no, they won't, especially if Sony 'coincidentally' will release a bunch of prerendered videos and claim that they are actual gameplay footage: people will be ooh-ing and aah-ing and wait for the PS3 launch which will cause MS to lose money on Christmas sales.
What? Are you hinting that the PS2 launch video of the anime girl walking up and down a catwalk and flicking her hair was just a pre-calculated stream of triangle/uv data that was thrown at the PS2 graphics hardware from a large fast hard disc, and not representative of the sort of graphics that the PS2 could produce in real time?!
I am shocked to my very core. Surely they wouldn't do that again?
Actually, one of the things that lets the game-makers put more fun stuff in is making the system easier to program.
Compare the ease of programming between Xbox/GC and PS2. The PS2 was unnecessarily poor in its programming environment/libraries. The Xbox and GC stuff stamped all over it.
It all comes down to money in the end, and if it's easier (read: cheaper) to develop for, the devs will get more time to put stuff in to improve the game.
I have a feeling that Sony might be ignoring this aspect with the PS3 like they did with the PS2, possibly due to arrogance. The cell architecture certainly doesn't seem to be easier to program. I hope they have some decent tools/support for that.
I have no hard evidence for this feeling, as I have not seen PS3 devkits - just a feeling. Still, I wonder if they've put a hardware clipper in this time:-)
Microsoft is (and should be) focusing on presentation, not innovation.
The problem is, more and more it seems like providing a presentation/UI that doesn't stink out loud is innovation.
To take Google maps as an example - I hadn't found a website that provided streetmaps of the UK with a decent UI. The existing sites would scroll (sorry, page) unreliably, often sending you somewhere that is almost, but not completely, unadjacent to your last view. And let's not forget their favourite - limit the map to a goddamn postage stamp, even though I have a 1280x1024 display, and surround it with distracting garbage.
With Google maps, it's simple and clear, I can maximise the window and the map fills the screen (shock horror!), scroll around as quickly or slowly as I like, and zoom in and out to the level I want, etc.
In some ways, you could say that this is the definition of innovation. Yes, it's obvious, but no-one else seemed to be doing it. (I've seen some better sites since Google Maps launched - that pre-dated Google Maps - but they're still not as simple and easy to use).
I'm reminded of something a friend once said about the iPod - that when the iPod was launched, everyone agreed, yes, this is how mp3 players should be designed and work. Everyone, that is, except all the other companies who made mp3 players.
My point is, some companies/websites will look at a site like Google Maps, and just not get why it is better, and just bitch about how they've been doing maps for ages, so what's so special about Google?
Hmm...except, I love the Simpsons and Futurama, but the fact that they are animated has nothing to do with it - it's mainly because they are well written and acted comedies.
Obviously both shows get some mileage from being animated, in that you can do things that would normally be expensive (esp. in Futurama), but that is for me, very much a side issue.
I don't ever think "Yay! Futurama's on! I love animation!", I think "Yay! Futurama's on! Bender is great! Deal with it!"
When the script runs, it adds an entry to the hosts file:
And if you're running the MS Anti-Spyware software, you'll immediately get a nice popup telling you that someone just added an entry to the host file, and do you want to allow it?
Of course, some people still might click OK.
Hmm...wonder if MS Anti-Spyware makes more of a fuss if it notices a MS website/update site being changed/spoofed like that.
Oh, apparently not. However, the generic alert does tell you to block the change if you didn't just edit your host file manually.
Like whatever you install with Steam? If they wanted to insist that you have an up-to-date Firefox or Mozilla, they could do it -- and even provide the distribution means.
Shut that guy up!
Seriously, don't give them ideas. I use Firefox, but if I installed a game and it insisted on (amongst other things) that I install a particular web browser, it would just annoy the hell out of me.
I get wound up enough that the Steam icon that sits in the tray has UI that uses kewl skinz, which is sitting there soaking up RAM, etc. (What the hell is wrong with standard Windows buttons?) Luckily they have a grey skin that looks 'kinda' like Windows, but not really.
Er...sorry, I just hate skins:-). Whenever I see a program that uses them, I think "Oh, so everything else works fine with no bugs then? It must do if you had time to dick around implementing non-standard UI in a desktop program."
