Once upon a time motherboards didn't have onboard hard drive controllers. Or, if you want to be more recent, RAID-enabled controllers. There were lots of companies fighting and making really good RAID solutions (as well as some bottom-of-the-barrel companies making lousy solutions). Nowadays I'd be hard pressed to find a new modern motherboard without RAID capabilities.
Does no one buy the add-on cards anymore? Well, no, the super high end has amazing 12-way hardware RAID cards that would make the freebie RAID weep.
But, freebie RAID is good enough for most users. I suspect it's the same for sound cards.
Motherboard sound isn't that great, but who has really great computer speakers anyway? What ordinary user even swapped his speakers from the craptastic freebies that came with his Dell?
There will always be a market for sound cards. While they may whine and kick and scream about it because of how hard it is to please the professional audio crowd, that's where it's heading.
I'm surprised the software BC isnt' 100% considering Sony's got the full and completely documented specs on their prior systems in their information vault.
That said, it's entirely possible that the compatibility list is lacking due to the developers doing "optimizations" and using coding practices that were ill-advised by the original dev-docs.
Typically, the console manufacturers will produce the games for the publishers. The fees the publisher pays for this service will vary based on how many they make and whether the title will be exclusive to the platform. In return, the manufacturer will produce the discs/cartridges and that media will work in the console. In that price is their "cut".
It's a trick. Since a third of all console owners are adults now the auto insurance I'm required to have by state law can happily up my premiums because I own a console.
One part I don't miss about being a stupid teenager is the insurance premiums.
While funny, maybe you're onto something. Embed some copper mesh into your walls and you should be able to reduce the EM interference you're getting from elsewhere. Maybe someone with a better physics education could help out here, but maybe you could even get away with just setting it up on a just a few walls.
While I agree Take Two summoning "Free Speech" on this one is pretty hypocritical, the free speech Thompson enjoys is limited.
If he shouts loud enough referring to baseless claims, this voice is only as loud as the next anti-everything guy. That's a right and no harm no foul. There are lots of groups who agree with him and petition and demonstrate. More power to them.
But once he starts filing frivilous baseless lawsuits, all of a sudden his voice is amplified on the taxpayer's dime. Investors become skiddish since they immediately have a company liability to think about. Retailers become skiddish because they don't want to deal with the logistics of shipping product out to a couple thousand stores just to pull them back and get them relabelled with a new ESRB rating and possibly being another party to his joke lawsuits. Parents who might look at a Take Two game with critical eyes and make a decision of whether it's appropriate might otherwise not take the time if someone else is filling the airwaves with outright lies about content.
Take Two has an obligation to at least keep him from doing the damage he can do simply because he can instigate a whole legal case out of everything and anything.
"The Xbox 360 sold through a reasonable, if not spectacular 228,000 copies, and the PlayStation 3 slumped to a disappointing 127,000 units, "
They're really not talking up this point. That's 360 outselling PS3 by almost 2:1. Even with it including a BluRay player and SIXAXIS. 228,000 isn't "spectacular", but considering Christmas was only two months earlier, I certainly agree it's reasonable.
Anyone still have the old Dreamcast sales figures? I'd like to see how current events mirror those.
I'm having visions of future SCO moves prompted by their crack legal team:
1) Admitting an IBM model-M keyboard as evidence to the case. 2) Calling a monkey to the stand. 3) Yelling "objection" at random moments, even during recess. 4) Showing the court on the doll where IBM touched them.
Can we just throw out the case and stop with the wasting of money already?
So, when Funcom goes under, are all the people who bought games that need an ok from a remote server going to be plumb out of luck? Sucks to be them? Same for Steam, actually.
"... it is a marketers dream for targeted advertising."
How is that different than other phones? I've heard lots of bells and whistles over the years about phones being a portal to direct advertising and that I'd get ads pushed to my phone constantly and, at least myself and my circle of contacts, it's. just. not. happening.
I don't see what would make Google phone more viable for direct marketing than iPhone or a regular cell that can run Google Maps mobile on it already.
