"Yes this is a troll. But Roland is an attention whore. It's worth the karma burn."
When you clicked on the story to get to the comments section, Slashdot served up at an ad. When you clicked on reply, you had Slashdot serve up yet another ad. The karma you (b)earned gave Slashdot a good reason to continue posting 'his' stories. In your position, I'd re-evaluate whether it was worth it or not.
" One business says to the other, "If you make your product exclusive to my product, I'll pay you some money". This is n ot called a "bribe". Get your facts straight."
I've always wondered if this is why some places only sell Pepsi products.
"No, just don't let them in. The only purpose for a baby in a cinema is to annoy other people. People who take babies into such places are vermin. "
No no no, we should duct-tape their mouthes shut. It's a technological solution that'll allow people to bring their babies into a theater AND maintain absolute silence. Afterall, what right does a baby have to cry anywhere it goes?
"There are tunnels underground where you can't get mobile access, should the owners of such tunnels have to put in phone masts so doctors on call can be contacted?"
Crying babies are annoying in theaters, do you start handing out duct tape?
"If you have an emergency, walk out of the bloody theater and use a land-line from a receptionist or payphone."
Um, how is this person supposed to be notified of the emergency if his cell phone or pager cannot get a signal?
Look, I understand that idiots with cell phones are annoying, but blocking cell signals from places like theaters is like forcing ISPs to block off a range of ports to their users because a few people pirated movies. "But what about these people who use these ports for legitimate reasons?" "Now the lawyers are annoyed, too bad."
This is a social problem, it should be solved socially, not with technology. Believe me, you do not want to end up in a world where it's OK to do something simply because there isn't a physical or technological barrier to doing it. "My new cell phone with a fancy ass new radio technology works in this theater even though they're trying to jam the signals, that means it's okay to jabber on it!"
"For example, it's not uncommon for proprietary licenses to have terms that effectively say ("we have the right to take over your computer and/or install random crap on it" - from anti-virus-company patches..."
Wouldn't this be %110 expected from an anti-virus package that constantly runs new and various types of updates to fix problems with your computer?
"In case anybody cares...the video chipset on this thing was MADE for home theater! It has hardware motion compensation, MPEG-2 hardware decoding, support for native HDTV resolutions and 16x9 aspect displays..among other nice stuff. It's NOT a big 3d gaming platform but definitely has the stuff for decoding video."
If I bought one of these for the purpose of attaching it to my TV (i.e. through the DVI cable, for example...), and I wanted to play DVDs and movies I've ripped on my Windows machine, would I find myself getting really pissed off at it? I.e. Is the networking semi-compatible? Codecs? Unforseen gotchas?
"Amazing... Simply ask a question hoping to gather some info and ideas and the incensed reaction from the Windows Elitists and their foaming at the mouth amazed responses that someone should dare consider something other than windows..."
After reading through some of the comments in this thread, I don't think either side should be casting stones. I'm seeing a lot of 'feaming at the mouth' from both sides here.
I think you should have another look at my post.;)
"Of course, one could use a different codec besides VOB/MPEG2..."
I specifically mentioned using a 'DivX-esque' codec. The idea being that they'd use something far more efficient than MPEG2.
"...but that loses compatibility with many non-computer DVD players."
Um, UMD media isn't compatible with DVD players (computer or non) for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the codec. Heh. The whole point of Sony making the UMD format was for them to have some proprietary format to make money with. I was suggesting how they could have made that work. Again, not trying to be insulting, but I don't think you got the point of my post at all.
"I agree, the Sony knock-off of the NES was a huge flop. I wish they would stop already. "
The original Playstation was cheaply made, had a high failure rate, and contained very little in terms of innovative features. Maybe 'knock-off' isn't a perfect description of Sony's consoles, but it's certainly in the right ballpark.
Odd. I just had this image in my head of Christopher Eccleston using a sonic screwdriver on his DVD player. I really need to stop reading Slashdot before my first cup of coffee.
"So basically, analysts do nothing. They act like they "analyze" and make predictions, but in fact they rely on the companies themselves to do all the work for them."
As opposed to: "Analysts are so full of shit. They act like they 'analyze' and make predictions, but in fact they don't even talk to the companies they're researching. I need to get a job where I can rake in the cash by rolling some dice."
"I recall a common complaint by development houses about Sega consoles were that they were very difficult to code for because of hardware complexity. Isn't Sony now making the very same mistake that doomed Sega's console business?"
