I think it's also partly because web authors "standardized" on a minimum 800x600 resolution layout. In vanilla HTML, text is infinitely reflowable, but it's apparently easier to make assumptions about screen sizes. Sites that put all their content into a fixed-width page regardless of your window size really bug me, and I'm hoping the proliferation of small-resolution browsers will help encourage the quick death of these sorts of sites.
For the moment, though, you're correct that browsing in a low-resolution devices is currently a very poor experience. I hope web designers will be looking harder at these sorts of choices now that people are browsing in a wide range of resolutions.
This has been discussed on/. before. Will "don't be evil" be enough to stop them killing a strategic competitor?
Killing a strategic competitor isn't evil - it's business. In the same way nature requires a rather brutal Darwinian process to ensure healthy species, capitalism requires failing business to go under. It's only evil if you kill a competitor through methods outside of legal competition (essentially, squelching fair competition in the marketplace).
That being said, I don't think Mozilla is really a strategic competitor. Remember, Google's primary feature is search, but their primary product and revenue stream is advertisement. Mozilla's browser doesn't hinder this revenue stream at all.
Further, anyone who thinks the constitution is a dead document, never to be altered or changed is a fucking moron, in my books. The founding fathers never could have conceived of the world we live in today, nor of what would become hotly contested issues, and so never addressed it in the document. To hold today's world to a piece of paper that was never meant to address the state of current society is narrow-minded and specious at best.
From what I understand, their country is essentially a giant mountain fortress filled with an entire country of well-armed militia with no real strategic value. Far easier to roll through the lowland countries like Holland in WW2. At least, I'd bet that's what the Germans were thinking.
Some of the largest games require an enormous amount of manpower to create. The game I'm working on (an upcoming MMO) has been in development for over three years, and has a team of over 100 developers and support staff. Game devs make anywhere from 50K to 150K per year. Figure perhaps average of 75 to 80K, perhaps. 80K x 100 x 3 = 24 mil just on salaries alone. Don't forget marketing budgets, licensing fees, equipment, rent, insurance, taxes, etc. Double that number and you've just about hit 50 mil.
Back in the day, there were competing operating systems. Not like today's portable web apps, but with non-interoperable programs, so that if you wanted do anything on Windows, you had to have programs written for Windows, and for Mac or Linux, you needed program written for Mac or Linux. So businesses had more than one operating system, each requiring different programs. That was expensive, and if one was far enough ahead of the other, they'd drop the Mac or Linux program and only take Windows, and when enough people did that, Mac or Linux would be worthless because you couldn't find the programs you needed on that platform. And, once Windows had 100% of the market, a startup would have to struggle to create a viable developer ecosystem in the market that it would be impossible to make it a practical alternative platform.
I've always thought of OSes as something that tended towards a natural monopoly. I'm not trying to defend MS here, but I think it makes sense that an OS has a natural momentum that's hard to break, because a huge infrastructure is built on top of each operating system. So, I'd say the current situation is the result of both Microsoft's shady practices as well as a natural tendency towards consolidation.
Agreed. I would have had much more respect for the study if it claimed to have established a strong correlation. But using the word "conclusive" and "proven" only shows that psychologists use an entirely different standard of "proof" than other scientists.
Here's the meatiest part of the article:
The team used meta-analytic procedures -- the statistical methods used to analyze and combine results from previous, related literature -- to test the effects of violent video game play on the behaviors, thoughts and feelings of the individuals, ranging from elementary school-aged children to college undergraduates.
The research also included new longitudinal data which provided further confirmation that playing violent video games is a causal risk factor for long-term harmful outcomes.
We're given a pretty thin slice of actual facts here. I see nothing of hard analysis or actual numbers anywhere in the article. They only talk about methods. They used their own study's data. "Meta-analysis" is just studying other published studies and incorporating that into your analysis. "Longitudinal data" simple means tracking data across an additional dimension, undoubtedly time. This means nothing more than "we looked at subjects over a period of time".
Anderson says the new study may be his last meta-analysis on violent video games because of its definitive findings.
Well, it's not all bad news, I guess. Of course, the flip side is this means he would never have the opportunity to *disprove* his earlier conclusions.
As someone that pirated and enjoyed the first assassin's creed on PC, I had every intent to buy the second iteration of the series. That is, until they introduced their current DRM. Good job ubisoft!
