Offical Blog: When In Panic, Fear Or Doubt ...

[Monk]

Ah yes. I understand. And people who say the axe is 3 years old are called trolls? That's quite easy...

I think that WizardStan's pretty close actually - it's all down to how you consider it. He's saying, if I read him right, that none of the parties are trolls. Just that they have different interpretations. The problem comes IMHO when people don't spend enough time to consider the other people's points of view.

Let's forget analogy, for a moment, and return to the ED/Craig/GP32 replacement console and look at it from the extreme points of view.

From your POV (which I personally tend to agree with) since ED and Craig set out their stall to produce a better, faster, more capable handheld gaming console - the Pandora 1 seems, currently, to be the fruit of that endevour. So any projection that they would have one ready by end of Dec 2007 is valid, and the project is 2 years late and counting, with anything prior to the final Pandora being simply part of their R&D process and not in any way the customers fault.

From EDs point of view, as best I can grasp it (since I generally agree with your POV, more-or-less) they've had several (at least 2) projects. One failed, and although it certainly informed the Pandora project in many ways, it was not part of the Pandora project and it all happened way, WAY before any money was taken. So ED could quite easily hold the Pandora as being little more than 1 year late since, IIRC, money was taken around October 2008 with the delivery target of November-December 2008 (rolling into the new year if things didn't go well) - anything before that was not "firm" and possibly not "Pandora" as such.

Personally, I'd rather find the way different people consider the projects the same, different, or linked to be interesting than to generate so much heat that not everyone holds the same view. It's fascinating (to me) how the same information can paint such different pictures, and that this variety in US may be a large part of what makes this planet so varied. If ED did promise A better replacement console for December 2007 then clearly he failed to deliver - and will ALWAYS have failed to deliver that console, because they stopped developing it - they abandoned it and any promises made for or about it, and moved on to something with very similar, but extended, goals.

The other way to view it is that of ED/OpenPandora "twisting" the facts to minimise their guilty conscience, or of you and... that other fellow who posted similarly of trying to "twist" the facts to make them out to be more incompetant/less honest than they are. I am not convinced that we have any such thing going on here - I really believe what we have is very different opinions/interpretations of the available facts, and it's just delicious HOW different the opinions are. It's like seeing two people regard a childs soccer ball, and having one person say "it's yellow" while another retort that "it is clearly blue". They're obviously both wrong, of course - it's green!

Ta...

Edited to change a "3" to a "2" thanks to a kind note from Awakening. Other misc typos corrected while I was here

 

[WizardStan]

Ah yes. I understand. And people who say the axe is 3 years old are called trolls? That's quite easy...

No, people who say that "the axe is 3 years old and that there is no other way of looking at it and anyone who disagrees with them are lying" are trolls.

 

[Awakening]

So any projection that they would have one ready by end of Dec 2007 is valid, and the project is 3 years late and counting, with anything prior to the final Pandora being simply part of their R&D process and not in any way the customers fault.

I think you need to learn how to count, Dec 2007 is hardly 3 years ago, just a few days over 2 years

Even if you consider the first project as part of the Pandora project the Pandora went through so many changes that a 1 year delay could not have been avoided anyway. Going with their first design then Dec 2008 might have been the real release date but since they scrapped that idea and started over they added a year or more to development time. In my view scrapping an idea and starting over with something different is a another project.

 

[mali]

@troll talk
Seriously, let's stop here and let Gruso reply. I didn't find sbock's post trollish, tbh. And ED's post was rational, too. I'm sure Gruso wanted to say something else. It's not needed that everyone gets involved in this misunderstanding, it can only make things worse.

 

[sbock]

@Monk

Nice post! Like it. I agree. Good to see some rational thinking and posting people here...

 

[Monk]

I think you need to learn how to count

Or just how to not let other peoples posts influence my own - I got stuck on the "3 years" from WizardStan's post (which I referred to) which combined with the years (2007 to 2010) to result in my error, rather than making a typo, but I don't believe either of those mistakes would warrant being accused of being unable to count to 2, personally. YMMV.