So yeah, shut up and don't give them ideas! If the next version of Steam requires that I download Opera 8 and Quicktime 7.5, I'll be blaming you. I've written down your IP address. 127.0.0.1 had better be armoured against my awesome skillz, let me tell you.
especially after seeing a preview of Episode III last night
Funny - I only just worked out that this smoking stuff must be in reference to your sig, which I can't see - but only because I turned them off a few weeks back, when some sad fuckwits started using Star Wars spoiler sigs again, for Ep. III this time.
See? It's all linked.
Plus if I ever meet anyone who uses spoiler sigs, I may have to punch them. Possibly with a good run-up. How's that for a spoiler?
Ah, no, I see what you mean, but no, that's not what I meant. Mea culpa.
What I meant was: isn't it likely that the raw digital audio file that is used to master the CD will be the same one that is compressed to AAC for iTunes? (AAC/iTMS just being an example).
That is, is there any reason why they wouldn't compress the already dynamically compressed audio?
Well, one reason would be that it would be dumb, but seeing as they already do it on radio and CD, well...I'm not hopeful myself.
Er, anyway, hopefully that makes it clear what I meant. Sorry for any confusion.
Well, perhaps, but my point is, consider these two percentages:
X = Percentage of people who listen to music on their computer, and have ripped their CDs to mp3 (or aac/ogg/whatever).
Y = Percentage of people who buy music from iTMS, and ever back up that music. Ever. Or, come to that, anything on their computer. Ever. At all. Like, ever.
I posit that X is orders of magnitude larger than Y.
You might (correctly) argue that that's the user's own fault, but I thought it would be part of Apple's approach to recognise "Hey, 99% of people never back up their stuff. We can trivially and very cheaply provide them with a backup service of what is probably their largest set of data, their digital music*. So why don't we do that, and save our customers a ton of inconvenience?"
I'm not saying it's a requirement, I just find it odd that Apple don't do it.
By way of example, Valve's much maligned Steam system does this. I can go to a virgin PC, install Steam, log in with my account, and Steam will ask me if I want my games on this PC. If I say yes, then a day later (it's a lot of data) I have Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Counterstrike, etc.
And as for iTMS again, people have already been caught out by losing their digital music, and I don't think it's unreasonable for them to expect to be able to re-download DRM'd songs that they already paid for. They bought them, Apple know who they are - why can't they download them again?
For example, I've bought a few tracks from iTMS, and I don't ever remember being told or reminded to back them up. For people who buy into Apple's "It just works" mantra, this could well be a nasty surprise waiting to happen.
In summary, yes, people can back up their music. I predict that they won't, though.
A few years ago I caught Sony doing this [gnu-designs.com] and reported about it
That was interesting. I spent the first half of reading your account thinking what a smug annoying dick you were (mainly due to the "No, you're not one of me. You could never be one of me." comment). Then I got to the bit where the Sony guy said "We don't really care about that. Go ahead, sue us and see how far you get..." and I was deeply impressed with your restraint.
I think I might have politely asked to see his Clie so I could show him something, then smashed the screen on the corner of the seat and quietly handed it back to him.
You would get this problem with some LCD combinations too - I believe some are BGR, others are RGB etc.
As OS X double buffers all windows, this could be tricky. Then again, maybe they just have two back buffers for a window that is spanning two monitors? That would fix it. If a little expensive on RAM.
Are you comparing like for like? Or is this a new CD vs 2 'bargain' DVDs? e.g. here in the UK, play.com sells most CDs around the £8 to £11 mark, whereas DVDs mostly range from £7 to £15. Maybe it's different where you are.
The package. One maybe 2 great songs and filler.
You need to listen to better artists:-). Besides, one man's "filler" is another woman's "awesome album track", in my experience.
The compression. Most CD's now are compressed to increase the percieved loudness much like most FM broadcast stations.
But isn't it likely (or even inevitable?) that digital audio files will suffer from the same thing? i.e. be mastered from the same digital source, once it's been compressed?
