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It's to stop spoofing. You can read about it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I know, I could've made that so much worse.

I was (perhaps a bit pedantically) objecting to the apparent argument that any shape will do because your fingers will wrap around it. I can think of shapes that you could hold but wouldn't like working with.

I first grabbed a computer mouse in 1984 and I've been using them ever since, without hand pain. How long to I have to wait to find out?

That means that the shape(s) you've been using is/are adequate (possibly for most normal hands of roughly similar size). The ordinary mouse I use at work is symmetric and gives me no issues, but early mice wouldn't work as well for long hours, and I know from experience that tiny "laptop" mice kill my thumb adductors. OTOH (no pun intended), I know people who work *better* with tiny mice, either because they have small hands or because of injury.

Lastly, TFA is about gamers. They mouse like their lives depend on it (some do make a living off it) and it's not unthinkable that the situation resembles other activities like shooting or golf to some degree, where subtle differences in performance and myth complicate gear choices.

There are many opinions and many products out there, and very many of them could be classified as unwise to partake of because there is much better to be had. Championing less knowledge for people about to make potentially life altering decisions is a viewpoint that makes no sense to me. Be that as it may, as you say there's a place for just about everyone. I wish only the best for you, your children, and your many grandchildren.

http://www.stupid.com/stat/XRAY.html

Well, I must say I never thought of making a /. article out of this one, but since about 1999 which is when I started working on my own computers for hobby, I would use stupid.com as a network test to see if I was online or not and not just loading a cached page (since I only go there when I am testing my network once in a blue moon...) One thing I have noticed about this site, it still feels like I'm in 1999 when I load it...

I'm reminded of my nunchucks...

:D

http://ad.hominem.attacks.make.your.argument.appea r.stupid.com/

Of course. Both are scams for the gullible. Both of these types of items have value which is arbitrarily assigned to them trough hype, connivery, lack of basic unerstanding of commerce etc, instead by true supply/demand equations. If anything, the baseball cards are more resembling of a marketplace although their supply is also completely artifically constrained. Thiose things are in the same boat as the 1970s "pet rock".

It is a well known facts that diamond mines produce many times the amount of the market demand quantity of diamonds, and so vast multi-national cartels which control 100% of the market are stockpiling literally metric tons upon metic tons of diamonds in order to manipulate the retail price. If true supply/demand mechanisms were allowed to take effect, the price of cut diamonds would be close to that of high-quality quartz. There are even at this point several companies capable of manufacturing diamonds which are for all practical purposes indistinguishable from the real thing and which have to be now artifically marked so that the dealers do not get confused. It is one of the examples of a complete and utter failure of laissez-faire capitalist marketplace and a prime example of what happens if the governments are not aggressively busting cartels, oligarchies and monopolies, which, contrary to what various wacky libertarians will tell you, are the natural apex of progression of laissez-faire capitalist corporate structures.

However, the change in price by a factor of 4 isn't that far from any number of reputable business practices you see all the time.

Skip the word "reputable" and we will agree. Diamonds, baseball cards, mass "pop" culture and similiar scams, pyramid schemes and other marketplace aberrations are not "honest" nor "reputable" business.

And I'll stick with my Mr. T Chia Pet.

Or perhaps, just maybe, the features were nowhere as important to the "success" as the marketing circus and the corresponding lunatic expectations of 300% profits and subsequent disappointment at "lack of growth" of the shareholders. Aka failure of logic and capitalism in general, so common these days. Apple is milking the market of the fashion sheep for all its worth and a great many of pin-headed businessmen drool at the idea of "iPod-killer", meaning taking all that undeserved profit for themselves. Reasonable products and modest profits are not something they are interested in.

The point was, marketing muscle alone isn't enough to make a product successful.

There was a time I would believe it, but then this happened.

Read up, it actually says some companies will have a small advantage that they can leverage against their competitors to steal marketshare. Its quite fascinating. Modern communications and distribution will work to increase this effect, which makes the overall system even mor efficient.

