Entertainment – Movies vs. Games

Yup:

reader comment from Mr. Peabody
Posted on: August 30, 2007, 6:34 AM PDT

Story: Movies to video games: Where entertainment has traveled

I’m pretty much nodding my head to this response, but sadly a 
lot of what Mr. Reisinger says is also no less than true.

Still, I think there are a lot of movies floating around that are 
very worthwhile and waiting to be discovered. If your movie-
going exercise only extends to Blockbuster for renting and 
Walmart for buying than you are short changing yourself. 
Over the last fifteen years or so I have hunted down and watched 
at least 150 titles that I thought were quite a bit above average. 
As one for-instance, discovering Russian Film Director Andre 
Tarkovsky renewed my belief that there have been and still are important 
movies to be made by past, present and future film makers, and upon renewing my search for those cinematic stories in my post college years, was richly rewarded – for the most part. Of course NOT needing to be entertained everyday or every week may be jading my perspective a tad.

I find video games just too time consuming whether they’re 
good or not, and yes, when you buy them you’re well invested in 
a non-refundable product. Of course you can’t return purchased 
movies either, but then you probably payed a third or less for 
that movie than you did for your game. I own a Gamecube, and 
my daughter and I have enjoyed many hours of gameplay over 
the last several years, but we’d almost always rather take a 
chance on a carefully selected movie than run out and buy 
another game title – But games are fun too. And what about a 
good book. If you want a good story with well developed 
characters and plots nothing beats a good book.
IN RESPONSE TO:
Not as rosy a picture as you’re painting: reader comment from clancypants
Posted on: August 29, 2007, 7:22 PM PDT
Story: Movies to video games: Where entertainment has traveled
For the most part, video games are as riddled with garbage and 
endless sequels as the movie industry. Take games like drake of 
the 9 dragons for example, bad story, bad gameplay, bad 
graphics, and the list continues. true, there are some standout 
titles like the halo’s and god of war’s and bioshock’s but the 
same can be said of movies. look at the bourne trilogy, a series 
of films that played with your standard action movie formula for 
something that wasn’t a spy movie and wasn’t an explosion-fest.

suffice it to say that most, if not all, of the creative industries are 
stuck in a quagmire of sorts. nobody wants to take a chance 
and lose on something new. what’s gone from all of these 
industries, for the most part, is that sense of adventure. there 
will always be people like rockstar that try and do something 
new and controversial but when does that start to hurt the 
industry instead of helping it? do we have to do a thing just 
because we can?

finally, the gamers are a much more volatile crowd. if you didn’t 
like a movie you only wasted 2-3 hours of your time and $10, if 
you didn’t like a game you just wasted 10-40 hours and $40-
$60. i can’t tell you how mad i was at the end of final fantasy X 
or even at the end of halo 2, which i have forgiven bungie for 
and do enjoy now.

in closing, the entertainment industry as a whole needs to stop 
worrying about losing money on taking a chance because 
eventually that chance will pay off and when that happens, 
people will regain their faith in hollywood and all the other 
entertainment cities.

IN RESPONSE TO:

