I know I complain when people whine about news being old, but I think this story missed the mark by about 10 years.
It used to be that any game I bought had about 10 patches before the month its was released changed.
Now, it seems like game are in perpetual development, NOT being released to customers, ever (Duke Nukem Forever). Games like Half Life 2 and Quake 4 were in development for years and missed umpteen deadlines before they finally came out, and the developer's excuses were they wanted to make it perfect.
While I don't play the whole plethora of games available today, I still usually pick up the popular titles. I find very few times that any of the big releases have any issues that prevent enjoyable gameplay. When a patch is made available (months after release), it usually tweaks games settings or fixes (usually) any multiplayer networking problems. These kinds of issues can only be encountered once something enters wide release. No beta environment could every duplicate what the open market can find for bugs (re, beta testers are usually people in the know, real life is actually filled with morons and people without a clue).
I seldom ever find myself using a game that feels like a beta.
The problem I have is, I would rather a company release a game that might still have a few lingering issues, and then patch it later, rather then holding a game from release for 12 - 18 months to make it perfect. As long as those issues do not interrupt gameplay, or are only encountered infrequently or very randomly, then I won't mind playing the game. What I can't stand is the idea that developers spend 3 months tracking down a bug that maybe only 5% of the market would ever encounter, and that only being once in their life time.
HL2 and Duke Nukem Forever are extremes in this case, where people make it a career to hype about a game that takes years to develop, and then keep postponing it indefinitely. For the most part, I don't need a game to be perfect on release, just good enough to play without too many interruptions or problems. I would be hypercritical of a game that has bugs but was still delayed 12 - 18 months to make it perfect over a game that was released too soon but has a quick patch cycle.
These are the same problems plaguing WiFi in general. I haven't setup a wireless network and have had the same results each time. I have worked with some pretty lousy equipment (ahem, DLink) and the problem is exasperated when the router itself is defective.
Even once set up, walls, wireless phones, other wireless computer equipment all can interfere and make WiFi problematic.
The problems experienced by muni-Wi-Fi is just a high concentration of the same kind of problems people will experience individually, just on a higher scale.
If its free, don't complain if you get intermittent interruptions in service or poor quality. Complain when you have to pay for that privilege.
Lastly, can we give up that stupid "free as in beer" crap? In the real world (i.e. outside college and univeristy), beer ain't free.
When Sony and other digital music players are getting 30 - 50 hours playback, why can't Apple release a product that truly offers more then 14 - 18 tops?
Apple also needs something a little more robust, to offer such features as some PDA like functionality, games, or better video support (i.e. HD video out).
Either that, or someone just offered Apple a cheaper version of the same concept so Apple can make more profit on their cheaper product lines.
Try compiling millions of lines of software all day long, then you will realize how slow hard drive technology is buddy.
Nothing hideously wrong with my system, just that when the hard drive gets saturated with IO calls, the system has to sit and wait for it. I think it is more because of Windows reliance of virtual memory, when you need to swap a gigabyte of ram to the hard drive when it is already saturated, the you get the system responding very slowly.
When I say new IO standards, I don't mean incremental updates of IDE or SATA technology, I mean something completely new. 80mb/s sustained transfer rate is rather pathetic, especially if your generating gigabytes of compiled code.
When solid state takes off, it won't be expensive. The problem currently is that hard drive makers keep finding ways of increasing storage for magnetic media, but they are not focusing on performance because they see no demand in it. The moment the capacity barrier is reached, solid state technology will take off and prices will drop when their is a demand for higher capacities AND performance.
I am sure current hard drives are adequate for downloading your porn and pirated music and CDs and playing all your video games, but for real people using their computers for real jobs, hard drive performance sucks, period.
Before mouthing off about how little someone knows about things, get a clue first and try to figure out where they are coming from. I experience how slow hard drives are every day, and simply desire something better in the industry, a position many are repeating in this thread because they also know what they are talking about and have actual experience.
I have seen a few hair brained "collaborative" development software, and this takes the cake.
Collaboration seems to be the current buzzword of late, the fact that suddenly individual programmers can get together in a virtual environment, and work together as if in the same office. The idea you can't "collaborate" unless you have some software interface connecting them is a crock of sh*t.
This is the kind of BS waste of time that managers love and programmers hate. The fact that they have to align themselves with some middle man software that interferes with their productivity for the supposed concept of collaboration which managers see as greatly reducing development costs and improve overall application design. In the end, it becomes a hurdle developers have to get over to get to their real jobs.
Croquet is just an elaborate IM with a 3D interface. Its a gimmick, purely designed to trying and get interest and investment dollars into a company that truly has a bullsh*t product, i.e., the kind of idea that non-developers like Wall Street brokers love and will dump millions into some stupid overinflated IPOs and not once think about whether the industry truly needs this software.
The Internet bubble is back, with lots of cockamamie ideas all in an effort to give start ups their 15 minutes of fame and millions in ill-gotten funds. 2 years from now Croquet will not exist or will never have reached the potential claimed.
Look, why not simply give away music for free, but then charge an arm and a leg for concerts.
Why not make musicians finally work for their money?
Music can be free, just pay for the privaledge of watching your favourite band, artist, symphony in concert.
There are lots of one hit wonders out their right now making millions from radio airplay and CD sales. They might appear performing on the Grammies, or have a quick concert tour, then sit on their royalty checks for the rest of their lives.
A artist serious about making music would screw profts from CD and perform a series of concerts year after year. It doesn't have to be some ball busing whirlwind tour where the artist sees 60 countries in 60 days or anything, but just enough of an appearance to earn some decent money and give fans more then what they can get from a music file.
For the most part, most artists know that there are more fans that could care less about seeing them in concert, so why not milk those fans that whould actually pay to see Madonna for $250. As long as the stadium fills up with these losers paying up, the prices will just keep going up.
The problem is that most artists will soon realise that audience attendance will drop AND their music is being distributed for free, so they will end up with nothing but the paltry millions they make from legitimate CD sales.
Why won't these people give up. Star Trek is a tired franchise filled with aging figureheads that can't reclaim the glory of their early years.
I mean, they have to make a new story filled with "younger" versions of their most popular characters, because most people involved in ANY Star Trek series is over 50.
If the same people that drove the Star Trek televisions shows into the ground are involved in this movie (Rick Berman and Brannon Bragga), it will be a disaster, as it will contain story elements based only on cloning Roddenberry's concepts, nothing new or fresh has been injected into this franchise for 20 years.
Personally, I am about due for Star Trek to retire, and 2008 for a new movie is way too early after the last movie fiasco and television series flop. I am sure their gearing up for another vapid television series as well, something filled with the same trite plots that have been repeated over and over again with 5 previous television shows.
The only way Star Trek will ever succeed again is to round up EVERYBODY ever associated with the Star Trek franchise (except William Shatner) and fire them into the sun. Every writer, director and producer of Star Trek should be ashamed of themselves for taking a great money making concept and turning it into the worst Sci-Fi drivel imaginable. What upsets me the most is that a sci-fi show like Firefly, that actually incorporated good writing, good acting, and novel ideas gets canned after 10 episodes, while the Star Trek franchise continues to limp along after being on cruise control since Roddenberry died. There was more originality and imagination in one episode of Firefly then in the entire DS9, Voyager and Enterprise series.
Put a photon torpedo into it already its dead Jim!
Sorry, I can't get overly excited about a hard drive maker increasing storage space. That is all they have been doing for the last 10 years, certainly hard drive performance hasn't been driving the industry.
Hard drives are the single biggest bottleneck on today's systems. With multi-core technology and cheap gigabytes of ram all with gigabyte transfer rates, a hard drive plodding along with a 100 - 200mb/s transfer just doesn't cut it. Why should my system seem to hang with only 10% CPU utilization because of intense hard drive activity. I can't even bring up another task that doesn't use the hard drive because the system is too busy with hard drive transfers.
Either a new I/O standard needs to be invented, something that doesn't tax your system when excessive hard drive transfers are made, or the frigging hard drives just need to start getting up to gigabyte transfer rates.
