Rumored Playstation 4 10 year life...hardware and history explains why.

In a recently reported article a Sony representative had this to say about their console plans:

"We at PlayStation have never subscribed to the concept that a console should last only a half-decade. Both the original PlayStation and PlayStation 2 had life cycles of more than 10 years, and PlayStation 3 will as well. The 10-year life cycle is a commitment we've made with every PlayStation consumer to date, and it's part of our philosophy that we provide hardware that will stand the test of time providing that fun experience you get from day one for the next decade."

It makes a lot of sense, but the trend of longer life times is not something that is unique to Sony's devices. Release periods between new game systems have been growing longer since the days of the Atari VCS. Note the current generation of video game systems last for a lot longer than the ones that were out when I used to play them which were updated yearly.

Modern systems only have finite processing requirements given that so many have already maxed out high frame rate performance for 3D gaming (the most processor and memory intensive) at high resolution on the most used panels (today LCD and LED panels of either 720 or 1080 p resolution). All the necessary hardware muscle to drive that panel depth can safely be packed into a cell phone sized screen device today...in fact there are smart phones today that have the *same* max. resolution pixel (1920 x 1080) wise as the Playstation 3.

Once processing needs are maxxed out there is no real reason to deploy new hardware, you simply focus on making better game experiences with the hardware that is already *good enough* to give great performance on the games designed for it.

There is a reason why all the game console makers basically stopped even using resolution as a marketing strategy in their sell of the games when I was smaller resolution was a top of line item to tout that you had it above your competitors console because then you could *see* the difference, not any more.

The latest generation graphics boards and chips are now doing stuff that was unheard of 10 years ago *in real time* let alone simulating them using old tricks like various types of mapping or shadowing procedures. Real time physics is all the rage, real time object deformation, real time fire and water effects...the hardware simply has gotten far beyond the applications that the developers are programming it to perform.

Any PS 4 is going to be at least current gen. capable and that would make it a *beast* when run at the relatively small resolution (of a standard large screen panel) of 1080p hd. Now things will change once high bit density displays start hitting the 50" + size panel market and those will show the lower resolution of a 1080p (upscaled to Ultra HD) for what it is...which of course will get people wanting a player which can drive the physics in real time, the textures and the impacts and all the rest at the higher resolution...that will require more horse power but Ultra HD panels are still tens of thousands of dollars just coming to CES...it will be ta da...at least 10 years before they get down in price to where the gamers start buying them...and noticing that their (then 10 year old) PS4 can't drive them without slow frame rates...and then they will want to upgrade.

the attributes of web 3.0...

As the US economy continues to suffer the doldrums of stagnant investment in many industries, belt tightening budgets in many of the largest cities and continuous rounds of lay offs at some of the oldest of corporations, it is little comfort to those suffering through economic problems that what is happening now, has happened before. True, the severity of the downturn might have been different but the common factors of people and businesses being forced to do more with less is the theme of the times. Like environmental shocks to an ecosystem, stresses to the economic system lead to people hunkering down to last the storm, but it is instructive to realize that during the storm, all that idle time in the shelter affords people the ability to solve previous or existing problems. Likewise, economic downturns enable enterprising individuals and corporations the ability to make bold decisions with regard to marketing , sales or product focus that can lead to incredible gains as the economic ...

How many cofactors for inducing expression of every cell type?

Another revolution in iPSC technology announced: "Also known as iPS cells, these cells can become virtually any cell type in the human body -- just like embryonic stem cells. Then last year, Gladstone Senior Investigator Sheng Ding, PhD, announced that he had used a combination of small molecules and genetic factors to transform skin cells directly into neural stem cells. Today, Dr. Huang takes a new tack by using one genetic factor -- Sox2 -- to directly reprogram one cell type into another without reverting to the pluripotent state." -- So the method invented by Yamanaka is now refined to rely only 1 cofactor and b) directly generate the target cell type from the source cell type (skin to neuron) without the stem like intermediate stage. It also mentions that oncogenic triggering was eliminated in their testing. Now comparative methods can be used to discover other types...the question is..is Sox2 critical for all types? It may be that skin to neuron relies on Sox2 ...

AgilEntity Architecture: Action Oriented Workflow

Permissions, fine grained versus management headache The usual method for determining which users can perform a given function on a given object in a managed system, employs providing those Users with specific access rights via the use of permissions. Often these permissions are also able to be granted to collections called Groups, to which Users are added. The combination of Permissions and Groups provides the ability to provide as atomic a dissemination of rights across the User space as possible. However, this granularity comes at the price of reduced efficiency for managing the created permissions and more importantly the Groups that collect Users designated to perform sets of actions. Essentially the Groups serve as access control lists in many systems, which for the variable and often changing environment of business applications means a need to constantly update the ACL’s (groups) in order to add or remove individuals based on their ability to perform cert...

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