Personally, I still buy CDs. DRM is just too much of a pain in the neck. With non-DRM'd music I can play it on any PC I'm using, and not have to give a toss whether it's got iTunes and my account set up, etc. The way iTunes is designed, in order to play a music track on a PC, you have to install Quicktime on the PC as well - not everyone wants Quicktime on their PC to be honest. And so on.
Plus Apple's delightful policy of "if your hard disk dies, you're free to buy all the music again!" Gee, thanks.
The only reason I'd buy a DRM'd song is if I only wanted the song and not an album. But I'd only do that as long as, e.g. hymn was still working.
CDs are not much of a hassle - I don't buy them often enough that ripping them is a chore. Ripping all my CDs initially took ages, but now my PC can rip a CD ludicrously quickly, and with always-on internet it gets the track names etc without me having to mess about getting on the net. There's just not enough of a downside to CDs for me to stop using them at the moment.
Plus, all CDs come with this great free robust silver backup disc, so I don't have to worry about that, either:)
I wish someone would steal The Register's Yahoo! joke - and I mean the proper sense of the word steal, i.e. not copyright infringement, but taking it away from them so they can no longer use it.
To reply to myself, because most people seem to be missing my point spectacularly, and it was quite simple really:
I wasn't arguing that Microsoft does not have a monopoly, nor that Apple do - I was pointing out that using an example of a total (and legally enforced, iirc) monopoly as a counter example to prove that Apple can't possibly have a monopoly is disingenuous, or just misguided.
However you feel about Microsoft's 'monopoly', the millions of Mac and Linux users prove that there is an alternative (compare this with how the phone system used to work - at least in the UK anyway, and I believe it was the same in the US/elsewhere). But Microsoft are commonly used as an example of a monopoly in their particular segment of the market.
Comments that amount to "but Windows is the only way to run Win32 programs, and Win32 programs are really popular" are simply not the same as "If you're not the phone company, you can't provide a phone service. Period."
I'm really saying that using the term monopoly in that absolute way to excuse Apple from any accusations of unpleasant business practices is not realistic. When it comes to a 'free market' like computer hardware/software (I can hear the rants coming from here), that's not what people generally mean by a monopoly.
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What? Are you hinting that the PS2 launch video of the anime girl walking up and down a catwalk and flicking her hair was just a pre-calculated stream of triangle/uv data that was thrown at the PS2 graphics hardware from a large fast hard disc, and not representative of the sort of graphics that the PS2 could produce in real time?!
I am shocked to my very core. Surely they wouldn't do that again?
Actually, one of the things that lets the game-makers put more fun stuff in is making the system easier to program.
:-)
Compare the ease of programming between Xbox/GC and PS2. The PS2 was unnecessarily poor in its programming environment/libraries. The Xbox and GC stuff stamped all over it.
It all comes down to money in the end, and if it's easier (read: cheaper) to develop for, the devs will get more time to put stuff in to improve the game.
I have a feeling that Sony might be ignoring this aspect with the PS3 like they did with the PS2, possibly due to arrogance. The cell architecture certainly doesn't seem to be easier to program. I hope they have some decent tools/support for that.
I have no hard evidence for this feeling, as I have not seen PS3 devkits - just a feeling. Still, I wonder if they've put a hardware clipper in this time
I know it's lowest of the low to moan about spelling in a post, but if you're going to keep talking about 'character', please learn to spell it :-)
Well, it is pretty hacked down - for instance, the last time I checked, the Xbox didn't support DLLs, and it only allows one process.
Also, I don't think it runs IE at all. Could be wrong, though.
I'm not sure how thrilled the average home user would be with this OS on their PC.
The problem is, more and more it seems like providing a presentation/UI that doesn't stink out loud is innovation.
To take Google maps as an example - I hadn't found a website that provided streetmaps of the UK with a decent UI. The existing sites would scroll (sorry, page) unreliably, often sending you somewhere that is almost, but not completely, unadjacent to your last view. And let's not forget their favourite - limit the map to a goddamn postage stamp, even though I have a 1280x1024 display, and surround it with distracting garbage.
With Google maps, it's simple and clear, I can maximise the window and the map fills the screen (shock horror!), scroll around as quickly or slowly as I like, and zoom in and out to the level I want, etc.
