It's great for people who can't run Google Desktop Search because of corporate policy. (Why Google had to get a perfectly useful tool, then start mining data from it... ugh!)
More likely the building has dirty power. Even the best power supply can't cope with the wiring in some buildings... I have a buddy who can't run a PC for more than a month, no matter how beefy the PSU is, because the wiring in his house is crap. He plugged in a UPS at my suggestion, and the wiring killed the UPS too! (It was a cheapish UPS, but still, you reach a point where you can't blame anything but the wall power.)
I use Network Solutions, even though the cost is a little bit higher, because they don't have a stupid name or waste millions on Super Bowl ads, but they provide consistent quality service. Lately, however, they've been adding more and more advertising and "services" to their domain registration, so I'm not sure whether I want to stick with them or not.
1) Your controllers aren't plugged in to the 360 when you turn it off. If you don't have anything plugged in to the USB ports, it just powers them down immediately. 2) Your controllers don't need charged. When charging is done, the 360 turns off the USB ports also. 3) Your 360 is defective.
I think Xbox crashes are mostly software-related. I had one freeze playing Gears of War, and so far 3 freezes playing Viva Pinata, but with all other games I've never noticed a glitch. Both of those games auto-save pretty frequently, so it wasn't a major problem, but it's still very annoying and I hope MS beefs up their QA process for future titles.
(I think the makers of Viva Pinata recognized it's tendency to freeze... it auto-saves all the freakin' time.)
Hm, now that you mention it, you have a point. Once the controller is fully charged, the Xbox turns off power to the USB ports anyway... so I guess the maximum it would be "off but powering USB" would be the amount of time it takes to charge whatever controllers are plugged in.
How much of the Xbox idle power consumption is keeping the USB ports powered to charge Play&Charge wireless controllers? Could you reduce the power by unplugging the USB cable of your controllers when done, or would that have no impact? Anybody know?
Well, that's true. As long as the group setting the standards represents a cross-section, I guess it doesn't matter where the physical office is located.
I've had a job playing games; it's not very fun. I'd like to work with the ESRB because I want to see them succeed. I think everyone (here on Slashdot) agrees that industry self-regulation is about 50 times better than government regulation, and every time the ESRB screws up, like with Oblivion, they're opening the door for the government to step in and take over. Considering what the FCC does to radio and television, I think we can all agree that's something that should be avoided if possible.
Out of curiosity, what makes you think Gates and Jobs hate each other? They have amazingly similar backgrounds, and no shortage of things to talk about. I bet they get along quite well.
Firefox wouldn't certify in any case. Last I checked (a couple months ago) it incorrectly stores the cache in/Application Data instead of/Local Settings/Application Data. What this means is that if you have roaming profiles set up on your network, the entire web browser cache (hundreds of MB of it) will roam with you. That's a huge bug.
I don't think a cross-section of New Yorkers is anywhere close to a decent cross-section of Americans. If they really want appropriate ratings, they should have offices:
1) In New York 2) On the west coast somewhere ( Seattle, Portland, or LA would be fine.) West-coasters don't think like New Yorkers at all. 3) In the mid-west 4) In the south.
That said, I'd love to work for the ESRB, but who the hell wants to live in New York? They need to come to Seattle.
Look, I know there's a lot of irrational Xbox hatred here, but I'm replying to this comment:
Well yeah, because all the consoles in the past have been designed to put out images on an SD television set.
The Dreamcast, PS2, and Gamecube supported 480p, but they were designed to put out images at 480i. Games ran in 480i by default, and very few titles supported 480p.
With the Xbox, on the other hand, outputted 480p BY DEFAULT, and many games supported higher resolutions. (The max was 1080i.)
Christ. You try to dispute one wrong fact, and everyone becomes a nitpicker.
You should call this the Blizzard hypothesis, since that's basically their entire business plan.
They didn't invent the RTS game, or the MMORPG, or the dungeon-digger, but they waited and let other companies invent them, then swooped in to perfect the game genres that caught on.
