Allow me to introduce a new feature here at The Corporation, The Daily Thread.
How does The Daily Thread work?
I am glad you asked! We take three or four headlines from the very recent news, and give our forum members the opportunity to generate a discussion for the remainder of the day. The most insightful comments and contributions(or whatever else strikes the fancy of the staff,) will wind up here for all of our loyal readers to read. (I am looking at you, yes all ten of you. For the love of god John put your pants on before coming here!) We do take requests, thought we may or may not honor them after hazing the shit out of them.
Yesterday's Topics were:
- BluRay fails to take off in the marketplace.
- Windows on the XO PC
- Guitar Hero IV: Kicking a dead Keith Richards?
BluRay fails to take off in the marketplace.
The media and retailers seem genuinely surprised that a format with players starting in the US$300 range (that's 25 quid to you Brits,) are not selling like mad in the middle of an economic clusterfuck that nobody can predict.
Nicademus writes:
I still can't get an answer on whether wide spread movie downloads like what Netflix offers are feasible on the interwebs, but until the day their bandwidth use makes the Net crash and burn I just can't see buying a new disc player. It'd be a nice to have if it came in a console or something, but I'm not going to run out and buy one.
I, for one, wholeheartedly agree that the PS3 is not a console, especially since Sony has been trying to take over for EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF EQUIPMENT in the home theater for 10 years now. I can't recall the term they used a while back, but it was something like "Home Entertainment Hub" or some similar crap.
DarkVengance writes:
Blu-ray (I still love how easily it typos to Blur-ray) players are still in the early adopter phase, in which the players are overpriced and underfeatured compared to what people get with their DVD players.
Personally, after seeing that goddamn demonstration showing the screen sweep from blurry to clear yet again, I'm content to say that I like blurry. They did it with DVDs, they did it with HDTV vs conventional, they did it with digital cable vs conventional. Every time I see that sweep, it means they want me to dump more money into my home theatre.
I am forced to conclude that DV saw the screen sweep in a peepshow booth and that wasn't actually a demonstration of Blu-Ray but of the bonus value of a good squeegee.
From the fingers of CrashCat:
Also not buying a Blu-ray, partly cause I don't have an HDTV suitable for it and partly because I don't want to pay more per disc. And they just finally came up with those convenient DVD kiosks around my area, so I kinda use one of those if I really have a yen to rent something. It's hard to beat a cheap $1 rental at the grocery store or a $7 used purchase from the same machine.
Ok ok he caught me. I, too am a cheapass, and I refuse to buy yet another shiny when I barely use the shinies that I already own.
UCJames Chimes in with:
No, I own 40 different titles on Blu-ray already. The difference between the picture I get with those and what you get from a dvd is so pronounced that I will likely never buy another dvd again. The Blu-ray collection, on the other hand, will continue to grow.
Ladies! James likes to spend money on nice looking things, if you know what I mean. What? No I really don't know what I mean either. I was hoping someone could explain it to me.
Windows on the XO PC
Microsoft has reached a deal with the OLPC folks to put windows XP on the machine, thereby raising the probability that productivity on these machines will grind to a halt in a wave of minesweeper, solitaire, and blue screens of death.
Crashcat Leads off with:
On one hand I would like to see the XO's have Windows so that they're actually useful for more than the handful of applications that get designed for the OLPC before everyone decides it's not fashionable anymore and third-worlds are stuck with a bunch of outdated lumps of tech pretty much only useful for surfing porn.On the other hand, putting Windows on them makes them that more attractive to the black market and that much more likely to be sold off by whoever it is in these places that gets them first rather than ever getting to a kid's hands. Not that it matters much, we spend plenty of money sending other useless things to third world countries, so one more won't exactly be out of the ordinary.
I am not sure WHO they would be reselling to, since most of these are going to 3rd world countries who are technologically behind, but then again there is a market for them here in the US.
Nicademus writes:
On the XO PC topic, the market has spoken and third world countries don't want to stick their citizens into an electronic ghetto where their cheap OLPC PCs can' utilize the Wintel world of programs.
I'd prefer that they'd stuck with the open source OS, but thats more b/c I have a gut level preference for open source stuck succeeding. But the if XO PC isn't selling to the levels that they were hoping for then this is the only change I can see that might fix this.
Out of the electronic ghetto into the Mogadishu Ghetto!
Guitar Hero IV: Kicking a dead Keith Richards?
Harmonix/Activision has unveiled the drum set for Guitar Hero IV. No word if they are planning on suing Yamaha or Roland for emulating their revolutionary design of electronics and drums in the same package.
Madman got the ball rolling:
I don't get why they are going to call it Guitar Hero IV when there drums and singing are going to be a large part of the game as well.
I know Rock Band is taken, but calling a game dealing with a full band Guitar Hero seems stupid to me. I know it is because GH is an established brand name, but you would think there would be one creative person who could come up with a better name.
If they wanted to step it up yet another notch and outdo Rock Band, they could include Groupie Sluts with a 1 in 50 rare variant that is actually STD free! They could call it "Oh shit I stuck my dick in WHAT?" or "What do you mean Penicillin won't clear that up?"
DarkVengance piped up with:
Guitar Hero IV is just about branding, though they'll certainly try to emulate Rock Band in many respects. GH jumped the shark with their GH:Rocks the 80s, which was effectively a GH2 expansion. GH3 represented a change in direction from "hey I don't play music, but i can play my favorite songs!" to "guitar virtuoso simulator EXTREEM". Not for me.
Rock Band focused on what made GH fun..."hey, I'm not a musician, but I can play my favorite songs!", and embraced the strength of the genre as a social/party game. They also got it right with the DLC to provide an ever-increasing setlist. I see no reason to buy another GH game.
So in short, GH3 is a cognitive experiment similar to what was performed on monkeys but with less brain probes. Makes sense.
Fan Favorite Boogaleeboo finished the discussion with perhaps too much truthiness to contain:
Why? All the creative people left to make Rock Band. You are left with hacks [talented hacks, but still] using someone else's work as a basis for a money machine. Even the addition of drums and shit is because Rock Band did it first. It's a game called "Guitar Hero", why the fuck add drums? Oh, wait, the group who invented the series did it and made a lot of money and you want their money too?
Whore away!
I get the impression that he is against this idea. Or that the GH3 KKK Took His Baby Away...
Drop By Monday to participate in the thread or watch out Tuesday for the results! We are also taking suggestions for topics! PM savagex in the forums!
