To play *NEW GAME* you have to update your firmware... or Game installs new firmware when you load it without you knowing about it
Yes you are prompted to update your PS3 firmware however this is only if you are on-line. In this case you don't have to but then you won't be able to play on-line. As for a game loading new firmware you are always prompted to update to the new firmware revision that supports the particular game. You can say "no" but then your game won't play. The same is true for PC's, Xbox360's and I assume the Wii.
Still it is is worth upgrading to the latest firmware although I don't recommend upgrading for a few days, preferring to do a web search to see if the new firmware has any issues. It has happened before although it is rare but it is not nice if you are one of those PS3 owners who does have a problem due to a firmware update.
GPL people don't want others to make money off their code.
When I write code I prefer the GPL over other licenses so I don't care if I don't get money from my code. But I can make a considerable amount of money from providing support and consultation for my code and even code I have not written. Sound familiar talk to Redhat and Novel.
However there are proprietary ripoffs of Apache and that is the problem that the GPL tries to defeat.
I fail to see how this is a problem. I can still go and download Apache and use it however I want.
You can download the Apache source and do whatever you want with it but try and sell the now modified code as your own then you may find out what the Law thinks of the Apache License. I think the following applies here:
1 You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License; and
2 You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files; and
3 You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works; and
Yes there is more, allot more, but RTFL if you want more info.:)
>How can you ripoff something that is freely given to all
By giving it a new name and removing all references to the original authors?
If found out the original authors or if GPL'd the GPL can litigation on plagiarism. It could cost said company the company.
When I say found out if one person does plagiarise software then it could be difficult to prove since the source code is kept secret by that one person but the more people involved in the development the greater the chance of been found out. Any business that is in for the long haul would be stupid to plagiarise software since the chance of getting found out increases with the number of developers. You only need once developer with a conscience that recognises the code has been stolen and that company is in a world of hurt.
The one with the closed kernel (Windows) has the biggest share, the one with the BSD'd kernel (Mac OS) has the second biggest, and the one with the GPL'd kernel (Linux) has about 1%. Doesn't sound like they're right to me.
You are correct if you are looking at the desktop, however Linux runs on a more appliances than does MS Windows and BSD put together and where do you get 1% and 1% of what and which county? A little serious statistical research will show you that there are 10's of millions of Linux users in the world (Fedora alone accounts for well over 10 million) and that is not just the server room. Don't limit your research to just first world countries and I think you will be surprised.
If I want I can take BSD source, modify and/or add to it providing I keep the BSD license. I can then go on and license that modified code under the GPL (yes even the GPL3). It must be noted that what I have suggested is quite legal and I have not contravened the spirit of the the BSD license. Now the BSD people cry foul and call the GPL viral yet under the spirit of the BSD license I have not done any wrong in fact I have bent over backwards ensuring that the spirit of the BSD license is upheld.
It has got to the point were some BSD license supporters are now suggesting adding to the BSD license stating that their code cannot be put in GPL'd software which kind of goes against the spirit of the BSD license in the first place. If you wish to licence your code under a BSD licence don't be surprise if that code is incorporated under the GPL one day since there is nothing in the BSD license that forbids this.
I am required, by the rules of the GPL, to give my customer the source, and they are allowed to do whatever they want, including give it to others, but if they paid $1,000,000 for it, chances are they're not going to do that.
True, but they might sell it to another would-be customer for $500,000. Which you might not be happy with.
I think the following part of the GPL2 applies here.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
Any customer who pays something like $500,000 for GPL'd software would have to be particularly dumb and I would not be surprised if the police were after the seller for fraud since $500,000 is a little bit expensive (fair trading act and such) for transferring GPL'd code although that won't stop con artists. On the other hand there are many customers who quite happily pay for service and support., after-all Redhat P/L does not charge for their GPL'd source it only charges for warranty and support which does not contravene the GPL. If you don't want to pay for Redhat code you can use CentOS however your company may still want some software support contact. At least you have a choice.
I suggest you read some modern history on this. One of the main reasons that Nazi Germany never invaded England was he fact that Germany needed air superiority however they did not know how close they came to achieving it and the burning desire of Hitler to invade Soviet Russia above all else. The possible invasion of America was not even a priority although the German submarines had a field day with coastal US shipping in the early weeks just after the US entered WW2.