Well yeah, because all the consoles in the past have been designed to put out images on an SD television set.
The original Xbox outputs 480p by default. It has to down-sample to be compatible with SD televisions. And it came out, what, 4-5 years ago? It was most certainly designed to work with HD.
Not that I necessarily disagree with your opinion, I just had to correct that little bit of mis-information.
For making a quick little utility app for a few hundred users in a simple company (for example, a task like: take CSV results from vendors A, B and C and combine them into a single CSV for uploading to the billing system), you're much better off using a language with automatic memory management to shorten development time. That could be VB, or RealBasic, or pretty much anything.net. Or even Python, Ruby or PHP if you don't need a GUI. But C, which you can make an identical application, will require a lot more resources and time.
Which is almost identical to VisualBasic, but has compiled on Linux for years and has cross-platform libraries for almost everything it supports and doesn't require Mono.
Just wait a couple years until some Linux distro decides to do the same thing, then it'll be the best idea ever. This happens every time Microsoft introduces some new feature.
Seriously. The only dead drives I've ever seen are either IBM Deathstars (known by that name so completely that I don't know what the actual brand name is... 'disk star' perhaps?) and Western Digital drives. I generally buy Seagate or Hitachi drives, and I've never had a failure. Usually I run out of space and have to upgrade before the drives die. IBM drives other than the Deathstars seem to do ok as well.
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It's great for people who can't run Google Desktop Search because of corporate policy. (Why Google had to get a perfectly useful tool, then start mining data from it... ugh!)
More likely the building has dirty power. Even the best power supply can't cope with the wiring in some buildings... I have a buddy who can't run a PC for more than a month, no matter how beefy the PSU is, because the wiring in his house is crap. He plugged in a UPS at my suggestion, and the wiring killed the UPS too! (It was a cheapish UPS, but still, you reach a point where you can't blame anything but the wall power.)
Also, this poll is stupid.
I use Network Solutions, even though the cost is a little bit higher, because they don't have a stupid name or waste millions on Super Bowl ads, but they provide consistent quality service. Lately, however, they've been adding more and more advertising and "services" to their domain registration, so I'm not sure whether I want to stick with them or not.
To answer your seriously proposed question:
;)
do you think that replacing all of the existing consoles with Wiis would increase the overall power usage, or decrease the overall power usage?
Screw you, I want to play Panzer Dragoon Orta!
It's supposed to. There are three possibilities:
1) Your controllers aren't plugged in to the 360 when you turn it off. If you don't have anything plugged in to the USB ports, it just powers them down immediately.
2) Your controllers don't need charged. When charging is done, the 360 turns off the USB ports also.
3) Your 360 is defective.
I think Xbox crashes are mostly software-related. I had one freeze playing Gears of War, and so far 3 freezes playing Viva Pinata, but with all other games I've never noticed a glitch. Both of those games auto-save pretty frequently, so it wasn't a major problem, but it's still very annoying and I hope MS beefs up their QA process for future titles.
(I think the makers of Viva Pinata recognized it's tendency to freeze... it auto-saves all the freakin' time.)
Hm, now that you mention it, you have a point. Once the controller is fully charged, the Xbox turns off power to the USB ports anyway... so I guess the maximum it would be "off but powering USB" would be the amount of time it takes to charge whatever controllers are plugged in.
How much of the Xbox idle power consumption is keeping the USB ports powered to charge Play&Charge wireless controllers? Could you reduce the power by unplugging the USB cable of your controllers when done, or would that have no impact? Anybody know?
Well, that's true. As long as the group setting the standards represents a cross-section, I guess it doesn't matter where the physical office is located.
I've had a job playing games; it's not very fun. I'd like to work with the ESRB because I want to see them succeed. I think everyone (here on Slashdot) agrees that industry self-regulation is about 50 times better than government regulation, and every time the ESRB screws up, like with Oblivion, they're opening the door for the government to step in and take over. Considering what the FCC does to radio and television, I think we can all agree that's something that should be avoided if possible.
That all said, I'm not moving to New York.
