I'm sorry, but your frothing at the mouth over the "misunderstood WM" just screams Astroturfing. Only way you can get a non-bloated WM device is IF you do hacks the end-user has no idea about. THAT is not how you keep a system from being bloated. The devices condition out of the box is what you get with 90% of all users. Especially on such a mission-critical device as a cellphone. WM devices will remain just how Windows in general is. Bloated & unstable under normal use by the majority of users.
The sad thing here is that WM competitors are Symbian, which is too carrier friendly to be considered (they do have a nice system). Then you have Palm, which for the most part the OS has been stagnant for the past 2 years or so, and is still a hell of allot better system for the end-user. Developers being happy means jack-shit if the device itself is junk. If your going to develop for just one: you develop for what has more possible sales. Any other decision is a poor business decision.
Yeah, Next Gen doesn't exactly write insightful articles anymore. They just write sensationalists crap anymore. They need to go cuddle up with EA & die together.
You are so right! I remember when I had a chemistry set when I was younger it came with everything BUT chemicals. Yet it had all the directions on how to use the nasty stuff. WTF!?!?!? Least I had cool rents that generally got me what I wanted. Just had to promise not to burn the rug. Kids now don't even get that much. Dumb-ass gummy science kits are the rage. Stupidity abounds.
I dunno what fantasy world you live in, but almost every successful game on the Xbox received patches. Hell Live itself was a patch for the Xbox a year or two after it was released. Not exactly a good precedent. They often included an extra thing for the game too with the patch, but a patch, is a patch. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory required a patch due to a bad matchmaking bug, and Halo 2 has received multiple patches for issues all over the board. I remeber there were a ton more, but it's been so long I can't remeber specifics. MS had the same no patches allowed mentality then too they are supposed to have now. I laughed it then, and I still do. Before consoles had the finality of, "thats it" now more work can be done! Not anymore unfortunately. Were now buying beta versions of games on disk with final patches that get patches made for them.
Actually, the problem is that Capcom doesn't seem to know what the hell they are doing. Most of the changes they are making are FUNDAMENTAL things US game makers figured out years ago. It is more evident however if you look at PC games (console developers can be pretty damn lazy). Almost everything they have stated thats changing is pretty simple stuff that should have been worked out in a few hours by a decent online dev-team.
If Apple+O for open is that hard to use, you have larger issues at hand. Macs were made to handle shortcuts well, and be pretty consistent about the handling of keyboard shortcuts. Anyone using a 30" Cinema display is going to be more on the, "Pro" level so such a thing is not hard for them to adapt to (hell if you use Quicksilver you almost NEVER need touch a menu). It's a waste of time to keep hitting menus for basic commands at any resolution. It always surprises me (even though it shouldn't anymore) that so many on/. are so dependent on menus for such simple things as: open, save, close, copy, paste, etc...
Yeah...unfortunately hibernation only really works well on Macs. Windows only partially can handle such things (certainly can't handle two hibernations without a reboot). Which would help explain why I own a Macbook. I do stuff at home, close the lid, take it with me in the morning and I have "instant on" when I open it back up if I so need it. Not to mention most Windows notebooks suck the power dry from a battery very quickly. Plus not to mention even if a Macbook's battery gets drained it'll do an emergency suspend to HD that works WAY better, and restores much faster than any other OS I've encountered.
Even if you have a desktop machine the same stuff applies pretty much. If 30-60 seconds is too long to wait, just buy a Mac. Drink the cool-aide. Our black turtlenecks are nice & warm this time of year ^^
I dunno what the fuss is about MS Office 2007 not running natively on the Intel Macbooks. 2004 doesn't run natively on my Macbook and I've never encountered any problems (I only noticed this a few weeks ago). Apple's PPC emulation is pretty damn rock solid. Well maybe it will if MS goes and does weird shit with 2007 that ends up ramping up the system requirements (perish the thought with MS).
How is this theft? When these artists recorded their songs 50 years ago, copyright was even shorter! They knew exactly how long their works would stay out of public domain. Anything extra these people have received is purely a free ride. The offspring are not royalty, and as such are not entitled to live forever off of their parents via extensions. We kicked that system the fuck out at the founding of this country for good reason.
What we have here is more likening to the dipshit offspring of that Ford employee demanding that they get the same compensation for their parents work. These people are more detestable than the lawyers that represent them.
