You can now get the source code for RHN satellite server, however like you said it does cost although if you are managing thousands of machines this is basically nothing compared to what it can do. RHEL5 is not supported because RHEL5 uses yum and if you care to look you can find a yum for RHEL4 which works fine, especially if you want to create your own private "yum" server which if you do your homework may only cost between US$1000 and US$5000 (could even do it cheaper but you do get what you pay for).
In a enterprise situation a few thousand dollars is small change so if this can save time and provide greater reliability then the money is well spent or in some case wasted.
Redhat 6/7? How long ago was that? See the following release dates I think you will find Redhat has improved since 1999/2000.
Professional Redhat releases RHEL2.1 (26 Mar 02), RH3 (22 Oct 03) through RHEL3.U9, RH4 (15 Feb 05) through RHEL4.U6 and now RHEL5 (14 Mar 07) through RHEL5.U2 although the above link does provide more information.
If people want a Linux distribution that has full software support they either go to Redhat or Novel (SuSE). There are firms that will provide support but the Redhat followed by Novel have the lion's share of the market.
Actually when using Redhat yum is only standard when you have RHEL5 although if you like you can put yum on RHEL4 (I have not tried this on 2 or 3) and it does work. As for auto updates this may be fine for the home user (like Microsoft update) but definately not for any business where any update must be done by hand only after the requites approval is given. Just updating without any formal approval such as a change request or even an email from the appropriate person to do this is just plain stupid.
It is very easy to setup and configure a private "yum" repository that can be customised for the business and by doing this you can have the latest "base" releases and the latest updates. In fact it is easy to lock an update and over a few days or even months update all appropriate machines to exactly the same update. The only downside is you may need a few hundred GB of disk space (mirrored or at least Raid 5). Any firm that will quibble over a few hundred dollars for the extra disk space and a possible thousand dollars for the yum server which can be used for other things as well is too cheap to even be in business.
You know, not everyone has non-production servers. Every server we have IS production. And if you are paying for Red Hat Enterprise, you expect Red Hat to have tested these updates themselves. If this was a Microsoft error, Slashdot would be all over Microsoft for allowing this to happen.
Any firm that requires computers and does not provide a non-production environment is asking to have problems. To these firms I ask a simple question "What price do you place on your data and how long can you afford to have your system(s) down while your IT people do maintenance? Another question I normally ask is do you have an IT disaster recovery plan in place such as backups and have you tested them?
I can ask lots more but I suppose the best question to ask is does your firm have a "change request" system and if it does why do you blindly update all systems without testing. Just paying for as subscription does not absolve the customer from exercising professional care.
And the Wii can handle jaw-dropping graphics. Played Mario Galaxy lately? Hell, I can think of PS2 and Gamecube games that have jaw-dropping graphics.
Yes I have played Mario Galaxy at a friends house and it does not look all that good graphically on a large HDTV although it does look fine on a smaller SDTV. I have a smaller 720p HDTV (37") so Gamecube and PS2 games have acceptable graphics on it since it actually upscales the game to 580p (PAL) but this is nothing compared to a PS3 game (or Xbox 360 for that matter) or even to a backwards compatible PS3 playing a PS2 game.
The Wii is fine for smaller TV's (HD or even SD) but once you have a 40" or more HDTV you start to see it's graphical limitations. Of course if your game has cartoony characters then it is possible to display acceptably on larger HDTV's.
That and the fact that FF is really not a franchise for casual gamers... it doesn't really cater to the Wii audience regardless of how large that audience is.
As of March 31, 2008, Twilight Princess sold 4.52 million copies on the Wii.
Actually "Twilight Princess" came out for the Gamecube first and was ported to the Wii as was Resident Evil 4 which was also ported to the PS2 and then the Wii. The actual graphics on the Wii are the same as the Gamecube in that they are for Standard Definition TV while the graphics of the PS3 and Xbox 360 can display on SDTV to 720p and 1080p HDTV.
The Wii's graphics like the Gamecube's are not that much better than the PS2's graphics although they are still quite nice on a SDTV and even a smaller upscaling HDTV. If you have a cartoony game the graphics can look quite acceptable even on a larger upscaling HDTV, however more detailed games are not that great graphically on a larger HDTV.
...but I can't think of any reasons to buy PS3 anymore. Metal gear solids seem to be the only one as I don't really have need for Blue ray now (if I have in a few years, they will propably be cheaper by that time anyways).
I guess that means you don't have a PS3 although you may have a PS2 or PS1 so I suppose that makes you a Sony fanboy. If you don't want a PS3 it's fine by me but to say what you just said because of one game sort of puts into the trolling category.
FF7 which came out originally on the PS1 was eventually ported to the PC (can't say how good it was) which means that it was ported to a Microsoft OS. Is porting FFX111 to the Xbox 360 that much different? Also FFX111 is almost a year away (maybe) and it is not coming out for the Xbox 360 in Japan due to it's abysmal install base. Most likely the US will get it first since the Xbox 360 leads the PS3 by over 5 million, however in Europe (ie. Others) the Xbox 360 is loosing ground rapidly (less than 700,000) to the PS3, however localisations make distribution in Europe more difficult.