In any case, I could care less about hard drives doubling or tripling in size, until they show significant improvements in performance, or move to solid state, then I am apathetic about the whole industry.
I mean, to say something is a linux killer suggests that Linux is the mainstream OS that everybody is using, and so Windows will overtake their dominance.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but 95% of the world runs Windows on their Desktop.
Sure, Linux is dominant in servers and server technology. But I would never have claimed that Windows 95 would kill Linux as a server OS.
When Windows 95 came out, where as Linux? Linux back then WAS a difficult POS to use, a convoluted OS with a lot of potential and very little innovation. In fact, it wasn't until Windows 95 was released that Linux actually started to adopt a UI that people liked to use on it (i.e. no more X-Windows). Gnome and KDE all got a lot of big design cues form Windows 95.
Back then, people though Linux was going to kill Windows, and with each new version of Windows that was released since Windows 95, Linux failed to make a dent in the market.
Today, in 2006, with Ubuntu being the lastest flavour of the mont Linux distro(but waining with rumors of other must have distros like a Google version of linux), Linux still is failing to captivate an audience for desktop users. In the past 10 years, Linux has failed to focus into a consise and effective replacement of Windows, failed to take 100 renegage distibrutions and consolidate it into one super-uber-distro that could rule them all and truely compete with Windows. Linux, and all its fragmeneted groups of developers still cannot unite to develop ONE good replacement to Windows, and while they all feel they can make a better Windows, none realize how damaging keeping seperated is having on their beloved hobby OS.
I have no idea where your coming from saying something like Vista will require driver disks if you plug your USB thingy into them. At least on Windows, drivers EXIST. Driver CD's actaully come with the product, and you can download the drivers online at least. This is unlike Linux where if you have new hardware, until some open source developer gets around to buying it you won't get any driver support for it. Even once you do, if the driver isn't for the specific nightly build of the kernel your running, your SOL for getting it to install properly without configuring scripts for hours.
Sorry, I know your trying to make a point about how cool and great Linux is over Windows, but you have to have some platform to stand on. Never once did I even consider that Windows needed to be a Linux killer. Linux speaks for itself, 95% of the world computer users say so. They all can't be mindless lemmings.
While most people gripe about Windows Vista and its lack of this and that, as a software developer I am still very excited about Windows Vista.
Bottom line is, Vista will over new levels of creativity and originality in application design that will be unmatched by any other system using any other development platform.
Windows Presentation Layer (Avalon) represents a different approach to GUI design. While some operating system like Java Desktop or OSX may use 3D hardware acceleration to render GUI, Windows will take it to new levels. Almost every physical property of a Windows control can be animated, its size, position, transparency. This includes transforming the control by rotations, shears, scaling, etc, all in 3D.
Does this just mean more eye candy. Well, yes. Windows Vista will promote a slew of new visual bells and whistles that many might enjoy and others will want to turn off. But basically Microsoft will bring Flash like GUI programming for real programs, not little applets on the web.
I can already imagine hundreds of ways I can utilize this level of power and control of GUI elements and I am looking forward to using Microsoft's new tools for application design and development.
For the most part, Vista is like Tiger, it is representing a different approach to developing applications on the system. OSX Tiger, asside from its obvious bells and whistles like Spotlight and Dashboard, improved its foundation for application design, including release of a new version of XCode and other Core components. Microsoft will do the same with Windows Vista.
What most people are not understanding is the level of creativity and power people will have developing applications for Vista. While I too am dissapointed that WinFS and other key OS technologies will not make it into Vista for release, it still represents a new platform for application design which I think will change the way we write and use applications.
I am considering Vista analagous to Windows 95. Windows 95 was a new approach to the Windows OS, and while it had many significant flaws and problems, it represented a firm foundation for a decade of OS design. Security holes and issues asside, Microsoft worked from the foundation which lead to Windows XP, which is easy to use and stable, regardless of what many of you think. XP is an OS where I can run my computer for months with BSOD's or crashes, and with the proper security apps in place, I can leave it running without worrying about all the security exploits. I don't think that Vista is a continuation of that line, but a break in that line, and by offering a new foundation hopefully built with far better security then currently along with a dramatically new way or presenting GUI applications, while Vista might ultimately suffer its setbacks and have a less dramatic release then anticipated, it will provide a firm foundation for another decade of OS design.
Like Windows 98, I expect a new release of Vista 2 - 3 years later that will work in WinFS and other modern OS technologies. This will be the OS to anticipate.
I am not hoping for much out of Vista, but from a developers standpoint, it is exciting to see where this new Windows Presentation Layer will go. I am tired of static applications with dull grey buttons. I am looking forward to full 3D hardware acceleration and bringing rich, robust and dynamic GUI into my OS design.
Just copy the i386 folder from the intall CD into the ghost image and then you can ghost the whole shebang without worry.
When you fire up the restored Windows XP on a computer with different hardware then last used, it will go through its hardware detection and driver installation phase, just point it to the i386 folder you have included in the image, and all should work.
In fact, I think if you specify somewhere in the registry before ghosting the installation, Windows XP will automatically search for the local i386 folder when looking for new drivers before prompting the user asking where it is or to install the CD. This should allow for relatively painless cloning.
Note, however, it isn't technically legal for you to clone Windows XP installation unless you purchased a volume license version of Windows XP. If you ghost retail copies of Windows XP, you might find yourself in deep sh*t if Microsoft finds out as your techincally pirating the OS, even if you have enough retail copies for each computer on the shelf. Each computer must be installed with its own licensed copy of Windows, or use the volume license version.
But I mean, if your socially deviant, who wants to hire you? Unless you have an impressive CV and can easily demonstrate your exceptional in what you do, then don't question why an employeer expects you to fit a certain mold.
The bottom line is that the employeer has a right to hire whomever they want. While racial profiling would be far too much and would result in lawsuits, there is nothing inherently illegal about refusing to hire a person, and without cause either.
Even once a person is hired, there is generally few laws that prevent an employeer from firing you without cause, unless your unionized of course.
Love it or hate it, life isn't fair, and if your applying for a company that requires a personality test, look elsewhere. Chances are this company doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground if they think someone with a nice personality is what they need in good employees. You probably don't want to work for that company anyways.
I have found networking on Mac's to be hit or miss. Seem like every version of OS, and intermitant releases of patchs, networking either works brilliantly, or not at all.
I mean, just try setting up a Mac to print to a printer connected on a Windows box. Depending on which version of OSX you have, and which patch, either this is braindead, or a cause for apoplexy.
While I can connect easily to Windows machines using smb, I have yet to actually SEE connected Windows boxes from a Mac, i.e. like Windows Network Neighbourhood. Conversely, while I may be able to see Mac machines connected in Windows Network Neighbourhood, I can't always connect to them.
Despite the firm root OSX has in Unix, networking has never been Apple's strong point, it might work well between Mac machines, but Mac/PC networking has always been hit or miss, and Apple doesn't seem to be improving it over time.
I can't see why Windows users will want Bonjour. I mean, networking on PC's is relatively braindead, and if configuration issues was a huge problem on Windows, Microsoft would have some other tool available. For the most part, Network Neighbourhood is all you need on windows to see and connect with other computers. But for people in mixed environments, Bonjour might be necessary so that Macs and finally work better networking with PC's.
Look, HD-DVD is available now, while Blu-ray is still struggling. The Fact that Sony couldn't get the PS3 released with Blu-ray technology now sealed its fate.
Plus, the simple fact is, Sony has never successfully launched a media format. BetaMax, MiniDisc, SuperAudio, UMD, MediaStick, and now BR-DVD you name it, if Sony had a hand it its development, it failed, most of the times miserably.
I think that both next generation DVD's will face serious lack of adoption as there just isn't any pressing need for consumers to upgrade their systems. But of the two formats, Sony doesn't have the reputation for making it work, and HD-DVD will become the next generation standard.
What will mark the success of this format is the first camp to offer a recordable PC drive. If Sony gets a Blu-Ray rewritable DVD drive before an HD-DVD, then I might change my story. But I doubt that will happen considering Sony is still struggling to define the format for read only drives.