Even the Japanese had no real intention of invading the US during WW2 since the main thrust of the Japanese attacks was to secure most of SE Asia including the Philippines and Indonesia as well as forcing the US to negotiate an end to hostilities which would be more favourable to the Japanese. Of course this did backfire but it cost many American and Japanese lives.
Australia is the ONLY non-Muslim and non-totalitarian, country that falls under either of those two classifications. Something to think about for you Aussies out there.
I have heard some of the people who want this speak, they are very eloquent and I think they genuinely believe they are doing the right thing. The problem is they keep harping on about the evils of child porn to get their point across to the point where you start to look for that monocle or small moustache.
Together with Iran and Turkey, Malaysia will soon be filtering its Internet content. The common thread among all 3 countries is that the majority of their citizens are Muslims.
It is not just Muslim countries but so called Christian countries as well. The usual excuses are "We want to protect you from child porn", " We need to protect children and young adults (WTF) from inappropriate material" and the best one "Think of the children". Surprisingly if you investigate the people who propose some sort of censorship they will normally be people who genuinely believe they are doing the right thing.
Two quotes come to mind when I hear about any type of censorship are "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". The only way to combat this infringement of what to me is a fundamental human right is have these people who want censorship investigating a wall covered with graffiti or other such obscene art that people are using for target practice at the time:).
If you need OrCAD then why not contact other educational organisations and find out if they want to use OrCAD and would prefer this product under a Linux distribution. Since OrCAD is a proprietary product I would assume there is a cost associated with running it. If this is case you could leverage a case for having this product ported to Linux and use a claim like "Well if you don't have a Linux version I guess we have no-choice but to go else-ware". It is amazing what this can do since companies don't like loosing sales however before you go down this track you better have done your homework, otherwise it can backfire.
When I say backfire you may find out that you are the only one that wants to run OrCAD on a Linux distribution and if there are other facilities you may find out that you are the only driving force which could paint a large target on you in an environment that may be very Microsoft centric, so while I would wish you the best of luck please take care.
Many people on Slashdot will recommend free software, however because you are in an educational institution you may find this way can also be risky for you. Personally I would recommend virtualisation with Win XP or even ReactOS (GPL'd Win XP emulator which is still in Alpha Testing) but because you are in a government environment get legal advice from your department first.
I think PC game dev is significantly slowed because of this gen of consoles, with longtime PC proponents finally falling to them (Epic Games, im looking at you! No Gear of war 2 for PC is a shame
This is the dilemma that Microsoft faces now, do they push PC gaming over Xbox360 gaming. Push one over the other then they are dammed in the eyes of the other party so what Microsoft has done (gasp! to their credit) is have a common set of API's which enables games developed for PC's to be ported to the Xbox360 and vice versa. I am quite sure they know that there are dedicated PC gamers that will not touch a console, hence the balancing act.
Personally I think you will see Gears of War 2 ported to the PC but not for at least a year.
I wouldn't say hardware was unimportant, though. The Wii won because of its hardware, clearly. But it needs to be looked at in terms of what the hardware actually brings to the buyer. Higher res? Who cares? Faster refresh? Doesn't matter. Better AI and gameplay? Well, that might help, but it's pretty clear that the 360's and PS3's improved processors aren't being used for that.
The "Wii won"? You can only say that if it's true when the last PS3, Wii and Xbox360 ships. You can say that of their generation the PS1 followed by the PS2 definitely won even though the PS2 has not finished selling yet. Yes the Wii is leading compared to each Xbox and PS3 individually but combined since they are both HD consoles and powerful ones at that, they are selling more than the Wii by approx 3 million world wide. As for better AI well there are some Xbox and PS3 games that aren't that good but most are definitely better than what the Wii has.
As for microphones, vibrations and sensors well most of the current generation consoles are heading in that direction although the Xbox and the PS3 definitely have the advantage since they have already shown that they have the feasibility to do just that. As for sound, is 7.1 good enough? however that entails buying a decent sound system and I can assure you that is not cheap.
Improvements in graphics are mattering less and less.
If that was the case we would all be still playing pong and enjoying it.:)
The problem is that humans have physical limitations such as a hearing limit of approx 20kHz and with 1080p HDTV's you are reaching what the human eye can distinguish unless you are up close and if you are up close you very quickly get a headache. The only area that has potential is smell and touch and that raises some interesting problems. For touch, force feedback comes to mind although how much force begs the question. Smell? well imagine entering a game area that has a huge collection of zombies or a cave full of poison. I will leave the rest to your imagination:~)
But graphics can only be improved so much until you can no longer use it to market your game.