The game is still coming out on the PS3 and now it will come out on the Xbox 360 and it will be interesting to see which machine gets the most sales of FFX111. Personally I don't care since I have no intention of paying over AU$100 for the game (in the US you will most likely get it for US$60) and our dollar is almost on par with the US dollar. Even Wii games which should be cheaper are about the same price of equivalent Xbox 360 and PS3 games (talk about price gouging).
Right, because no other company ever makes lock in. Nope, I'm just imagining memory sticks, atrac audio codec, minidiscs, UMDs and all that jazz.
The memory stick and the Minidisk is not just made by Sony it is licensed to other manufacturers as well. Many PC's have SD, Memory Stick and CF adaptors. ATRAC is a Sony proprietary codec and if you care to look there are many other proprietary codecs that have patents on them including some by Microsoft. Basically all vendors try to lock the consumer to their product and Microsoft is IMHO one of the worst for doing this.
As for UMD that is a proprietary Sony format however it is mainly used for the PSP since people could not see the point of buying movies on this disk. UMD has done surprisingly well since it is relatively cheap to produce and stores approx 1.8GB which is fine for the PSP. Of course you could put a game on a memory card (now) but this would still add significantly to the cost to the game.
Or Resident Evil IV, or Metroid Prime (ooh, gonna step on some shoes there).
Jesus, those games suck. I mean suck, suck suck. HARD. And no, I'm not just bitching about the controls; these games would suck on a PC too, though they'd at least be a bit less painful to slog through.
Halo, too, for that matter.
I have played RE 1V on the PS2 and the BC PS3 and the difference is amazing since the PS3 does enhance the graphics. The game play of RE4 is different compared to other RE games even though I actually liked them all since they actually were different. Personally I liked two and three the best.
Personally I thought Metroid for the Gamecube was fairly innovative and really fun and vastly different to the NES and SNES side-scrolling platform versions however I lost interest after that. The same with Zelda. I liked Zelda I and Zelda II (IMHO it was significantly different) while Zelda on the SNES was sort of like Zelda I (I still liked it though, but to me something was missing) then came the first Zelda for the Gamecube which IMHO reinvented Zelda but releases after that while different where not that much different. Don't get me started on Mario.
I have played the PC version of Halo and IMHO it was an adrenaline rush for the first hour but I rapidly lost interest after that. That is normally my attitude to most FPS games however if you like them then fine.
The point I am trying to make here is many games suffer from too much milking with the fist game normally being the best, however I suppose the attitude of the gaming house is if games one, two and three sell well then four, five and six... etc will really rake in the money and yes Nintendo I am looking at you although to be fair many gaming house do this. Still until people stop buying the latest rehashed game then we are going to have to put up with these clones.
Yeah, but console games sometimes suffer from what I like to call, "console vision." The game worlds are limited and confining, possibly due to shoehorning PC genres into a console control scheme.
With the Xbox 360 and the PS3 the line between console gaming and PC gaming is blurring significantly however it really comes down to the individual gamer and their tastes in games. Personally I think the PC still excels in first person shooters, strategy and massively multi-player on-line RPG's while the console is excellent for action adventure, sport, racing and Japanese RPG's to name a few.
While PC games can display at a much higher resolution than a console game which can only go to 1920 x 1080 since that is the maximum HDTV standard. It is not that common to see PC monitors much over 22" while HDTV can easily exceed 55" although the average HDTV would be around 40". For the PC user to get incredible resolution they normally requires a decent (read expensive) graphics card and a game that can output that resolution. In addition a console gamer will normally play two to four meters (read yards for those in the US) from the screen while a PC gamer plays with a meter or yard of the screen.
To sum up if you are a PC gamer then great and if you are a console game then great.
Actually the PS2 game called "Oni" and now the PS3 "Haze" (never played it) has drug usage. I wonder how these got passed by the censor. Of course you can look at most games that have "herbs" (eg Final Fantasy and Resident Evil) or those healing orbs (god knows what's inside of them) and medical packs and you have some sort of drug reference implied:-)
The problem is that game censorship in Australia only goes to R15+ which still falls into the Child category. The only way to get games that are adult is to have a R18+ category however the present Government (Labour) as well as the previous Government (Liberal) don't appear to be interested in passing legislation for a R18+ category. It is not intransigence on the part of the gaming lobby groups since they really want this category it is the Government.
Of course (puts on tin-foil hat) all Governments appear to like the "think of the children" slogan which can be a good vote getter, so if you can prevent or stall an R18+ classification the Government can milk the save the children platform (or rant) for all it's worth then they are perceived as protecting society.
That is why IMHO I think most Government officials are "Technological Cretins" (we like to call them "idiots" and other more colourful words as well).
You already pipe methane into your house and haul around ~100kg of gasoline everywhere you go. You're worried about . . . . what exactly?