I think Sony truthfully delayed the PS3 because they are uncertain if Blu-Ray will succeed. If they can't sell BR-DVD players and BR-DVD movies in the next 6 months, why release the PS3 with the failed Blu-Ray technology.
I have nothing against Sony, and look forward to the PS3, but I think in the long run I would put my money on ANY non-Sony inspired digital media. It just makes common sense.
Microsoft deciding to be more family friendly now means they completely missed their mark. By selling a hugely expensive game console, and targeting its audience with the same sort of FPS and sports games that make the original Xbox somewhat of a hit with hardcore gamers, they have no chance in heck of claiming the console a success for family markets.
Lets face the facts that Microsoft has missed:
1) With games like GTA being highly scrutinized for its adult content and inappropriate rating, there has been a large focus as of late for games that are excessively violent or mature rated. These are the games that hard core gamers want to buy, but legislation or litigation will eventually put an end to them one way or another. Microsoft will need to change focus, rather then being a platform where some GTA game could flourish, they want to avoid these games and put G rated titles on the shelves.
2) Wall-Mart apparently has some say in how games are designed, and their emphasis is on family oriented fair. While I don't believe that an individual game developer would be affected by Wall-Mart not selling their games, a game console maker wants to have ALL possible games sold at Wall-Mart to make their system sell well at Wall-Mart. Microsoft wants to suck up to Wall-Mart now.
3) Nintendo has long since banked on family/children titles for their success. While it may not make them the number one console maker, it still gives them strong sales to say in business. With the upcoming Revolution, Microsoft wants to ensure they are in a position to compete with Nintendo for family titles, which could put the Revolution into the number one position for a while (until the PS3 is released). Nintendo will gain a huge immediate market in Japan, where the Xbox is always done poorly, and even in North America and Europe, Xbox360 hasn't sold that well either, certainly within margins that Nintendo could approach.
That aside, Microsoft is playing catch up in the next generation console market they had hoped to define. With the poor roll out of the Xbox360, and still no real buying trend for them, even without ANY major competitor, Microsoft is still doing poorly. If they see that family titles are helping to define a console and increase sales, then they are going to have to figure out how to cater to that market.
But Nintendo already has a leg up by keeping the cost of their console and games lower. Microsoft will have to heavily discount the Xbox360 if they want to compete in the family market, and force game developers to sell their software for cheaper. This will mean a longer then expected loss of profit on the Xbox360 and possibly developer backlash that might force developers to abandon support for the platform.
If this is Microsoft's goal, to make the Xbox360 a successful family oriented game console, they have failed on ALL accounts. I think the Xbox360 is another Dreamcast, can't wait for it to hit $99 at Wall-mart, then again, who even wants it at $99.
There is a certain amount of 3733t12t attitude when it comes to Linux. Its is warranted in many cases. People that spend 20 solid hours configuring an email server and compiling kernels and video card drivers deserve to have a bit of an attitude, and be defensive about their prized OS.
Still the biggest problem with the adoption of Linux isn't snobby geeks. About once a year, I pick up the Linux flavour of the month (Ubuntu this time) and try it out. My questions, "Can I use it as a replacement of Windows? What benefits over Windows will it feature? What features am I getting that I can't find in Windows? How easy it is to install? Does it support naively all my hardware?"
It is surprising that after 10 years of trying different flavours of Linux out, none have ever answered those basic questions. Mostly the problems I have had over the last 3 years is that it doesn't support my hardware properly. Currently Ubuntu has problems with some hardware in my current laptop. I can't change the laptop hardware, so I have to change the OS, back to Windows. Problems in the past have been, significant problems getting Internet to work on Linux, hardware support, installation fiascoes, ease of use, and general lack of appeal for most applications that start with G or have GNU in them.
All told, what prevents people from adopting Linux is just a general sense of futility in the effort. Why should some newbie be forced to ask a comment board about how to learn to use Linux. An OS should be intuitive, period! My computer illiterate parents picked up on Windows XP quickly enough, without having to RTFM or post endless questions on comment boards. Heck, my father had Firefox 1.5 installed before I even knew it existed for release. He installed an ethernet card and set up his Cable Modem and Internet in 15 minutes when I couldn't get my ethernet card recognized in a Linux distro for 2 days before I had to modify some cryptic scripts after seeing some obscure message board comments.
What Linux Gurus lord over Windows users is that they feel they know how to use a computer better because they spend hours tweaking it, writing scripts, compiling drivers and kernels, setting up email and web servers, spend most of their time with a blinking command prompt. I know one guy that got off on the fact he set up multiple servers on a single Linux based computer and could VPN between them. When he claims I am a mindless lemming for continuing to use Windows, I just smile and nod. Have fun with VPN'ing with yourself. Then he upgraded his Linux kernel, and spent 2 days rewriting scripts and recompiling this and that to get his self contained VPN system up and running, cursing Linux every step of the say. Yeah, I am a mindless lemming.
Real computer users don't write scripts for hours, they just use the computer, period.
If your playing a 3D game, and your computer has more power to encode other stuff, then your not aming this system at hardcore gamers.
Hard core gamers trying and squeeze every last performance index out of their system to get the maximum performance and quality out of their favourite games. They spend hours tweaking BIOS settings, RAM settings, overclocking their system, all in an effort to get one more frame/sec out of their system.
Running a movie encoding or DVD ripping software in the background while they play their favourite game is kind of counter-productive.
If this is possible, then game developers are not maximizing performance out of their computers, and this just proves that its no longer 3D gaming titles that is driving hardware development. What this means is that there is now a glass ceiling as to what constitutes a high performance top notch gaming system, and it isn't the most expensive kit out there anymore. If there is performance left over to do other CPU intensive operations, like encoding media, then people should be able to buy a system that is $500 to $1000 less, and still get the SAME great gaming performance as the high end models, which now just have wasted CPU cycles.
The bottom line is, by Dell announcing a so-called hardcore game system that has enough superfluous performance to rip DVD's or encode music/movies, then there is no market for high end systems anymore. People will find hard core gaming available in cheaper packages, and thus Dell will lose market with their high end systems.
It like if your buying a car, but have no intention of going over 60km/h in commuter stop and go traffic, why buy a car with 300hp for $30,000 more then a car with 100 hp for $15,000? Why too, if gaming is your thing, would you buy an expensive computer that does more then you intend to do, wasting money on feature syour not going to use or can't use to maximize gaming performance.
Hardcore gamers really don't blow $3000 on a computer. They like to find the cheapest system with the maximum performance. They like to customize their system and tweak it at will. And they don't buy Dell, dude!
OSX is built on an open source platform, BSD. Why should it itself be open sourced? Why do I want 20 different distributions of OSX when Apple makes one decent version of it.
Honestly, people say Open Source without thinking. They think that all software should be free or all source code should be made available without even thinking for one instance whether the world needs it. OSX doesn't need to be open sourced, neither does windows, sorry.
For all you hobbyists out their, linux is great, it is an example of good OS design and if your wondering how the pros do it, look at linux source code. But that doesn't mean that every software vendor out their needs to open source their friggin software.
Open source isn't a solution. It's a business concept which really isn't that successful. Its not making anybody rich, it isn't creating products that are truly sweeping proprietary software, and I tire when someone say "Hey, open source your software!" without making one real statement of why it should be so.
F*ck off, write your own software, stop standing on the shoulder's of giants because you feel you can build a better mouse trap then them.
I can tell you one thing that will happen if everything is to go Open Source, Software PATENTS. If Microsoft or Apple open sources their OS, then that is going to mean that as much as you can look at their source code, you can't use it or modify it because of both Microsoft and Apple will get so many patents on it that it will stiffle open source development. Apple isn't going to want to give away source code that makes spotlight fast and efficient, especially with companies like Microsoft around. So Apple will patent their software up the wazoo so that even if you see their code, you couldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Will this be beneficial for Open Source?