By that I assume that the current 1080p (1920x1080) resolution is good enough for most people up to 60" screen sizes. To get better you would need to double that in both axis again and increase the maximum possible size of the screen which would require a much larger room. Not to say that can't be done but most people don't have a living room that suits a 100" plus screen.
Left 4 Dead, for instance, still sells like hot cakes despite not looking anywhere near as good as Crysis in "full glory", and so does Counter Strike which even in the Source version looks worse than both.
Most people's PC's monitors are less then 24" and many don't even support HP 1080p so even if you did have a larger PC screen with much higher resolution it is going to cost allot more since you will require a more expensive graphics card as well. My son has a full HD 24" 1080p quad core PC with a top (well two years ago) video card and Crysis does not even install even though he has a genuine Win XP OS. Solution pirate the game you have already paid for. Same again for "World in Conflict" and eventually you ask yourself why should I bother paying for a DRM game.
Microsoft just realized what Nintendo already had (and Sony should have after the PS2): that there *is* such thing as "good enough", and that we've reached it already.
Comparing a PS2 game to a PS3 game you can easily see the difference since the PS2 was designed for Standard Definition TV's while the PS3 was for HDTV. I have a backwards compatible PS3 and PS2 games on my HDTV look very good and are still very playable graphically because my PS3 can up-scale and smooth so "good enough" applies here. PS1 games even the good ones do tend to look grainy so they are not acceptable at least to me so there are now only a few PS1 games I would consider playing now so "good enough" does not apply here.
I have a Gamecube and while the games are playable and acceptable on my HDTV (37", 720p) you can pick the reduced graphics quality which does detract from the overall enjoyment of the game. I suppose "good enough" could apply here but I would prefer "just acceptable". So basically if you have a HDTV it is hard to play a game that is made for an SDTV unless that game can be up-scaled and smoothed properly. Unfortunately the larger the HDTV the worse the SDTV graphics looks even when up-scaled and smoothed although "barely acceptable" still comes to mind.
Like it or not HDTV will replace SDTV and people will want HDTV content hence the move to purchasing HDTV ready game machines such as the Xbox360 and the PS3 which together exceed the overall sales of the Wii although not by a huge amount yet.
If good enough was true in games we would all be playing pong and liking it:)
I do agree with you but there are people who would be quite happy to cheat so they could brag that they actually completed something without cheating.
I was once showing a friend of my son a game that was challenging and great fun to play but it did take some time to complete. This person asked for a cheat so he could have all the stats and weapons without going to the trouble of getting them for himself. He even explained to me that when he played PC games he always made himself invincible and had the highest stats. I did ask what was the point of that since that is just cheating and the only person you really are cheating was yourself. Surprisingly he could not understand what I said and went on to say that it impressed all his friends. Weird I know but the world has some strange people.
It's funny but when I brought my PC it came with Vista Ultimate, so to get in the spirit I backed it up and then proceeded to fully install Fedora 8 on it. Now I have Fedora 11 and I still can't bring myself to put on MS Vista even though I do run Virtualisation and have XP as well as ReactOS (free GPL'd Windows XP) which run surprisingly well just for curiosity. I may yet put on Windows 7 (My work has a legitimate site license we are allowed to use) but only under virtualisation although I am still at a loss on why I want to do this. Before anyone suggests games I prefer console games to PC games so your words mean nothing to me.
Yeah, but they have to actually implement it before they can find out whether it can withstand all the attacks that will be launched against it. That's where it's likely to really cost them.:)
I think the main attack is going to be the voter especially if the opposition groups can get a good logical argument going and definitely not any disobedience which will play into these peoples hands. The problem you have here in Australia is many people vote for a party (Liberal or Labour) not the man and even if you have a minister cultivate a small moustache, wears knee high boots and walks in a funny way many will vote for him because he is a member of the party that that person votes for.
This is the sort of action that slowly erodes basic human freedoms by effectively having the Government gradually take over thinking for you and you really have to be stupid or just plain lazy not to see this. I have seen and heard arguments from various Government ministers on the so called internet monitoring and they initially sound rational with quotes like "Think of the children" and "We are against child porn" but behind the faÃade you really do have to worry.
