure he closed the door, publicly that the contest is over. But the bait is still there... What if someone actually does write up a virus that can fuck up OSX? what if mister campbell receives a call in the middle of the night, "It's done, deposit it to my account in the caimans..."
In this world, and age we live in, everything is possible, and this fool has just made a subconcious challenge that will be taken to hand by someone. Specially when all the great hackers (all the ones unknown to us) are busy doing things right, all there are left, are the script kiddies who want to impress the girl next door with their picture next to the Secret Service...
Just my opinion... I hope it makes sense to someone out there...
Slashdot Mirror
That doesnt play games or doesnt use the living room for other none than sitting and having a good conversation. Or like you building huge architectures made out of ABS ;) Not that its such a bad idea... :)
But the gaming industry doesn't attack a small niche... If it were it wouldn't be the 20 billion dollar a year industry it is, and 20 billion a year is a shitload of money... You know how much money Electronics Arts (The largest publisher of games) did last year? they did from 8-9 Billion Dollars. Game engines are getting better and better, i bet you didnt know either that movie producers like James Cameron, Steven Spielburg and Peter Jackson used gaming engines to stage how a scene would look in a movie (I think spielburg lic. the halflife 2 source engine for one of the new movies to check how a complex scene would look rather than pre-rendering it in a huge server farm). Or how games are what most power users use to benchmark a PC to see if it's good for anything. If it doesnt run Doom 3 it's a POS...
Computer games have become an industry as big and as profitable as any other, inclusive every year its doubling it's numbers and it is comparable right now to the profit some of the largest playmakers in the market, like Microsoft. Microsoft makes around 1 billion per month that is roughly 12 billion a year and Electronic Arts made 8-9 billion? That is only a 3billion dollar difference, which is not a large difference if we putting it side by side. There is a lot of more people playing than working hon... :)
So to answer your last question:
What will the Xbox do for my living room? :-)?
Well alone it will only look good, more or less like a piece of modern art, but if you sum it a TV, you can in addition to playing games own the VCR of the future because with Xbox 360 you can record TV Shows, music and a lot more. It becomes the entertainment hub in your home. Then again maybe you are not a TV person :)
PS: You have great creative talent with the LEGO stuff.
Ever since I got my Gmail, I got a new interest in reading e-mail again. One thing I think Google should offer with Gmail is to have some sort of Calendar or contact base accesible from the web and synchronizable with PDA's, Phones, ical on mac or entourage... I think if they did that would make me a very happy individual. :)
IT would be a possibility that our generation might not live to see... :P
Sure, the console has not received the best welcome from fans and future buyers, because no one really understands why is microsoft is hurrying up to launch a new system when their "old" system is doing so well. This means for most of us that have 2 xbox consoles that in a year or less our consoles will be outdated, so imagine how pissed some people can be. But knowing what I know about Xbox Live and how the system will revolutionize console online gaming as we know it, I know its the winning element Microsoft has that neither competition has and it will be the one thing that will bring the new Xbox a solid base.
I think that speculating on this event without hard facts is simply trolling. Like I said before, Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar corporation. They are not going to disappear, immediately, but their immediate downfall will be the Longhorn OS. Mark my words... its written all over it.
To answer the anonymous coward's port; I think you are wrong and I think the developer you "spoke" to is biased and so are you. Let me explain:
Number 1. The new Xbox Hardware is everything but pathetic. From a computing look, they are running a really impressive piece of hardware. 3 Processors of 3ghz each dual core? Come on not even apple has Dual Core CPU's in their Power Macs, and have you seen the results of the benchmarks AMD is having with their Opteron class CPU's crunching numbers how they are doing. That is just 1 CPU. 3 CPU's that each handles a group of process is going to really elevate the amount of things you can do on that little ugly white box (yes ill give it to you, it looks ugly... looks like a martha stewart thing...).
Number 2. Sony has never talked about their console and much less nintendo. But I think that jumping forward to a Wireless everything console was one of the things I noticed as a wide eye opener. Microsoft is trully delivering an interesting piece of hardware.
Number 3. The development platform, FYI and that of your developer is touted to be one of the easiest ones to develope considering the Playstation developer foundation is a pain in the ass and the nintendo one is practically unknown... I think its linux but i am not pretty sure. One thing microsoft has given developers is an excellent toolset called XNA, which I think your developer friend should take a quick look at.