If wireless is what you want theres the Super Scope 6 and the Sega Menacer. Now I don't know the year the SS6 was released, but the Menacer was released by Sega in response to the SS6 in 1992 (as per Wikipedia) so theres some wireless prior art there for you.
Nintendo doesn't even need prior art. Their implementation is different. Interlink's lame-duck patent focuses on a remote with a button on the bottom that emits IR to a base-station. Nintendo's implementation goes the other way and receives the IR then sends the data via Bluetooth back to the system. I highly doubt Nintendo has anything to worry about here. Most that I bet happens here is Nintendo is kills them off or just tosses them a few bucks in-case anyone else wants to try that implementation in the future.
No...the problem with E&B was that Westwood Studios got shit-canned during the final development when the studios marketing department was starting the marketing blitz for it. As such, EA moved development and a few devs to EA Proper, and proceeded to pathetically attempt to market it. If anyone is keeping track, they can't market anything unless it's Madden or similar (just look at American McGees Alice for a good example). I should know well...I was one of the marketing people at Westwood even though I don't like MMORPGS much. That game was supposed to do so much >_
If by revolution, you mean not actually having a revolution, then yes. Read a history book sometime. No revolution happened in this country. Just a change of who got to make up the taxes & run the army (oh and the loss of mobbing as a right). If that'd happened, Washington & the bunch of them would have been hung. Which almost happened on a few occasions for not delivering on their promises.
I'm going to assume you mean launch PS2 and at that you either don't play it much, had it repaired, lying, dilusional, or by work, you mean the power turns on. You virtually never hear of anyone who has a launch PS2 that works still unless it's got half an inch of dust on it from lack of frequent use. Me? I've burned through 4 PS2s since launch, and I'm sure I'll burn through a few PS3s. Their hardware is complete crap and anyone who claims otherwise is full of it.
Luckily I've never had to result to fraud with my gear. Almost everything of mine carries service plans, and about zero items ever make it to the end of their service plan life with me. Hell my HDTV is about to die after 3 years. Perfect time of year for me ^^
What makes me flinch is the thought that people still buy into the myth that iPod = lock in. These people shouldn't even be bothering with computers. Your only locked into iTunes as much as you want to be (if you want to buy songs via any online store your locked in period). There are plenty of apps on every OS to keep you off of Apple software otherwise.
Me? I handle everything through iTunes. Theres absolutely no reason not to. I run Windows & Mac with a little Linux. I decide to get a different player one day? I just move everything out of iTunes. It's not fsking brain-surgery.
Thats why the majority of Mac users use Palm Treo phones (actually the majority in general). They've worked with Macs for a very long time (maybe since the beginning), and wonderfully I might add. I am however extremely excited about this whole Apple Smartphone..Mac integration would finally give me a good reason to find out what it's all about.
Westwood still exists, just as Petroglyph Studios now (do yourself a favor and check the Star Wars RTS out). They may end up having quite a bit to do with C&C3, but thats still up in the air. C&C Generals was pretty craptastic to me too. Then again I worked at WW before they canned the Las Vegas office so my views may be skewed a little.
Hello Mr. Uninformed dipshit. Let me enlighten you a little. XBMC is an OpenSource dashboard for the X-Box. X-Box + $15 mod chip thats so easy to install a 6 year old can do it (are you gona let a 6 year old show you up?). Once you do that you just load up the latest t3ch build of XBMC. Hell if your that poor and $15 will break the bank theres plenty of softmods out there for the price of free. Yes theres a little bit more involved in putting things together, but your on/. You can't be that stupid now can you? Once you, "git er done" it's smooth sailing. The best part of it to me is the ability to actually have what you want for once from these boxes. Want to play DivX, Xvid, Ogg, MKV, etc? All the codecs are provided. You even get DVD playback without the $30 adapter that apparently it too expensive for you. Hell you can even stream video from a PC on the network. It's what I do. My TB server pumps out video and audio to my 3 X-Boxes around the house. Microsoft made the best Media Center system ever, and they just made the hardware!
Plus! How the fuck low is the volume for your movies? I can crank the fan on mine up to 70% (20% is standard unless you mod) before it's audible during normal use. Then again, I have the money to have a decent sound system. Not to mention, you actually watch DVDs on your PS2? The PS2 by FAR has the shittiest DVD playback I've ever seen in my life. PC software DVD players look better. *twitch*
But by all means. Remain in your little fantasy Digg world that the PS2 is anything but a piece of crap (I'm an owner of 4 failed PS2s here!). To each their own lil fantasy world I guess.