Try turning on (please don't) your house gas and after a short time light a match then if you survive try the same thing with opening a can of petrol in a closed garage and lighting a match. The petrol explosion while spectacular will not look anywhere as good as the methane or natural gas one. If you somehow survive this try the same experiment with hydrogen. The resulting explosion will be very spectacular it will most likely get your neighbours involved as well:-)
On a scale of 1 to 10 diesel fumes (if you could stand the smell) would be a 1 while petrol fumes would be a 3, methane and natural gas would be a 6 and hydrogen would be a 10. Of course these are fairly rubbery figures but I would not like to be anywhere near when someone provides a flammable source, although it would be a great way of giving up smoking.
Since I brought up smell the following list may save your life.
Diesel fumes - fairly strong walk away.
Petrol fumes - strong but some people get addicted to it - run or stagger away.
Methane - no smell - you won't even know your going to die.
Natural and town gas - additives added so you can smell it - run away.
Hydrogen - no smell - ignited with oxygen in an enclosed space results in water plus a demolished building. Again you won't even know your going to die.
Actually earlier versions of KDE were actually nicer and much more functional than windows 2000. if you look at the the task bar on OS-X you could at one stage do something similar with KDE using the small to tiny task bar. For KDE things have changed and IMHO not for the better.
Annoyances of KDE 4:
Where is the auto hide setting for the task bar (easy to set in 3.5 back)?
Why use a widget to position the task bar when you could drag it in 3.5 back?
Even if you position the task bar why don't the fonts on the task bar auto scale (3.5 back did)?
The KDE designers appear to have the "new" KDE look like MS Windows. Again why since you could always change the look and feel to MS windows if you wanted to?
I personally found KDE 3.5 quite nice to use, however when I updated to Fedora 9 I got KDE 4.0 beta which had IMHO annoying features associated with the fonts on the panel not scaling when I put the panel on my right hand side of the screen (does the same thing on the left as well). Top and bottom is ok but not have you did a left or right switch. What I disliked was the fact you could not grab the bar with your mouse and move it like you could with KDE 3.5 (and all other versions of KDE), instead you needed to pop-up a small window that allowed you to do this. There were other annoyances as well but the font scaling was IMHO the worst.
I recently updated my KDE on my Fedora 9 OS to kdebase-4.0.5-4.fc9.x86_64 and it still has the same "annoying" features that caused me to switch to Gnome. Maybe I am being too hard but I have used KDE since 1999 (Intel and Alpha machines) and have never found issue till now.
I have never had a crash with the new version of KDE but then again I have not persevered long enough to see a crash, instead I am back on Gnome again (Sigh!).
Please note I prefer KDE (at least 3.5) over Gnome however I don't care which session manager (there are others as well) I use just so long as it works and IMHO KDE version 4 definately needs some work.
In the comments I could not find anyone who had a problem. There are plenty who are upset and nervous about upgrading or just waiting on a so called "fix", but I could not find anyone who's PS3 had been bricked.
I did the 2.4 update on my PAL 60GB PS2 backwards compatible model yesterday and did not have any issues. My son played GTA4 for a few hours today and again no problems. We even tested in-game XMB and it works fine.
I found that in-game XMB does not work with PS1 and PS2 games. You can only stop the game and if you want you can change the virtual memory card or even select a different controller then get back to the game, however you have been able to do this for PS1 and PS2 games for quite some time now. Personally I don't have any problems with this.
It would be interesting to look at the stats on what PS3 models actually had issues and in what numbers.
Yikes. With consoles becoming more complex and more like computers with each generation, it looks like issues like this will become all too common. How long before someone brings a PS3 backup utility to market?
Why? All you do is plug in your usb disk or Flash card (if you have the model that supports this) and backup (selected from the XMB). Recovery is no issue as well (also selected from the XMB).
Like anything with storage you should back it up regularly.
Except after playing roughly 10 games you will have filled your 40GB hard drive with the mandatory-to-play files. 4.5GB install to play Assassins Creed? So now you've filled up the hard drive and have to buy a new one that's bigger and install it yourself. While most of us on/. can do it, the average player can't. Way to go SONY.
Very few PS3 games require much in the way of cashing files. I have the 60GB PAL version and I have only used up 20GB (mostly demo games) even after a year. If you look in the manual you can follow the pictures on how to change your hard drive or if you are the type of person who can't do this (you know, the 12:00 o'clock flasher people) then you can always pay the kid next door to do it for you.
In Australia I can get an 80GB disk for AU$43, a 250GB disk for AU95 to a 320GB disk for AU$139 so I am sure you can get a better price in the USA since AU1.00 is approx equal US$0.958.
Automatic updates may be ok for the novice or the person who has no interest in knowing what is being updated until it is actually updated.
The problem you have in the enterprise is the IT mangers need to know what is being updated and talk to the appropriate application people so they can get approval to do the actual update. In the majority of cases you are going to find a vendor who is not willing to support a particular update so you end up with a political mess on your hands.
From the Redhat, Fedora or Centos side it is very easy to setup and maintain an in-house yum server so that you can "lock-in" a specific set of updates from which acceptance tests can be run and once accepted the same updates are then requested by each client. This may take a few months between testing, final acceptance and eventual update roll-out, in the meantime no new updates are are accepted. Then the cycle repeats.
