"Even game consoles are starting to see their market eroded by boxes like the Steam Link, which acts as a pipe for a game being played elsewhere on a PC."
Unless you can provide some very surprising evidence backing this claim, I'm going to have to call bullshit. Sales of console and handheld games and hardware have been steadily, reliably increasing since the 1990s, and the industry's rate of growth has started to increase exponentially over the past few years (source here).
Not only that, but Steam Link was only released earlier this month. Even assuming it will take a chunk out of console sales, there hasn't been enough time to see evidence of that eventuality. If Steam Link was just used as an example of devices that allow PC games to be played through the television, you run into the same problem. That tech has only been available/known to mainstream consumers for about a year and a half. Still not enough time to prove this point, even if it wasn't based on false assumptions.
I support your comment as a kneejerk reaction, but let's be clear: This is a PR stunt. The OED may be a staid reference book, but it won't print itself and its editors won't work for free. You have to drum up public interest to maintain mindshare and thus sales, and given the OED's limited appeal in a world saturated by digital entertainment choosing an emoji and declaring it a word is a clever move.
By choosing an emoji, the OED has made millions of people actively think about the OED, and when the hell was the last time you had ANY reason to think about the OED?
While I agree that you'd need infinite energy to attain the theoretical 'absolute hot' the fact that our current view of physics doesn't allow for such things doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
100 years from now we'll be traveling back and forth in time and heating and cooling our houses with absolute hot/cool air conditioners and we'll look back on this post -- now safely reproduced as etchings on a lead block -- and laugh our cybernetic heads off.
I agree with you, but the switch to Apple products lowers the bar for just how competent the military IT people need to be. With Windows machines there is a much greater statistical likelihood that they will be compromised, but with Macs, they have that protective layer of "security through obscurity" in addition to the skills learned by their IT team.
Since they're dealing with sensitive, dangerous information, I'd rather they put as many failsafes as possible into the infrastructure to avoid the whole system being compromised.
I'm wicked pissed that I don't have any current mod points because this is one of the most clever, insightful posts, I've ever read on Slashdot. Well done!
I worked for Game Crazy (the Hollywood video owned game store) for 2 years, and though it was one of the better ones, it was, at times, a nightmare.
The reliance on extended warranties and upselling is almost (but not quite) as bad as at big box places like Best Buy (whom I also worked for). They expect you to push 2 to 3 things per sale whether you know the customer will want it or not. Warranties, pre-orders, CD cleaning kits, it's all totally useless, but we had to push it anyway.
Thankfully, I had a very cool boss who was happy as long as we made him look good, and the staff was pretty good about actually selling stuff to people who could use it (CD resurfacers to parents with young kids, warranties to parents with young kids, discount cards to people who were there constantly... etc.) If we didn't think someone was going to go for something extra, we were usually right, and he let us get off without offering it (which is demeaning as all hell).
Of course, the employees were also forced to buy this stuff on anything we bought, but we could actually use it. PS2 got a nick on it when you moved? Maybe you should warranty it out for a new one!
One last note, we also told people they could destroy their own systems to get the warranty to give them a new one. Most people never did, but they enjoyed the idea that they could, and it sold a lot more warranties than the standard pitch. Of course, such talk would get you fired if the higher-ups ever heard about it, but they left us alone since we kept selling warranties for them.
I find it funny that 90% of the arguments against this being a fantastic game were of the "it isn't exactly like the original Starfox" variety. Sure, the developers went out and tried something new while adhering to general principles of the first, but shouldn't that be the point?
Nintendo, while sticking to a handful of properties is always trying to innovate and we should applaud them for that. Sure, they've had a few missteps (Starfox Adventures, arguably Super Mario Bros 2), but overall, they've taken us in new and interesting directions that are mimicked for years afterwards all over the industry.
Unless you guys are fans of having the same crap repeated year after year (EA), we should embrace innovation and new ideas, instead of clinging too tightly to the games of our collective childhoods.
In the current world, and in the near future, printed news, magazines and humor is going to be completely superceded by online sources simply because the internet is cheaper, updated more frequently and available 24 hours a day.
You'll have your hold-outs who desire a physical product, or the aesthetics/tactile feedback of paper, but with the coming advances in e-ink and e-paper, it's only a matter of time before paper media will be relegated to the realm of the courier on horseback riding from town to town to deliver the news.
"Given that computers use more metal than any other consumer product"
You literally pulled this out of your ass, didn't you?
