Paul

"Christ, what an asshole."

No, the ones you posted are enough. Maybe you should read them again,
your comprehension seems quite low.

50GB is still a good amount of permanent storage for users who cannot afford or don't need tape backup. Hard drives are not for backup. You could have made the same argument about CD or DVD when they launched and you would have been equally wrong.

Also, Moore's law does not apply to either optical or magnetic media. Moore's law is an actual law that applies (only) to transistor density, not just some turn of phrase that reflects the fast pace of technology.

Sometimes, it's a good idea to actually know something about a topic before giving your opinion on it.

It's worth noting that there are two very large barriers in the way of a 360 Blu-ray drive that most people don't realize exist. Both are the result of Microsoft business practices.

First, to even have a Blu-ray player, Microsoft would be required by the Blu-ray Disc Association to include support for the BD-J interactivity layer, which is based on Sun Java technology. Given the amount of bad blood between Sun and Microsoft, this is extremely unlikely.

The other obstacle is that in addition to BD-J, Microsoft would also be required by the BDA to include support for the Blu-ray DRM scheme, which is called BD+. This is again unlikely because Microsoft has been a very outspoken critic of BD+ since it's creation, preferring instead another DRM scheme called AACS (Microsoft and Sony both belong to the consortium that developed AACS). Additionally, since BD+ requires a small virtualized environment in which to run executable code, the security architecture of the 360 may actually make this impossible. If the player is external, the firmware update required would be Very Significant (with capitols!), and therefore also Very Scary to do.

So given these two rather large things to deal with, and also given the enormous investment Microsoft has already made with Xbox Live, it's conceivable that over the wire may be the way Senior Ballmer chooses to go with HD content on the 360. XBOX 720 EXTREME MEDIA GAMING PLATFORM 2010 .NET EDITION will probably include a Blu-ray drive, but for this console it isn't going to happen very easily.

Sorry to nitpick, but this definitely isn't the first commercial use of a Cell processor outside of PS3. Mercury makes a few products, including a blade server and accelerator board, based on the Cell Broadband Engine, and IBM announced their own CBE based blades earlier this year. Toshiba has also stated that they will eventually be using Cell's for their high end displays, although there has been no specific product announcement that I am aware of.

The article says that this is the first arcade game to use Cell, which is probably true. To say otherwise isn't right.

geh, sorry about the formatting. Top paragraph is meant to respond to Motorola 3G Victim.

Is it true that the real price break through on this new desk top is Dell pre-installing spy ware for $$$ from China Central Gov to help catch political dissidents?

This seems pretty unlikely (and also ridiculous). Although technologically feasible, it is not in Dell's interest to pursue that kind of business, mainly because the consumer backlash here at home would be enormous if knowledge of a deal like that came to light. Companies pander to the Chinese government because they have to, not because they really want to.

Dell has had it pretty rough these last few quarters, and falling behind HP in market share is embarrassing. Now that Michael Dell is back as CEO, he's for sure going to play rough in order to reestablish supremacy, which definitely means emerging markets. Challenging Lenovo is tough, but if they can make themselves a substantial market in China they will be well on their way to turning their stock price back around.

You are calculating all the possible combinations that any 25 character string can make. However,the subset of VALID keys that may be generated within those 25 characters is much smaller than all possible combinations. Therefore, a collision is probably much more feasible than you have predicted.

But, I agree with you that it's probably unlikely. I think we can safely assume that Microsoft will have prepared for the possibility of shipping a lot of units, and allowed for a lot of keys as well.

Jeez, you people are negative. "Not impressed", give me a break. It's not supposed to be that impressive. It's just a fun little piece of code built into Live maps. Lighten up a bit, yeah?

It's a neat trick, using joystick input for a web app, and I hope that this is a trend that continues.

If you want to compare, the PC version of Heavy Rain available for download from the Ageia Physx video page:

http://www.ageia.com/physx/videos.html