Personally the Wii is far more likely candidate here for "a bunch of friends" to pick up and write something for. The Wii vs PS2 programing actually favors the Wii in terms of ease of programing. Same goes for devkit costs. Not to mention...Nintendo is a hell of allot more receptive to something like that than Sony is.
And I swear...the next person who says there are 100million+ people with PS2s out there to sell to needs to be beat over the head with something. It's apparent the stupid stick was already used (Arc the Lad Collection didn't sell that well). Many people own multiple PS2s due to the shoddy build quality (I have 4!), most who own a PS2 aren't playing them anymore (the occasional import I come across that I missed), and most importantly those who do play them or just bought one are most likely to be rummaging though the used bargain bin. Not the $50 new games rack. All this VS those who just bought a PS3 or Wii. Those are people looking for new games and more often than not, in multiples.
I was heavily involved in the industry for the first two that died (not gona argue with what puts money in the bank that I enjoy). Third one came with a dead laser I replaced, and the 4th one was given to me as a gift which I won't argue with given I really wanted to play the Japanese Beserk game at the time.
Other people I have no idea what their problem is. The PS2 was and still remains a steaming pile of shit. I still own my original Gamecube which runs beautifully, and 3 Xboxes (XBMC usage mainly).
Your fooling yourself if you think MS will do a software update. They don't own the sourcecode. The Zune is just a crappy repackage of the Toshiba Gigabeat S. The round wheel is still a D-Pad. It's a faux scroll wheel! If they want a software update it'll involve paying Toshiba to do the coding and MS won't just give it away. They'll just release "Zune: Part Deux" which will just be another incarnation of another failed Toshiba player.
Oh, and WM Smartphones are still crap. Only groups that consider them competitive are brainwashed MS shops. Hell the form-factors on all of them alone are ass. The software itself isn't much better. They don't even come close to a Blackberry or Palm's Treo line (the Treo 700WM is a POS) and Palm's OS has stagnated for the past 2-3 years without real significant changes outside of hardware.
At the rate things are going Apple has far more to fear from the likes of Sandisk than MS.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but your frothing at the mouth over the "misunderstood WM" just screams Astroturfing. Only way you can get a non-bloated WM device is IF you do hacks the end-user has no idea about. THAT is not how you keep a system from being bloated. The devices condition out of the box is what you get with 90% of all users. Especially on such a mission-critical device as a cellphone. WM devices will remain just how Windows in general is. Bloated & unstable under normal use by the majority of users.
The sad thing here is that WM competitors are Symbian, which is too carrier friendly to be considered (they do have a nice system). Then you have Palm, which for the most part the OS has been stagnant for the past 2 years or so, and is still a hell of allot better system for the end-user. Developers being happy means jack-shit if the device itself is junk. If your going to develop for just one: you develop for what has more possible sales. Any other decision is a poor business decision.
Yeah, Next Gen doesn't exactly write insightful articles anymore. They just write sensationalists crap anymore. They need to go cuddle up with EA & die together.
You are so right! I remember when I had a chemistry set when I was younger it came with everything BUT chemicals. Yet it had all the directions on how to use the nasty stuff. WTF!?!?!? Least I had cool rents that generally got me what I wanted. Just had to promise not to burn the rug. Kids now don't even get that much. Dumb-ass gummy science kits are the rage. Stupidity abounds.
I dunno what fantasy world you live in, but almost every successful game on the Xbox received patches. Hell Live itself was a patch for the Xbox a year or two after it was released. Not exactly a good precedent. They often included an extra thing for the game too with the patch, but a patch, is a patch. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory required a patch due to a bad matchmaking bug, and Halo 2 has received multiple patches for issues all over the board. I remeber there were a ton more, but it's been so long I can't remeber specifics. MS had the same no patches allowed mentality then too they are supposed to have now. I laughed it then, and I still do. Before consoles had the finality of, "thats it" now more work can be done! Not anymore unfortunately. Were now buying beta versions of games on disk with final patches that get patches made for them.
Actually, the problem is that Capcom doesn't seem to know what the hell they are doing. Most of the changes they are making are FUNDAMENTAL things US game makers figured out years ago. It is more evident however if you look at PC games (console developers can be pretty damn lazy). Almost everything they have stated thats changing is pretty simple stuff that should have been worked out in a few hours by a decent online dev-team.