CNET Blogs
August 29, 2007 6:34 PM PDT

Movies to video games: Where entertainment has traveled

Posted by Don Reisinger

As I mentioned over the weekend, video games have once again become part of my life. And as I explore far away lands like Hyrule or Gaia, along with newer places like the city of Rapture in BioShock, I can’t help but be amazed at how far video games have come in the past decade. And with that in mind, I’m left wondering why the New Release rack at Blockbuster is still filled with 90 percent garbage. For a business that relies on entertaining people, the movie industry really needs to take some pages out of the video game play book.
Video games have become the most entertaining form of enjoyment. Period. Think back to some of the new movies you’ve watched in the past few years and tell me how many of these justified the two hours you wasted watching it. Chances are, that number will be quite low when compared to the number of great games you’ve played in the last year. Of course, the reason for this is quite simple: The movie industry has become monolithic and its very business model has become derivative and outdated. There is very little drive for anyone to make a unique and extremely exciting movie anymore because producers know that many of us will go out and watch the garbage no matter how bad it is. On the other hand, video game developers–largely relegated to second-class by the Hollywood-types–have something to prove. And in the process of proving themselves, it’s the video game developers that are providing the real entertainment.
Over the past month, I’ve rented or purchased well over 25 movies. Of those 25, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that about five were good. On the other hand, look at new video game releases like BioShock or the impending release of Halo 3, Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid. These titles will feature an epic storyline, engaging characters and a plot that will keep you up at night. Are there any recently released or upcoming movies that you can say the same about? I doubt it.
Movies have become boring and derivative. What ever happened to variety? Every time I look for a movie, I’m offered one of three things: a “blood-pumping thriller”, a “laugh-out-loud comedy”, or your run-of-the-mill family drama. Can’t these people come up with something different? And as soon as October rolls around, a flood of horror movies will invade movie theaters all over the world with each offering nothing new to the stale genre.
And while there are some derivative motifs in the gaming business, it’s a far more innovative industry. Take BioShock, for example. The game is a first-person shooter, which is old, but it adds a new experience and engaging storyline to keep us coming back for more.
I’ve always enjoyed news stories that discuss the fall in box-office numbers and raised ticket prices to offset the high costs of running a movie theater. More often than not, these “cinemas” blame the public for raised prices and declining sales. Even better, they normally scoff at the video game industry when individual games outperform movies at the box office. But what the movie industry fails to understand and the video game business does, is that people are fed up with junk.
For too long, we’ve been subjected to the mind-numbing stories of love, action and drama. How many more times can I see a man and a woman dislike each other, then love each other, then hate each other and then fall back in love with each other? Enough is enough.
The movie industry needs to take some notes from the video game developers. Trust me, it’s the only way to bring us back.

More Delays, But Expensive Gasoline In Abundance

Six Months Six Years:

reader comment from Mr. Peabody
Posted on: September 5, 2007, 6:18 AM PDT

Story: Is EEStor delaying its power system for cars?

One truth is that, I’ve been hearing about the “real” possibilities 
of going electric since I was fifteen years old – and the promise 
was always that it was only about ten or fifteen years away – and 
yet here we still are – ten or fifteen years away… (notably this 
time, its the hydroden powered possiblitiy). Oh, and I’m almost 
fifty now.

To our credit we’ve managed to finally squeak out some nice 
hybrid cars that help reduce our gasoline usage, and that people 
will buy, but I still sense that none of us is really committed to 
completely doing away with petroleum or alchohol based fuels at 
all, or in the future, we just keep playing this mind game with 
ourselves that burning less is good enough, and that the next 
generation can decide whether or not they want to actually 
eliminate traditional internal combustion engines in 
automobiles.

Let’s see, what was it last month right here on CNET (not 
pointing any fingers at CNET), a new type of carburation system 
that can facilitate a gasoline burning engine getting upwards of 
100 miles to the gallon… Oooooo!

So tell me, are we going to get off of our gasoline habit, or not. 
I know I really want to see that happen before my final breath, 
but if I’m the only one then obviously it’s not happening – and 
I’m very weary of feeling obligated to slap the next set of good 
’ole boys on the back for getting us more miles per gasoline 
gallon. From here on out, my moral and financial support is 
reserved exclusively for those developers and technologies that 
get us off of gasoline – now.

IN RESPONSE TO:

CNET Blogs
September 4, 2007 2:24 PM PDT

Is EEStor delaying its power system for cars?