For a while now, we've had these things called "automobiles". They are generally made up of metals of various sorts. They also weigh 1-2 tons a piece. Unless you're referring to all those consumer grade ENIACs you see everywhere, I'm not sure how you think computers consume the most metal of any consumer product.
"Next to picture quality, interactivity has been touted as one of the key selling points of the next-gen disc formats... This past Tuesday, Universal Studios released 'Fast and the Furious: Toyko Drift' on HD DVD..."
Maybe, instead of adding fancy user controlled content, they should use that money hire more competent writers, directors and actors, so that we are being sold media based on the quality of the IP contained inside, not how many different angles you can look at Vin Diesel's Orc crushing arms.
Sure, maybe for the moment, but I think you'd be surprised as to how rapidly their subscription fees are dwindling. Who needs a newspaper when you can get all of your news faster and cheaper with Google?
The loss of their ability to be the only news source is why they are suing Google in the first place. If they didn't fear Google's strength in the market of luring subscriber's away, they wouldn't be suing, would they?
As much as Sony doesn't want to play the "My system is a games machine for playing fun games" game, they have really gone overboard with trying to sell it based on alternate features. It's not like the PS3 is going to replace a home computer for photo manipulation or viewing. Until Adobe decides to release Photoshop for PS3 (along with keyboards and tablets and trackball mice), this feature is simply a glorified picture frame.
This is a good reason why the PS3 won't do well. Sony doesn't seem to realize that we already have electronics that will do the extraneous functions of the PS3 better than the PS3 will. I have DVD players for playing movies, a computer for photo work, a printer attached to that computer to print them out (and, for that matter, with a Wii, I'd also have a machine to play games), so does that leave the PS3 out in the cold?
Slashdot Mirror
Fuck it. I clearly have no idea what I'm doing anymore.
Source here:
Unless you can provide some very surprising evidence backing this claim, I'm going to have to call bullshit. Sales of console and handheld games and hardware have been steadily, reliably increasing since the 1990s, and the industry's rate of growth has started to increase exponentially over the past few years (source here).
Not only that, but Steam Link was only released earlier this month. Even assuming it will take a chunk out of console sales, there hasn't been enough time to see evidence of that eventuality. If Steam Link was just used as an example of devices that allow PC games to be played through the television, you run into the same problem. That tech has only been available/known to mainstream consumers for about a year and a half. Still not enough time to prove this point, even if it wasn't based on false assumptions.
I support your comment as a kneejerk reaction, but let's be clear: This is a PR stunt. The OED may be a staid reference book, but it won't print itself and its editors won't work for free. You have to drum up public interest to maintain mindshare and thus sales, and given the OED's limited appeal in a world saturated by digital entertainment choosing an emoji and declaring it a word is a clever move.
By choosing an emoji, the OED has made millions of people actively think about the OED, and when the hell was the last time you had ANY reason to think about the OED?
Yeah, that comic would be the controversial bit I was talking about.
While they let me speak on it, I couldn't convince the higher ups to let me post that image on the homepage.
That's only because nowadays our vacuum cleaners look a lot like robots.
While I agree that you'd need infinite energy to attain the theoretical 'absolute hot' the fact that our current view of physics doesn't allow for such things doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
100 years from now we'll be traveling back and forth in time and heating and cooling our houses with absolute hot/cool air conditioners and we'll look back on this post -- now safely reproduced as etchings on a lead block -- and laugh our cybernetic heads off.
I agree with you, but the switch to Apple products lowers the bar for just how competent the military IT people need to be. With Windows machines there is a much greater statistical likelihood that they will be compromised, but with Macs, they have that protective layer of "security through obscurity" in addition to the skills learned by their IT team.
Since they're dealing with sensitive, dangerous information, I'd rather they put as many failsafes as possible into the infrastructure to avoid the whole system being compromised.
And, for that matter, how fragile will these discs be?
Even with the larger-than-DVD dimensions outlined in the article, that's a huge density of data per disc.
It doesn't matter how many GB each disc can store if it all gets corrupted every time your dog barks too loudly.
I'll admit, the wind has done some excellent things in IT recently, but when it comes to dealing with those accents over the phone I go nuts.
How you can replace an 'h' with a subtle wooshing noise is completely beyond me.
To show you just how old this new story is, it was originally published on Seanbaby's site before Ultima 9 came out, hence why it's not on the list.
Does it even qualify as news if it's that old?
I'm wicked pissed that I don't have any current mod points because this is one of the most clever, insightful posts, I've ever read on Slashdot. Well done!
No, that was not sarcasm.
You realize that you posted that comment to a forum, right?
If we're not speculating, what the hell else are we going to do? Write long lists of tired cliches and in-jokes vaguely related to the IT profession?