Thankyou for your kind, considerate, and thoughtful responses

@sbock there are a lot of contemplative posts and posters around, but they tend to be harder to make out through the fog of less considerate postings

 

[Grench]

3 years ago I bought an axe. It was a good axe. 2 years ago the handle split, so I got a new one, but kept the same head. 1 year ago the head chipped and couldn't be sharpened, so I kept the handle but replaced the head. How old is the axe? You're statement suggests you would think it is 3 years old, but it is an entirely different axe from what it was then. Others would say it is as old as the oldest part of it, so 2 years. Some might say it became new when the last piece of the old was replaced, so only 1 year. Your fact is meaningless in the face of objective idealism.

The guy has an axe. The axe's age is whatever he says it is until such a time as he encounters someone with a chain saw. He'll give up the chain saw when he finds the 9mm behind the dead zombie. That will get disdained when he finds the shotgun in a dark alcove. Eventually he'll get a chain gun and forget all about the shotgun. Then a pulse riffle and a BFG9000 or equivalent. Then at some point bad guys will whop him on the head, take it all and he'll get a 'gravity gun' and be stuck using it for the next 8 areas and the sequel.

 

[Nation.A.List]

The guy has an axe. The axe's age is whatever he says it is until such a time as he encounters someone with a chain saw. He'll give up the chain saw when he finds the 9mm behind the dead zombie. That will get disdained when he finds the shotgun in a dark alcove. Eventually he'll get a chain gun and forget all about the shotgun. Then a pulse riffle and a BFG9000 or equivalent. Then at some point bad guys will whop him on the head, take it all and he'll get a 'gravity gun' and be stuck using it for the next 8 areas and the sequel.

LOL :lol:

 

[mali]

The good old trusty shotgun comes in handy in many situations, so don't be so fast dismissing it. Just be sure to be close enough to your opponent and try to hit the head. Many Hell Knights lost their life that way.

 

[Awakening]

With slugs you don't have to be so up close and personal with your shotgun
I think SS2 is the only game that have used slugs for shotguns.

 

[alucart1984]

-If green - then MP starts at a rate of 1 per two minutes (single cycle), 120 per hour, 1200 per 10 hour Chinese work day ~ 8-10 days. Feb 5thish
-All 10,000 get boxed up, packed, placed on the big slow boat - you didn't honestly expect these to be sent priority... Feb 10thish
-30-45 days later the container arrives in a ship port somewhere in LA. March 20thish
-7 days later the sub-units from within the container clear customs and get shipped to the 'factory' and a call goes out to any enthusiasts who want to help assemble them. March 25thish

Are you kidding me? You think we'd let them ship the cases via boat?

He obviously doesn't realize you can put that on bulk pallet(s) and have it shipped via AIR mail to the states.

 

[EvilDragon]

I'm really shocked now. What happed to gp32x.de? I can't believe this. I always thought ED (and you Gruso/Chip) where nice and fair people. You call me a troll? I never attacked the Pandora. OK. I call you fanboy. End of discussion. One more victim for my ignore list...
[Edit:] Typos.

I never did call you a troll.
Might be that we already had the keyboard idea at that time, but we didn't have the OMAP by then.
We were definately trying with an MMSP2+ devboard, which was crap so we basically scrapped the whole thing.
The OMAP3530 wasn't even out before early 2008 (you can check that on various internet ressources).

If you would like to compare this to your birth: It would be like your parents planned a girl a year before but scrapped that idea and got a son instead a while later.
Would you say you're the girl they planned? Nope, your something different, but you're a human, too

It's the same with the old handheld. It did exist, we wanted Amiga Emulation (that was one of the first things we wanted) and we even had some ideas and renderings.
Still, we did want to use a very simple SoC (similar to the existing MMSP2, so board design would have been MUCH easier than with the Pandora) and found out AFTER we announced it, that the MMSP2+ wasn't capable of doing much more than the MMSP2.
Therefore, we decided to take a look at other SoCs, and stumbled across the OMAP3530 a bit later. But that's a totally different system...

We might've even had the same name for it back then, I don't remember and I don't care.
But telling we announced the system we're just finishing in 2007 is simply wrong. It's the SNES CD by Sony and Nintendo. It has never been released because of problems, but Sony redeveloped the thing and released it as PSX. Still you wouldn't say the PSX is a device by Nintendo and Sony and had been announced much earlier, would you?