Sounds silly but large corporations insist on this and the Redhat Satellite server was one of the best ways of doing this, however it was not a cheap solution. Since Redhat decided to use yum (RHEL5 on) the Satellite solution can now be replaced by a yum server although some companies with huge amounts of Linux machines could still benefit from the Satellite solution.
I am not quite sure if Redhat supports yum on RHEl4 but the packages can be got from Redhat and they do work. Using yum (not that much different to using apt-get or yast) is very easy and you can vet what you are going to update as well as preventing some applications from being updated such as "Java" and "MySQL" which can result in embarrassing moments if these are updated and the MySQL application does not support the later release.
If you are paying for RHEL 4 then you most likely have a server and you don't need a browser or GUI for a server. If you are using RHEL4 for your desktop again I would question your reasoning for using RHEL4 why would you not use CentOS 5 or if you want to pay, RHEL5 both of which have been out for some time now and you can easily get the latest updates from the appropriate repositories. Upgrading a desktop is so much easier (approx one hour) than upgrading a server considering the politics involved.
If anyone's to blame here, it's your "third party tool" vendor because they're locking you into a distribution that rapidly becoming unsupported by the rest of the world.
Wow, I'm sure glad that Linux users avoid all that "DLL Hell" I keep hearing about on Windows.
Yeah, yeah, mod me down...
You do deserve to be modded down but there is some element of truth in what you have said since many people don't have any idea how updating works on Linux thinking that anything can be installed.
If you have a good updater and package manager then installs and upgrades are easy however if you want to grab say an "rpm" file from "some site" (the Microsoft users lament) and expect to just install it then IMHO you are in for a world of pain.
Even with an updater you have to be careful on your choice of repositories. I use Fedora and by default I only use the normal repos however I do have another repo called "livna" which I enable when I want video drivers and codecs. I try and avoid other repo sites since some of them can cause problems although if I need them I only use them for specific packages and even then I find it safer to just get the source and compile it.
While I don't expect a first time Linux user to be on top of all things Linux I always suggest going to the appropriate forums and some of the "how to" web sites. A little bit of common sense can go along way and if after installing an application from a site it does not work and no one can help I would always suggest you give up (if you are keen get the source) and look for something similar that works. Definitely remove the offending package though (--nodeps can be your friend here).
Since RHEL5/CentOS 5 has been out for quite some time, RHEL4 and variants are considered legacy OSes in many circles, especially when it comes to the fast-changing world of the Linux desktop. And this is why most OSS is not suitable for enterprise environments. That is not just a problem with Linux it is a problem with all OS's. You find in many medium to large corporations it is very hard to arrange to apply patches or updates, as for upgrading try to convince management that their multi-million dollar machine has to be shut-down for 4 hours just to upgrade the OS.
At least with Linux you can run updates live without even shutting down the machine although a new kernel does require a reboot (normally about 15 minutes - depends on the application) before it takes effect. What I normally do now is set-up a corporate "yum" (most sites I manage/consult with use Redhat) server to manage updates. This is very easy to set-up and manage and appears to work well.
The problem you nearly always get with doing OS upgrades is with the vendor only supporting a particular OS version and patch/revision level. When this happens you are stuffed.
To just try and install the latest release of an application on an older version of an OS is IMHO stupid you are going to run into so many incompatibility problems it is not worth it. Just about all Linux distributions use a package manager and updater (yum, apt-get, yast) and if that updater does not install the latest version of Firefox with the correct dependencies then you have to consider an OS upgrade or baring that forget about it. If you have a server why would you even consider upgrading the browser anyway?
As for a Linux desktop I would strongly suggest an upgrade if you can. Example: Fedora 8 to Fedora 9 fresh install. 1) One hour to backup. 2) One hour to install Fedora 9 from first principles. 3) One hour to recover data. 4) 30 min for minor customisation or if you don't like this you can take approx 1 hour to just upgrade. Most of the time you are waiting and the same would be true for other Linux distributions.
Using YUM on Fedora 9 successfully updates to the latest release of Firefox (the performance really has improved) but if it did not I would not worry about it. Now if only KDE 4 would be more stable so I could go back to it:-)
I sort of agree with limiting or dropping Redhat support however your IT person better be in good with management and knows how to properly manage a Linux environment. If you are managing a small Linux environment then just about any reasonable distribution will do, however if the environment is part of a large corporation's IT structure then I would not like to be the IT manager to go to the business and tell them that we only need limited (it is possible to justify this) or no support (good luck) for our Redhat or Novel Linux machines. Even worse recommending a non-commercial Linux for a large commercial installation would IMHO be corporate IT suicide so if this is the case I hope your CV is up to date.
Actually no matter which distribution of Linux you have you should never run the GUI if your Linux machines are servers so you should not care about upgrading Firefox on these machines anyway. Use the normal updates and if they do upgrade then hopefully you won't have any issues.
I run Fedora 9 (no dual boot) on my laptop and have successfully upgraded to Firefox 3 ("yum update firefox") but then again my machine is not only a server and a personal computer I actually own it so I don't care what the corporate world thinks. At work I do care and from a corporate perspective if you put on a commercial Linux (Redhat or SuSE) then the company will buy licenses and I don't get any flack for this stance, in fact I actually get praise for doing this.