A very good quote comes to mind here. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance".
I run Fedora 11 and normally keep up with the latest updates including the kernel. On my machine:
kernel-2.6.29.5-191.fc11.x86_64
ntp-4.2.4p7-2.fc11.x86_64
openssl-0.9.8k-5.fc11.x86_64
openssh-5.2p1-2.fc11.x86_64
Ok that was just a few and it appears that Fedora 11 is a bit behind considering that this distro is fairly cutting edge and IMHO not appropriate for current enterprise usage. The DoD people who suggest really bleeding edge releases appear to have a crystal ball which must tell them that that these releases are fine for their use especially in light of the so called following 2.6.30 kernel exploit . Woops! I think resumes need to be typed up:)
Upgrading a distribution like Fedora is doable but it is strongly recommended you don't. This is not to say Fedora is bad, it is just that you get so many new things moving from one version of Fedora to another it is quicker and safer to actually do a fresh install. For me to do a fresh install takes about 4 hours however this does depend on the amount of data you want to backup. The actual install only takes between 30 minutes to an hour depending on what you wish to install. For the home user of Fedora this is the norm however anyone who uses Fedora in the enterprise needs to get a reality check.
Personally I would say Fedora is for the hacker or for people who are genuinely interested in learning something new and not for the casual Linux user who really should be using a more stable Linux distribution. I have found Fedora 11 is much better than Fedora 10 however there are some minor issues which I knew would occur and that is what the forums are for.
It should go without saying that you back your files up however I think I am very much underestimating that for every Linux user that does not do some sort of backup there would be hundreds of MS Windows users who just don't backup at all.
I use Fedora and while I don't recommend this distribution for the general Linux user it normally works straight off the DVD install (approx 40 minutes). When I say works I mean wireless as well without any hacking. I have not used ndiswrapper for well over two years since I normally use a x86_64 distribution and native 64 bit applications. Using 64 bit allows me to install 32 bit applications if a 64 bit one is not available.
Nearly all the applications I have are native 64 bit and it is extremely easy to keep all of them up to date by using "yum" and the "presto" delta rpm management tools which save anything up to 90% of overall downloads. It must be noted that the Debian and SuSE distributions have similar package management and update tools that work just as well. As for upgrading I don't recommend upgrading Fedora although you can, preferring a fresh install per version, however more stable releases like Ubuntu can be upgraded if required. Still the choice is yours.
As for comparing XP or Vista or Windows 7 against a more popular Linux distribution I would choose Linux everyday since it has IMHO a much more logical file-system structure that lends itself to disaster recovery techniques and when you get into this area Linux/Unix beats MS Windows hands down.
Unfortunately, until Microsoft grow up on this front or someone writes software as powerful as Creative Suite to run on Linux, this is the world many of us are stuck in.:-(
If you want to run a Linux distribution and want to run your favourite MS Windows application just install your Linux distribution and then virtualise MS Windows with your favourite application. You can go the other way if you want but you would have less hassles since you have a better way of delineating the OS to your data and who knows you may actually get to like Linux over MS Windows;-)
For home use I find Linux will do everything I want and if I need to play "Games for Windows" (I rarely do) then virtualisation works really well. You can even run PhotoShop and other MS centric applications without any issues and the total cost is what you would pay for the Windows versions.
I don't classify myself as a programmer preferring to consult instead. If I have to program my order of preference is Borne/Korn shell followed by Perl then as a last resort C. If there is a need for more esoteric languages I either learn them or just work out what the requirements are and then get a programmer to implement the coding side of the job. Surprisingly you actually get allot more money by delegating responsibility and suffer less stress as well. In addition when the job is complete the consultant gets the praise not the others who probably worked twice as hard for much less pay.
"But that's not fair" I hear people say. When I originally started consulting I tried to do everything and very soon I worked out I was heading for a nervous breakdown if I kept going the way I was. So I quickly learned to delegate responsibility to those people who were better skilled in specific areas. All I had to do was manage people from a technical aspect not as a project manager (they get the greater praise for a successful project but cop it when there are problems) which means I need to consult with all parties and understand what is required and how to go about getting the job done.