I'd be more concerned with a Google phone dropping calls when you start talking about stuff the Chinese government would consider corrupting influences on society.
Yes, you *can* run HL 2 on DX7. There are some command line switches to do it, and Valve tech support told me to give it a try when it would consistantly crash on my machine right when it was time to move Gordon around.
It wasn't that... neither of us ever got to the bottom of it since I had to reformat my system due to another problem.
But, while putting on the switches to force it to run in DX7, gotta tell you, it was UGLY. Source was definitely made to use DX9. DX7 support looked like it consisted of just a bunch of if statements that turned everything off except the polys themselves and capped textures to 64x64. Gross.
2012 for the next XBox iteration? That means the 360 would have a life of at least 7 years. Much better than the previous XBox incantation (4 years), the Gamecube (5 years), and even the PS2 (6 years).
Obviously that's a long way in the future so I take that with huge chunks of salt, but I would definitely appreciate a slowing down of next gen arms race propagation.
Not much different from admitting evidence suggesting an alleged had checked out a book on poisons from the library when the stand accused of a poisoning death.
What I want to know is whether researching the search histories of the accused is the status quo.
They're selling it for profit, at what I imagine is a premium compared to other food.
I don't work for free, why should I force that upon others?
How does genetically modified food save lives?
The theory is that GM crops could have better, more nutritious yields than non GM-foods on the same amount of land, or insect or spoilage resistant GM crops would reduce the shrinkage of a yield, or a combination of both.
The big deal is that it will be a government mandate. Toys 'r' Us is a toy store. It's self-governed business knows that porn doesn't belong there so it's not there. I bet you also won't find bongs, industrial chemicals, fresh fruit, bags of concrete, and document safes in there, either.
In you installing a filter on your home network, you're taking some pro-active steps. That's good. Companies that make filters are always improving them so your job becomes less difficult. That's good, too. And neither of those things required laws to be written.
Maybe the real lesson is that people who make content filtering software should lobby the legislature like other companies do.
So with cars running fuel cells that are essentially free of vehicle pollution, now they're going to muck it up by throwing chemicals and other non-energy-related things with it? I guess the future of transportation is fine as long as we will continue to have a pollution crisis in one form or another.
Before the automobile was happily mass-produced, it was then expected that nobody would drive their own cars and estimated that only a couple hundred people in the world would have the skills to drive them. (For how much they would cost, it wouldn't have been unreasonable that owners could afford to rent drivers.)
Fast forward to today and mostly everyone in the industrialized world knows how to drive. Some people are good drivers, some people are bad drivers. Being free of distractions aren't going to magically make bad drivers into good ones, and handing a cell phone or Blackberry or Big Mac to a good driver won't immediately make them bad drivers.
Meanwhile, there are undistracted people who drive aggressively, cut people off, drive faster than conditions safely allow, ignore maintenance of things like brakes and tires, drive drunk, and other bad things. I'd like to see statistics of traffic accidents and fatalities involving these factors versus those with cells and Blackberries.
I'd wager technology distractions aren't nearly as significant as the politicians looking to get pegged as "The Guy who Cleaned Up our Roads" are making it out to be.
They're called "starving artists" for a reason. If you want to be an artiste , and you're going to rely on shock and things that people find distasteful to gain audience or instill emotion, then don't be surprised you're not going to get wonderful accolades and prizes and financial benefits.
You're... not just in it for accolades, prizes, and free swag, right? Not for interview time to push an agenda, right? You did it because you had a message to get out.
How you produce and handle backlash over this sort of thing is, I'll say, what separates the men from the boys.
"These would make it very attractive device, providing Sony stops stops trying to cripple the software running on them."
Now that's a cheap shot. Any console/handheld maker should reserve the right to protect their system from running homebrew anything. Homebrew advances hand-in-hand with piracy, reduces publishers' confidence in the platform, and ultimately costs the manufacturer money. If you want to develop for it, don't you think it's reasonable for Sony to ask you to buy a developer kit?