In some ways, you could say that this is the definition of innovation. Yes, it's obvious, but no-one else seemed to be doing it. (I've seen some better sites since Google Maps launched - that pre-dated Google Maps - but they're still not as simple and easy to use).
I'm reminded of something a friend once said about the iPod - that when the iPod was launched, everyone agreed, yes, this is how mp3 players should be designed and work. Everyone, that is, except all the other companies who made mp3 players.
My point is, some companies/websites will look at a site like Google Maps, and just not get why it is better, and just bitch about how they've been doing maps for ages, so what's so special about Google?
Wake me up when it's time to invoke Godwin.
...a master and a dupe.
Hmm...except, I love the Simpsons and Futurama, but the fact that they are animated has nothing to do with it - it's mainly because they are well written and acted comedies.
Obviously both shows get some mileage from being animated, in that you can do things that would normally be expensive (esp. in Futurama), but that is for me, very much a side issue.
I don't ever think "Yay! Futurama's on! I love animation!", I think "Yay! Futurama's on! Bender is great! Deal with it!"
Freedom, democracy, French Fries... ;-)
But as anyone with any familiarity with Acorn machines knows, the serial port won't work properly :-)
And if you're running the MS Anti-Spyware software, you'll immediately get a nice popup telling you that someone just added an entry to the host file, and do you want to allow it?
Of course, some people still might click OK.
Hmm...wonder if MS Anti-Spyware makes more of a fuss if it notices a MS website/update site being changed/spoofed like that.
Oh, apparently not. However, the generic alert does tell you to block the change if you didn't just edit your host file manually.
Shut that guy up!
Seriously, don't give them ideas. I use Firefox, but if I installed a game and it insisted on (amongst other things) that I install a particular web browser, it would just annoy the hell out of me.
I get wound up enough that the Steam icon that sits in the tray has UI that uses kewl skinz, which is sitting there soaking up RAM, etc. (What the hell is wrong with standard Windows buttons?) Luckily they have a grey skin that looks 'kinda' like Windows, but not really.
Er...sorry, I just hate skins :-). Whenever I see a program that uses them, I think "Oh, so everything else works fine with no bugs then? It must do if you had time to dick around implementing non-standard UI in a desktop program."
So yeah, shut up and don't give them ideas! If the next version of Steam requires that I download Opera 8 and Quicktime 7.5, I'll be blaming you. I've written down your IP address. 127.0.0.1 had better be armoured against my awesome skillz, let me tell you.
Go home. Your Mum's got cake.
Funny - I only just worked out that this smoking stuff must be in reference to your sig, which I can't see - but only because I turned them off a few weeks back, when some sad fuckwits started using Star Wars spoiler sigs again, for Ep. III this time.
See? It's all linked.
Plus if I ever meet anyone who uses spoiler sigs, I may have to punch them. Possibly with a good run-up. How's that for a spoiler?
I'd worry about your 1337 nickname first :)
You are Richard Feynmann, and I claim my $5.
What I meant was: isn't it likely that the raw digital audio file that is used to master the CD will be the same one that is compressed to AAC for iTunes? (AAC/iTMS just being an example).
That is, is there any reason why they wouldn't compress the already dynamically compressed audio?
Well, one reason would be that it would be dumb, but seeing as they already do it on radio and CD, well...I'm not hopeful myself.
Er, anyway, hopefully that makes it clear what I meant. Sorry for any confusion.
Spot the odd one out:
X = Percentage of people who listen to music on their computer, and have ripped their CDs to mp3 (or aac/ogg/whatever).
Y = Percentage of people who buy music from iTMS, and ever back up that music. Ever. Or, come to that, anything on their computer. Ever. At all. Like, ever.
I posit that X is orders of magnitude larger than Y.
You might (correctly) argue that that's the user's own fault, but I thought it would be part of Apple's approach to recognise "Hey, 99% of people never back up their stuff. We can trivially and very cheaply provide them with a backup service of what is probably their largest set of data, their digital music*. So why don't we do that, and save our customers a ton of inconvenience?"
I'm not saying it's a requirement, I just find it odd that Apple don't do it.