Sega didn't make a single mistake, they made a LOT of them. I imagine you're thinking of the Saturn. It was supposed to be a SNES killer. In other words, all the fancy technology it had was meant to throw sprites on the screen. Then Sony showed up with it's fancy ass 3D architecture, and Sega said oops. So they band-aided some hardware in there to perform 3D functions. Unfortunately, this added another processor to the mix. The result? It was a bitch to program for, and it never really reached the performance levels of the PS. The result? Saturn games looked inferior to PS games. However, in the 2D fighter realm, the Saturn did quite well. As I recall, the Saturn was actually fairly successful in Japan for this.
The Genesis was pretty easy to program for, at least compared to the SNES. The SNES had a weaker CPU, but it had extra hardware to beef up its graphics. In the end, the SNES won, but not without a couple of years of Genesis superiority. I remember lots of people bitching about the SNES slowing down when it came to a lot of sprites on the screen. This complaint died when Donkey Kong Country hit the scene.
The Dreamcast... well I don't know as much about it. As I understand it, it wasn't too hard to program for. It even had some great hardware for throwing textures on the screen. This gave the DC an edge against the first generation of PS2 games despite having considerably weaker specs.
The Saturn definitely hurt Sega. One could attribute this to the difficulty of programming for the system, and they'd likely be correct. PS ports to the Saturn often came many months after the original release, and they simply didn't do as well graphically. Sega had also flooded the market with hardware. Between the Genesis, the Sega CD, the 32X, and the Saturn, the market was pretty confused. Sega wasn't focused where they should have been and it came back and bit them in the keyster.
Sega was in pretty sad shape financially when the DC was released. I vaguely recall that the president of Sega at the time had given up most of his shares of stock to keep the company afloat. (I want to say it was around 100 million dollars roughly, but I don't recall the specifics. I do remember thinking "wow, that's one dedicated dude.") In the end, though, Sega needed several hundred million dollars in order to get 10 million DCs out there in order to really start raking in money. But they simply didn't have the assets to do it. Kerplunk, the Dreamcast died, and Sega focused on software.
With all that said, I'm sure a number of people will chime in with their own contribuatory reasons for Sega's demise. They wouldn't necessarily be wrong, either. It took a number of things to take Sega down, not one key one.
"Speaking of which, is XB360 easier to code for than PS3?"
I read an interview with Carmack not too long ago, and his answer was basically 'yes'. He did NOT go one to say that the difference would be a huge huge factor or not, though. Frankly, I have difficulty imagining it making all that big of difference, at least from a financial point of view. As these machines get more powerful, the weight of development shifts more towards the artists than the actual programmers. That is just an opinion, though. I'm a 3D artist by trade. Maybe my view is biased. But I know how much it costs to keep me seated at my desk. I know about how the work piles up by orders of magnitude as projects get more ambitious. And I have a pretty good sense of how artistry in video games has evolved over the last decade. Compare Super Mario 64 to Resident Evil 4 and you'll see what I mean.
"Zeus was booked, Apollo was out of town, Hermes is still learning, Posideon just signed a 500-year agreement with Apple and Ares was killed off in God of War, so most of the good non-mortal programmers were out of the question. Hades claims to be a writer instead of a programmer, but most of the plot lines he comes up with ends up with everyone dead."
Ugh. I'm pretty annoyed with Sony over the UMD discs. They have 1.5 gigabytes of storage available. With that much space, they could not only store a DivX'esque version of a movie formatted to the PSP, but also include a full res version to be played on TVs. If Sony had elected to do this AND release a DVD player that also included a UMD slot, I would have jumped on that bandwagon pretty quick. The discs are physically smaller. I could actually keep them in a drawer instead of on a shelf. The PSP isn't a bad little mobile movie gadget. They have a plastic casing which should, in theory, reduce problems with skipping etc. Heck, if they released a UMD burner, bonus.
But, instead, they'd rather sell overpriced movies that only work on the PSP with virtually no bonus features. It's a pity, really. Mobile movies are interesting to me, but not enough to run around trying to build up a huge library of them.
Slashdot Mirror
"That's a joke, right?"
If he's talking about technical superiority, then no, it's not a joke.
"I've heard at least twice on the show itself that Springfield is in Kentucky."
:P
The first time I saw that episode, it said Missouri. The second time that show aired, they said Kentucky. It was a practical joke on the audience.
Besides, we all know that it's a reference to Springfield, Oregon.
"Yes this is a troll. But Roland is an attention whore. It's worth the karma burn."
When you clicked on the story to get to the comments section, Slashdot served up at an ad. When you clicked on reply, you had Slashdot serve up yet another ad. The karma you (b)earned gave Slashdot a good reason to continue posting 'his' stories. In your position, I'd re-evaluate whether it was worth it or not.
" One business says to the other, "If you make your product exclusive to my product, I'll pay you some money". This is n ot called a "bribe". Get your facts straight."