 

[iprice]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSmSTpRUeLs - from 2:20 onwards

 

[hobbyman II]

and the BFG9000 is all sparks and farts , nothing sorts out the undead or alien cyborgs like a couple of rounds of good old fashioned lead , either up close or from range, depends on your opponent, those spike guys in Quake2 where better dealt with at range, letting em get close is a bad idea, but grunts and machine gunners?, just wade right in and take em out h34r: .

 

[geo12]

I'm just worried that OP's reply to the latest factory e-mail was something like, "OK, thanks for caring so much about the quality of our little Pandora machine :rolleyes: "

I want to know that the team is pressing the factory to make sure that they're getting the work done and to let them know we're getting sick and tired of their incessant fuck-ups

 

[sbock]

@ED

I see your point of view is completely different and if that's what you think: Fine. I don't really care. Unfortunately I'm not the only person who has a different opinion about this, so I can see no reason to lock a thread when somebody claims a different point of view.
Even Wikipedia says something different:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_%28console%29

Development of the Pandora began when Craig Rothwell, Fatih Kilic, Michael Mrozek and (later) Michael Weston teamed up and planned a portable system that would excel in the areas where they thought the GP32 and GP2X systems (from Gamepark and Gamepark Holdings respectively) were flawed.[2] The Pandora was designed based on ideas and suggestions contributed by GP32X forum members, with the goal of creating the ultimate open source handheld device.[3]

The release of the console has been delayed many times. Originally it was estimated by the developers that the console would be released in 2007. 3000 units were finally available for pre-order on September 30, 2008,[2] but demand was so high that the developers chose to increase this number to 4000, all of which were sold in under a week. The console was expected to begin shipping around November 30, 2008, but the creators report that it was delayed due to several compounding factors. In June 2009 Craig suggested in the forums that a July release was likely.[4] Later in June, Mrozek suggested that while that estimate was optimistic, some units may start shipping as early as August or September.[5] Christmas 2009, Craig Rothwell is currently "confident that you will receieve your Pandoras in January [2010]". As of January 2010, no units have been shipped.

 

[mali]

Chip locked the thread, because it would have become a heated and long _off topic_ discussion like this one might evolve into.
As a side note, I find it rather academic, boring and irrelevant to discuss it.

 

[deise]

@ iprice, very good

 

[HackModford]

I'm so sad... it's so close, yet far away...

To bad we can't have an email address for that factory... I'd be willing to throw in $10 bucks in a reward pot if they could get it done before such and such a time... If everyone pitched in it would probably work...

But alas, I think most people would be detested at throwing MORE money at this company that seems to fail/delay every two months :rolleyes:

Good thing I bought an iPod Touch... I don't think I could've survived these two years doing nothing...

I don't know what else to say... I think I would throw the towl in, get my $300 back but every time I think of doing that I hear... it's going to be done by such and such... it's just too tempting...

What should I do h34r:

I think I'll wait... my strategy, go on and occupy your mind with other things, so that when the desire comes it will be totally unexpected and frought with happy tears...

 

[borgqueenx]

I'm so sad... it's so close, yet far away...

To bad we can't have an email address for that factory... I'd be willing to throw in $10 bucks in a reward pot if they could get it done before such and such a time... If everyone pitched in it would probably work...

But alas, I think most people would be detested at throwing MORE money at this company that seems to fail/delay every two months :rolleyes:

Good thing I bought an iPod Touch... I don't think I could've survived these two years doing nothing...

I don't know what else to say... I think I would throw the towl in, get my $300 back but every time I think of doing that I hear... it's going to be done by such and such... it's just too tempting...

What should I do h34r:

I think I'll wait... my strategy, go on and occupy your mind with other things, so that when the desire comes it will be totally unexpected and frought with happy tears...

exactly my thoughts. We are already getting the good news and sayings that "its almost there" for over a half year now.

Its so close, but yet its far away.
im having some fun on my 3gs but i want to have the pandora for a better fun experience.