By way of example, Valve's much maligned Steam system does this. I can go to a virgin PC, install Steam, log in with my account, and Steam will ask me if I want my games on this PC. If I say yes, then a day later (it's a lot of data) I have Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Counterstrike, etc.
And as for iTMS again, people have already been caught out by losing their digital music, and I don't think it's unreasonable for them to expect to be able to re-download DRM'd songs that they already paid for. They bought them, Apple know who they are - why can't they download them again?
For example, I've bought a few tracks from iTMS, and I don't ever remember being told or reminded to back them up. For people who buy into Apple's "It just works" mantra, this could well be a nasty surprise waiting to happen.
In summary, yes, people can back up their music. I predict that they won't, though.
* Assuming they they bought it from iTMS
That was interesting. I spent the first half of reading your account thinking what a smug annoying dick you were (mainly due to the "No, you're not one of me. You could never be one of me." comment). Then I got to the bit where the Sony guy said "We don't really care about that. Go ahead, sue us and see how far you get..." and I was deeply impressed with your restraint.
I think I might have politely asked to see his Clie so I could show him something, then smashed the screen on the corner of the seat and quietly handed it back to him.
I mean, what's he going to do? :-)
Yes. Very digital hub, I must say.
All the data I buy is stored on a massive set of central servers in a nice data-centre, but I still have to back stuff up myself?
True. Or, in my case, get burgled.
But I'll still have the mp3s :-)
You would get this problem with some LCD combinations too - I believe some are BGR, others are RGB etc.
As OS X double buffers all windows, this could be tricky. Then again, maybe they just have two back buffers for a window that is spanning two monitors? That would fix it. If a little expensive on RAM.
Are you comparing like for like? Or is this a new CD vs 2 'bargain' DVDs? e.g. here in the UK, play.com sells most CDs around the £8 to £11 mark, whereas DVDs mostly range from £7 to £15. Maybe it's different where you are.
You need to listen to better artists :-). Besides, one man's "filler" is another woman's "awesome album track", in my experience.
But isn't it likely (or even inevitable?) that digital audio files will suffer from the same thing? i.e. be mastered from the same digital source, once it's been compressed?
Personally, I still buy CDs. DRM is just too much of a pain in the neck. With non-DRM'd music I can play it on any PC I'm using, and not have to give a toss whether it's got iTunes and my account set up, etc. The way iTunes is designed, in order to play a music track on a PC, you have to install Quicktime on the PC as well - not everyone wants Quicktime on their PC to be honest. And so on.
Plus Apple's delightful policy of "if your hard disk dies, you're free to buy all the music again!" Gee, thanks.
The only reason I'd buy a DRM'd song is if I only wanted the song and not an album. But I'd only do that as long as, e.g. hymn was still working.
CDs are not much of a hassle - I don't buy them often enough that ripping them is a chore. Ripping all my CDs initially took ages, but now my PC can rip a CD ludicrously quickly, and with always-on internet it gets the track names etc without me having to mess about getting on the net. There's just not enough of a downside to CDs for me to stop using them at the moment.
Plus, all CDs come with this great free robust silver backup disc, so I don't have to worry about that, either :)
I wish someone would steal The Register's Yahoo! joke - and I mean the proper sense of the word steal, i.e. not copyright infringement, but taking it away from them so they can no longer use it.
I wasn't arguing that Microsoft does not have a monopoly, nor that Apple do - I was pointing out that using an example of a total (and legally enforced, iirc) monopoly as a counter example to prove that Apple can't possibly have a monopoly is disingenuous, or just misguided.
However you feel about Microsoft's 'monopoly', the millions of Mac and Linux users prove that there is an alternative (compare this with how the phone system used to work - at least in the UK anyway, and I believe it was the same in the US/elsewhere). But Microsoft are commonly used as an example of a monopoly in their particular segment of the market.
Comments that amount to "but Windows is the only way to run Win32 programs, and Win32 programs are really popular" are simply not the same as "If you're not the phone company, you can't provide a phone service. Period."
I'm really saying that using the term monopoly in that absolute way to excuse Apple from any accusations of unpleasant business practices is not realistic. When it comes to a 'free market' like computer hardware/software (I can hear the rants coming from here), that's not what people generally mean by a monopoly.