I've always wondered if this is why some places only sell Pepsi products.
" That is what separates Christianity from crazy cults, since it is large and diverse enough to have people make up their own minds on such things."
You'd think that a website whose readership grew up on Star Trek and the various lessons about humanity would naturally understand this point.
"Wow. Brings a whole new meaning to "tastes like shit."
Have you ever tasted pre-cow-shit shampoo?
"No, just don't let them in. The only purpose for a baby in a cinema is to annoy other people. People who take babies into such places are vermin. "
No no no, we should duct-tape their mouthes shut. It's a technological solution that'll allow people to bring their babies into a theater AND maintain absolute silence. Afterall, what right does a baby have to cry anywhere it goes?
"There are tunnels underground where you can't get mobile access, should the owners of such tunnels have to put in phone masts so doctors on call can be contacted?"
Crying babies are annoying in theaters, do you start handing out duct tape?
"That may mean in practice that if you are on call, you can't go to the movies, but so what? "
I used to work for a doctor. This would have meant he couldn't ever go to a movie theater. So what, indeed.
"If you have an emergency, walk out of the bloody theater and use a land-line from a receptionist or payphone."
Um, how is this person supposed to be notified of the emergency if his cell phone or pager cannot get a signal?
Look, I understand that idiots with cell phones are annoying, but blocking cell signals from places like theaters is like forcing ISPs to block off a range of ports to their users because a few people pirated movies. "But what about these people who use these ports for legitimate reasons?" "Now the lawyers are annoyed, too bad."
This is a social problem, it should be solved socially, not with technology. Believe me, you do not want to end up in a world where it's OK to do something simply because there isn't a physical or technological barrier to doing it. "My new cell phone with a fancy ass new radio technology works in this theater even though they're trying to jam the signals, that means it's okay to jabber on it!"
"Why didn't they add these features originally? "
Price. The DS isn't as attractive compared to the PSP when it runs for $200 instead of $130.
"For example, it's not uncommon for proprietary licenses to have terms that effectively say ("we have the right to take over your computer and/or install random crap on it" - from anti-virus-company patches..."
Wouldn't this be %110 expected from an anti-virus package that constantly runs new and various types of updates to fix problems with your computer?
"Might as well get a high performace CPU and VGA, and some USB controllers and play on a PC."
For $400?
Just wanted to say thank you for the informative links. *Bookmarked*
"In case anybody cares...the video chipset on this thing was MADE for home theater! It has hardware motion compensation, MPEG-2 hardware decoding, support for native HDTV resolutions and 16x9 aspect displays..among other nice stuff. It's NOT a big 3d gaming platform but definitely has the stuff for decoding video."
If I bought one of these for the purpose of attaching it to my TV (i.e. through the DVI cable, for example...), and I wanted to play DVDs and movies I've ripped on my Windows machine, would I find myself getting really pissed off at it? I.e. Is the networking semi-compatible? Codecs? Unforseen gotchas?
"Amazing... Simply ask a question hoping to gather some info and ideas and the incensed reaction from the Windows Elitists and their foaming at the mouth amazed responses that someone should dare consider something other than windows..."
After reading through some of the comments in this thread, I don't think either side should be casting stones. I'm seeing a lot of 'feaming at the mouth' from both sides here.
I think you should have another look at my post. ;)
"Of course, one could use a different codec besides VOB/MPEG2..."
I specifically mentioned using a 'DivX-esque' codec. The idea being that they'd use something far more efficient than MPEG2.
"...but that loses compatibility with many non-computer DVD players."
Um, UMD media isn't compatible with DVD players (computer or non) for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the codec. Heh. The whole point of Sony making the UMD format was for them to have some proprietary format to make money with. I was suggesting how they could have made that work. Again, not trying to be insulting, but I don't think you got the point of my post at all.
"I agree, the Sony knock-off of the NES was a huge flop. I wish they would stop already. "
The original Playstation was cheaply made, had a high failure rate, and contained very little in terms of innovative features. Maybe 'knock-off' isn't a perfect description of Sony's consoles, but it's certainly in the right ballpark.
"Doctorow on DRM and Activism"
Odd. I just had this image in my head of Christopher Eccleston using a sonic screwdriver on his DVD player. I really need to stop reading Slashdot before my first cup of coffee.
"So basically, analysts do nothing. They act like they "analyze" and make predictions, but in fact they rely on the companies themselves to do all the work for them."
As opposed to: "Analysts are so full of shit. They act like they 'analyze' and make predictions, but in fact they don't even talk to the companies they're researching. I need to get a job where I can rake in the cash by rolling some dice."