Posted by Michael Kanellos
It looks like the futuristic power system for electric cars promised by EEStor could be a little late.
EEStor CEO Richard Weir told CNET News.com in a brief phone interview that commercial production of its energy storage system–a device that holds electricity and functions somewhat like a battery–will be sometime in the next 10 months or so. The unit is also referred to as an “ultracapacitor.”
“We intend to be in production on or before the middle of next year,” he said.
Although that means that the company could be in production by tomorrow, the time frame is a little wider, and extends about six months or so further into the future than previously stated.
Back in January, the company stated that it would start shipping 15 kilowatt hour electrical energy storage units to Canada’s Zenn Motors, its first customer, in 2007. Zenn’s cars will mark the first commercial application of EEStor’s technology.
EEStor has been somewhat secretive about its technology, but proponents claim it will revolutionize the automotive industry because it will deliver electrical storage units that can power cars for hundreds of miles and can be recharged in minutes. By contrast, lithium-ion batteries now being prepared for cars take hours to charge and can take cars 200 miles or less. Skeptics have wondered whether EEStor can live up to its claims.
A six-month delay isn’t that serious of an issue for a start-up, and a number of clean-tech companies have faced delays this year. Tesla Motors had to postpone its electric cars a few months, while in solar both Miasole and DayStar Technologies have had delays. So has GreenFuel Technologies, which wants to turn algae into fuel and clean carbon dioxide from the environment. But it’s not great news either, and underscores the difficulty of bringing some of these green technologies to market.
Zenn, which invested in EEStor earlier this year, currently sells low-speed electric cars that run on more conventional batteries. These low-speed cars, which are similar to those made by other small manufacturers like Miles Automotive, are designed for campuses and retirement communities. The U.S. Department of Defense has also launched a program to buy a significant number of low-speed vehicles. For more information, you need to go to Zenn’s Web site. EEStor doesn’t have one.
You can’t learn a lot from looking at the Web site of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers either. The firm is reportedly an investor in EEStor, but EEstor is not listed as a portfolio company on the firm’s site. Venture firms, however, do this at times with stealth companies.

How Many CPUs/GPUs Is Enough – Or How Fast Is Fast Enough

It Just So Happens There Are 8 In Mine.

Reader post by: Mr. Peabody
Posted on: August 8, 2007, 6:35 AM PDT

Story: How many processors are in your PC?

Evenso, I think we’re a long way off from being able to crack 
Shor’s algorhythm with even the best CPUs or GPUs multiplied by 
any reasonable number of multicore CPUs or GPUs you might 
realistically be able fit onto a logic board in one of today’s 
desktop computers.

Among other things this article gets me to wondering if 
quantum computers will in fact be the foray into “real” artificial 
intelligence – but back down to earth – For me, once computers 
hit the 1GHz mark that was enough for many of the routine 
tasks I perform at home. It also made the possibility of buying 
used computers a more desirable thing for me as well, and as 
we crossed the one 1GHz mark I no longer felt that I just had to 
have the latest or fastest computer. I do use an 8-core 
computer at work, and the main difference is that this computer 
has the ability to render high-end graphics much faster than 
single processor dual-core machines do. So how much faster do 
computers really have to be? Well, how much money is enough? 
How big of a house is big enough? How many inputs is enough? 
How much land is enough? How much food is enough? How 
much power [of any kind] is enough? If we can find a single 
answer to any of these question that we all agree on, then 
maybe we’ll be able to know just how fast a computer absolutely 
has to be before we all say, enough.

Thanks for the pleasently provokative article Mr. Glaskowsky.

IN RESPONSE TO:

CNET Blogs

How many processors are in your PC?