Open source is about the free exchange of information and ideas to develop software by community, and while this is a great grassroots idea, the fact is that Apple and Microsoft and others have billions invested in their software, they aren't just going to hand it out so that Linux users can make 100 differet versions of OSX or Windows. What benefit has 100+ versions of Linux offered the world? Only confusion and weakness is what 100 versions of Linux has offered. Without one distro to rule them all, Linux WILL NEVER compete with OSX or Windows. Open source development fragments the linux community into 100 weak products, all with their own subtle strengths, but get the community behind one Linux distro, and you will have a strong competitive product.
But sorry, Apple isn't one of them, neither is Microsoft. I mean, did this guy even realize that Apple is the developer of OSX? A company that surrounds themselves in propietary technology and secrecy to the point that you don't really know something exists until Steve Jobs stands up on a stage and says its so? You really think Apple wan'ts to release their OSX operating system, now the ONLY reason why people should buy a Mac to the masses so that it can be cloned and ripped off at will leaving Apple with no leverage. OSX as open source would simply turn Apple into Dell, an OEM pre-fab PC manufacturer among 100's of equals. This will kill off Apple quickly.
Sure, OSX source code will last for ages, in one form or another, but gone will be the company that made it great.
Open source OSX? Get real. Put down that pipe because you got a hold of some very bad weed.
DVD was dramatically new. Even compared to Laserdisks, DVD was better quality in a more convenient form factor. It represented a huge leap over VHS tapes, and it was the fastest growing media format compared to tapes, CD's and VHS combined.
But High Def DVD's just don't have the same impact as DVDs. DVDs have overed exceptional quality, and even on HD Televisions, DVD's still offer good quality. With new up-converting DVD players, that quality is furthered as it converts DVD data to HD signals. Up converting DVD players are about 1/10 the price of next gen HD DVD players, and people can use their existing library to watch better quality HD movies.
But, High Def was a f*cked up technology release. I don't think you could have rolled out a technology format in a worse way. Cable and Satellite providers were slow to offer HD content, so consumers were slow to buy HD equipment. HD has been around for over 10 years now, believe it or not, and yet, TVs are still pricey, they don't feature ture HD tuner integration (i.e. do not support digital cable natively), and cable companies are charging too much for the "premium" of watching HD content.
High Def DVD players will be a f*cked up technology roll out as well. With DRM and Hollywoods unwarranted worry over copy protection, next gen DVD's will never be quickly adopted. With two competing standards, its the Betamax/VHS stand off all over again. Except the problem now is that we already have a decent format that suits most of our purposes, DVD, period!
Like you said, I will buy a next gen DVD player when they hit Wall-Mart for $50 and one format one over the other. I will only get one that supports my existing DVD library and when HD-DVD's are the same price as regular DVD's, or you can only buy HD-DVDs. I think most people feel the same way.
The question is, will either formats pervail, or will the industry drop both of them because demand will be weak or non-existent?
That they are not a "Star Wars" game company. God knows that nobody is interested in Star Wars anymore.
Lucas Arts has made some pretty interesting and innovative games in the past, like Grim Fandango and Full Throttle. I wish they would bring back some of the talent behind those games, and ACTUALLY produce a non Star Wars game, then at least that statement wouldn't be moronic.
Anything to do with Lucas-X these days is so wrapped up in Star Wars, George needs some therapy because he can't let it go. A Star Wars television series? Endless tie in games and merchandising products?
When does someones obsession and love of something turn into a reason to go to the loony bin, I think George has long since passed that point.
Lucasarts will have to pull some gems out of their asses if they hope to ride out the current downturn in video games. We are nearing another video game drought, like back in the 80's with the Atari. Game are just not inventive and innovative anymore. Video gaming bottomed out in the 80's because Atari kept pumping out the same old tired titles. Stick figures bouncing around on a static screen with two bit sound effects. People got tired of essentially playing the same game back in the 80's.
People are getting tired of essentially playing the same game, now, in 2006. Quake 4, Doom 3, HL2, Star Wars: Whatever. MMORPGs that go no where. I actually think ALL next gen game consoles will bomb and the Xbox360 is off to a good start (for bombing that is).
Game companies have grown too complacent and used to the idea that by spinning off another game based on a successful franchise, your going to make millions in profit. Every MAJOR game developer currently is working on a SEQUEL. Smaller game developers are simply cloning big game franchise and offering some moderate twists and variations of a theme.
People are getting tired of the same old.
So, hopefully Lucasarts will find some new novel and innovative theme to focus on (not obsess over) and come out with some NEW gaming franchises. Until that happens, it is laughable to think that LucasArts ISN'T a Star Wars crap factory.
First, and foremost, you could never have a mixed environment of automated and manually driven vehicles. Watching iRobot and seeing Will Smith take over manual control on an automated highway was completely ridiculous. In an environment where computers will have to react to the unpredictable behaviour of human drivers, the computes will always lose. How many 200 car pileups will have to occur before it is realized that computer drivers and human drivers won't mix. Computers cannot anticipate the irradict behaviour of a drunk driver. Nor can they anticipate a woman swearving across 6 lanes of traffic to hit her exit because she was too busy putting on lipstick to pay attention to the exit signs. Humans and computers won't mix.
Secondly, you need to either put the highways underground or put a cover on them. There is no way a computer driven vehicle will respond appropriately if a deer rushes on the road, or suddenly there is a freak blizzard and the road conditions go from dry to slick. Putting highways in tunnels will mean your eliminating weather and most other external obstacles from interfering with computer driven vehicles. A human might pick up a deer standing still off the side of the road and slow down anticipating if it might jump out. A computer probably wouldn't register the deer was standing there until its firmly embedded in its windshield.
Lastly, simple fact will be that there will be some significant flaw in the entire system. Your not going to get all car manufacturers to use the same systems. Your going to need some external system regulating the traffic and communicating with a variety of different systems which will vary city to city, state to state. Even if the communication protocol is standardized, your still going to have some car manufactures that implement automated driving better then others. A Jaguar or other high end vehicle is going to react faster and have better handling them some Geo Metro or Ford Escort.
Bottom line is, in an environment with so much variation, something will go wrong, and it will cost significant human life. When this happen, people will abandon the concept of computer driven vehicles.
Its a nice hobby, but its a complete waste of time. Unless they invent anti-gravity and force fields, your never going to have an automated highway system.
I mean, email was invented first, and I am sure someone has a patent for that. Just because the transport medium is wireless instead of over a wire, is there any validity in a patent for "wireless" email? If I had patented email, I would have said over ANY approrpirate digital transport, wired or wireless. Shouldn't the original email patent holder basically hold the patent for "wireless" email?
This is where patents break down, when people simply mash two patents together and feel they are justified for having a patent based on other people's work. Wireless communcations is patented, as well as the concept of email. Someone saying, hey, lets patent wireless-email should be shot.
I am sure there were inherent difficulties and specific problems that had to be resolved before making wireless email work properly, but come on. This is the application of two existing patented process, not the INVENTION of a new process.
This is why patents are failing to encourage innovation, because people with a law degree are simply taking combinations of other peoples inventions, mashing them together, and hoping that someone one day might use the right combination of inventions so they can sue them in courts for stealing their "innovation".
Patents are stifling innovation because they are being filed by people with no intention of developing the process, simply sitting on them until someone that actually makes the idea work is successful enough to earn them millions in a lawsuit for infringement.
Patents are shyster documents designed to make shysters richer.
Its isn't Apple's style to release a BETA of anything. Apple seldom released public betas, instead tends to only distribute betas to those select few that actually have a developers membership.
It is also unusual that one of Apple's Beta's would be so flaky. Usually they reserve that for release software and then quickly patch it.
While I was under the impression that Apple probably always had Boot Camp up their sleeves, something now tells me that this may have been a rushed effort to prevent too many illegit dual boot systems out there, or for Apple to get another 15 minutes of fame by announcing yet another innovative product.
Apple seems to live on 15 minutes fame intervals, and since their 30th Anniversary went by without so much as a peep from the Apple camp, I can only expect that Boot Camp was to keep Apple in the news for 15 more minutes until the next iPod version is rushed out the door.
- - - - "I don't understand why people put silly quoted comments after their already silly main comment!"
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I know I complain when people whine about news being old, but I think this story missed the mark by about 10 years.
It used to be that any game I bought had about 10 patches before the month its was released changed.