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To play *NEW GAME* you have to update your firmware... or Game installs new firmware when you load it without you knowing about it
Yes you are prompted to update your PS3 firmware however this is only if you are on-line. In this case you don't have to but then you won't be able to play on-line. As for a game loading new firmware you are always prompted to update to the new firmware revision that supports the particular game. You can say "no" but then your game won't play. The same is true for PC's, Xbox360's and I assume the Wii.
Still it is is worth upgrading to the latest firmware although I don't recommend upgrading for a few days, preferring to do a web search to see if the new firmware has any issues. It has happened before although it is rare but it is not nice if you are one of those PS3 owners who does have a problem due to a firmware update.
GPL people don't want others to make money off their code.
When I write code I prefer the GPL over other licenses so I don't care if I don't get money from my code. But I can make a considerable amount of money from providing support and consultation for my code and even code I have not written. Sound familiar talk to Redhat and Novel.
However there are proprietary ripoffs of Apache and that is the problem that the GPL tries to defeat.
I fail to see how this is a problem. I can still go and download Apache and use it however I want.
You can download the Apache source and do whatever you want with it but try and sell the now modified code as your own then you may find out what the Law thinks of the Apache License. I think the following applies here:
:)
1 You must give any other recipients of the Work or Derivative Works a copy of this License; and
2 You must cause any modified files to carry prominent notices stating that You changed the files; and
3 You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works; and
Yes there is more, allot more, but RTFL if you want more info.
>How can you ripoff something that is freely given to all
By giving it a new name and removing all references to the original authors?
If found out the original authors or if GPL'd the GPL can litigation on plagiarism. It could cost said company the company.
When I say found out if one person does plagiarise software then it could be difficult to prove since the source code is kept secret by that one person but the more people involved in the development the greater the chance of been found out. Any business that is in for the long haul would be stupid to plagiarise software since the chance of getting found out increases with the number of developers. You only need once developer with a conscience that recognises the code has been stolen and that company is in a world of hurt.
The one with the closed kernel (Windows) has the biggest share, the one with the BSD'd kernel (Mac OS) has the second biggest, and the one with the GPL'd kernel (Linux) has about 1%. Doesn't sound like they're right to me.
You are correct if you are looking at the desktop, however Linux runs on a more appliances than does MS Windows and BSD put together and where do you get 1% and 1% of what and which county? A little serious statistical research will show you that there are 10's of millions of Linux users in the world (Fedora alone accounts for well over 10 million) and that is not just the server room. Don't limit your research to just first world countries and I think you will be surprised.
If I want I can take BSD source, modify and/or add to it providing I keep the BSD license. I can then go on and license that modified code under the GPL (yes even the GPL3). It must be noted that what I have suggested is quite legal and I have not contravened the spirit of the the BSD license. Now the BSD people cry foul and call the GPL viral yet under the spirit of the BSD license I have not done any wrong in fact I have bent over backwards ensuring that the spirit of the BSD license is upheld.
It has got to the point were some BSD license supporters are now suggesting adding to the BSD license stating that their code cannot be put in GPL'd software which kind of goes against the spirit of the BSD license in the first place. If you wish to licence your code under a BSD licence don't be surprise if that code is incorporated under the GPL one day since there is nothing in the BSD license that forbids this.
I am required, by the rules of the GPL, to give my customer the source, and they are allowed to do whatever they want, including give it to others, but if they paid $1,000,000 for it, chances are they're not going to do that.
True, but they might sell it to another would-be customer for $500,000. Which you might not be happy with.
I think the following part of the GPL2 applies here.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and
you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
Any customer who pays something like $500,000 for GPL'd software would have to be particularly dumb and I would not be surprised if the police were after the seller for fraud since $500,000 is a little bit expensive (fair trading act and such) for transferring GPL'd code although that won't stop con artists. On the other hand there are many customers who quite happily pay for service and support., after-all Redhat P/L does not charge for their GPL'd source it only charges for warranty and support which does not contravene the GPL. If you don't want to pay for Redhat code you can use CentOS however your company may still want some software support contact. At least you have a choice.
I suggest you read some modern history on this. One of the main reasons that Nazi Germany never invaded England was he fact that Germany needed air superiority however they did not know how close they came to achieving it and the burning desire of Hitler to invade Soviet Russia above all else. The possible invasion of America was not even a priority although the German submarines had a field day with coastal US shipping in the early weeks just after the US entered WW2.