Obviously this was a jibe at Sony since Nintendo handhelds have gotten a reputation for being homebrew friendly. But, even then:
* Bung was the biggest manufacturer of original Game Boy homebrew kits. N sued them out of existance. * Homebrew flash for Game Boy Advance requires a "boot sector" of sorts. When you turn it on, that little Nintendo logo under the Game Boy logo comes from the cartridge. The BIOS displays that on the screen and if its checksum matches what the Nintendo logo checksum is, it runs. Meaning: if you want to boot a non-genuine cartridge, that cartridge has to contain a digitally identical copy of a picture, so even carts for homebrew use are violating copyright. * The DS flaunts all over the documentation that games are signed with RSA. IANAL, but now beyond just copyright now you've got patent violations to worry about.
Just because Nintendo hasn't gone crazy with suing like Sony has (probably due to how financially healthy their gaming divisions are) doesn't mean they won't come back and bite these guys in the butt.
"Just to clarify, God of War and God of War 2 are Sony first party titles, so I don't see the series being developed for the 360 anytime soon."
When Dreamcast died Sega started making games for other systems. From growing up in the late 80's/early 90's, seeing Sonic on a Nintendo system practically brought a tear to my eye.
I think the key is that the quote references "essential" liberty. Is it essential liberty to drive around at 80 mph and to honk at slow drivers because I should not use the brakes on my sports car? Is it an essential liberty to run a restauraunt and secretly feed people unsafe food? Is it an essential liberty to carry a wide array of bombs and bomb accessories on an airplane? Obviously a civil society would have laws to keep at least some semblance of order.
Brevity is the soul of wit, and Ben Franklin certainly was witty. But I think he compressed his words a little too much leading to being "full of crap" on this one. At least we was smart enough not to become President.
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Once upon a time motherboards didn't have onboard hard drive controllers. Or, if you want to be more recent, RAID-enabled controllers. There were lots of companies fighting and making really good RAID solutions (as well as some bottom-of-the-barrel companies making lousy solutions). Nowadays I'd be hard pressed to find a new modern motherboard without RAID capabilities.
Does no one buy the add-on cards anymore? Well, no, the super high end has amazing 12-way hardware RAID cards that would make the freebie RAID weep.
But, freebie RAID is good enough for most users. I suspect it's the same for sound cards.
Motherboard sound isn't that great, but who has really great computer speakers anyway? What ordinary user even swapped his speakers from the craptastic freebies that came with his Dell?
There will always be a market for sound cards. While they may whine and kick and scream about it because of how hard it is to please the professional audio crowd, that's where it's heading.
I'm surprised the software BC isnt' 100% considering Sony's got the full and completely documented specs on their prior systems in their information vault.
That said, it's entirely possible that the compatibility list is lacking due to the developers doing "optimizations" and using coding practices that were ill-advised by the original dev-docs.
Typically, the console manufacturers will produce the games for the publishers. The fees the publisher pays for this service will vary based on how many they make and whether the title will be exclusive to the platform. In return, the manufacturer will produce the discs/cartridges and that media will work in the console. In that price is their "cut".
SCO would do well to add him to their crack legal team.
It's a trick. Since a third of all console owners are adults now the auto insurance I'm required to have by state law can happily up my premiums because I own a console.
One part I don't miss about being a stupid teenager is the insurance premiums.
While funny, maybe you're onto something. Embed some copper mesh into your walls and you should be able to reduce the EM interference you're getting from elsewhere. Maybe someone with a better physics education could help out here, but maybe you could even get away with just setting it up on a just a few walls.
I guess now I'll have to wrap my shipped pirate discs in bags of cocaine.
While I agree Take Two summoning "Free Speech" on this one is pretty hypocritical, the free speech Thompson enjoys is limited.
If he shouts loud enough referring to baseless claims, this voice is only as loud as the next anti-everything guy. That's a right and no harm no foul. There are lots of groups who agree with him and petition and demonstrate. More power to them.
