not everyone wants to have to hook a computer up to their TV to watch a movie
Yet. Watch for a Google TV Netflix partnership. Google TV may change everything (for grandmas and normal people).
Bullshit. Google TV will end up just like every other Google thing like Android, ChromeOS, Apps, Wave, Docs, Voice, etc. They'll get it 85% of the way there. Then they'll get bored with it and move onto something else.
Not until the manufacturers actually start putting it in EVERY television they build, not until those TVs get down to commodity-level pricing, and not until the average consumer starts wiring their home for Ethernet (or makes sure the TV has WiFi and they have an AP) and has unlimited-use or cheap metered broadband.
If it's only available built-in to a smattering of higher-end sets then it won't get into the hands of the masses.
If it's a standalone box then it's yet another remote control for grandma, mom, Cousin Jake, et al to worry about and try to understand ("No, mom, you press the input button on the Samsung remote for the TV three times, then press the power button on the Google remote, then you use the arrow buttons to move the box around and click on the channel you want to watch, just like I showed you last time I was there").
If it's not easy to configure and connect then it's going to be nothing but another "blinking 12:00" syndrome and will go unused (I was the only person who ever set the VCR when I lived at my parents' house, and I'm sure I'm not alone there).
If the consumer has to pay a huge amount to be able to cover the data package for the streaming or has to pay out the nose for a metered data package, they're not going to bother with it.
Don't get me wrong, I think that Google TV is the dogs bollocks and will be likely to pick up one of the boxes when they roll them out the door, but until it proves that it can change the world of television viewing it's just a good idea that most of us geek types will drool over.
Back on topic here: Anyone else think that the Kinect would kick butt as a personal trainer interface in other fields aside from the fitness games, such as dance or martial arts?
there haven't been more comments about its potential.
Oh, there's tons of potential there. Motion control of the 360 is only the surface of it. Like I mentioned before, its movement recognition software would be perfect for training in the physical realm, such as learning dance moves or for martial arts. Interaction with virtual environment elements is another huge thing as well. But if we don't see any of these things in short order after release then I suspect it's going to get stuck in the same niche as the Wii - crappy casual minigames and multiplayer flail-a-thons that are useless to the typical gamer - and will be wasted technology.
Video games don't sell on potential. They sell on reliable and familiar.
Nope. They sell on accessibility and approachability. Most video games scare away most people. A game like Bejeweled, Farmville, or Wii Sports is the opposite.
I am sure this new motion capture system is a joy to behold, but truthfully I don't care how cool or awesome an accessory is. The bottom line is that the sell-through rate for add-ons is incredibly low. Yes, there will be a small handful of excellent games to show of its potential, but after that, it won't be worth the time and effort of any 3rd party to put a huge development effort forth on a title with a limited audience. Most likely, they will put out some janky releases just trying to get a piece of the pie.
I was talking about the Modern Warfares of the world but that's fine too.
A facinating thing that happens when Modern Warfare games are released - there seems to be a spike in interest for the guns in the game. I was chatting to a friend of mine back home who works in a gun store, and he asked me "Hey, by the way, Have you ever heard of a gun from Bushmaster called the "ACR"? " "Yeah, It's currently in development, used to be called the Magpul Masada, but bushmaster bought it, and got the Magpul guys to work on it - Not released or manufactured en masse, yet. It'd be illegal anyway, it's a assault rifle, being made for the US army. Why?" "Well, a bunch of these kids, like, 16-20 or so, they keep coming in and asking for it, and a few even got pissed off and started saying shit like "Oh, all the GOOD stores have them" - I had to explain that it's probably because the Main gun in the single player of MW2 is the ACR, and people are idiots.
I'd be interested to see what would happen if "As appeared in Modern Warfare 2" posters went up. Shit would, most likely, be lost.
Goddamn right it would, because the government would lose it's shit about selling military automatic weapons to the public.
But the trick is - most Gun makers already do this. They ramped up production to meet sales of the USP Match after The Tomb raider movies, and they often produce models of some weapons that match the look of the ones in the game. They just don't put posters up everywhere, because they don't really do that anyway. Games, however, are the ideal venue for this, but for a few brands - I mean, How many games - Including MW2 - Label anything that looks like a Kalishnakov an AK-47, when there are many makers and variants of the pattern, and aside from that, when the show the guns in the game, it's usually an AK-74 or later. The AK47 has become "Generic Bad guy gun", and thus, any marketing from that is kinda pointless. Why buy an AK-74, civilian version, when an AKM from Cambodia is cheaper?
I meant for the handguns and stuff. Would people drop that much on a rifle, just seeing it a game?