Now, it seems like game are in perpetual development, NOT being released to customers, ever (Duke Nukem Forever). Games like Half Life 2 and Quake 4 were in development for years and missed umpteen deadlines before they finally came out, and the developer's excuses were they wanted to make it perfect.
While I don't play the whole plethora of games available today, I still usually pick up the popular titles. I find very few times that any of the big releases have any issues that prevent enjoyable gameplay. When a patch is made available (months after release), it usually tweaks games settings or fixes (usually) any multiplayer networking problems. These kinds of issues can only be encountered once something enters wide release. No beta environment could every duplicate what the open market can find for bugs (re, beta testers are usually people in the know, real life is actually filled with morons and people without a clue).
I seldom ever find myself using a game that feels like a beta.
The problem I have is, I would rather a company release a game that might still have a few lingering issues, and then patch it later, rather then holding a game from release for 12 - 18 months to make it perfect. As long as those issues do not interrupt gameplay, or are only encountered infrequently or very randomly, then I won't mind playing the game. What I can't stand is the idea that developers spend 3 months tracking down a bug that maybe only 5% of the market would ever encounter, and that only being once in their life time.
HL2 and Duke Nukem Forever are extremes in this case, where people make it a career to hype about a game that takes years to develop, and then keep postponing it indefinitely. For the most part, I don't need a game to be perfect on release, just good enough to play without too many interruptions or problems. I would be hypercritical of a game that has bugs but was still delayed 12 - 18 months to make it perfect over a game that was released too soon but has a quick patch cycle.
These are the same problems plaguing WiFi in general. I haven't setup a wireless network and have had the same results each time. I have worked with some pretty lousy equipment (ahem, DLink) and the problem is exasperated when the router itself is defective.
Even once set up, walls, wireless phones, other wireless computer equipment all can interfere and make WiFi problematic.
The problems experienced by muni-Wi-Fi is just a high concentration of the same kind of problems people will experience individually, just on a higher scale.
If its free, don't complain if you get intermittent interruptions in service or poor quality. Complain when you have to pay for that privilege.
Lastly, can we give up that stupid "free as in beer" crap? In the real world (i.e. outside college and univeristy), beer ain't free.
Al Gore must be fuming over this statement. It think he thinks he invented the iPod when he was dreaming up the Internet.
When Sony and other digital music players are getting 30 - 50 hours playback, why can't Apple release a product that truly offers more then 14 - 18 tops?
Apple also needs something a little more robust, to offer such features as some PDA like functionality, games, or better video support (i.e. HD video out).
Either that, or someone just offered Apple a cheaper version of the same concept so Apple can make more profit on their cheaper product lines.
Try compiling millions of lines of software all day long, then you will realize how slow hard drive technology is buddy.
Nothing hideously wrong with my system, just that when the hard drive gets saturated with IO calls, the system has to sit and wait for it. I think it is more because of Windows reliance of virtual memory, when you need to swap a gigabyte of ram to the hard drive when it is already saturated, the you get the system responding very slowly.
When I say new IO standards, I don't mean incremental updates of IDE or SATA technology, I mean something completely new. 80mb/s sustained transfer rate is rather pathetic, especially if your generating gigabytes of compiled code.
When solid state takes off, it won't be expensive. The problem currently is that hard drive makers keep finding ways of increasing storage for magnetic media, but they are not focusing on performance because they see no demand in it. The moment the capacity barrier is reached, solid state technology will take off and prices will drop when their is a demand for higher capacities AND performance.
I am sure current hard drives are adequate for downloading your porn and pirated music and CDs and playing all your video games, but for real people using their computers for real jobs, hard drive performance sucks, period.
Before mouthing off about how little someone knows about things, get a clue first and try to figure out where they are coming from. I experience how slow hard drives are every day, and simply desire something better in the industry, a position many are repeating in this thread because they also know what they are talking about and have actual experience.
I have seen a few hair brained "collaborative" development software, and this takes the cake.
Collaboration seems to be the current buzzword of late, the fact that suddenly individual programmers can get together in a virtual environment, and work together as if in the same office. The idea you can't "collaborate" unless you have some software interface connecting them is a crock of sh*t.
This is the kind of BS waste of time that managers love and programmers hate. The fact that they have to align themselves with some middle man software that interferes with their productivity for the supposed concept of collaboration which managers see as greatly reducing development costs and improve overall application design. In the end, it becomes a hurdle developers have to get over to get to their real jobs.
Croquet is just an elaborate IM with a 3D interface. Its a gimmick, purely designed to trying and get interest and investment dollars into a company that truly has a bullsh*t product, i.e., the kind of idea that non-developers like Wall Street brokers love and will dump millions into some stupid overinflated IPOs and not once think about whether the industry truly needs this software.
The Internet bubble is back, with lots of cockamamie ideas all in an effort to give start ups their 15 minutes of fame and millions in ill-gotten funds. 2 years from now Croquet will not exist or will never have reached the potential claimed.
Look away, nothing to see here.
Look, why not simply give away music for free, but then charge an arm and a leg for concerts.
Why not make musicians finally work for their money?
Music can be free, just pay for the privaledge of watching your favourite band, artist, symphony in concert.
There are lots of one hit wonders out their right now making millions from radio airplay and CD sales. They might appear performing on the Grammies, or have a quick concert tour, then sit on their royalty checks for the rest of their lives.
A artist serious about making music would screw profts from CD and perform a series of concerts year after year. It doesn't have to be some ball busing whirlwind tour where the artist sees 60 countries in 60 days or anything, but just enough of an appearance to earn some decent money and give fans more then what they can get from a music file.
For the most part, most artists know that there are more fans that could care less about seeing them in concert, so why not milk those fans that whould actually pay to see Madonna for $250. As long as the stadium fills up with these losers paying up, the prices will just keep going up.
The problem is that most artists will soon realise that audience attendance will drop AND their music is being distributed for free, so they will end up with nothing but the paltry millions they make from legitimate CD sales.
Why won't these people give up. Star Trek is a tired franchise filled with aging figureheads that can't reclaim the glory of their early years.
I mean, they have to make a new story filled with "younger" versions of their most popular characters, because most people involved in ANY Star Trek series is over 50.
If the same people that drove the Star Trek televisions shows into the ground are involved in this movie (Rick Berman and Brannon Bragga), it will be a disaster, as it will contain story elements based only on cloning Roddenberry's concepts, nothing new or fresh has been injected into this franchise for 20 years.
Personally, I am about due for Star Trek to retire, and 2008 for a new movie is way too early after the last movie fiasco and television series flop. I am sure their gearing up for another vapid television series as well, something filled with the same trite plots that have been repeated over and over again with 5 previous television shows.
The only way Star Trek will ever succeed again is to round up EVERYBODY ever associated with the Star Trek franchise (except William Shatner) and fire them into the sun. Every writer, director and producer of Star Trek should be ashamed of themselves for taking a great money making concept and turning it into the worst Sci-Fi drivel imaginable.
What upsets me the most is that a sci-fi show like Firefly, that actually incorporated good writing, good acting, and novel ideas gets canned after 10 episodes, while the Star Trek franchise continues to limp along after being on cruise control since Roddenberry died. There was more originality and imagination in one episode of Firefly then in the entire DS9, Voyager and Enterprise series.
Put a photon torpedo into it already its dead Jim!
Sorry, I can't get overly excited about a hard drive maker increasing storage space. That is all they have been doing for the last 10 years, certainly hard drive performance hasn't been driving the industry.
Hard drives are the single biggest bottleneck on today's systems. With multi-core technology and cheap gigabytes of ram all with gigabyte transfer rates, a hard drive plodding along with a 100 - 200mb/s transfer just doesn't cut it. Why should my system seem to hang with only 10% CPU utilization because of intense hard drive activity. I can't even bring up another task that doesn't use the hard drive because the system is too busy with hard drive transfers.
Either a new I/O standard needs to be invented, something that doesn't tax your system when excessive hard drive transfers are made, or the frigging hard drives just need to start getting up to gigabyte transfer rates.