Posted by Peter Glaskowsky
These days, most new PCs have dual-core central processors (CPU). That’s one chip with two complete microprocessors on it, both sharing one path to memory and peripherals.
If you have a high-end gaming PC or a workstation, you might have one or two processor chips with four cores each. An eight-core PC is a very powerful machine–in real terms, up to eight times faster than the best desktop PCs you could get in 2004. For many years, PC performance doubled roughly every 18 months; multicore technology has produced annual doubling for three years now.
But that’s not really so impressive when you look at the 15-year history of 3D graphics on PCs. The companies making graphics processors (GPUs) have delivered a doubling of performance every 6 months or so for this whole time. That means today’s graphics chips are faster than 1992 products by a ratio of 2 to the 30th power, or about a billion to one.
CPU progress is slow by comparison. Over the last 30 years of the microprocessor, performance on integer operations has improved by about a million to one. Floating-point performance looks much better, since early CPUs had to emulate floating-point operations in software. With hardware floating-point units (FPUs), today’s processors run FP-intensive code about 100 million times faster than those of 1977.
Floating-point performance is the key to the rapid progress of graphics chips, too. Most of the math required to display the special effects in a game like Company of Heroes is done using floating-point numbers. This math has to be done over and over for each pixel on the screen, but the work for many pixels can be done in parallel.
That’s the loophole here, the trick that graphics chips exploit to boost performance so much with each new generation of 3D chips. It’s all done in parallel.
So if you think eight processor cores is great, think about an Nvidia GeForce 8800 GPU with 128-thread processors running at 1.35GHz…or an AMD Radeon HD 2900 with 320-stream processors running at 743MHz. These processors are very simple by comparison with the cores in a CPU, but there sure are a lot of them. (There’s no easy way to make direct comparisons between these numbers, so don’t worry about it…just let the numbers flow over you.)
Then think about this: either one of those chips could, in principle, run a word-processing program all by itself. But such a program would probably run on only a few of those thread or stream processors, and inefficiently at that, so the program would probably run more slowly overall than it would on some old Windows 98 machine. For some things, CPUs are still much better than GPUs.
And this brings me back to the subject of yesterday’s blog (here). Nobody’s really sure how to evolve a CPU to the point that it could replace a GPU without losing what makes it a good CPU. Or vice-versa. CPUs and GPUs are likely to have distinct designs for a long time to come.
But they won’t necessarily stay on separate chips. I’ll explain why later this week.

Is 100MPG Better?

Is Lower Mileage the Goal?:

reader comment from Mr. Peabody
Posted on: August 31, 2007, 6:21 AM PDT

Story: Transonic’s goal: A car engine that gets 100 miles per gallon

The way this is written it makes it sound like we’re supposed to 
be excited because it gets better gas mileage than a hybrid. 
Isn’t the goal to get off of petroleum based fuels all together?

As in previous decades we come up with yet another ultra-high-
mileage engine that never gets produced, and if it did it would 
only be taking us down the path of less but none-the-less 
continued gasoline usage, doing nothing less than making us 
feel perfectly justified in continuing our use of gasoline with 
nothing but a shrug of the shoulders.

IN RESPONSE TO:

August 30, 2007 3:49 PM PDT

Transonic’s goal: A car engine that gets 100 miles per gallon

Posted by Michael Kanellos
Transonic is coming clean with its ambitions: it is working on a fuel injection system that will let liquid fuel cars get 100 miles a gallon.
And an engine equipped with Transonic’s technology will be able to run on gas, ethanol or other types of fuel without help from batteries. In other words, a car with a Transonic-assisted engine would get as good or better mileage than a plug-in hybrid (mileage on plug-ins drops on freeways) but still have the punch of a gas car. More mileage leads directly to lower emissions, and also less dependence on foreign oil.
Put in a fuel like biodiesel and the car with the technology would, in theory, emit nearly zero emissions from the tailpipe.
The somewhat secretive start-up, based in Southern California, has received investments from both Venrock (the firm that grew out of the Rockefeller fortune) and Khosla Ventures. Until recently, the company has been relatively vague about its plans and still shows only details of its technology under nondisclosure agreements. I was given some details a few months ago but was sworn to secrecy–and, because I promised, I still can’t talk about that. But vague details have begun to emerge.
The company has created a new type of fuel injector for high-compression engines that greatly improves energy efficiency, according to its Web site. Waste heat is minimized by the efficient use of energy, but efficiency can also be boosted by more advanced thermal management technologies and sophisticated combustion chamber designs.
Meanwhile, major car makers are trying to eke out efficiencies in their engines. General Motors and Toyota have been researching Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI), which increases mileage by varying the pressure and temperature inside an engine, for the past few years. HCCI promises to boost fuel economy by 20 percent or more. Honda has a diesel Accord coming in 2010 that gets 62 miles per gallon.
The company’s president is Mike Cheiky, who also help start battery start-up Zinc Matrix Power. Cheiky, who has 45 patents and pending patent applications to his name, also has invented technology for the cellular industry. He invented some early prototypes around the ideas behind Transonic in 2005 and formed the company in 2006.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, Venrock partner Ray Rothrock wrote a bit about the company in a column on VentureBeat.
“It minimizes the volume of carbon emissions by developing a way to reduce the amount of gasoline or other liquid fuels needed to go the same distance as engines today,” he said. “This injector can be supplemented by advanced thermal management, EGR, electronic valves, and advanced combustion chamber geometries for even better utilization of a unit of fuel.”