"Analysts will no longer be necessary after the free, ad-supported GAnalyst (Beta) debuts next week..."
Enron Executive: "We can't use this, they don't let you delete anything!"
"I recall a common complaint by development houses about Sega consoles were that they were very difficult to code for because of hardware complexity. Isn't Sony now making the very same mistake that doomed Sega's console business?"
Sega didn't make a single mistake, they made a LOT of them. I imagine you're thinking of the Saturn. It was supposed to be a SNES killer. In other words, all the fancy technology it had was meant to throw sprites on the screen. Then Sony showed up with it's fancy ass 3D architecture, and Sega said oops. So they band-aided some hardware in there to perform 3D functions. Unfortunately, this added another processor to the mix. The result? It was a bitch to program for, and it never really reached the performance levels of the PS. The result? Saturn games looked inferior to PS games. However, in the 2D fighter realm, the Saturn did quite well. As I recall, the Saturn was actually fairly successful in Japan for this.
The Genesis was pretty easy to program for, at least compared to the SNES. The SNES had a weaker CPU, but it had extra hardware to beef up its graphics. In the end, the SNES won, but not without a couple of years of Genesis superiority. I remember lots of people bitching about the SNES slowing down when it came to a lot of sprites on the screen. This complaint died when Donkey Kong Country hit the scene.
The Dreamcast... well I don't know as much about it. As I understand it, it wasn't too hard to program for. It even had some great hardware for throwing textures on the screen. This gave the DC an edge against the first generation of PS2 games despite having considerably weaker specs.
The Saturn definitely hurt Sega. One could attribute this to the difficulty of programming for the system, and they'd likely be correct. PS ports to the Saturn often came many months after the original release, and they simply didn't do as well graphically. Sega had also flooded the market with hardware. Between the Genesis, the Sega CD, the 32X, and the Saturn, the market was pretty confused. Sega wasn't focused where they should have been and it came back and bit them in the keyster.
Sega was in pretty sad shape financially when the DC was released. I vaguely recall that the president of Sega at the time had given up most of his shares of stock to keep the company afloat. (I want to say it was around 100 million dollars roughly, but I don't recall the specifics. I do remember thinking "wow, that's one dedicated dude.") In the end, though, Sega needed several hundred million dollars in order to get 10 million DCs out there in order to really start raking in money. But they simply didn't have the assets to do it. Kerplunk, the Dreamcast died, and Sega focused on software.
With all that said, I'm sure a number of people will chime in with their own contribuatory reasons for Sega's demise. They wouldn't necessarily be wrong, either. It took a number of things to take Sega down, not one key one.
"Speaking of which, is XB360 easier to code for than PS3?"
I read an interview with Carmack not too long ago, and his answer was basically 'yes'. He did NOT go one to say that the difference would be a huge huge factor or not, though. Frankly, I have difficulty imagining it making all that big of difference, at least from a financial point of view. As these machines get more powerful, the weight of development shifts more towards the artists than the actual programmers. That is just an opinion, though. I'm a 3D artist by trade. Maybe my view is biased. But I know how much it costs to keep me seated at my desk. I know about how the work piles up by orders of magnitude as projects get more ambitious. And I have a pretty good sense of how artistry in video games has evolved over the last decade. Compare Super Mario 64 to Resident Evil 4 and you'll see what I mean.
"Zeus was booked, Apollo was out of town, Hermes is still learning, Posideon just signed a 500-year agreement with Apple and Ares was killed off in God of War, so most of the good non-mortal programmers were out of the question. Hades claims to be a writer instead of a programmer, but most of the plot lines he comes up with ends up with everyone dead."
That still leaves Boomer and Starbuck!
Ugh. I'm pretty annoyed with Sony over the UMD discs. They have 1.5 gigabytes of storage available. With that much space, they could not only store a DivX'esque version of a movie formatted to the PSP, but also include a full res version to be played on TVs. If Sony had elected to do this AND release a DVD player that also included a UMD slot, I would have jumped on that bandwagon pretty quick. The discs are physically smaller. I could actually keep them in a drawer instead of on a shelf. The PSP isn't a bad little mobile movie gadget. They have a plastic casing which should, in theory, reduce problems with skipping etc. Heck, if they released a UMD burner, bonus.
But, instead, they'd rather sell overpriced movies that only work on the PSP with virtually no bonus features. It's a pity, really. Mobile movies are interesting to me, but not enough to run around trying to build up a huge library of them.
"Imagine thousands small, spider like robots invading your house throught ventilation shafts, sewers, etc. while you are sleeping."
It's not all bad. Imagine Tom Cruise crashing through your window and asking to borrow your bath tub!