On a side note I noticed you mentioned RHEL4. You do realise that you can run YUM on this distribution to a YUM server which need not be Redhat (we use CentOS 5.1). This is very useful when you can go to management and suggest that you have the ability of "locked" upgrades (eg RHEL4 U6 or even a specific day) to all machines. This does go down well with corporations although I would still strongly suggest a support contact even it is limited and it actually can assist in removing any finger pointing at you from management.
Slashdot Mirror
You can now get the source code for RHN satellite server, however like you said it does cost although if you are managing thousands of machines this is basically nothing compared to what it can do. RHEL5 is not supported because RHEL5 uses yum and if you care to look you can find a yum for RHEL4 which works fine, especially if you want to create your own private "yum" server which if you do your homework may only cost between US$1000 and US$5000 (could even do it cheaper but you do get what you pay for).
In a enterprise situation a few thousand dollars is small change so if this can save time and provide greater reliability then the money is well spent or in some case wasted.
Redhat 6/7? How long ago was that? See the following release dates I think you will find Redhat has improved since 1999/2000.
Professional Redhat releases RHEL2.1 (26 Mar 02), RH3 (22 Oct 03) through RHEL3.U9, RH4 (15 Feb 05) through RHEL4.U6 and now RHEL5 (14 Mar 07) through RHEL5.U2 although the above link does provide more information.
If people want a Linux distribution that has full software support they either go to Redhat or Novel (SuSE). There are firms that will provide support but the Redhat followed by Novel have the lion's share of the market.
Actually when using Redhat yum is only standard when you have RHEL5 although if you like you can put yum on RHEL4 (I have not tried this on 2 or 3) and it does work. As for auto updates this may be fine for the home user (like Microsoft update) but definately not for any business where any update must be done by hand only after the requites approval is given. Just updating without any formal approval such as a change request or even an email from the appropriate person to do this is just plain stupid.
It is very easy to setup and configure a private "yum" repository that can be customised for the business and by doing this you can have the latest "base" releases and the latest updates. In fact it is easy to lock an update and over a few days or even months update all appropriate machines to exactly the same update. The only downside is you may need a few hundred GB of disk space (mirrored or at least Raid 5). Any firm that will quibble over a few hundred dollars for the extra disk space and a possible thousand dollars for the yum server which can be used for other things as well is too cheap to even be in business.
You know, not everyone has non-production servers. Every server we have IS production. And if you are paying for Red Hat Enterprise, you expect Red Hat to have tested these updates themselves. If this was a Microsoft error, Slashdot would be all over Microsoft for allowing this to happen.
Any firm that requires computers and does not provide a non-production environment is asking to have problems. To these firms I ask a simple question "What price do you place on your data and how long can you afford to have your system(s) down while your IT people do maintenance? Another question I normally ask is do you have an IT disaster recovery plan in place such as backups and have you tested them?
I can ask lots more but I suppose the best question to ask is does your firm have a "change request" system and if it does why do you blindly update all systems without testing. Just paying for as subscription does not absolve the customer from exercising professional care.
And the Wii can handle jaw-dropping graphics. Played Mario Galaxy lately? Hell, I can think of PS2 and Gamecube games that have jaw-dropping graphics.
Yes I have played Mario Galaxy at a friends house and it does not look all that good graphically on a large HDTV although it does look fine on a smaller SDTV. I have a smaller 720p HDTV (37") so Gamecube and PS2 games have acceptable graphics on it since it actually upscales the game to 580p (PAL) but this is nothing compared to a PS3 game (or Xbox 360 for that matter) or even to a backwards compatible PS3 playing a PS2 game.
The Wii is fine for smaller TV's (HD or even SD) but once you have a 40" or more HDTV you start to see it's graphical limitations. Of course if your game has cartoony characters then it is possible to display acceptably on larger HDTV's.
That and the fact that FF is really not a franchise for casual gamers... it doesn't really cater to the Wii audience regardless of how large that audience is.
As of March 31, 2008, Twilight Princess sold 4.52 million copies on the Wii.
Actually "Twilight Princess" came out for the Gamecube first and was ported to the Wii as was Resident Evil 4 which was also ported to the PS2 and then the Wii. The actual graphics on the Wii are the same as the Gamecube in that they are for Standard Definition TV while the graphics of the PS3 and Xbox 360 can display on SDTV to 720p and 1080p HDTV.
The Wii's graphics like the Gamecube's are not that much better than the PS2's graphics although they are still quite nice on a SDTV and even a smaller upscaling HDTV. If you have a cartoony game the graphics can look quite acceptable even on a larger upscaling HDTV, however more detailed games are not that great graphically on a larger HDTV.
...but I can't think of any reasons to buy PS3 anymore. Metal gear solids seem to be the only one as I don't really have need for Blue ray now (if I have in a few years, they will propably be cheaper by that time anyways).
I guess that means you don't have a PS3 although you may have a PS2 or PS1 so I suppose that makes you a Sony fanboy. If you don't want a PS3 it's fine by me but to say what you just said because of one game sort of puts into the trolling category.