In any case, I could care less about hard drives doubling or tripling in size, until they show significant improvements in performance, or move to solid state, then I am apathetic about the whole industry.
Um, when did Linux ever kill Windows?
I mean, to say something is a linux killer suggests that Linux is the mainstream OS that everybody is using, and so Windows will overtake their dominance.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but 95% of the world runs Windows on their Desktop.
Sure, Linux is dominant in servers and server technology. But I would never have claimed that Windows 95 would kill Linux as a server OS.
When Windows 95 came out, where as Linux? Linux back then WAS a difficult POS to use, a convoluted OS with a lot of potential and very little innovation. In fact, it wasn't until Windows 95 was released that Linux actually started to adopt a UI that people liked to use on it (i.e. no more X-Windows). Gnome and KDE all got a lot of big design cues form Windows 95.
Back then, people though Linux was going to kill Windows, and with each new version of Windows that was released since Windows 95, Linux failed to make a dent in the market.
Today, in 2006, with Ubuntu being the lastest flavour of the mont Linux distro(but waining with rumors of other must have distros like a Google version of linux), Linux still is failing to captivate an audience for desktop users. In the past 10 years, Linux has failed to focus into a consise and effective replacement of Windows, failed to take 100 renegage distibrutions and consolidate it into one super-uber-distro that could rule them all and truely compete with Windows. Linux, and all its fragmeneted groups of developers still cannot unite to develop ONE good replacement to Windows, and while they all feel they can make a better Windows, none realize how damaging keeping seperated is having on their beloved hobby OS.
I have no idea where your coming from saying something like Vista will require driver disks if you plug your USB thingy into them. At least on Windows, drivers EXIST. Driver CD's actaully come with the product, and you can download the drivers online at least. This is unlike Linux where if you have new hardware, until some open source developer gets around to buying it you won't get any driver support for it. Even once you do, if the driver isn't for the specific nightly build of the kernel your running, your SOL for getting it to install properly without configuring scripts for hours.
Sorry, I know your trying to make a point about how cool and great Linux is over Windows, but you have to have some platform to stand on. Never once did I even consider that Windows needed to be a Linux killer. Linux speaks for itself, 95% of the world computer users say so. They all can't be mindless lemmings.
While most people gripe about Windows Vista and its lack of this and that, as a software developer I am still very excited about Windows Vista.
Bottom line is, Vista will over new levels of creativity and originality in application design that will be unmatched by any other system using any other development platform.
Windows Presentation Layer (Avalon) represents a different approach to GUI design. While some operating system like Java Desktop or OSX may use 3D hardware acceleration to render GUI, Windows will take it to new levels. Almost every physical property of a Windows control can be animated, its size, position, transparency. This includes transforming the control by rotations, shears, scaling, etc, all in 3D.
Does this just mean more eye candy. Well, yes. Windows Vista will promote a slew of new visual bells and whistles that many might enjoy and others will want to turn off. But basically Microsoft will bring Flash like GUI programming for real programs, not little applets on the web.
I can already imagine hundreds of ways I can utilize this level of power and control of GUI elements and I am looking forward to using Microsoft's new tools for application design and development.
For the most part, Vista is like Tiger, it is representing a different approach to developing applications on the system. OSX Tiger, asside from its obvious bells and whistles like Spotlight and Dashboard, improved its foundation for application design, including release of a new version of XCode and other Core components. Microsoft will do the same with Windows Vista.
What most people are not understanding is the level of creativity and power people will have developing applications for Vista. While I too am dissapointed that WinFS and other key OS technologies will not make it into Vista for release, it still represents a new platform for application design which I think will change the way we write and use applications.
I am considering Vista analagous to Windows 95. Windows 95 was a new approach to the Windows OS, and while it had many significant flaws and problems, it represented a firm foundation for a decade of OS design. Security holes and issues asside, Microsoft worked from the foundation which lead to Windows XP, which is easy to use and stable, regardless of what many of you think. XP is an OS where I can run my computer for months with BSOD's or crashes, and with the proper security apps in place, I can leave it running without worrying about all the security exploits. I don't think that Vista is a continuation of that line, but a break in that line, and by offering a new foundation hopefully built with far better security then currently along with a dramatically new way or presenting GUI applications, while Vista might ultimately suffer its setbacks and have a less dramatic release then anticipated, it will provide a firm foundation for another decade of OS design.
Like Windows 98, I expect a new release of Vista 2 - 3 years later that will work in WinFS and other modern OS technologies. This will be the OS to anticipate.
I am not hoping for much out of Vista, but from a developers standpoint, it is exciting to see where this new Windows Presentation Layer will go. I am tired of static applications with dull grey buttons. I am looking forward to full 3D hardware acceleration and bringing rich, robust and dynamic GUI into my OS design.
Just copy the i386 folder from the intall CD into the ghost image and then you can ghost the whole shebang without worry.
When you fire up the restored Windows XP on a computer with different hardware then last used, it will go through its hardware detection and driver installation phase, just point it to the i386 folder you have included in the image, and all should work.
In fact, I think if you specify somewhere in the registry before ghosting the installation, Windows XP will automatically search for the local i386 folder when looking for new drivers before prompting the user asking where it is or to install the CD. This should allow for relatively painless cloning.
Note, however, it isn't technically legal for you to clone Windows XP installation unless you purchased a volume license version of Windows XP. If you ghost retail copies of Windows XP, you might find yourself in deep sh*t if Microsoft finds out as your techincally pirating the OS, even if you have enough retail copies for each computer on the shelf. Each computer must be installed with its own licensed copy of Windows, or use the volume license version.
But I mean, if your socially deviant, who wants to hire you? Unless you have an impressive CV and can easily demonstrate your exceptional in what you do, then don't question why an employeer expects you to fit a certain mold.
The bottom line is that the employeer has a right to hire whomever they want. While racial profiling would be far too much and would result in lawsuits, there is nothing inherently illegal about refusing to hire a person, and without cause either.
Even once a person is hired, there is generally few laws that prevent an employeer from firing you without cause, unless your unionized of course.
Love it or hate it, life isn't fair, and if your applying for a company that requires a personality test, look elsewhere. Chances are this company doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground if they think someone with a nice personality is what they need in good employees. You probably don't want to work for that company anyways.
I have found networking on Mac's to be hit or miss. Seem like every version of OS, and intermitant releases of patchs, networking either works brilliantly, or not at all.
I mean, just try setting up a Mac to print to a printer connected on a Windows box. Depending on which version of OSX you have, and which patch, either this is braindead, or a cause for apoplexy.
While I can connect easily to Windows machines using smb, I have yet to actually SEE connected Windows boxes from a Mac, i.e. like Windows Network Neighbourhood. Conversely, while I may be able to see Mac machines connected in Windows Network Neighbourhood, I can't always connect to them.
Despite the firm root OSX has in Unix, networking has never been Apple's strong point, it might work well between Mac machines, but Mac/PC networking has always been hit or miss, and Apple doesn't seem to be improving it over time.
I can't see why Windows users will want Bonjour. I mean, networking on PC's is relatively braindead, and if configuration issues was a huge problem on Windows, Microsoft would have some other tool available. For the most part, Network Neighbourhood is all you need on windows to see and connect with other computers. But for people in mixed environments, Bonjour might be necessary so that Macs and finally work better networking with PC's.
Look, HD-DVD is available now, while Blu-ray is still struggling. The Fact that Sony couldn't get the PS3 released with Blu-ray technology now sealed its fate.
Plus, the simple fact is, Sony has never successfully launched a media format. BetaMax, MiniDisc, SuperAudio, UMD, MediaStick, and now BR-DVD you name it, if Sony had a hand it its development, it failed, most of the times miserably.
I think that both next generation DVD's will face serious lack of adoption as there just isn't any pressing need for consumers to upgrade their systems. But of the two formats, Sony doesn't have the reputation for making it work, and HD-DVD will become the next generation standard.
What will mark the success of this format is the first camp to offer a recordable PC drive. If Sony gets a Blu-Ray rewritable DVD drive before an HD-DVD, then I might change my story. But I doubt that will happen considering Sony is still struggling to define the format for read only drives.