You seriously think that your stated intent to purchase the game means squat to them after you admit you played the first game without paying them anything? No offense, but you aren't really starting off on the moral high ground to begin with.
Here's a thought: How about instead of pirating the hell out of their games as "protest", why don't we just ignore Ubisoft's games altogether? Don't buy them, and don't even bother cracking the DRM scheme. The only way they'll get the message is if they can't simply blame piracy for their sales going in the shitter.
Not that this will ever happen, of course. They've painted far too attractive a target on their next game for the hackers, and too many people just want to play games for free. What kills me is that many people will probably purchase the game, then download the crack to make it *playable*, and Ubisoft will still count this as a LOST SALE.
And implode it did. After publishing a particularly alarming set of findings - which I still stand behind while continuing to evaluate new data - the internet became engulfed in controversy.
Awesome. He continues to demonstrate that he's technically incompetent as well as being a fraud.
The safest thing for any bureaucracy to do is nothing at all. You can't get blamed for making a bad decision, and you get to claim that you don't have enough resources to do the job, thus vying for an increased budget next year.
More to the point, the company that wrote this little monitoring tool badly misunderstood basic principles of how the operating system works. At this point, I think we can move on and completely disregard any conclusion they came to. It either demonstrated profound ignorance or a deliberate attempt to mislead people it what turned out to be a slashvertisement of their products and company.
From the article:
One might almost think that this whole exercise was simply a cynical ploy. Allegations of Microsoft bloatware are, of course, nothing new, and oblique references to the old canard that what Intel gives, Microsoft takes away does nothing to dispel the impression that this is another case of Microsoft bashing.
What a surprise. Fortunately, people really didn't even let them get away with it even in the previous article. Microsoft deserves plenty of what slashdot slings its way, but let's stick try sticking to facts.
The 360 analog sticks do seem to require a lighter touch than the PS3 controllers.
I own all three consoles, but I prefer my 360 for the controller, Xbox live, and achievements (it's a Pavlovian thing, sue me). I have one of the 40gb PS3 controllers with no rumble, which makes the controller feel too lightweight and flimsy to me. I've been thinking up picking up a new one, but I just don't play all that many PS3 games. Generally, the 360 just feels better ergonomically to me. I'm just praying MS is smart enough to leave the controller alone for their next console, except for perhaps improving the d-pad that many seem to hate, which I've never minded, but then again, I rarely use.
I don't hate the PS3 controller or anything... it's just doesn't feel quite as good to me. But honestly, I've had no problems switching back and forth between the two. It only takes a few hours before you forget about a new controller unless it's got really glaring flaws, and I wouldn't say that of any of the current-gen controllers.
His fault, because he had the audacity to click on a link in an e-mail, or visit a malformed web page? Or because the flash plugin he was using was slightly out of date and didn't bother letting him know it was time to update? Or because he didn't realize that www.paypal.com != www.paypa1.com? There are thousands of ways a computer can get infected with malware. Many are poor judgement on the user's part, but hell, many are no fault of the user at all - at least, not in a sane world. My definition of a sane world does not include getting your computer compromised simply by viewing a web page.
Linux has the advantage of an inherently superior security model (permissions-based security was ALWAYS the standard), where Windows has the problem of supporting legacy apps from a model that allowed total permissions from ANY process. And of course, there's the fact that Linux (on the desktop) is a much smaller target.
Blaming users is a copout. Lay the blame squarely where it deserves to go: programmers / managers who were thinking far too much about cool whiz-bang features and not enough about hardening their software from malicious attacks.
Censorship? Here comes a clue. Catch: Most of the people in China want it.
...according to government-sponsored polls, reported by state-run media. And Sadaam won re-election with 100% of the vote.
you can prove yourselves hypocrites by supporting what amounts to subversion of the government of the world's largest nation.
Why would NOT supporting an authoritarian government like China make us hypocrites? Most people who live in representative governments value personal rights and freedom, not slavish obedience to governmental authority. As a simple example: people cannot sell themselves into slavery (see: inalienable rights), as this would violate their natural rights, even by their own consent.
And last we looked, China was an ally no less than Israel
We spy on and are spied on by pretty much every other country, but your equivocation is growing absurd.