FF7 which came out originally on the PS1 was eventually ported to the PC (can't say how good it was) which means that it was ported to a Microsoft OS. Is porting FFX111 to the Xbox 360 that much different? Also FFX111 is almost a year away (maybe) and it is not coming out for the Xbox 360 in Japan due to it's abysmal install base. Most likely the US will get it first since the Xbox 360 leads the PS3 by over 5 million, however in Europe (ie. Others) the Xbox 360 is loosing ground rapidly (less than 700,000) to the PS3, however localisations make distribution in Europe more difficult.
The game is still coming out on the PS3 and now it will come out on the Xbox 360 and it will be interesting to see which machine gets the most sales of FFX111. Personally I don't care since I have no intention of paying over AU$100 for the game (in the US you will most likely get it for US$60) and our dollar is almost on par with the US dollar. Even Wii games which should be cheaper are about the same price of equivalent Xbox 360 and PS3 games (talk about price gouging).
Right, because no other company ever makes lock in. Nope, I'm just imagining memory sticks, atrac audio codec, minidiscs, UMDs and all that jazz.
The memory stick and the Minidisk is not just made by Sony it is licensed to other manufacturers as well. Many PC's have SD, Memory Stick and CF adaptors. ATRAC is a Sony proprietary codec and if you care to look there are many other proprietary codecs that have patents on them including some by Microsoft. Basically all vendors try to lock the consumer to their product and Microsoft is IMHO one of the worst for doing this.
As for UMD that is a proprietary Sony format however it is mainly used for the PSP since people could not see the point of buying movies on this disk. UMD has done surprisingly well since it is relatively cheap to produce and stores approx 1.8GB which is fine for the PSP. Of course you could put a game on a memory card (now) but this would still add significantly to the cost to the game.
Or Resident Evil IV, or Metroid Prime (ooh, gonna step on some shoes there).
Jesus, those games suck. I mean suck, suck suck. HARD. And no, I'm not just bitching about the controls; these games would suck on a PC too, though they'd at least be a bit less painful to slog through.
Halo, too, for that matter.
I have played RE 1V on the PS2 and the BC PS3 and the difference is amazing since the PS3 does enhance the graphics. The game play of RE4 is different compared to other RE games even though I actually liked them all since they actually were different. Personally I liked two and three the best.
... etc will really rake in the money and yes Nintendo I am looking at you although to be fair many gaming house do this. Still until people stop buying the latest rehashed game then we are going to have to put up with these clones.
Personally I thought Metroid for the Gamecube was fairly innovative and really fun and vastly different to the NES and SNES side-scrolling platform versions however I lost interest after that. The same with Zelda. I liked Zelda I and Zelda II (IMHO it was significantly different) while Zelda on the SNES was sort of like Zelda I (I still liked it though, but to me something was missing) then came the first Zelda for the Gamecube which IMHO reinvented Zelda but releases after that while different where not that much different. Don't get me started on Mario.
I have played the PC version of Halo and IMHO it was an adrenaline rush for the first hour but I rapidly lost interest after that. That is normally my attitude to most FPS games however if you like them then fine.
The point I am trying to make here is many games suffer from too much milking with the fist game normally being the best, however I suppose the attitude of the gaming house is if games one, two and three sell well then four, five and six
Yeah, but console games sometimes suffer from what I like to call, "console vision." The game worlds are limited and confining, possibly due to shoehorning PC genres into a console control scheme.
With the Xbox 360 and the PS3 the line between console gaming and PC gaming is blurring significantly however it really comes down to the individual gamer and their tastes in games. Personally I think the PC still excels in first person shooters, strategy and massively multi-player on-line RPG's while the console is excellent for action adventure, sport, racing and Japanese RPG's to name a few.
While PC games can display at a much higher resolution than a console game which can only go to 1920 x 1080 since that is the maximum HDTV standard. It is not that common to see PC monitors much over 22" while HDTV can easily exceed 55" although the average HDTV would be around 40". For the PC user to get incredible resolution they normally requires a decent (read expensive) graphics card and a game that can output that resolution. In addition a console gamer will normally play two to four meters (read yards for those in the US) from the screen while a PC gamer plays with a meter or yard of the screen.
To sum up if you are a PC gamer then great and if you are a console game then great.
Actually the PS2 game called "Oni" and now the PS3 "Haze" (never played it) has drug usage. I wonder how these got passed by the censor. Of course you can look at most games that have "herbs" (eg Final Fantasy and Resident Evil) or those healing orbs (god knows what's inside of them) and medical packs and you have some sort of drug reference implied :-)
The problem is that game censorship in Australia only goes to R15+ which still falls into the Child category. The only way to get games that are adult is to have a R18+ category however the present Government (Labour) as well as the previous Government (Liberal) don't appear to be interested in passing legislation for a R18+ category. It is not intransigence on the part of the gaming lobby groups since they really want this category it is the Government.
Of course (puts on tin-foil hat) all Governments appear to like the "think of the children" slogan which can be a good vote getter, so if you can prevent or stall an R18+ classification the Government can milk the save the children platform (or rant) for all it's worth then they are perceived as protecting society.
That is why IMHO I think most Government officials are "Technological Cretins" (we like to call them "idiots" and other more colourful words as well).
