You know your computer is outdated when our Big Brother starts purchasing computers faster, meaner, and sleeker than your own!
Here's spec of PC gov't is purchasing:
Man, my computer is so frigg'n old!!!
LOLz. If person in that fluffy thing is not 1)a girl, and 2)cute, I'll hate Pikachu forever.
I'm not too sure on this, but I say Microsoft's new "innovative" product, Surface, may be their next big thing. (After, say, Zune. Or.. I don't know, what else did they make anyways?) It seems like they are showing it off as the new thing, and people are biting it; I see people talking about it as coolest thing in the world.
But the thing about it is, I don't see it being anything but a big failure, a big let down. Maybe it won't be a BIG failure, but definitely not a big success. Sure it is cool, to be able to have interactive, true desktop to play around with. Note that I said "play around with" because I precisely mean it. They claim it will have much more use; Sure, it can. But will people adopt to realize it's full capability? I doubt it. Here's why:
Unless they roll out a table top that's only few inches thick that can be installed easily--think IKEA--I don't see this going far.
I think Microsoft is struggling to find a new ground for it to roam about. Certainly, they seem to be doing better with entertainment area with Halo 3, their new OS is certainly not welcomed, and I don't want to even mention Zune. It feels like they're trying out new stuff just to keep up with companies like Google, when they should more focus on their own product, and perfect it. I say they should employ Surface's interface to Windows, renovate it in such way that people will actually use it. Not like Vista's deceptively sucking UI.
Not sure if you'll find this British person reviewing some games really fast--I mean fast--but I certainly did.
This review from some time ago is on Psychonauts, one of the-most-innovative-artistic-fun-yet-huge-commercial-failure game by Tim Shafer. ...Oh, that and dick gamers who want games to be art yet don't want to play them. I personally haven't played this. I really want to. And I shall... someday.
Enough of my bullocks, and here you go. Enjoy!
PS. Yahtzee's (the guy mumbling in the video) comment about how game became 2nd job reminds me of how I just don't play Eve-Online now. I want fun and reach experience from games, not dry, long, not interesting laborish experience. I..better cancel the subscription.
Moore's Law. It represent our--consumers'--expectation of how fast computers will become as every year passes by. Because of it, the chip industry always scrambles to meet that expectation and is designed and built based on this law; the whole industry competes each other to meet this law, and rips profits from doing so.
Although this is a good thing--who doesn't want super fast computer at disposal?--recently the market has seen a phenomenon it has never seen before; because all of the processors, even the low-end models became sufficiently fast, people simply stopped opening wallets for fastest chips out there. While the chips grew by Moore's Law, software stayed relatively simple, and did not use much of the processing power today's models are capable of.* The Cutting-Edge, The Fastest lost its sexyback.
One market that hasn't seen this yet is the game industry. Because it is relatively young industry, it has seen crazy growth throughout its history, and still sees unbelievable speed of advancement--people that I know who hasn't realized how fast the games grow often tells me how amazing they look these days. Because people wants more, games keep pushing its limits, which in turn asks for more processing power.
Although games do have a lot to develop on currently, there certainly will come a time when gamers stops looking for prettier and more realistic games, simply because most if not all games look pretty and feel realistic enough. This will be the time when games takes another step towards realizing its potential, and starts experiementing to become more mature media as a whole. I hope CEOs and managements of game industry will look forward to and prepare for this day. I certainly can't wait to see this time to come.
*Microsoft's new OS, Vista, tries to push boundaries with it's new graphical interface and other gimmicks, but seems like that boundaries will remain still for awhile, as Vista's launch seem like a failed ignition--at least for now.