Last but not least, Number 4: Xbox Live. Which like I told you before, its the one product neither Sony nor Nintendo really have. And in that field Microsoft is a winner. They had all of these thoughts of what Xbox live would be and they did it. And now with the new generation console showing itself up soon, a new generation of Xbox Live will be born to feed the new generation of console player.
please donot misunderstand me. This is just speculation, since the competition is very tough, but I think that in this department Microsoft will do really good, better fare than it will do when Longhorn launches.
It would be really cool if google released some of its software on Mac and Linux... :)
Someone here said that Microsoft has become a dull and boring place, and I tend to believe it has. I think their engineers have lost the spice to create really cool things, because we can see that in the evolution of windows. Since Windows 95 we have seen the START taskbar... below. And the only differences are nicer graphics and more compatibility with hardware and games. That is basically it.
And frankly by the look of things, Longhorn is just looking to be a big fat white elephant. Longhorn will be Microsoft's downfall. Nothing the OS has is impressive, not glass, not Aero... basically its more gloatware... The only thing it had that was amazing, IMHO, was the WinFX foundation and that got ripped out.
But to say Microsoft entirely is doomed is an overstatement. While I think Microsoft's downfall will be the OS Longhorn, it will rise from the ashes with the new Xbox 360. I guess while they are not innovating on the Desktop they are doing it on the Living Room. So all is not lost for Microsoft.
In that sense the competition they are getting heavily from Apple will either put them on their toes or bring them to their knees, specially if more governments around the world choose to dump Microsoft for cheaper and better functioning Open Source solutions.
That is why I strongly believe Longhorn won't be the event they think it will be. The most important group of people that has to upgrade their systems and wont do it in the first 5yrs is the corporate sector. The consumer will prolly upgrade to Longhorn, but not that quickly as you think they can. Mostly because the hardware requirements to run LH with all the bells and whistles are short of obscene and your average PC comes with a Intel Video graphics card that sucks... But on the other hand, their innovative new Xbox 360 will do everything you wanted to do in the living room and will change the way the living room is. In that department SONY doesnt have a chance.
Everything that is important will happen this summer and by the end of the summer we are going to be well aware of who is winning the war of Microsoft vs The World.
I like any other would like to see OSX on a x86, but with solutions like the mac mini, i guess if that little thing holds, its a good investment.
i dont know how power pc/osx architecture runs... but i know 1gb of ram makes anything on any hardware just run :) I guess ill find out soonish. I know if you run WoW with only 256mb even on an imac g5 it runs choppy...
is the mac mini good enough to play World of Warcraft? That is my only phear... I can port all my work to mac happily but it would suck to just open windows to do some WoW. :P
______________
Point is, that he asked for a non-harmful virus to be created. But what control he has on someone who is in it for the kick of just destroying an industry that is striving to bring us an electronic working environment that is finally free of all the shit and junk we get in the Windows environment most of us move on.
I have been a microsoft user since DOS, Windows 3.1, I have had my share of experience with everything, from OS/2, slackware, etc. The first program i install on my windows machine right after SP2, is the Antivirus. Why? Because i know the second i hook my system to the internet, i am going to get some weird shit running on my machine.
Recently my GF surprised me with a Valentines gift i never expected. I bet she just got tired of listening to me curse and whine when i got my windows pc fucked up with some weird shit...
She got me a Mac Mini. I hooked it up and it's bliss. Now I am not trying to patronise or start a flamewar. But I do enjoy working on my mac and not worrying about some virus to catch or some spyware, malware or other shit bothering my ass.
Do I run a huge risk running unprotected? Yeah maybe i am running a risk. But i am confident that in a very long time i wont need to worry about this. And when it happens well i guess i can deal for it.
What i cannot believe is that a company has a product that is little by little gaining market share because they are trully innovating (contrary to you bill, which the only innovation is adding nice gui effects to an os that has sucked since windows 3.1) that i know we all wish for (well except the linux users because they enjoy of that freedom as well), which is freedom of finally using our systems without worrying of a virus to come and fuck us up. And this guy just opened a door to encourage those virii writers to actuall ycreate something harmful.
Sure he closed the door, publicly that the contest is over. But the bait is still there... What if someone actually does write up a virus that can fuck up OSX? what if mister campbell receives a call in the middle of the night, "It's done, deposit it to my account in the caimans..."
In this world, and age we live in, everything is possible, and this fool has just made a subconcious challenge that will be taken to hand by someone. Specially when all the great hackers (all the ones unknown to us) are busy doing things right, all there are left, are the script kiddies who want to impress the girl next door with their picture next to the Secret Service...
Just my opinion... I hope it makes sense to someone out there...