If Apple+O for open is that hard to use, you have larger issues at hand. Macs were made to handle shortcuts well, and be pretty consistent about the handling of keyboard shortcuts. Anyone using a 30" Cinema display is going to be more on the, "Pro" level so such a thing is not hard for them to adapt to (hell if you use Quicksilver you almost NEVER need touch a menu). It's a waste of time to keep hitting menus for basic commands at any resolution. It always surprises me (even though it shouldn't anymore) that so many on /. are so dependent on menus for such simple things as: open, save, close, copy, paste, etc...
Yeah...unfortunately hibernation only really works well on Macs. Windows only partially can handle such things (certainly can't handle two hibernations without a reboot). Which would help explain why I own a Macbook. I do stuff at home, close the lid, take it with me in the morning and I have "instant on" when I open it back up if I so need it. Not to mention most Windows notebooks suck the power dry from a battery very quickly. Plus not to mention even if a Macbook's battery gets drained it'll do an emergency suspend to HD that works WAY better, and restores much faster than any other OS I've encountered.
Even if you have a desktop machine the same stuff applies pretty much. If 30-60 seconds is too long to wait, just buy a Mac. Drink the cool-aide. Our black turtlenecks are nice & warm this time of year ^^
I dunno what the fuss is about MS Office 2007 not running natively on the Intel Macbooks. 2004 doesn't run natively on my Macbook and I've never encountered any problems (I only noticed this a few weeks ago). Apple's PPC emulation is pretty damn rock solid. Well maybe it will if MS goes and does weird shit with 2007 that ends up ramping up the system requirements (perish the thought with MS).
How is this theft? When these artists recorded their songs 50 years ago, copyright was even shorter! They knew exactly how long their works would stay out of public domain. Anything extra these people have received is purely a free ride. The offspring are not royalty, and as such are not entitled to live forever off of their parents via extensions. We kicked that system the fuck out at the founding of this country for good reason.
What we have here is more likening to the dipshit offspring of that Ford employee demanding that they get the same compensation for their parents work. These people are more detestable than the lawyers that represent them.
If wireless is what you want theres the Super Scope 6 and the Sega Menacer. Now I don't know the year the SS6 was released, but the Menacer was released by Sega in response to the SS6 in 1992 (as per Wikipedia) so theres some wireless prior art there for you.
Nintendo doesn't even need prior art. Their implementation is different. Interlink's lame-duck patent focuses on a remote with a button on the bottom that emits IR to a base-station. Nintendo's implementation goes the other way and receives the IR then sends the data via Bluetooth back to the system. I highly doubt Nintendo has anything to worry about here. Most that I bet happens here is Nintendo is kills them off or just tosses them a few bucks in-case anyone else wants to try that implementation in the future.
No...the problem with E&B was that Westwood Studios got shit-canned during the final development when the studios marketing department was starting the marketing blitz for it. As such, EA moved development and a few devs to EA Proper, and proceeded to pathetically attempt to market it. If anyone is keeping track, they can't market anything unless it's Madden or similar (just look at American McGees Alice for a good example). I should know well...I was one of the marketing people at Westwood even though I don't like MMORPGS much. That game was supposed to do so much >_
If by revolution, you mean not actually having a revolution, then yes. Read a history book sometime. No revolution happened in this country. Just a change of who got to make up the taxes & run the army (oh and the loss of mobbing as a right). If that'd happened, Washington & the bunch of them would have been hung. Which almost happened on a few occasions for not delivering on their promises.
I'm going to assume you mean launch PS2 and at that you either don't play it much, had it repaired, lying, dilusional, or by work, you mean the power turns on. You virtually never hear of anyone who has a launch PS2 that works still unless it's got half an inch of dust on it from lack of frequent use. Me? I've burned through 4 PS2s since launch, and I'm sure I'll burn through a few PS3s. Their hardware is complete crap and anyone who claims otherwise is full of it.
Luckily I've never had to result to fraud with my gear. Almost everything of mine carries service plans, and about zero items ever make it to the end of their service plan life with me. Hell my HDTV is about to die after 3 years. Perfect time of year for me ^^
What makes me flinch is the thought that people still buy into the myth that iPod = lock in. These people shouldn't even be bothering with computers. Your only locked into iTunes as much as you want to be (if you want to buy songs via any online store your locked in period). There are plenty of apps on every OS to keep you off of Apple software otherwise.