But once he starts filing frivilous baseless lawsuits, all of a sudden his voice is amplified on the taxpayer's dime. Investors become skiddish since they immediately have a company liability to think about. Retailers become skiddish because they don't want to deal with the logistics of shipping product out to a couple thousand stores just to pull them back and get them relabelled with a new ESRB rating and possibly being another party to his joke lawsuits. Parents who might look at a Take Two game with critical eyes and make a decision of whether it's appropriate might otherwise not take the time if someone else is filling the airwaves with outright lies about content.
Take Two has an obligation to at least keep him from doing the damage he can do simply because he can instigate a whole legal case out of everything and anything.
"The Xbox 360 sold through a reasonable, if not spectacular 228,000 copies, and the PlayStation 3 slumped to a disappointing 127,000 units, "
They're really not talking up this point. That's 360 outselling PS3 by almost 2:1. Even with it including a BluRay player and SIXAXIS. 228,000 isn't "spectacular", but considering Christmas was only two months earlier, I certainly agree it's reasonable.
Anyone still have the old Dreamcast sales figures? I'd like to see how current events mirror those.
I'm having visions of future SCO moves prompted by their crack legal team:
1) Admitting an IBM model-M keyboard as evidence to the case.
2) Calling a monkey to the stand.
3) Yelling "objection" at random moments, even during recess.
4) Showing the court on the doll where IBM touched them.
Can we just throw out the case and stop with the wasting of money already?
So, when Funcom goes under, are all the people who bought games that need an ok from a remote server going to be plumb out of luck? Sucks to be them? Same for Steam, actually.
"... it is a marketers dream for targeted advertising."
How is that different than other phones? I've heard lots of bells and whistles over the years about phones being a portal to direct advertising and that I'd get ads pushed to my phone constantly and, at least myself and my circle of contacts, it's. just. not. happening.
I don't see what would make Google phone more viable for direct marketing than iPhone or a regular cell that can run Google Maps mobile on it already.
I'd be more concerned with a Google phone dropping calls when you start talking about stuff the Chinese government would consider corrupting influences on society.
Yes, you *can* run HL 2 on DX7. There are some command line switches to do it, and Valve tech support told me to give it a try when it would consistantly crash on my machine right when it was time to move Gordon around.
It wasn't that... neither of us ever got to the bottom of it since I had to reformat my system due to another problem.
But, while putting on the switches to force it to run in DX7, gotta tell you, it was UGLY. Source was definitely made to use DX9. DX7 support looked like it consisted of just a bunch of if statements that turned everything off except the polys themselves and capped textures to 64x64. Gross.
2012 for the next XBox iteration? That means the 360 would have a life of at least 7 years. Much better than the previous XBox incantation (4 years), the Gamecube (5 years), and even the PS2 (6 years).
Obviously that's a long way in the future so I take that with huge chunks of salt, but I would definitely appreciate a slowing down of next gen arms race propagation.
Not much different from admitting evidence suggesting an alleged had checked out a book on poisons from the library when the stand accused of a poisoning death.
What I want to know is whether researching the search histories of the accused is the status quo.
They're selling it for profit, at what I imagine is a premium compared to other food.
I don't work for free, why should I force that upon others?
How does genetically modified food save lives?
The theory is that GM crops could have better, more nutritious yields than non GM-foods on the same amount of land, or insect or spoilage resistant GM crops would reduce the shrinkage of a yield, or a combination of both.
The big deal is that it will be a government mandate. Toys 'r' Us is a toy store. It's self-governed business knows that porn doesn't belong there so it's not there. I bet you also won't find bongs, industrial chemicals, fresh fruit, bags of concrete, and document safes in there, either.
In you installing a filter on your home network, you're taking some pro-active steps. That's good. Companies that make filters are always improving them so your job becomes less difficult. That's good, too. And neither of those things required laws to be written.
Maybe the real lesson is that people who make content filtering software should lobby the legislature like other companies do.