As a business, Google doesn't pretend to such principles.
They set themselves up as the guys in the white hats, remember? Google's motto "Don't be evil?" ring a bell?
Or because I need to keep a permanent copy, so I would never re-use the plastic.
It's curious you say that... You consider a paper copy "permanent"? I've always considered the electronic copy to be the "permanent" and original document (presuming it's well backed-up), while a paper copy is a transient snapshot, something that can be handed out for easy reference during a meeting and discarded at whim, because one can always print more.
I wonder if the lack of paperless offices around the world are as much about psychology as practicality? There are probably very few cases where printed paper couldn't be completely eliminated with a bit of ingenuity and careful planning, but I think too many people don't perceive documents as real and permanent unless they're printed on paper.
True, we're not going to run out of trees. The issue is more about the cost (both monetary and energy-wise) to produce the paper from the trees.
So, to me, the real question is: is one of these re-usable plastic sheets more efficient (both cost-wise and energy-wise) to produce than 1000 sheets of paper AND offsets the cost of purchasing and maintaining two types of printers (you'll undoubtedly still need traditional laser printers for some applications) AND the additional electricity to power both of them AND the additional trouble of keeping track of all the reusable paper?
Honestly, this strikes me as a very stop-gap solution anyhow. It seems like a temporary bridge at best between now and the time when we have ubiquitous and inexpensive access to digital pads that can completely replace printed paper altogether.
If the US government tried that, I'd tell them to take a flying leap.
Well, yeah... we do have the advantage of that First Amendment thing... It allows a bit more bravado while trying to protect your privacy. Citizens in Iran or China are faced with jail time or worse if they tell their government to "take a flying leap".
It's not specific to a particular company, actually. It's particular to a specific threshold of success, or so it seems.
Whenever a company enjoys a high degree of success in a particular market, they tend to start acting like asses toward the developers who made them successful. Just a few years ago, Sony was particularly flush with themselves with the success of the PlayStation 2. As a developer creating a PS2 game, it was unbelievably annoying to go through the approval process, in which those idiots at SCEA to dictate *game design* to us instead of just assuring we were TRC-compliant.
Funny enough, when they came out with the PSP, they couldn't be more accommodating, since they knew they needed developer support. I'm not currently working on a PS3 title, but I've heard that they're on better terms with developers than they used to be. No surprise, now that they're not the 800-lb gorilla in the marketplace anymore.
look at the mess MS got themselves into with the WIndows mantra that everything ever written for it had to be supported on the newer OS, while Apple took the approach of dropping a lot of support for old software so that they could make significant gains in the OS within a smaller time frame.
And that's exactly the reason Windows has such a dominant market share, especially in business environments. Yes, it means that Microsoft brings along a lot of cruft in their OS's. But at this point, the new hardware is fast enough to just use virtualization / emulation to achieve compatibility with older software.
The reason backward compatibility on consoles is important to people is because for many (at least for me) the money you spend on games absolutely dwarfs the money you spend on consoles. A lot of people I know own many dozens of games. There's another reason backward compatibility is desirable - at least to me. I don't like cluttering up my entertainment room with old hardware. I already have all three of the current gen consoles, plus my PS2. Combined with the cable inputs, I don't have enough inputs on my auto-switching box (only supports four devices).
You could say that technically it doesn't make much sense to support older games, and I'd completely agree. It's nice to be able to throw compatibility to the wind and start from scratch. But this is not a technical issue - it's a marketing issue, and you can't discount the importance of what consumers want either.
Quite frankly, we're probably going to start reaching a saturation point on hardware power, where the obvious visual difference between console generations isn't that significant to the consumer (a lot of games are already damn near photorealistic at this point). I think backward compability is only going to get more important as it becomes harder to sell people on only *slightly* better graphics. How many people do you think would buy a Blu-Ray player if it didn't also play DVDs?
Anyhow, this is wandering off-topic quite a bit. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if Microsoft has a deep mole making these sort of decisions at Sony. It's pretty incredible to me to see how many horrible decisions they can keep making. It still feels like they haven't quite figured out they're not in the absolute dominant position they had with the PS2 a half-decade ago. This is not exactly the best time for them to start pissing off their existing customers.
I agree - ability to MAKE the call is not that important because you are in control and you can find an alternate way or time to call someone.