Well, most people think it would cost them, maybe, a bit more than airsoft kinda prices, rather than multiple thousand dollars. You can buy a used car for the price of some assault rifles - Hell, My first car cost less than my first marksman's rifle, and my first car was no slouch. And you think you can get financing on a 7.62 with the folding polymer stock, custom trigger assembly and a Schmidt & Bender 5-25x56 PM II LP Scope? Bullshit you can. Even my cheapest rifle - a 30.08 cut down Marlin lever action with a 4X reflex sight - cost me more than a grand and a half, and I got it cheap. Even a run of the mill handgun usually costs a few hundred dollars.
But people will buy them, for their various reasons. Punk kids might not, unless they're some rich punk kids, or one makes the round at a gun show through an ever so slightly dodgey second hand dealer.
That said, the Druganov. :3c
Personally, I don't like them. The Ergonomics are terrible(seriously, did they make that fucking rifle for midgets or something? Fuck me sideways.) it's not as accurate as cheaper, less popular rifles, the construction is usually shoddy, there is great variation between the rifles depending on where it's made. It's a slow round, too - 810 m/s - and if you put the wrong cartridges through it, you've just fucked the gun to bits - No, No, A regular 7.62 isn't good enough for the Druggie, only the 7.62x54mmR. And the Best accuracy you can hope for is 1.24 MOA, and that's with the newer barrels and a very specific build of round. Standard rounds, it's 2.21 MOA. For comparison, my old marksman's rifle, pushed about 0.5 MOA. If I was only getting 2.21 MOA, then something is drastically wrong, and I mean fucking drastically. Last of all, the last thing you'd expect out of a Russian designed rifle - Half of them fuck up when it's too cold(Bolt freezes, and shit don't go bang no more), or they get too hot(barrel warps), and don't even talk to me about the Magazine, which if you grip it while you fire, as many shooters do, you've got about a 30% chance of your next round being a failure to feed. (I'm not even that bothered, this is just the way I talk.)
Churba, If I was actually buying a gun, I'd actually research it. Maybe get a nice bolt-action.
I know. But when has that ever held me back from bitching about weird shit?
Also - Bolt action, good choice for you.
Churba, how the fuck do you know so much about guns?
It's a long story, but the most basic version is simply a good memory and a spot of mnemonic technique - Every firearm has unique visual features, and if you can attach bits of information to the picture in your head, it all gets really easy to remember.
ESPN 3(60) has always been that way. If your ISP pays for it, it's free. Otherwise, you have to pay for it yourself. They're not letting you get around this restriction just because you have an XBox. Yes, if you got a login from your parents, it would let you login. I think I'm going to get my parents AT&T; U-Verse login to do the same thing.
This kind of thing is exactly why we need net neutrality. ESPN is discriminating based on network. Your visiting from network X? We'll show you this. Visiting from network Y? We show you something different. Not cool.
No they are not. The ISP has paid a fee to ESPN to allow its subscribers greater access.
It's no different than the recent SBC/ATT - Yahoo deal. For a while I was getting multiple pro flickr accounts for free because my ISP (SBC, then ATT) was selling their DSL product co-branded with Yahoo. Non SBC/ATT/Yahoo visitors were still able to pay for the Pro accounts on flickr. There was no discrimination there just as there is no discrimination now.
Discrimination would be ESPN saying, "Comcast customers are not allowed to access our special content even if they pay for it." This is not what is happening. What is happening is that at the ISP level ESPN has signed a contract that allows all of that ISP's customers to gain access to the special stuff without paying on an individual basis. This is very common and ESPN probably figures that they are getting more money with the group licensing deal than they would if they only got individual subscribers to pay.
If Cablevision decided to buy Flickr Pro accounts for all their customers, that would not be cool because the ISP is giving Flickr preferential treatment over Picasa and others. It's the same as if Yahoo paid an ISP to slow down Google so it could get preferential treatment.
There shall be no deals of any kind between network operators, like ISPs, and endpoint content providers. All shall be equal on all networks. It doesn't matter what the business deal is, or which direction it is in. The Internet shall be absolutely identical on every ISP. No matter who your service provider is, no matter where you are connecting from, all shall be equal. No packets speeding up, no packets slowing down, no nothing. The ISP must be a dumb pipe. All they should ever do is make a best effort to deliver packets and that's it. They should not do anything else, at all. Period.
How would you feel if Verizon Wireless bought all their customers free phone sex. You pay for it, indirectly, whether you want it or not. Or likewise, if Google Voice was free for AT&T customers, but cost money for T-Mobile customers. We have laws against those things. The phone system is a utility. All carriers just connect the calls, that's it. They can't do anything else at all. They can't give preferential treatment to any phone number over any other in any way. That's how the ISP should be.
Comments
- If it's only available built-in to a smattering of higher-end sets then it won't get into the hands of the masses.
- If it's a standalone box then it's yet another remote control for grandma, mom, Cousin Jake, et al to worry about and try to understand ("No, mom, you press the input button on the Samsung remote for the TV three times, then press the power button on the Google remote, then you use the arrow buttons to move the box around and click on the channel you want to watch, just like I showed you last time I was there").