So with cars running fuel cells that are essentially free of vehicle pollution, now they're going to muck it up by throwing chemicals and other non-energy-related things with it? I guess the future of transportation is fine as long as we will continue to have a pollution crisis in one form or another.
Before the automobile was happily mass-produced, it was then expected that nobody would drive their own cars and estimated that only a couple hundred people in the world would have the skills to drive them. (For how much they would cost, it wouldn't have been unreasonable that owners could afford to rent drivers.)
Fast forward to today and mostly everyone in the industrialized world knows how to drive. Some people are good drivers, some people are bad drivers. Being free of distractions aren't going to magically make bad drivers into good ones, and handing a cell phone or Blackberry or Big Mac to a good driver won't immediately make them bad drivers.
Meanwhile, there are undistracted people who drive aggressively, cut people off, drive faster than conditions safely allow, ignore maintenance of things like brakes and tires, drive drunk, and other bad things. I'd like to see statistics of traffic accidents and fatalities involving these factors versus those with cells and Blackberries.
I'd wager technology distractions aren't nearly as significant as the politicians looking to get pegged as "The Guy who Cleaned Up our Roads" are making it out to be.
They're called "starving artists" for a reason. If you want to be an artiste , and you're going to rely on shock and things that people find distasteful to gain audience or instill emotion, then don't be surprised you're not going to get wonderful accolades and prizes and financial benefits.
You're... not just in it for accolades, prizes, and free swag, right? Not for interview time to push an agenda, right? You did it because you had a message to get out.
How you produce and handle backlash over this sort of thing is, I'll say, what separates the men from the boys.
"These would make it very attractive device, providing Sony stops stops trying to cripple the software running on them."
Now that's a cheap shot. Any console/handheld maker should reserve the right to protect their system from running homebrew anything. Homebrew advances hand-in-hand with piracy, reduces publishers' confidence in the platform, and ultimately costs the manufacturer money. If you want to develop for it, don't you think it's reasonable for Sony to ask you to buy a developer kit?
Obviously this was a jibe at Sony since Nintendo handhelds have gotten a reputation for being homebrew friendly. But, even then:
* Bung was the biggest manufacturer of original Game Boy homebrew kits. N sued them out of existance.
* Homebrew flash for Game Boy Advance requires a "boot sector" of sorts. When you turn it on, that little Nintendo logo under the Game Boy logo comes from the cartridge. The BIOS displays that on the screen and if its checksum matches what the Nintendo logo checksum is, it runs. Meaning: if you want to boot a non-genuine cartridge, that cartridge has to contain a digitally identical copy of a picture, so even carts for homebrew use are violating copyright.
* The DS flaunts all over the documentation that games are signed with RSA. IANAL, but now beyond just copyright now you've got patent violations to worry about.
Just because Nintendo hasn't gone crazy with suing like Sony has (probably due to how financially healthy their gaming divisions are) doesn't mean they won't come back and bite these guys in the butt.
Good thing they pulled all those Viacom clips from Youtube last few months, otherwise they might have been sued for, like, a billion dollars!
Oh, wait.
"Just to clarify, God of War and God of War 2 are Sony first party titles, so I don't see the series being developed for the 360 anytime soon."
When Dreamcast died Sega started making games for other systems. From growing up in the late 80's/early 90's, seeing Sonic on a Nintendo system practically brought a tear to my eye.
I think the key is that the quote references "essential" liberty. Is it essential liberty to drive around at 80 mph and to honk at slow drivers because I should not use the brakes on my sports car? Is it an essential liberty to run a restauraunt and secretly feed people unsafe food? Is it an essential liberty to carry a wide array of bombs and bomb accessories on an airplane? Obviously a civil society would have laws to keep at least some semblance of order.
Brevity is the soul of wit, and Ben Franklin certainly was witty. But I think he compressed his words a little too much leading to being "full of crap" on this one. At least we was smart enough not to become President.
So, if I wanted to pirate a readily-available closed-source proprietary operating system for my PC other than Windows, what would I pick?