Me? I handle everything through iTunes. Theres absolutely no reason not to. I run Windows & Mac with a little Linux. I decide to get a different player one day? I just move everything out of iTunes. It's not fsking brain-surgery.
Thats why the majority of Mac users use Palm Treo phones (actually the majority in general). They've worked with Macs for a very long time (maybe since the beginning), and wonderfully I might add. I am however extremely excited about this whole Apple Smartphone. .Mac integration would finally give me a good reason to find out what it's all about.
Westwood still exists, just as Petroglyph Studios now (do yourself a favor and check the Star Wars RTS out). They may end up having quite a bit to do with C&C3, but thats still up in the air. C&C Generals was pretty craptastic to me too. Then again I worked at WW before they canned the Las Vegas office so my views may be skewed a little.
You sir...have been trolled by the AC.
Hello Mr. Uninformed dipshit. Let me enlighten you a little. XBMC is an OpenSource dashboard for the X-Box. X-Box + $15 mod chip thats so easy to install a 6 year old can do it (are you gona let a 6 year old show you up?). Once you do that you just load up the latest t3ch build of XBMC. Hell if your that poor and $15 will break the bank theres plenty of softmods out there for the price of free. Yes theres a little bit more involved in putting things together, but your on /. You can't be that stupid now can you? Once you, "git er done" it's smooth sailing. The best part of it to me is the ability to actually have what you want for once from these boxes. Want to play DivX, Xvid, Ogg, MKV, etc? All the codecs are provided. You even get DVD playback without the $30 adapter that apparently it too expensive for you. Hell you can even stream video from a PC on the network. It's what I do. My TB server pumps out video and audio to my 3 X-Boxes around the house. Microsoft made the best Media Center system ever, and they just made the hardware!
Plus! How the fuck low is the volume for your movies? I can crank the fan on mine up to 70% (20% is standard unless you mod) before it's audible during normal use. Then again, I have the money to have a decent sound system. Not to mention, you actually watch DVDs on your PS2? The PS2 by FAR has the shittiest DVD playback I've ever seen in my life. PC software DVD players look better. *twitch*
But by all means. Remain in your little fantasy Digg world that the PS2 is anything but a piece of crap (I'm an owner of 4 failed PS2s here!). To each their own lil fantasy world I guess.
Disk Read Error
Personally the Wii is far more likely candidate here for "a bunch of friends" to pick up and write something for. The Wii vs PS2 programing actually favors the Wii in terms of ease of programing. Same goes for devkit costs. Not to mention...Nintendo is a hell of allot more receptive to something like that than Sony is.
And I swear...the next person who says there are 100million+ people with PS2s out there to sell to needs to be beat over the head with something. It's apparent the stupid stick was already used (Arc the Lad Collection didn't sell that well). Many people own multiple PS2s due to the shoddy build quality (I have 4!), most who own a PS2 aren't playing them anymore (the occasional import I come across that I missed), and most importantly those who do play them or just bought one are most likely to be rummaging though the used bargain bin. Not the $50 new games rack. All this VS those who just bought a PS3 or Wii. Those are people looking for new games and more often than not, in multiples.
I was heavily involved in the industry for the first two that died (not gona argue with what puts money in the bank that I enjoy). Third one came with a dead laser I replaced, and the 4th one was given to me as a gift which I won't argue with given I really wanted to play the Japanese Beserk game at the time.
Other people I have no idea what their problem is. The PS2 was and still remains a steaming pile of shit. I still own my original Gamecube which runs beautifully, and 3 Xboxes (XBMC usage mainly).
Back to Zelda!
Your fooling yourself if you think MS will do a software update. They don't own the sourcecode. The Zune is just a crappy repackage of the Toshiba Gigabeat S. The round wheel is still a D-Pad. It's a faux scroll wheel! If they want a software update it'll involve paying Toshiba to do the coding and MS won't just give it away. They'll just release "Zune: Part Deux" which will just be another incarnation of another failed Toshiba player.
Oh, and WM Smartphones are still crap. Only groups that consider them competitive are brainwashed MS shops. Hell the form-factors on all of them alone are ass. The software itself isn't much better. They don't even come close to a Blackberry or Palm's Treo line (the Treo 700WM is a POS) and Palm's OS has stagnated for the past 2-3 years without real significant changes outside of hardware.
At the rate things are going Apple has far more to fear from the likes of Sandisk than MS.
W00t! While slightly off-topic, mod parent up for finding something highly helpful!