You already pipe methane into your house and haul around ~100kg of gasoline everywhere you go. You're worried about . . . . what exactly?
Try turning on (please don't) your house gas and after a short time light a match then if you survive try the same thing with opening a can of petrol in a closed garage and lighting a match. The petrol explosion while spectacular will not look anywhere as good as the methane or natural gas one. If you somehow survive this try the same experiment with hydrogen. The resulting explosion will be very spectacular it will most likely get your neighbours involved as well :-)
On a scale of 1 to 10 diesel fumes (if you could stand the smell) would be a 1 while petrol fumes would be a 3, methane and natural gas would be a 6 and hydrogen would be a 10. Of course these are fairly rubbery figures but I would not like to be anywhere near when someone provides a flammable source, although it would be a great way of giving up smoking.
Since I brought up smell the following list may save your life.
Actually earlier versions of KDE were actually nicer and much more functional than windows 2000. if you look at the the task bar on OS-X you could at one stage do something similar with KDE using the small to tiny task bar. For KDE things have changed and IMHO not for the better.
Annoyances of KDE 4:
Where is the auto hide setting for the task bar (easy to set in 3.5 back)?
Why use a widget to position the task bar when you could drag it in 3.5 back?
Even if you position the task bar why don't the fonts on the task bar auto scale (3.5 back did)?
The KDE designers appear to have the "new" KDE look like MS Windows. Again why since you could always change the look and feel to MS windows if you wanted to?
I personally found KDE 3.5 quite nice to use, however when I updated to Fedora 9 I got KDE 4.0 beta which had IMHO annoying features associated with the fonts on the panel not scaling when I put the panel on my right hand side of the screen (does the same thing on the left as well). Top and bottom is ok but not have you did a left or right switch. What I disliked was the fact you could not grab the bar with your mouse and move it like you could with KDE 3.5 (and all other versions of KDE), instead you needed to pop-up a small window that allowed you to do this. There were other annoyances as well but the font scaling was IMHO the worst.
I recently updated my KDE on my Fedora 9 OS to kdebase-4.0.5-4.fc9.x86_64 and it still has the same "annoying" features that caused me to switch to Gnome. Maybe I am being too hard but I have used KDE since 1999 (Intel and Alpha machines) and have never found issue till now.
I have never had a crash with the new version of KDE but then again I have not persevered long enough to see a crash, instead I am back on Gnome again (Sigh!).
Please note I prefer KDE (at least 3.5) over Gnome however I don't care which session manager (there are others as well) I use just so long as it works and IMHO KDE version 4 definately needs some work.
http://kotaku.com/5021575/sony-pulls-ps3-240-firmware-after-reported-problems Looks like it needs a bit more QA.
In the comments I could not find anyone who had a problem. There are plenty who are upset and nervous about upgrading or just waiting on a so called "fix", but I could not find anyone who's PS3 had been bricked.
I did the 2.4 update on my PAL 60GB PS2 backwards compatible model yesterday and did not have any issues. My son played GTA4 for a few hours today and again no problems. We even tested in-game XMB and it works fine.
I found that in-game XMB does not work with PS1 and PS2 games. You can only stop the game and if you want you can change the virtual memory card or even select a different controller then get back to the game, however you have been able to do this for PS1 and PS2 games for quite some time now. Personally I don't have any problems with this.
It would be interesting to look at the stats on what PS3 models actually had issues and in what numbers.
Yikes. With consoles becoming more complex and more like computers with each generation, it looks like issues like this will become all too common. How long before someone brings a PS3 backup utility to market?
Why? All you do is plug in your usb disk or Flash card (if you have the model that supports this) and backup (selected from the XMB). Recovery is no issue as well (also selected from the XMB).
Like anything with storage you should back it up regularly.
Except after playing roughly 10 games you will have filled your 40GB hard drive with the mandatory-to-play files. 4.5GB install to play Assassins Creed? So now you've filled up the hard drive and have to buy a new one that's bigger and install it yourself. While most of us on /. can do it, the average player can't. Way to go SONY.
Very few PS3 games require much in the way of cashing files. I have the 60GB PAL version and I have only used up 20GB (mostly demo games) even after a year. If you look in the manual you can follow the pictures on how to change your hard drive or if you are the type of person who can't do this (you know, the 12:00 o'clock flasher people) then you can always pay the kid next door to do it for you.
In Australia I can get an 80GB disk for AU$43, a 250GB disk for AU95 to a 320GB disk for AU$139 so I am sure you can get a better price in the USA since AU1.00 is approx equal US$0.958.
Automatic updates may be ok for the novice or the person who has no interest in knowing what is being updated until it is actually updated.
The problem you have in the enterprise is the IT mangers need to know what is being updated and talk to the appropriate application people so they can get approval to do the actual update. In the majority of cases you are going to find a vendor who is not willing to support a particular update so you end up with a political mess on your hands.
From the Redhat, Fedora or Centos side it is very easy to setup and maintain an in-house yum server so that you can "lock-in" a specific set of updates from which acceptance tests can be run and once accepted the same updates are then requested by each client. This may take a few months between testing, final acceptance and eventual update roll-out, in the meantime no new updates are are accepted. Then the cycle repeats.