I own a cell phone primarily for the ability to make emergency calls when and where I need to. It's extremely rare that someone needs to contact me for some reason that couldn't have waited until I'd gotten home.
However, those who do not game due to the entry cost of a console or PC might find the idea neat and it could catch on
The entry cost of a Wii is what... $200? Is this system supposed to be cheaper than that? I dunno, I think people are going to be somewhat dubious of yet another company trying to sucker them into a monthly subscription fee, or however this service works.
Day cares are not monitored. They're inspected. It's not like they install a remotely monitored audiovisual system in them, THAT would be monitored.
Actually, a lot of daycare centers are doing exactly that. It makes Mom a lot happier being able to remotely look in on the kids from the office at any time using webcams.
As part of a psychological experiment, two single men, a physicist and mathematician, were placed in an otherwise empty room with a beautiful naked women at the far end.
They were instructed that they'd be allowed to close half the distance to the women every 10 minutes. Disgusted at the obvious subterfuge, the mathematician walked away in disgust. But the physicist stayed behind, occasionally glancing at his watch.
The experimenters looked puzzled, then asked the physicist, "You do realize, of course, that mathematically speaking, you can never actually reach the woman?"
"Naturally", replied the physician, looking up. "But I can sure get close enough for all practical purposes!"
As long as we live in a capitalist world (ya, even the communists are capitalists these days), and money changes hands for goods, we will never have such a device.
Capitalism is not just about exchanging goods. It's also about exchange of services. The relative value of goods and services are already reversed from what they used to be. Replicator technology will just push that to an extreme. Hell, open-source software is sort of like that, where you don't pay for the software, but for related services.
Want to:
* Hire a live band for your daughter's wedding? * Commission a painting? * Get a professional's advice (on just about anything)? * Research new technology? * Write new software? * Read an author's new book? * Go watch a play at the theater? * Go to Disneyland?
Extremely low-cost goods will still allow capitalism to work just fine. Frankly, I think it's rather inevitable anyhow, barring any natural or self-inflicted apocalypse.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's also partly because web authors "standardized" on a minimum 800x600 resolution layout. In vanilla HTML, text is infinitely reflowable, but it's apparently easier to make assumptions about screen sizes. Sites that put all their content into a fixed-width page regardless of your window size really bug me, and I'm hoping the proliferation of small-resolution browsers will help encourage the quick death of these sorts of sites.
For the moment, though, you're correct that browsing in a low-resolution devices is currently a very poor experience. I hope web designers will be looking harder at these sorts of choices now that people are browsing in a wide range of resolutions.
This has been discussed on /. before. Will "don't be evil" be enough to stop them killing a strategic competitor?
Killing a strategic competitor isn't evil - it's business. In the same way nature requires a rather brutal Darwinian process to ensure healthy species, capitalism requires failing business to go under. It's only evil if you kill a competitor through methods outside of legal competition (essentially, squelching fair competition in the marketplace).
That being said, I don't think Mozilla is really a strategic competitor. Remember, Google's primary feature is search, but their primary product and revenue stream is advertisement. Mozilla's browser doesn't hinder this revenue stream at all.
Further, anyone who thinks the constitution is a dead document, never to be altered or changed is a fucking moron, in my books. The founding fathers never could have conceived of the world we live in today, nor of what would become hotly contested issues, and so never addressed it in the document. To hold today's world to a piece of paper that was never meant to address the state of current society is narrow-minded and specious at best.
Yes, if only the founding fathers had considered the notion that the Constitution might need to be changed someday.
From what I understand, their country is essentially a giant mountain fortress filled with an entire country of well-armed militia with no real strategic value. Far easier to roll through the lowland countries like Holland in WW2. At least, I'd bet that's what the Germans were thinking.
Some of the largest games require an enormous amount of manpower to create. The game I'm working on (an upcoming MMO) has been in development for over three years, and has a team of over 100 developers and support staff. Game devs make anywhere from 50K to 150K per year. Figure perhaps average of 75 to 80K, perhaps. 80K x 100 x 3 = 24 mil just on salaries alone. Don't forget marketing budgets, licensing fees, equipment, rent, insurance, taxes, etc. Double that number and you've just about hit 50 mil.