Even the Japanese had no real intention of invading the US during WW2 since the main thrust of the Japanese attacks was to secure most of SE Asia including the Philippines and Indonesia as well as forcing the US to negotiate an end to hostilities which would be more favourable to the Japanese. Of course this did backfire but it cost many American and Japanese lives.
Australia is the ONLY non-Muslim and non-totalitarian, country that falls under either of those two classifications. Something to think about for you Aussies out there.
I have heard some of the people who want this speak, they are very eloquent and I think they genuinely believe they are doing the right thing. The problem is they keep harping on about the evils of child porn to get their point across to the point where you start to look for that monocle or small moustache.
Together with Iran and Turkey, Malaysia will soon be filtering its Internet content. The common thread among all 3 countries is that the majority of their citizens are Muslims.
It is not just Muslim countries but so called Christian countries as well. The usual excuses are "We want to protect you from child porn", " We need to protect children and young adults (WTF) from inappropriate material" and the best one "Think of the children". Surprisingly if you investigate the people who propose some sort of censorship they will normally be people who genuinely believe they are doing the right thing.
:).
Two quotes come to mind when I hear about any type of censorship are "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" and "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". The only way to combat this infringement of what to me is a fundamental human right is have these people who want censorship investigating a wall covered with graffiti or other such obscene art that people are using for target practice at the time
If you need OrCAD then why not contact other educational organisations and find out if they want to use OrCAD and would prefer this product under a Linux distribution. Since OrCAD is a proprietary product I would assume there is a cost associated with running it. If this is case you could leverage a case for having this product ported to Linux and use a claim like "Well if you don't have a Linux version I guess we have no-choice but to go else-ware". It is amazing what this can do since companies don't like loosing sales however before you go down this track you better have done your homework, otherwise it can backfire.
When I say backfire you may find out that you are the only one that wants to run OrCAD on a Linux distribution and if there are other facilities you may find out that you are the only driving force which could paint a large target on you in an environment that may be very Microsoft centric, so while I would wish you the best of luck please take care.
Many people on Slashdot will recommend free software, however because you are in an educational institution you may find this way can also be risky for you. Personally I would recommend virtualisation with Win XP or even ReactOS (GPL'd Win XP emulator which is still in Alpha Testing) but because you are in a government environment get legal advice from your department first.
I think PC game dev is significantly slowed because of this gen of consoles, with longtime PC proponents finally falling to them (Epic Games, im looking at you! No Gear of war 2 for PC is a shame
This is the dilemma that Microsoft faces now, do they push PC gaming over Xbox360 gaming. Push one over the other then they are dammed in the eyes of the other party so what Microsoft has done (gasp! to their credit) is have a common set of API's which enables games developed for PC's to be ported to the Xbox360 and vice versa. I am quite sure they know that there are dedicated PC gamers that will not touch a console, hence the balancing act.
Personally I think you will see Gears of War 2 ported to the PC but not for at least a year.
I wouldn't say hardware was unimportant, though. The Wii won because of its hardware, clearly. But it needs to be looked at in terms of what the hardware actually brings to the buyer. Higher res? Who cares? Faster refresh? Doesn't matter. Better AI and gameplay? Well, that might help, but it's pretty clear that the 360's and PS3's improved processors aren't being used for that.
The "Wii won"? You can only say that if it's true when the last PS3, Wii and Xbox360 ships. You can say that of their generation the PS1 followed by the PS2 definitely won even though the PS2 has not finished selling yet. Yes the Wii is leading compared to each Xbox and PS3 individually but combined since they are both HD consoles and powerful ones at that, they are selling more than the Wii by approx 3 million world wide. As for better AI well there are some Xbox and PS3 games that aren't that good but most are definitely better than what the Wii has.
As for microphones, vibrations and sensors well most of the current generation consoles are heading in that direction although the Xbox and the PS3 definitely have the advantage since they have already shown that they have the feasibility to do just that. As for sound, is 7.1 good enough? however that entails buying a decent sound system and I can assure you that is not cheap.
Improvements in graphics are mattering less and less.