I think Sony truthfully delayed the PS3 because they are uncertain if Blu-Ray will succeed. If they can't sell BR-DVD players and BR-DVD movies in the next 6 months, why release the PS3 with the failed Blu-Ray technology.
I have nothing against Sony, and look forward to the PS3, but I think in the long run I would put my money on ANY non-Sony inspired digital media. It just makes common sense.
Microsoft deciding to be more family friendly now means they completely missed their mark. By selling a hugely expensive game console, and targeting its audience with the same sort of FPS and sports games that make the original Xbox somewhat of a hit with hardcore gamers, they have no chance in heck of claiming the console a success for family markets.
Lets face the facts that Microsoft has missed:
1) With games like GTA being highly scrutinized for its adult content and inappropriate rating, there has been a large focus as of late for games that are excessively violent or mature rated. These are the games that hard core gamers want to buy, but legislation or litigation will eventually put an end to them one way or another. Microsoft will need to change focus, rather then being a platform where some GTA game could flourish, they want to avoid these games and put G rated titles on the shelves.
2) Wall-Mart apparently has some say in how games are designed, and their emphasis is on family oriented fair. While I don't believe that an individual game developer would be affected by Wall-Mart not selling their games, a game console maker wants to have ALL possible games sold at Wall-Mart to make their system sell well at Wall-Mart. Microsoft wants to suck up to Wall-Mart now.
3) Nintendo has long since banked on family/children titles for their success. While it may not make them the number one console maker, it still gives them strong sales to say in business. With the upcoming Revolution, Microsoft wants to ensure they are in a position to compete with Nintendo for family titles, which could put the Revolution into the number one position for a while (until the PS3 is released). Nintendo will gain a huge immediate market in Japan, where the Xbox is always done poorly, and even in North America and Europe, Xbox360 hasn't sold that well either, certainly within margins that Nintendo could approach.
That aside, Microsoft is playing catch up in the next generation console market they had hoped to define. With the poor roll out of the Xbox360, and still no real buying trend for them, even without ANY major competitor, Microsoft is still doing poorly. If they see that family titles are helping to define a console and increase sales, then they are going to have to figure out how to cater to that market.
But Nintendo already has a leg up by keeping the cost of their console and games lower. Microsoft will have to heavily discount the Xbox360 if they want to compete in the family market, and force game developers to sell their software for cheaper. This will mean a longer then expected loss of profit on the Xbox360 and possibly developer backlash that might force developers to abandon support for the platform.
If this is Microsoft's goal, to make the Xbox360 a successful family oriented game console, they have failed on ALL accounts. I think the Xbox360 is another Dreamcast, can't wait for it to hit $99 at Wall-mart, then again, who even wants it at $99.
There is a certain amount of 3733t12t attitude when it comes to Linux. Its is warranted in many cases. People that spend 20 solid hours configuring an email server and compiling kernels and video card drivers deserve to have a bit of an attitude, and be defensive about their prized OS.
Still the biggest problem with the adoption of Linux isn't snobby geeks. About once a year, I pick up the Linux flavour of the month (Ubuntu this time) and try it out. My questions, "Can I use it as a replacement of Windows? What benefits over Windows will it feature? What features am I getting that I can't find in Windows? How easy it is to install? Does it support naively all my hardware?"
It is surprising that after 10 years of trying different flavours of Linux out, none have ever answered those basic questions. Mostly the problems I have had over the last 3 years is that it doesn't support my hardware properly. Currently Ubuntu has problems with some hardware in my current laptop. I can't change the laptop hardware, so I have to change the OS, back to Windows. Problems in the past have been, significant problems getting Internet to work on Linux, hardware support, installation fiascoes, ease of use, and general lack of appeal for most applications that start with G or have GNU in them.
All told, what prevents people from adopting Linux is just a general sense of futility in the effort. Why should some newbie be forced to ask a comment board about how to learn to use Linux. An OS should be intuitive, period! My computer illiterate parents picked up on Windows XP quickly enough, without having to RTFM or post endless questions on comment boards. Heck, my father had Firefox 1.5 installed before I even knew it existed for release. He installed an ethernet card and set up his Cable Modem and Internet in 15 minutes when I couldn't get my ethernet card recognized in a Linux distro for 2 days before I had to modify some cryptic scripts after seeing some obscure message board comments.
What Linux Gurus lord over Windows users is that they feel they know how to use a computer better because they spend hours tweaking it, writing scripts, compiling drivers and kernels, setting up email and web servers, spend most of their time with a blinking command prompt. I know one guy that got off on the fact he set up multiple servers on a single Linux based computer and could VPN between them. When he claims I am a mindless lemming for continuing to use Windows, I just smile and nod. Have fun with VPN'ing with yourself. Then he upgraded his Linux kernel, and spent 2 days rewriting scripts and recompiling this and that to get his self contained VPN system up and running, cursing Linux every step of the say. Yeah, I am a mindless lemming.
Real computer users don't write scripts for hours, they just use the computer, period.
One last point, hard core gamers don't buy laptops, period!
If your playing a 3D game, and your computer has more power to encode other stuff, then your not aming this system at hardcore gamers.
Hard core gamers trying and squeeze every last performance index out of their system to get the maximum performance and quality out of their favourite games. They spend hours tweaking BIOS settings, RAM settings, overclocking their system, all in an effort to get one more frame/sec out of their system.
Running a movie encoding or DVD ripping software in the background while they play their favourite game is kind of counter-productive.
If this is possible, then game developers are not maximizing performance out of their computers, and this just proves that its no longer 3D gaming titles that is driving hardware development. What this means is that there is now a glass ceiling as to what constitutes a high performance top notch gaming system, and it isn't the most expensive kit out there anymore. If there is performance left over to do other CPU intensive operations, like encoding media, then people should be able to buy a system that is $500 to $1000 less, and still get the SAME great gaming performance as the high end models, which now just have wasted CPU cycles.
The bottom line is, by Dell announcing a so-called hardcore game system that has enough superfluous performance to rip DVD's or encode music/movies, then there is no market for high end systems anymore. People will find hard core gaming available in cheaper packages, and thus Dell will lose market with their high end systems.
It like if your buying a car, but have no intention of going over 60km/h in commuter stop and go traffic, why buy a car with 300hp for $30,000 more then a car with 100 hp for $15,000? Why too, if gaming is your thing, would you buy an expensive computer that does more then you intend to do, wasting money on feature syour not going to use or can't use to maximize gaming performance.
Hardcore gamers really don't blow $3000 on a computer. They like to find the cheapest system with the maximum performance. They like to customize their system and tweak it at will. And they don't buy Dell, dude!
OSX is built on an open source platform, BSD. Why should it itself be open sourced? Why do I want 20 different distributions of OSX when Apple makes one decent version of it.
Honestly, people say Open Source without thinking. They think that all software should be free or all source code should be made available without even thinking for one instance whether the world needs it. OSX doesn't need to be open sourced, neither does windows, sorry.
For all you hobbyists out their, linux is great, it is an example of good OS design and if your wondering how the pros do it, look at linux source code. But that doesn't mean that every software vendor out their needs to open source their friggin software.
Open source isn't a solution. It's a business concept which really isn't that successful. Its not making anybody rich, it isn't creating products that are truly sweeping proprietary software, and I tire when someone say "Hey, open source your software!" without making one real statement of why it should be so.
F*ck off, write your own software, stop standing on the shoulder's of giants because you feel you can build a better mouse trap then them.
I can tell you one thing that will happen if everything is to go Open Source, Software PATENTS. If Microsoft or Apple open sources their OS, then that is going to mean that as much as you can look at their source code, you can't use it or modify it because of both Microsoft and Apple will get so many patents on it that it will stiffle open source development. Apple isn't going to want to give away source code that makes spotlight fast and efficient, especially with companies like Microsoft around. So Apple will patent their software up the wazoo so that even if you see their code, you couldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Will this be beneficial for Open Source?