Changes made to bold text:
Back in the day, there were competing operating systems. Not like today's portable web apps, but with non-interoperable programs, so that if you wanted do anything on Windows, you had to have programs written for Windows, and for Mac or Linux, you needed program written for Mac or Linux. So businesses had more than one operating system, each requiring different programs. That was expensive, and if one was far enough ahead of the other, they'd drop the Mac or Linux program and only take Windows, and when enough people did that, Mac or Linux would be worthless because you couldn't find the programs you needed on that platform. And, once Windows had 100% of the market, a startup would have to struggle to create a viable developer ecosystem in the market that it would be impossible to make it a practical alternative platform.
I've always thought of OSes as something that tended towards a natural monopoly. I'm not trying to defend MS here, but I think it makes sense that an OS has a natural momentum that's hard to break, because a huge infrastructure is built on top of each operating system. So, I'd say the current situation is the result of both Microsoft's shady practices as well as a natural tendency towards consolidation.
Agreed. I would have had much more respect for the study if it claimed to have established a strong correlation. But using the word "conclusive" and "proven" only shows that psychologists use an entirely different standard of "proof" than other scientists.
Here's the meatiest part of the article:
The team used meta-analytic procedures -- the statistical methods used to analyze and combine results from previous, related literature -- to test the effects of violent video game play on the behaviors, thoughts and feelings of the individuals, ranging from elementary school-aged children to college undergraduates.
The research also included new longitudinal data which provided further confirmation that playing violent video games is a causal risk factor for long-term harmful outcomes.
We're given a pretty thin slice of actual facts here. I see nothing of hard analysis or actual numbers anywhere in the article. They only talk about methods. They used their own study's data. "Meta-analysis" is just studying other published studies and incorporating that into your analysis. "Longitudinal data" simple means tracking data across an additional dimension, undoubtedly time. This means nothing more than "we looked at subjects over a period of time".
Anderson says the new study may be his last meta-analysis on violent video games because of its definitive findings.
Well, it's not all bad news, I guess. Of course, the flip side is this means he would never have the opportunity to *disprove* his earlier conclusions.
As someone that pirated and enjoyed the first assassin's creed on PC, I had every intent to buy the second iteration of the series. That is, until they introduced their current DRM. Good job ubisoft!
You seriously think that your stated intent to purchase the game means squat to them after you admit you played the first game without paying them anything? No offense, but you aren't really starting off on the moral high ground to begin with.
Here's a thought: How about instead of pirating the hell out of their games as "protest", why don't we just ignore Ubisoft's games altogether? Don't buy them, and don't even bother cracking the DRM scheme. The only way they'll get the message is if they can't simply blame piracy for their sales going in the shitter.
Not that this will ever happen, of course. They've painted far too attractive a target on their next game for the hackers, and too many people just want to play games for free. What kills me is that many people will probably purchase the game, then download the crack to make it *playable*, and Ubisoft will still count this as a LOST SALE.
And implode it did. After publishing a particularly alarming set of findings - which I still stand behind while continuing to evaluate new data - the internet became engulfed in controversy.
Awesome. He continues to demonstrate that he's technically incompetent as well as being a fraud.
The safest thing for any bureaucracy to do is nothing at all. You can't get blamed for making a bad decision, and you get to claim that you don't have enough resources to do the job, thus vying for an increased budget next year.
More to the point, the company that wrote this little monitoring tool badly misunderstood basic principles of how the operating system works. At this point, I think we can move on and completely disregard any conclusion they came to. It either demonstrated profound ignorance or a deliberate attempt to mislead people it what turned out to be a slashvertisement of their products and company.
From the article:
One might almost think that this whole exercise was simply a cynical ploy. Allegations of Microsoft bloatware are, of course, nothing new, and oblique references to the old canard that what Intel gives, Microsoft takes away does nothing to dispel the impression that this is another case of Microsoft bashing.
What a surprise. Fortunately, people really didn't even let them get away with it even in the previous article. Microsoft deserves plenty of what slashdot slings its way, but let's stick try sticking to facts.
The 360 analog sticks do seem to require a lighter touch than the PS3 controllers.
