Found on E-Bay….

With the debut of the XBox 360, has Microsoft begun the slow death march of the gaming PC?

With a sales price of $300 (potentially), three 3.2 GHz processors (potentially) and a 512 MB graphics card (potentially), what makes it worth it to drop a few thousand on a PC to play games on a comparable system you can pick up for $300?

PC users everywhere (except for loyal fanatics of course) are going to start to question whether it makes sense to keep upgrading their PCs, spending thousands of dollars on video cards and memory to play the latest games or just spend a quick $300 to play all the same games (especially since all the games are being released for all the consoles and the PC now)

I used to be a big console guy. This was back in the day when I had no money so paying $100 for the 8-but Nintendo to play all those cool games was like a dream come true. Then I started getting frustrated because computer games could do so much more and be so much larger (especially since I’m a fan of RPGs). So once I got a real job, I bought my first computer and so I became a computer gamer and my consoles started collecting dust. Now however, I’m not so sure my PC makes as much sense anymore. I’m not willing to shuck out another $1500 just to play the next version of Unreal Tournament, especially since I will probably be able to play the same game on the XBox for $300.

Yes, I think Microsoft might have finally killed the PC. I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing sales of computers declining right after it’s release.

I really don’t think there’s much more I can say…

While doing some reasearch to figure out how to explain some of the inheritance features of .NET to one of my fellow coders, I stumbled across this excerpt from the SAM’s Teach yourself Visual Basic.NET in 21 days book (excerpt and original link here)

To some people, Inheritance is one of the most exciting features of Visual Basic.NET - a feature that is considered fundamental to the creation of object-based systems and that has been missing from VB until this version. I am not going to argue with this opinion, but somehow I managed to build systems for many years before .NET arrived, without inheritance. Regardless, the addition of inheritance to the Visual Basic language is an important feature and worth a little discussion.

Now one, the underlined text (which I added the underline to draw attention to the text) is in fact in argument with the opinion that inheritance is one of the most exciting features of Visual Basic.NET, so that already makes the author a liar. He said he wasn’t going to argue, but he couldn’t resist so he slipped it in there.

And two, how in the hell can you write a VB.NET book and NOT understand how inheritance is one of the most important features of Visual Basic.NET and if you don’t think it’s important why would YOU of all people be selected (or want to) write a book about VB.NET?!

In the authors opinion (at least in my opinion it’s his opinion), he doesn’t even understand why VB.NET should have been released. Heck, he was doing fine churning out applications with VB6 so what’s the big deal about .NET?

Yeah, that’s the level of excitement about a product that I want an author to show. Well you don’t really need this, all your old sofware you’ve been using works just fine this is really just a stupid upgrade. Why would a publisher pick this guy? (Money, I know)

And what kind of coder is this guy? I’m guessing a clockpuncher who just writes code that gets the job done. Best practices, maintainability, what are those? Of what use could inheritance EVER be to anybody. It’s definitely not an improvement to VB. Heck, why do I need a car? My horse has been getting around just fine. Or electricity? I have candles. Wish, I could come up with some better examples but I’m too angry.

No wonder VB coders aren’t making the leap to .NET correctly. If this is the book they are picking up (which I don’t recommend learn something in a ridiculously short amount of time books to anybody), they are just coding VB6 code in a .NET world. What a waste.

If you’re not excited about the subject why would you write a book about VB.NET and more importantly who would want to buy the one you did write?

You know, the people who Go 10 MPH under the speed limit until the passing lane comes, only to speed up so you can’t pass them.

People suck.

link via UtterlyBoring