It occurred to me that the ThinkNIC (http://www.thinknic.com) might
possibly play games reasonably well if it had 3D hardware (can't tell)
and might make a nice open platform for games. Of course they would
have a tiny fraction of the processing power of the XBox or Playstation
2, but still enough to handle all the games of a generation or two ago.
At $199 with no strings, it's an interesting platform.
Upon reading the article today about the idea of an Apache 'game' for
the XBox and rereading the Ellison reiteration of the MS strategy for
handling new competition:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29280-2000Jun9.html
Responded Ellison: "Microsoft has four stages in stealing someone else's
idea. First is 'This is incredibly stupid.' Then it's 'This is stupid,
but there are interesting things about it.' Third is 'We have a version,
and ours is better.' And the fourth is 'What are you talking about? We
invented it.' That's what Bill calls innovation."
It occurred to me that the XBox is MS's NIC+Game machine. If Larry had
positioned his box as an open game machine And an open NIC, he would
have been far more successful. Maybe they'll add a laptop style CPU
module with AGP video to make it upgradable. (Nah, you'll just buy a
new one at $199.)
Now that I think of it, a ThinkNIC would be a perfect network terminal
(a la VNC) to 'Office' and 'Browser' games on the XBox, with it's 8GB
drive, of a home network!
sdw
-- sdw@lig.net http://sdw.st Stephen D. Williams 43392 Wayside Cir,Ashburn,VA 20147-4622 703-724-0118W 703-995-0407Fax Dec2000
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Apr 29 2001 - 20:25:40 PDT