Out of curiosity, what makes you think Gates and Jobs hate each other? They have amazingly similar backgrounds, and no shortage of things to talk about. I bet they get along quite well.
Firefox wouldn't certify in any case. Last I checked (a couple months ago) it incorrectly stores the cache in /Application Data instead of /Local Settings/Application Data. What this means is that if you have roaming profiles set up on your network, the entire web browser cache (hundreds of MB of it) will roam with you. That's a huge bug.
I don't think a cross-section of New Yorkers is anywhere close to a decent cross-section of Americans. If they really want appropriate ratings, they should have offices:
1) In New York
2) On the west coast somewhere ( Seattle, Portland, or LA would be fine.) West-coasters don't think like New Yorkers at all.
3) In the mid-west
4) In the south.
That said, I'd love to work for the ESRB, but who the hell wants to live in New York? They need to come to Seattle.
Look, I know there's a lot of irrational Xbox hatred here, but I'm replying to this comment:
Well yeah, because all the consoles in the past have been designed to put out images on an SD television set.
The Dreamcast, PS2, and Gamecube supported 480p, but they were designed to put out images at 480i. Games ran in 480i by default, and very few titles supported 480p.
With the Xbox, on the other hand, outputted 480p BY DEFAULT, and many games supported higher resolutions. (The max was 1080i.)
Christ. You try to dispute one wrong fact, and everyone becomes a nitpicker.
And there's a lot of farmers who stay in the shade and use sunscreen, but everybody still knows what you mean when you say "farmer's tan."
That the Internet has a lingo doesn't imply that everybody using the Internet uses that lingo.
1) Xbox supports resolutions up to 1080i (including 720p). Try playing, say, Syberia or Enter The Matrix on Xbox with your HDTV.
2) The original poster said SD. SD refers to 480i. I've never heard the term "SD" used to refer to anything other than 480i.
You should call this the Blizzard hypothesis, since that's basically their entire business plan.
They didn't invent the RTS game, or the MMORPG, or the dungeon-digger, but they waited and let other companies invent them, then swooped in to perfect the game genres that caught on.
Well yeah, because all the consoles in the past have been designed to put out images on an SD television set.
The original Xbox outputs 480p by default. It has to down-sample to be compatible with SD televisions. And it came out, what, 4-5 years ago? It was most certainly designed to work with HD.
Not that I necessarily disagree with your opinion, I just had to correct that little bit of mis-information.
For making a quick little utility app for a few hundred users in a simple company (for example, a task like: take CSV results from vendors A, B and C and combine them into a single CSV for uploading to the billing system), you're much better off using a language with automatic memory management to shorten development time. That could be VB, or RealBasic, or pretty much anything .net. Or even Python, Ruby or PHP if you don't need a GUI. But C, which you can make an identical application, will require a lot more resources and time.
Who cares what API it uses as long as it works in Mac OS X, Win NT, and Linux all from the same codebase? .net is a means, not an end.
Which is almost identical to VisualBasic, but has compiled on Linux for years and has cross-platform libraries for almost everything it supports and doesn't require Mono.
But, you know, whatever.
Didn't Alone in the Dark come out in like 1992? WTH?
"Oh yeah, the line up for Xbox 360 is great this year. We have Gears of War, Lost Planet, Lemmings, Kameo..."
You're seriously telling me that Pitfall was an "intense intellectual puzzle?"
Maybe for *some* games you're correct, but to categorize the entire industry that way is ridiculous.
Just wait a couple years until some Linux distro decides to do the same thing, then it'll be the best idea ever. This happens every time Microsoft introduces some new feature.
... was Western Digital EVER a good manufacturer?
Seriously. The only dead drives I've ever seen are either IBM Deathstars (known by that name so completely that I don't know what the actual brand name is... 'disk star' perhaps?) and Western Digital drives. I generally buy Seagate or Hitachi drives, and I've never had a failure. Usually I run out of space and have to upgrade before the drives die. IBM drives other than the Deathstars seem to do ok as well.