Sounds silly but large corporations insist on this and the Redhat Satellite server was one of the best ways of doing this, however it was not a cheap solution. Since Redhat decided to use yum (RHEL5 on) the Satellite solution can now be replaced by a yum server although some companies with huge amounts of Linux machines could still benefit from the Satellite solution.
I am not quite sure if Redhat supports yum on RHEl4 but the packages can be got from Redhat and they do work. Using yum (not that much different to using apt-get or yast) is very easy and you can vet what you are going to update as well as preventing some applications from being updated such as "Java" and "MySQL" which can result in embarrassing moments if these are updated and the MySQL application does not support the later release.
If you are paying for RHEL 4 then you most likely have a server and you don't need a browser or GUI for a server. If you are using RHEL4 for your desktop again I would question your reasoning for using RHEL4 why would you not use CentOS 5 or if you want to pay, RHEL5 both of which have been out for some time now and you can easily get the latest updates from the appropriate repositories. Upgrading a desktop is so much easier (approx one hour) than upgrading a server considering the politics involved.
Wow, I'm sure glad that Linux users avoid all that "DLL Hell" I keep hearing about on Windows.
Yeah, yeah, mod me down...
You do deserve to be modded down but there is some element of truth in what you have said since many people don't have any idea how updating works on Linux thinking that anything can be installed.If you have a good updater and package manager then installs and upgrades are easy however if you want to grab say an "rpm" file from "some site" (the Microsoft users lament) and expect to just install it then IMHO you are in for a world of pain.
Even with an updater you have to be careful on your choice of repositories. I use Fedora and by default I only use the normal repos however I do have another repo called "livna" which I enable when I want video drivers and codecs. I try and avoid other repo sites since some of them can cause problems although if I need them I only use them for specific packages and even then I find it safer to just get the source and compile it.
While I don't expect a first time Linux user to be on top of all things Linux I always suggest going to the appropriate forums and some of the "how to" web sites. A little bit of common sense can go along way and if after installing an application from a site it does not work and no one can help I would always suggest you give up (if you are keen get the source) and look for something similar that works. Definitely remove the offending package though (--nodeps can be your friend here).
At least with Linux you can run updates live without even shutting down the machine although a new kernel does require a reboot (normally about 15 minutes - depends on the application) before it takes effect. What I normally do now is set-up a corporate "yum" (most sites I manage/consult with use Redhat) server to manage updates. This is very easy to set-up and manage and appears to work well.
The problem you nearly always get with doing OS upgrades is with the vendor only supporting a particular OS version and patch/revision level. When this happens you are stuffed.
To just try and install the latest release of an application on an older version of an OS is IMHO stupid you are going to run into so many incompatibility problems it is not worth it. Just about all Linux distributions use a package manager and updater (yum, apt-get, yast) and if that updater does not install the latest version of Firefox with the correct dependencies then you have to consider an OS upgrade or baring that forget about it. If you have a server why would you even consider upgrading the browser anyway?
:-)
As for a Linux desktop I would strongly suggest an upgrade if you can. Example: Fedora 8 to Fedora 9 fresh install. 1) One hour to backup. 2) One hour to install Fedora 9 from first principles. 3) One hour to recover data. 4) 30 min for minor customisation or if you don't like this you can take approx 1 hour to just upgrade. Most of the time you are waiting and the same would be true for other Linux distributions.
Using YUM on Fedora 9 successfully updates to the latest release of Firefox (the performance really has improved) but if it did not I would not worry about it. Now if only KDE 4 would be more stable so I could go back to it
I sort of agree with limiting or dropping Redhat support however your IT person better be in good with management and knows how to properly manage a Linux environment. If you are managing a small Linux environment then just about any reasonable distribution will do, however if the environment is part of a large corporation's IT structure then I would not like to be the IT manager to go to the business and tell them that we only need limited (it is possible to justify this) or no support (good luck) for our Redhat or Novel Linux machines. Even worse recommending a non-commercial Linux for a large commercial installation would IMHO be corporate IT suicide so if this is the case I hope your CV is up to date.
Actually no matter which distribution of Linux you have you should never run the GUI if your Linux machines are servers so you should not care about upgrading Firefox on these machines anyway. Use the normal updates and if they do upgrade then hopefully you won't have any issues.
I run Fedora 9 (no dual boot) on my laptop and have successfully upgraded to Firefox 3 ("yum update firefox") but then again my machine is not only a server and a personal computer I actually own it so I don't care what the corporate world thinks. At work I do care and from a corporate perspective if you put on a commercial Linux (Redhat or SuSE) then the company will buy licenses and I don't get any flack for this stance, in fact I actually get praise for doing this.
On a side note I noticed you mentioned RHEL4. You do realise that you can run YUM on this distribution to a YUM server which need not be Redhat (we use CentOS 5.1). This is very useful when you can go to management and suggest that you have the ability of "locked" upgrades (eg RHEL4 U6 or even a specific day) to all machines. This does go down well with corporations although I would still strongly suggest a support contact even it is limited and it actually can assist in removing any finger pointing at you from management.