Serious Electric Car Competition?

OK But…

Reader post by: Mr. Peabody
Posted on: August 13, 2007, 11:26 AM PDT

Story: In electric car stakes, it’s Miles to go

Let’s not forget that wind and solar power are also being used 
more in certain parts of the county, and you left out hydro-
electric power.

But here’s the point I really want to make, I’m ok with the 
apparently negative scenario you imply and here’s why: I think 
we should use electricity even if it’s generated from a petroleum 
bi-product source, simply because the more we narrow the use 
of petroleum/fossil based power sources down, the easier it gets 
to focus on those final sources and to begin replacing them with 
alternate sources. It’s a little like cornering a mouse in the 
dining room, as you get it narrowed to one corner you keep 
moving all of the other furniture behind you so that it can no 
longer hide in those places, and when it’s got no where else to 
go then the choices of exactly what you’re going to do to catch it 
and eliminate it become much clearer. Very rough analogy I 
know, but you get the point.

I don’t think we should wait to start doing the right thing where 
it presensts itself just because we don’t have an end-to-end 
solution yet, and in the case of petroleum-based fuel the power 
of private interests have here-to-fore continued to win out over 
really implementing alternative fuel source for cars and 
generating electricity in any large scale way. Waiting has been 
the number one killer of using non-petroleum based fuel 
sources for cars, let’s stop waiting until some politician tells us 
it’s ok to start buying other types of cars and start buying only 
cars that DO NOT use gasoline – And let’s start that now, not 
another ten years from now. (Read that as YET ANOTHER ten 
years from now.)

IN RESPONSE TO:

TalkBack: Makes no sense to use fossile fuels to charge an electric car.

reader response

Makes no sense to use fossile fuels to charge an electric car.

Reader post by: lingsun 
Posted on: August 10, 2007, 7:23 PM PDT

Story: In electric car stakes, it’s Miles to go

Unless your electric company has a nuclear plant, having an electric car makes no environmental sense. Otherwise, you give up a gasline engine to have your electric company burn coal or natural gas to charge the battery.

IN RESPONSE TO:

CNET Blogs

In electric car stakes, it’s Miles to go

Southern California company joins a host of start-ups hoping consumers will get a charge out of electric-powered sedans.
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: August 10, 2007, 10:25 AM PDT