Open source is about the free exchange of information and ideas to develop software by community, and while this is a great grassroots idea, the fact is that Apple and Microsoft and others have billions invested in their software, they aren't just going to hand it out so that Linux users can make 100 differet versions of OSX or Windows. What benefit has 100+ versions of Linux offered the world? Only confusion and weakness is what 100 versions of Linux has offered. Without one distro to rule them all, Linux WILL NEVER compete with OSX or Windows. Open source development fragments the linux community into 100 weak products, all with their own subtle strengths, but get the community behind one Linux distro, and you will have a strong competitive product.
But sorry, Apple isn't one of them, neither is Microsoft. I mean, did this guy even realize that Apple is the developer of OSX? A company that surrounds themselves in propietary technology and secrecy to the point that you don't really know something exists until Steve Jobs stands up on a stage and says its so? You really think Apple wan'ts to release their OSX operating system, now the ONLY reason why people should buy a Mac to the masses so that it can be cloned and ripped off at will leaving Apple with no leverage. OSX as open source would simply turn Apple into Dell, an OEM pre-fab PC manufacturer among 100's of equals. This will kill off Apple quickly.
Sure, OSX source code will last for ages, in one form or another, but gone will be the company that made it great.
Open source OSX? Get real. Put down that pipe because you got a hold of some very bad weed.
I think that is the opinion of many people.
DVD was dramatically new. Even compared to Laserdisks, DVD was better quality in a more convenient form factor. It represented a huge leap over VHS tapes, and it was the fastest growing media format compared to tapes, CD's and VHS combined.
But High Def DVD's just don't have the same impact as DVDs. DVDs have overed exceptional quality, and even on HD Televisions, DVD's still offer good quality. With new up-converting DVD players, that quality is furthered as it converts DVD data to HD signals. Up converting DVD players are about 1/10 the price of next gen HD DVD players, and people can use their existing library to watch better quality HD movies.
But, High Def was a f*cked up technology release. I don't think you could have rolled out a technology format in a worse way. Cable and Satellite providers were slow to offer HD content, so consumers were slow to buy HD equipment. HD has been around for over 10 years now, believe it or not, and yet, TVs are still pricey, they don't feature ture HD tuner integration (i.e. do not support digital cable natively), and cable companies are charging too much for the "premium" of watching HD content.
High Def DVD players will be a f*cked up technology roll out as well. With DRM and Hollywoods unwarranted worry over copy protection, next gen DVD's will never be quickly adopted. With two competing standards, its the Betamax/VHS stand off all over again. Except the problem now is that we already have a decent format that suits most of our purposes, DVD, period!
Like you said, I will buy a next gen DVD player when they hit Wall-Mart for $50 and one format one over the other. I will only get one that supports my existing DVD library and when HD-DVD's are the same price as regular DVD's, or you can only buy HD-DVDs. I think most people feel the same way.
The question is, will either formats pervail, or will the industry drop both of them because demand will be weak or non-existent?
That they are not a "Star Wars" game company. God knows that nobody is interested in Star Wars anymore.
Lucas Arts has made some pretty interesting and innovative games in the past, like Grim Fandango and Full Throttle. I wish they would bring back some of the talent behind those games, and ACTUALLY produce a non Star Wars game, then at least that statement wouldn't be moronic.
Anything to do with Lucas-X these days is so wrapped up in Star Wars, George needs some therapy because he can't let it go. A Star Wars television series? Endless tie in games and merchandising products?
When does someones obsession and love of something turn into a reason to go to the loony bin, I think George has long since passed that point.
Lucasarts will have to pull some gems out of their asses if they hope to ride out the current downturn in video games. We are nearing another video game drought, like back in the 80's with the Atari. Game are just not inventive and innovative anymore. Video gaming bottomed out in the 80's because Atari kept pumping out the same old tired titles. Stick figures bouncing around on a static screen with two bit sound effects. People got tired of essentially playing the same game back in the 80's.
People are getting tired of essentially playing the same game, now, in 2006. Quake 4, Doom 3, HL2, Star Wars: Whatever. MMORPGs that go no where. I actually think ALL next gen game consoles will bomb and the Xbox360 is off to a good start (for bombing that is).
Game companies have grown too complacent and used to the idea that by spinning off another game based on a successful franchise, your going to make millions in profit. Every MAJOR game developer currently is working on a SEQUEL. Smaller game developers are simply cloning big game franchise and offering some moderate twists and variations of a theme.
People are getting tired of the same old.
So, hopefully Lucasarts will find some new novel and innovative theme to focus on (not obsess over) and come out with some NEW gaming franchises. Until that happens, it is laughable to think that LucasArts ISN'T a Star Wars crap factory.
Automated highway systems will never happen.
First, and foremost, you could never have a mixed environment of automated and manually driven vehicles. Watching iRobot and seeing Will Smith take over manual control on an automated highway was completely ridiculous. In an environment where computers will have to react to the unpredictable behaviour of human drivers, the computes will always lose. How many 200 car pileups will have to occur before it is realized that computer drivers and human drivers won't mix. Computers cannot anticipate the irradict behaviour of a drunk driver. Nor can they anticipate a woman swearving across 6 lanes of traffic to hit her exit because she was too busy putting on lipstick to pay attention to the exit signs. Humans and computers won't mix.
Secondly, you need to either put the highways underground or put a cover on them. There is no way a computer driven vehicle will respond appropriately if a deer rushes on the road, or suddenly there is a freak blizzard and the road conditions go from dry to slick. Putting highways in tunnels will mean your eliminating weather and most other external obstacles from interfering with computer driven vehicles. A human might pick up a deer standing still off the side of the road and slow down anticipating if it might jump out. A computer probably wouldn't register the deer was standing there until its firmly embedded in its windshield.
Lastly, simple fact will be that there will be some significant flaw in the entire system. Your not going to get all car manufacturers to use the same systems. Your going to need some external system regulating the traffic and communicating with a variety of different systems which will vary city to city, state to state. Even if the communication protocol is standardized, your still going to have some car manufactures that implement automated driving better then others. A Jaguar or other high end vehicle is going to react faster and have better handling them some Geo Metro or Ford Escort.
Bottom line is, in an environment with so much variation, something will go wrong, and it will cost significant human life. When this happen, people will abandon the concept of computer driven vehicles.
Its a nice hobby, but its a complete waste of time. Unless they invent anti-gravity and force fields, your never going to have an automated highway system.
I mean, email was invented first, and I am sure someone has a patent for that. Just because the transport medium is wireless instead of over a wire, is there any validity in a patent for "wireless" email? If I had patented email, I would have said over ANY approrpirate digital transport, wired or wireless. Shouldn't the original email patent holder basically hold the patent for "wireless" email?
This is where patents break down, when people simply mash two patents together and feel they are justified for having a patent based on other people's work. Wireless communcations is patented, as well as the concept of email. Someone saying, hey, lets patent wireless-email should be shot.
I am sure there were inherent difficulties and specific problems that had to be resolved before making wireless email work properly, but come on. This is the application of two existing patented process, not the INVENTION of a new process.
This is why patents are failing to encourage innovation, because people with a law degree are simply taking combinations of other peoples inventions, mashing them together, and hoping that someone one day might use the right combination of inventions so they can sue them in courts for stealing their "innovation".
Patents are stifling innovation because they are being filed by people with no intention of developing the process, simply sitting on them until someone that actually makes the idea work is successful enough to earn them millions in a lawsuit for infringement.
Patents are shyster documents designed to make shysters richer.
Its isn't Apple's style to release a BETA of anything. Apple seldom released public betas, instead tends to only distribute betas to those select few that actually have a developers membership.
It is also unusual that one of Apple's Beta's would be so flaky. Usually they reserve that for release software and then quickly patch it.
While I was under the impression that Apple probably always had Boot Camp up their sleeves, something now tells me that this may have been a rushed effort to prevent too many illegit dual boot systems out there, or for Apple to get another 15 minutes of fame by announcing yet another innovative product.
Apple seems to live on 15 minutes fame intervals, and since their 30th Anniversary went by without so much as a peep from the Apple camp, I can only expect that Boot Camp was to keep Apple in the news for 15 more minutes until the next iPod version is rushed out the door.
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- "I don't understand why people put silly quoted comments after their already silly main comment!"