toblix

SPOILER

The chat wasn't recorded in any way, right? Could you tell us a little about how it went down, and whether it was a success?

Oh, no, I just saw the trailer, and thought it looked like a film that might be good. Obviously the trailer pushes the heart-warming™ aspect of it, but for some reason I expect it to be good almost simply because it's French, and I've enjoyed all French films I've seen.

Apparently they're trying out a new thing whereby they stream the pre-recorded podcast and are present on the chat to comment on it. I just left since I'd rather hear it as a separate thing, and also the 5cm² comment field is just a torrent of people shouting idle puns, but at least it was fun hearing them struggle with live streaming, which turns out to be an impossible black art. I sort of hope they don't start doing this as a regular thing, since you have to be there to experience it (there's no recording of the chat) and the chat is too chaotic, but that's only me not wanting to miss anything ever.

Shameless? How?

They may err towards caution, but the metrics they'll be using won't megs of RAM, or whether developers will have to struggle to get the next Gears of War out, as long as they do. The specs will probably be somewhere between what the tech people say are the lowest possible specs and what the financial people say is the highest possible cost. Whatever amount of RAM they end up putting in there will be a calculation based on months of financial and technical predictions, rounded up to the nearest possible MB. Or so I imagine. Full disclosure: I know nothing about console design.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsPHXVnt27g

Most users run more than one application, though. If the Xbox 360 is getting away with 512MB shared memory, and they envision a GPU with 1GB dedicated, maybe 4GB sounds about right. It's easy to say "lol my rig haz 64gbitz" but obviously a business won't do anything more than they'll get away with, and if they can get away with buying 256 petabyte of ram instead of 512 petabyte, they will. No doubt developers will quickly start lamenting all the limitations of the new architecture whilst releasing beautiful, great games for it.

Could it be that application installers are doing things that require admin privileges when they shouldn't? I know one of Microsoft's huge problems is having to cater to software that does things badly and incorrectly – maybe you don't have to do admin stuff to install software, but installers do it anyway?

Obviously none of the new consoles will come without an optical drive, simply because Bluray, but it would be sweet if they somehow managed to force publishers into a first-class digital distribution system. They could ship around their little plastic boxes if they must, but all games should be globally available at the same time. It won't happen this generation, of course, but some day.

Yeah, it seems to be a few years old. I just heard there are rumours of the Wii U having more than 1GB RAM, which astounded me. I guess I'm overestimating how much memory you need to run a modern console game. It will be interesting if it turns out they'll ship the Kinect v2 with the next Xbox and consider it part of the base system specs. I wonder if it'll increase the amount of dumb shit game creators will have to tack onto their games to have them released, or if it'll enable them to do stuff they couldn't before because almost nobody had Kinect. Probably both. Next year seems like the year to watch for official announcements.

Hm, sounds almost like a bug. I haven't had those kinds of problems with it all. Also, I thought internet connections would be handled by the firewall. I've never seen UAC interfere with that.

Sounds like a pain. Do you install a lot of applications?

I'm probably imagining something far more hilarious than what you're actually talking about. What are those "worst times"?

First of all, why do you want a camera? I pretty much agree with everything everyone said. In my experience, people too quickly assume they want/need a DSLR camera, when all they need is a good digital camera. There are great compact cameras that will give you just as good pictures as a DSLR, and if you're not interested in learning about photography you'll just be dragging around heavier, more expensive gear than you need. BEWARE OF PHOTOGRAPHY EQUIPMENT FETISHISM. It's real, and it's ugly. That said, at this point you basically can't go wrong with any current DSLR. I know Canon, Nikon and Sony (and others here can probably vouch for many more) make great DSLRs, and if you end up going for one, you'll find that the camera itself ends up being among the least costly thing you buy (you end up spending way more on lenses, which will last you multiple camera generations. Lenses are the monitors of personal computers.) If you know people with accessories like lenses and flashes of a particular brand that you could borrow, that might be a good reason to chose that brand. But, for great image quality, inexpensiveness and portability (which I think is more important than people realise) you can't beat a good compact camera. If you tell us a little more, you'll get much better answers.

Sean!

It would probably be a smart to always try to not call people "Hitler." Even in the cases where it should be appropriate, it always backfires. This Trowe character seems like he has problems controlling himself – he's probably just super-into video games.

Okay. edit: Just one more thing before I'm out of everyone's hair: I agree with this, and wish I could formulate my thoughts like that.

While this is a super-interesting topic, I too get the feeling we ought to let this thread just sink. Most of us are probably more or less on the same page with regards to the actual topic, and it seems almost like the real debate or conflict lies in how to go about discussing the topic, where the boundaries go and what things are called. Those too are important and interesting things to discuss, but there seems to be an unfortunate, highly combustible combination of tempers and views that flares up around them, surprisingly quickly escalating and threatening to engulf everything in a vile fireball of anger and quotes. So, to make sure everyone forgets this, everyone should post that they wish this thread would disappear. For the record, I'm against permanently deleting threads, unless they're spam, or embarrass me.

That makes tons of sense. So, tell me about lists – what are they?

Who said it was? Well, I'm not sure I agree, and it sounds like somewhat of a stretch to me, but okay, derail averted.

Jesus Christ. "Baby it's Cold Outside" is a rape culture song? Really?

While I admit the search function isn't very good, a search for the word last revealed this thread, with which this one should probably be merged. In case you missed the search box completely, it's in the top right corner of the page. Also, I'm looking forward to this.

So now you have 36 feeds? I'm at the point where I'm following a few too many people, and spend too much time rewinding to catch every little tweet. Luckily I don't have anything better to do.

I've always liked avoiding the spoilers and waiting until I can see the keynote myself. (Here's the link for today.) There were some interesting announcements today, like the Do Not Disturb setting, and a laptop with a 2880x1800 display. However, I find myself become increasingly annoyed at weird stuff I notice, like them making fun of competitors, which always strike me as particularly pathetic coming from Apple. And the focus on – and crazy applause for – completely non-spectacular stuff. What got the greatest applause this time? Fucking pull-down-to-refresh in the email client. The new map looked really sweet. It'll be interesting to see what Google are doing here – they tried to pre-empt Apple last week by announcing something 3D coming to Google Maps. We'll see what happens, but I guess the battle of the maps is on like never before. I like the focus on accessibility, too, like the hearing-aid thing. Sounds like a cool thing, though, knowing Apple, it could just as well be a lame attempt at a lock-in thing.