If that was the case we would all be still playing pong and enjoying it. :)
The problem is that humans have physical limitations such as a hearing limit of approx 20kHz and with 1080p HDTV's you are reaching what the human eye can distinguish unless you are up close and if you are up close you very quickly get a headache. The only area that has potential is smell and touch and that raises some interesting problems. For touch, force feedback comes to mind although how much force begs the question. Smell? well imagine entering a game area that has a huge collection of zombies or a cave full of poison. I will leave the rest to your imagination :~)
But graphics can only be improved so much until you can no longer use it to market your game.
By that I assume that the current 1080p (1920x1080) resolution is good enough for most people up to 60" screen sizes. To get better you would need to double that in both axis again and increase the maximum possible size of the screen which would require a much larger room. Not to say that can't be done but most people don't have a living room that suits a 100" plus screen.
Left 4 Dead, for instance, still sells like hot cakes despite not looking anywhere near as good as Crysis in "full glory", and so does Counter Strike which even in the Source version looks worse than both.
Most people's PC's monitors are less then 24" and many don't even support HP 1080p so even if you did have a larger PC screen with much higher resolution it is going to cost allot more since you will require a more expensive graphics card as well. My son has a full HD 24" 1080p quad core PC with a top (well two years ago) video card and Crysis does not even install even though he has a genuine Win XP OS. Solution pirate the game you have already paid for. Same again for "World in Conflict" and eventually you ask yourself why should I bother paying for a DRM game.
Microsoft just realized what Nintendo already had (and Sony should have after the PS2): that there *is* such thing as "good enough", and that we've reached it already.
Comparing a PS2 game to a PS3 game you can easily see the difference since the PS2 was designed for Standard Definition TV's while the PS3 was for HDTV. I have a backwards compatible PS3 and PS2 games on my HDTV look very good and are still very playable graphically because my PS3 can up-scale and smooth so "good enough" applies here. PS1 games even the good ones do tend to look grainy so they are not acceptable at least to me so there are now only a few PS1 games I would consider playing now so "good enough" does not apply here.
:)
I have a Gamecube and while the games are playable and acceptable on my HDTV (37", 720p) you can pick the reduced graphics quality which does detract from the overall enjoyment of the game. I suppose "good enough" could apply here but I would prefer "just acceptable". So basically if you have a HDTV it is hard to play a game that is made for an SDTV unless that game can be up-scaled and smoothed properly. Unfortunately the larger the HDTV the worse the SDTV graphics looks even when up-scaled and smoothed although "barely acceptable" still comes to mind.
Like it or not HDTV will replace SDTV and people will want HDTV content hence the move to purchasing HDTV ready game machines such as the Xbox360 and the PS3 which together exceed the overall sales of the Wii although not by a huge amount yet.
If good enough was true in games we would all be playing pong and liking it
I do agree with you but there are people who would be quite happy to cheat so they could brag that they actually completed something without cheating.
I was once showing a friend of my son a game that was challenging and great fun to play but it did take some time to complete. This person asked for a cheat so he could have all the stats and weapons without going to the trouble of getting them for himself. He even explained to me that when he played PC games he always made himself invincible and had the highest stats. I did ask what was the point of that since that is just cheating and the only person you really are cheating was yourself. Surprisingly he could not understand what I said and went on to say that it impressed all his friends. Weird I know but the world has some strange people.
If you take sport seriously, can you still call it a game?
Err no, but I would not say that to a fanatic. If you do I hope you have good hospital cover :)
And I plan on missing Windows 7, as well.
It's funny but when I brought my PC it came with Vista Ultimate, so to get in the spirit I backed it up and then proceeded to fully install Fedora 8 on it. Now I have Fedora 11 and I still can't bring myself to put on MS Vista even though I do run Virtualisation and have XP as well as ReactOS (free GPL'd Windows XP) which run surprisingly well just for curiosity. I may yet put on Windows 7 (My work has a legitimate site license we are allowed to use) but only under virtualisation although I am still at a loss on why I want to do this. Before anyone suggests games I prefer console games to PC games so your words mean nothing to me.
Yeah, but they have to actually implement it before they can find out whether it can withstand all the attacks that will be launched against it. That's where it's likely to really cost them. :)
I think the main attack is going to be the voter especially if the opposition groups can get a good logical argument going and definitely not any disobedience which will play into these peoples hands. The problem you have here in Australia is many people vote for a party (Liberal or Labour) not the man and even if you have a minister cultivate a small moustache, wears knee high boots and walks in a funny way many will vote for him because he is a member of the party that that person votes for.