I own all three consoles, but I prefer my 360 for the controller, Xbox live, and achievements (it's a Pavlovian thing, sue me). I have one of the 40gb PS3 controllers with no rumble, which makes the controller feel too lightweight and flimsy to me. I've been thinking up picking up a new one, but I just don't play all that many PS3 games. Generally, the 360 just feels better ergonomically to me. I'm just praying MS is smart enough to leave the controller alone for their next console, except for perhaps improving the d-pad that many seem to hate, which I've never minded, but then again, I rarely use.
I don't hate the PS3 controller or anything... it's just doesn't feel quite as good to me. But honestly, I've had no problems switching back and forth between the two. It only takes a few hours before you forget about a new controller unless it's got really glaring flaws, and I wouldn't say that of any of the current-gen controllers.
His fault, not the computer's fault.
His fault, because he had the audacity to click on a link in an e-mail, or visit a malformed web page? Or because the flash plugin he was using was slightly out of date and didn't bother letting him know it was time to update? Or because he didn't realize that www.paypal.com != www.paypa1.com? There are thousands of ways a computer can get infected with malware. Many are poor judgement on the user's part, but hell, many are no fault of the user at all - at least, not in a sane world. My definition of a sane world does not include getting your computer compromised simply by viewing a web page.
Linux has the advantage of an inherently superior security model (permissions-based security was ALWAYS the standard), where Windows has the problem of supporting legacy apps from a model that allowed total permissions from ANY process. And of course, there's the fact that Linux (on the desktop) is a much smaller target.
Blaming users is a copout. Lay the blame squarely where it deserves to go: programmers / managers who were thinking far too much about cool whiz-bang features and not enough about hardening their software from malicious attacks.
Censorship? Here comes a clue. Catch: Most of the people in China want it.
...according to government-sponsored polls, reported by state-run media. And Sadaam won re-election with 100% of the vote.
you can prove yourselves hypocrites by supporting what amounts to subversion of the government of the world's largest nation.
Why would NOT supporting an authoritarian government like China make us hypocrites? Most people who live in representative governments value personal rights and freedom, not slavish obedience to governmental authority. As a simple example: people cannot sell themselves into slavery (see: inalienable rights), as this would violate their natural rights, even by their own consent.
And last we looked, China was an ally no less than Israel
We spy on and are spied on by pretty much every other country, but your equivocation is growing absurd.
As a business, Google doesn't pretend to such principles.
They set themselves up as the guys in the white hats, remember? Google's motto "Don't be evil?" ring a bell?
What simple features took you that long to relearn?
Auto-rant.
Or because I need to keep a permanent copy, so I would never re-use the plastic.
It's curious you say that... You consider a paper copy "permanent"? I've always considered the electronic copy to be the "permanent" and original document (presuming it's well backed-up), while a paper copy is a transient snapshot, something that can be handed out for easy reference during a meeting and discarded at whim, because one can always print more.
I wonder if the lack of paperless offices around the world are as much about psychology as practicality? There are probably very few cases where printed paper couldn't be completely eliminated with a bit of ingenuity and careful planning, but I think too many people don't perceive documents as real and permanent unless they're printed on paper.
True, we're not going to run out of trees. The issue is more about the cost (both monetary and energy-wise) to produce the paper from the trees.
So, to me, the real question is: is one of these re-usable plastic sheets more efficient (both cost-wise and energy-wise) to produce than 1000 sheets of paper AND offsets the cost of purchasing and maintaining two types of printers (you'll undoubtedly still need traditional laser printers for some applications) AND the additional electricity to power both of them AND the additional trouble of keeping track of all the reusable paper?
Honestly, this strikes me as a very stop-gap solution anyhow. It seems like a temporary bridge at best between now and the time when we have ubiquitous and inexpensive access to digital pads that can completely replace printed paper altogether.
If the US government tried that, I'd tell them to take a flying leap.
Well, yeah... we do have the advantage of that First Amendment thing... It allows a bit more bravado while trying to protect your privacy. Citizens in Iran or China are faced with jail time or worse if they tell their government to "take a flying leap".
It's not specific to a particular company, actually. It's particular to a specific threshold of success, or so it seems.
Whenever a company enjoys a high degree of success in a particular market, they tend to start acting like asses toward the developers who made them successful. Just a few years ago, Sony was particularly flush with themselves with the success of the PlayStation 2. As a developer creating a PS2 game, it was unbelievably annoying to go through the approval process, in which those idiots at SCEA to dictate *game design* to us instead of just assuring we were TRC-compliant.