- If it's not easy to configure and connect then it's going to be nothing but another "blinking 12:00" syndrome and will go unused (I was the only person who ever set the VCR when I lived at my parents' house, and I'm sure I'm not alone there).
- If the consumer has to pay a huge amount to be able to cover the data package for the streaming or has to pay out the nose for a metered data package, they're not going to bother with it.
Don't get me wrong, I think that Google TV is the dogs bollocks and will be likely to pick up one of the boxes when they roll them out the door, but until it proves that it can change the world of television viewing it's just a good idea that most of us geek types will drool over.Back on topic here: Anyone else think that the Kinect would kick butt as a personal trainer interface in other fields aside from the fitness games, such as dance or martial arts?
But the trick is - most Gun makers already do this. They ramped up production to meet sales of the USP Match after The Tomb raider movies, and they often produce models of some weapons that match the look of the ones in the game. They just don't put posters up everywhere, because they don't really do that anyway. Games, however, are the ideal venue for this, but for a few brands - I mean, How many games - Including MW2 - Label anything that looks like a Kalishnakov an AK-47, when there are many makers and variants of the pattern, and aside from that, when the show the guns in the game, it's usually an AK-74 or later. The AK47 has become "Generic Bad guy gun", and thus, any marketing from that is kinda pointless. Why buy an AK-74, civilian version, when an AKM from Cambodia is cheaper?
That said, the Druganov. :3c
Even my cheapest rifle - a 30.08 cut down Marlin lever action with a 4X reflex sight - cost me more than a grand and a half, and I got it cheap.
Even a run of the mill handgun usually costs a few hundred dollars.
But people will buy them, for their various reasons. Punk kids might not, unless they're some rich punk kids, or one makes the round at a gun show through an ever so slightly dodgey second hand dealer. Personally, I don't like them. The Ergonomics are terrible(seriously, did they make that fucking rifle for midgets or something? Fuck me sideways.) it's not as accurate as cheaper, less popular rifles, the construction is usually shoddy, there is great variation between the rifles depending on where it's made. It's a slow round, too - 810 m/s - and if you put the wrong cartridges through it, you've just fucked the gun to bits - No, No, A regular 7.62 isn't good enough for the Druggie, only the 7.62x54mmR. And the Best accuracy you can hope for is 1.24 MOA, and that's with the newer barrels and a very specific build of round. Standard rounds, it's 2.21 MOA. For comparison, my old marksman's rifle, pushed about 0.5 MOA. If I was only getting 2.21 MOA, then something is drastically wrong, and I mean fucking drastically. Last of all, the last thing you'd expect out of a Russian designed rifle - Half of them fuck up when it's too cold(Bolt freezes, and shit don't go bang no more), or they get too hot(barrel warps), and don't even talk to me about the Magazine, which if you grip it while you fire, as many shooters do, you've got about a 30% chance of your next round being a failure to feed.
(I'm not even that bothered, this is just the way I talk.)
Also - Bolt action, good choice for you. It's a long story, but the most basic version is simply a good memory and a spot of mnemonic technique - Every firearm has unique visual features, and if you can attach bits of information to the picture in your head, it all gets really easy to remember.
It's no different than the recent SBC/ATT - Yahoo deal. For a while I was getting multiple pro flickr accounts for free because my ISP (SBC, then ATT) was selling their DSL product co-branded with Yahoo. Non SBC/ATT/Yahoo visitors were still able to pay for the Pro accounts on flickr. There was no discrimination there just as there is no discrimination now.
Discrimination would be ESPN saying, "Comcast customers are not allowed to access our special content even if they pay for it." This is not what is happening. What is happening is that at the ISP level ESPN has signed a contract that allows all of that ISP's customers to gain access to the special stuff without paying on an individual basis. This is very common and ESPN probably figures that they are getting more money with the group licensing deal than they would if they only got individual subscribers to pay.
Tons of fanboy briefs are now filled with fluids.
There shall be no deals of any kind between network operators, like ISPs, and endpoint content providers. All shall be equal on all networks. It doesn't matter what the business deal is, or which direction it is in. The Internet shall be absolutely identical on every ISP. No matter who your service provider is, no matter where you are connecting from, all shall be equal. No packets speeding up, no packets slowing down, no nothing. The ISP must be a dumb pipe. All they should ever do is make a best effort to deliver packets and that's it. They should not do anything else, at all. Period.
How would you feel if Verizon Wireless bought all their customers free phone sex. You pay for it, indirectly, whether you want it or not. Or likewise, if Google Voice was free for AT&T customers, but cost money for T-Mobile customers. We have laws against those things. The phone system is a utility. All carriers just connect the calls, that's it. They can't do anything else at all. They can't give preferential treatment to any phone number over any other in any way. That's how the ISP should be.