This is the sort of action that slowly erodes basic human freedoms by effectively having the Government gradually take over thinking for you and you really have to be stupid or just plain lazy not to see this. I have seen and heard arguments from various Government ministers on the so called internet monitoring and they initially sound rational with quotes like "Think of the children" and "We are against child porn" but behind the faÃade you really do have to worry.
A very good quote comes to mind here. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance".
Ok that was just a few and it appears that Fedora 11 is a bit behind considering that this distro is fairly cutting edge and IMHO not appropriate for current enterprise usage. The DoD people who suggest really bleeding edge releases appear to have a crystal ball which must tell them that that these releases are fine for their use especially in light of the so called following 2.6.30 kernel exploit . Woops! I think resumes need to be typed up :)
Upgrading a distribution like Fedora is doable but it is strongly recommended you don't. This is not to say Fedora is bad, it is just that you get so many new things moving from one version of Fedora to another it is quicker and safer to actually do a fresh install. For me to do a fresh install takes about 4 hours however this does depend on the amount of data you want to backup. The actual install only takes between 30 minutes to an hour depending on what you wish to install. For the home user of Fedora this is the norm however anyone who uses Fedora in the enterprise needs to get a reality check.
Personally I would say Fedora is for the hacker or for people who are genuinely interested in learning something new and not for the casual Linux user who really should be using a more stable Linux distribution. I have found Fedora 11 is much better than Fedora 10 however there are some minor issues which I knew would occur and that is what the forums are for.
It should go without saying that you back your files up however I think I am very much underestimating that for every Linux user that does not do some sort of backup there would be hundreds of MS Windows users who just don't backup at all.
I use Fedora and while I don't recommend this distribution for the general Linux user it normally works straight off the DVD install (approx 40 minutes). When I say works I mean wireless as well without any hacking. I have not used ndiswrapper for well over two years since I normally use a x86_64 distribution and native 64 bit applications. Using 64 bit allows me to install 32 bit applications if a 64 bit one is not available.
Nearly all the applications I have are native 64 bit and it is extremely easy to keep all of them up to date by using "yum" and the "presto" delta rpm management tools which save anything up to 90% of overall downloads. It must be noted that the Debian and SuSE distributions have similar package management and update tools that work just as well. As for upgrading I don't recommend upgrading Fedora although you can, preferring a fresh install per version, however more stable releases like Ubuntu can be upgraded if required. Still the choice is yours.
As for comparing XP or Vista or Windows 7 against a more popular Linux distribution I would choose Linux everyday since it has IMHO a much more logical file-system structure that lends itself to disaster recovery techniques and when you get into this area Linux/Unix beats MS Windows hands down.
Unfortunately, until Microsoft grow up on this front or someone writes software as powerful as Creative Suite to run on Linux, this is the world many of us are stuck in. :-(
If you want to run a Linux distribution and want to run your favourite MS Windows application just install your Linux distribution and then virtualise MS Windows with your favourite application. You can go the other way if you want but you would have less hassles since you have a better way of delineating the OS to your data and who knows you may actually get to like Linux over MS Windows ;-)
For home use I find Linux will do everything I want and if I need to play "Games for Windows" (I rarely do) then virtualisation works really well. You can even run PhotoShop and other MS centric applications without any issues and the total cost is what you would pay for the Windows versions.
I don't classify myself as a programmer preferring to consult instead. If I have to program my order of preference is Borne/Korn shell followed by Perl then as a last resort C. If there is a need for more esoteric languages I either learn them or just work out what the requirements are and then get a programmer to implement the coding side of the job. Surprisingly you actually get allot more money by delegating responsibility and suffer less stress as well. In addition when the job is complete the consultant gets the praise not the others who probably worked twice as hard for much less pay.
"But that's not fair" I hear people say. When I originally started consulting I tried to do everything and very soon I worked out I was heading for a nervous breakdown if I kept going the way I was. So I quickly learned to delegate responsibility to those people who were better skilled in specific areas. All I had to do was manage people from a technical aspect not as a project manager (they get the greater praise for a successful project but cop it when there are problems) which means I need to consult with all parties and understand what is required and how to go about getting the job done.
Photoshop has enough trouble crashing without adding to the issues. If only The GIMP had a proper interface.
It does try GimpShop .