Oh, wait...
I worked for Game Crazy (the Hollywood video owned game store) for 2 years, and though it was one of the better ones, it was, at times, a nightmare.
The reliance on extended warranties and upselling is almost (but not quite) as bad as at big box places like Best Buy (whom I also worked for). They expect you to push 2 to 3 things per sale whether you know the customer will want it or not. Warranties, pre-orders, CD cleaning kits, it's all totally useless, but we had to push it anyway.
Thankfully, I had a very cool boss who was happy as long as we made him look good, and the staff was pretty good about actually selling stuff to people who could use it (CD resurfacers to parents with young kids, warranties to parents with young kids, discount cards to people who were there constantly... etc.) If we didn't think someone was going to go for something extra, we were usually right, and he let us get off without offering it (which is demeaning as all hell).
Of course, the employees were also forced to buy this stuff on anything we bought, but we could actually use it. PS2 got a nick on it when you moved? Maybe you should warranty it out for a new one!
One last note, we also told people they could destroy their own systems to get the warranty to give them a new one. Most people never did, but they enjoyed the idea that they could, and it sold a lot more warranties than the standard pitch. Of course, such talk would get you fired if the higher-ups ever heard about it, but they left us alone since we kept selling warranties for them.
*points to parent*
And I'm off topic?
I find it funny that 90% of the arguments against this being a fantastic game were of the "it isn't exactly like the original Starfox" variety. Sure, the developers went out and tried something new while adhering to general principles of the first, but shouldn't that be the point?
Nintendo, while sticking to a handful of properties is always trying to innovate and we should applaud them for that. Sure, they've had a few missteps (Starfox Adventures, arguably Super Mario Bros 2), but overall, they've taken us in new and interesting directions that are mimicked for years afterwards all over the industry.
Unless you guys are fans of having the same crap repeated year after year (EA), we should embrace innovation and new ideas, instead of clinging too tightly to the games of our collective childhoods.
In the current world, and in the near future, printed news, magazines and humor is going to be completely superceded by online sources simply because the internet is cheaper, updated more frequently and available 24 hours a day.
You'll have your hold-outs who desire a physical product, or the aesthetics/tactile feedback of paper, but with the coming advances in e-ink and e-paper, it's only a matter of time before paper media will be relegated to the realm of the courier on horseback riding from town to town to deliver the news.
Want some advice? Register http://www.theredcoatsarecoming.com/ as soon as you can!
Kosher or regular?
Shhhh! Don't give them any ideas!
"Given that computers use more metal than any other consumer product"
You literally pulled this out of your ass, didn't you?
For a while now, we've had these things called "automobiles". They are generally made up of metals of various sorts. They also weigh 1-2 tons a piece. Unless you're referring to all those consumer grade ENIACs you see everywhere, I'm not sure how you think computers consume the most metal of any consumer product.
"Next to picture quality, interactivity has been touted as one of the key selling points of the next-gen disc formats ... This past Tuesday, Universal Studios released 'Fast and the Furious: Toyko Drift' on HD DVD..."
Maybe, instead of adding fancy user controlled content, they should use that money hire more competent writers, directors and actors, so that we are being sold media based on the quality of the IP contained inside, not how many different angles you can look at Vin Diesel's Orc crushing arms.
After this post, you can almost hear the geeks sharpening their slide rules and gnashing their retainers together, can't you?
Sure, it would be dumb to not include them, but it's even more dumb to market what should be a videogame system as something else.
Sure, maybe for the moment, but I think you'd be surprised as to how rapidly their subscription fees are dwindling. Who needs a newspaper when you can get all of your news faster and cheaper with Google?
The loss of their ability to be the only news source is why they are suing Google in the first place. If they didn't fear Google's strength in the market of luring subscriber's away, they wouldn't be suing, would they?
As much as Sony doesn't want to play the "My system is a games machine for playing fun games" game, they have really gone overboard with trying to sell it based on alternate features. It's not like the PS3 is going to replace a home computer for photo manipulation or viewing. Until Adobe decides to release Photoshop for PS3 (along with keyboards and tablets and trackball mice), this feature is simply a glorified picture frame.
This is a good reason why the PS3 won't do well. Sony doesn't seem to realize that we already have electronics that will do the extraneous functions of the PS3 better than the PS3 will. I have DVD players for playing movies, a computer for photo work, a printer attached to that computer to print them out (and, for that matter, with a Wii, I'd also have a machine to play games), so does that leave the PS3 out in the cold?
I, honestly, think it might.