Miles Automotive will try to accomplish two feats with one car in 2008: bring an electric sedan to the market, and bring a car made in China to the U.S.
The Javlon, from Southern California’s Miles Automotive, will go 120 miles before it needs a charge and will hit a top speed of 80 miles an hour, according to CEO Jeff Boyd. It will cost approximately $32,000, and its lithium ion battery will last more than 100,000 miles before it needs to be replaced.
The company hopes eventually to come out with other models that will accelerate faster and go farther on a single charge.
Although Miles is based in the U.S., the car will be assembled in China, and most of the key components, such as the battery, will come from there as well. The basic chassis of the Javlon, in fact, is already being used for a gas car by another company in China. (U.S. carmakers get parts from China but assemble them elsewhere, and Chinese companies do not import street cars in large numbers to the U.S.)
China isn’t exactly identified with high-quality manufacturing these days, but Boyd and other executives assert that Chinese doesn’t mean cheap or shoddy. The chassis was actually designed by Italian designer Pininfarina.
The battery also comes from a well-known vendor. “We’re buying it from one of the premium battery manufacturers in China,” he said.
Over the next three years, the world will get a chance to see if it’s really ready to embrace electric cars. General Motors, Toyota, Honda and Ford all brought out electric vehicles in the 1990s–only to yank them off the market because of dismal sales. Some of the current crop of electric car designers and execs also assert that these early cars weren’t very good.
Since then, better batteries, higher oil prices and global warming have brought the idea back into vogue. Tesla Motors will bring out a $98,000 sports car later this year.
Selling sedans
Meanwhile, a whole host of companies–including Think, Zap, Tesla and Phoenix Motorcars–hope to bring out sedans for the mainstream market. (Others, such as India’s Reva, are aiming for the economy market, while Zero Motorcycles and Vectrix are selling electric two-wheelers.)

The sports cars are being sold on the basis of speed and acceleration, an advantage that comes from having an electric motor. Marketing sedans is a bit trickier. The sedans will range in price from $30,000 to $50,000, and most will only be able to go about 100 to 150 miles before needing a charge.
Will Americans pay that much for a car that might not get them away for a quick weekend trip without conking out? Nobody knows, but Boyd notes that most Americans commute only about 40 miles a day and that a lot of people have second cars they use only for commuting.
“We don’t expect this to be most people’s primary car,” he said.
Charge time is another issue. The battery in the Javlon will take 8 to 10 hours to fully charge. That’s significantly longer than the charge times touted by other manufacturers–the Tesla Roadster, which comes with a fairly large battery, charges in about 4 hours. Boyd says that customers will become acclimated to thinking about charging every time they park.
The Santa Monica company was founded by Miles Rubin, an executive-turned-entrepreneur and a philanthropist. About three years ago, he was at an automotive conference with now-Chief Marketing Officer David Hirsch. They listened to two engineers argue about the feasibility of hydrogen cars. One said hydrogen cars would hit in about 18 years.
“He turned to me and said ‘18 years? I’ll be dead in 18 years. What can we do in 18 months?’” Hirsch recalled.
The company has already come out with low-speed vehicles that top out at 25 to 35 miles per hour. They are sold to college campuses, industrial sites and the military. The Department of Defense is replacing a number of conventional cars with low-speed vehicles. Retirement communities, which have seen a rash of accidents among their golf cart-commuting residents, are another target market.
The company has already come out with low-speed vehicles that top out at 25 to 35 miles an hour. They are sold for use on college campuses, industrial sites and military posts–the Department of Defense is replacing a number of conventional cars with low-speed vehicles. Retirement communities, which have seen a rash of accidents among their golf cart-commuting residents, are another target market.
“There are about 70,000 low-speed vehicles in the U.S. today,” Boyd said.
To date, Rubin has put about $15 million to $20 million into the company. Venture capital firms have not invested in it.

The first prototypes are currently being finished in China, and Miles hopes to bring them to the U.S. for testing and to show potential dealers by September. The company will then begin the rigorous, and somewhat expensive, process of testing required by the U.S. government and the EU.
If all goes well, Miles will begin to sell cars in the fourth quarter of 2008. For the first year of production, it has set a goal of producing 18,000 cars, and for the second year, 38,000. An SUV-like car will follow, ideally, in 2010.
If electric cars are such a good idea, what will prevent the big companies from coming in and taking over? Size, says Boyd, who has owned and run several car dealerships. Unless big automakers believe they can sell 200,000 units of a new model, they won’t make it, he said.