Funny enough, when they came out with the PSP, they couldn't be more accommodating, since they knew they needed developer support. I'm not currently working on a PS3 title, but I've heard that they're on better terms with developers than they used to be. No surprise, now that they're not the 800-lb gorilla in the marketplace anymore.
look at the mess MS got themselves into with the WIndows mantra that everything ever written for it had to be supported on the newer OS, while Apple took the approach of dropping a lot of support for old software so that they could make significant gains in the OS within a smaller time frame.
And that's exactly the reason Windows has such a dominant market share, especially in business environments. Yes, it means that Microsoft brings along a lot of cruft in their OS's. But at this point, the new hardware is fast enough to just use virtualization / emulation to achieve compatibility with older software.
The reason backward compatibility on consoles is important to people is because for many (at least for me) the money you spend on games absolutely dwarfs the money you spend on consoles. A lot of people I know own many dozens of games. There's another reason backward compatibility is desirable - at least to me. I don't like cluttering up my entertainment room with old hardware. I already have all three of the current gen consoles, plus my PS2. Combined with the cable inputs, I don't have enough inputs on my auto-switching box (only supports four devices).
You could say that technically it doesn't make much sense to support older games, and I'd completely agree. It's nice to be able to throw compatibility to the wind and start from scratch. But this is not a technical issue - it's a marketing issue, and you can't discount the importance of what consumers want either.
Quite frankly, we're probably going to start reaching a saturation point on hardware power, where the obvious visual difference between console generations isn't that significant to the consumer (a lot of games are already damn near photorealistic at this point). I think backward compability is only going to get more important as it becomes harder to sell people on only *slightly* better graphics. How many people do you think would buy a Blu-Ray player if it didn't also play DVDs?
Anyhow, this is wandering off-topic quite a bit. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if Microsoft has a deep mole making these sort of decisions at Sony. It's pretty incredible to me to see how many horrible decisions they can keep making. It still feels like they haven't quite figured out they're not in the absolute dominant position they had with the PS2 a half-decade ago. This is not exactly the best time for them to start pissing off their existing customers.
I agree - ability to MAKE the call is not that important because you are in control and you can find an alternate way or time to call someone.
I own a cell phone primarily for the ability to make emergency calls when and where I need to. It's extremely rare that someone needs to contact me for some reason that couldn't have waited until I'd gotten home.
However, those who do not game due to the entry cost of a console or PC might find the idea neat and it could catch on
The entry cost of a Wii is what... $200? Is this system supposed to be cheaper than that? I dunno, I think people are going to be somewhat dubious of yet another company trying to sucker them into a monthly subscription fee, or however this service works.
Day cares are not monitored. They're inspected. It's not like they install a remotely monitored audiovisual system in them, THAT would be monitored.
Actually, a lot of daycare centers are doing exactly that. It makes Mom a lot happier being able to remotely look in on the kids from the office at any time using webcams.
As part of a psychological experiment, two single men, a physicist and mathematician, were placed in an otherwise empty room with a beautiful naked women at the far end.
They were instructed that they'd be allowed to close half the distance to the women every 10 minutes. Disgusted at the obvious subterfuge, the mathematician walked away in disgust. But the physicist stayed behind, occasionally glancing at his watch.
The experimenters looked puzzled, then asked the physicist, "You do realize, of course, that mathematically speaking, you can never actually reach the woman?"
"Naturally", replied the physician, looking up. "But I can sure get close enough for all practical purposes!"
As long as we live in a capitalist world (ya, even the communists are capitalists these days), and money changes hands for goods, we will never have such a device.
Capitalism is not just about exchanging goods. It's also about exchange of services. The relative value of goods and services are already reversed from what they used to be. Replicator technology will just push that to an extreme. Hell, open-source software is sort of like that, where you don't pay for the software, but for related services.
Want to:
* Hire a live band for your daughter's wedding?
* Commission a painting?
* Get a professional's advice (on just about anything)?
* Research new technology?
* Write new software?
* Read an author's new book?
* Go watch a play at the theater?
* Go to Disneyland?
Extremely low-cost goods will still allow capitalism to work just fine. Frankly, I think it's rather inevitable anyhow, barring any natural or self-inflicted apocalypse.