Nothing of the sort. As soon as that occurs, that little wee thing called competition is supposed to restore the equilibrium by new players entering the market. Adam Smith repeatedly warned about monopolies and oligopolies being the worst threat to his "invisible hand" model. Read up indeed.

Rio had piss-poor marketing, so? This feeds into the "Rio had bad management" arguement. Marketing is supposed to pay for itself, I spend $1 million advertising my product, it generates sufficient sales to earn $1.3 million. If all it took was advertising, then Rio should have paid for it.

What you neglect to see is that marketing of that sort, aka "branding" is contrary to the tenets of capitalism. The idea of consumer choice is predicated upon the consumer being knowledgeable, being able to make a rational choice. If that fails, the whole capitalist "invisible hand" system fails. Add to this the fact that the types of marketing Apple could do were simply not available to Rio. Apple leveraged its existing "brand recognition" and could also afford much larger campaigns then Rio and sign contracts with recording companies Rio was too small for. It was (and still is) a stacked deal.

Is this what bothers you? that Apple had the insight to realize something other than technology might motivate buyers? Because Sony realized this too, as did Nike, and dozens of others.

See "invisible hand" and failure of thereof above.

What you said is "Their reasons are stoopid and mine are intelligent".

I am sorry, I was unable to find that line in my posts, could you point me to it?

And occaisonal typos and spelling errors, which you have helpfully pointed out because you are no better than me.

I started pointing them out because I realized they interfered with the logic of the sentence. I assumed that by passively pointing them out (as opposed to "you made a typo here! haha! Look everyone!" as some do) I am simply giving you the opportunity to correct the meaning should I guess it wrong.

Ah, you were using the "two wrongs make a right" arguement. That because they are foolish and childish, you should be too.

Nothing of the sort. But you simply cannot accuse me of something the original poster does because I point that out. It does not work that way, which, I am sure, you find disappointing and confusing.

... nor am I they [sic] guy who first accused you of acting as a holier than thou snot.

Assuming I read that correctly, quote you:

in fact make you a holier than thou jackass

Perha

Incidentally, "pig game" came back with a pretty amusing game: http://www.stupid.com/games/feedthepig/

Tom Petty, along with other artists like King Crimson and Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, have been responsible for many hours of zoned out internet surfing to some of my favorite sites. You've been there - putting on some tunes, firing up your browser, zoning out and surfing away...
Two minutes later, an hour has passed, the album has ended, and you've been around the world and back and hopefully learned something new.

That's just how I started off the other night. I popped Tom Petty's Wildflowers cd into the drive, cranked up the volume, and fired up the browser. I was immediately sucked in by the sweet acoutic guitar sounds of the title track. Click... Click... Click... You Don't Know How It Feels comes up, I hear the sentimental lyrics, and I drift back to my younger days... Click... Click... Click... Another 30 seconds rolls by and half the album's over... Cabin Down Below just nails me with the big fat Telecasters running through tube amps turned up to 11 sound... Click... Click... Click... I finally make it to Wake Up Time ... "Time to open your eyes... And rise and shine..." and...

I'm accosted by the stench of burning pl

I think that anyone who would say "video games are mindless entertainment" obviously does not understand enough about games to make such a judgment. That said, games run the whole spectrum from purely mindless entertainment to extremely though provoking.
Lets start out with an example, two games that I play alot are Kolf and KBounce, both are relativily simple and quite mindless games. These are games that I play during commercials on TV if i'm watching a show, during a lul in the conversation when i'm on the phone, while i'm waiting for a huge file to compile, or any other time when I just want some small distraction while I wait on something. These games are really mindless.
Lets look at another game that I play quite a bit. Soul Caliber II. This is a game that combines quick reflexes with strategy to defeat an opponent. It's not chess but it will keep you thinking, especially when you are playing against a human opponent, who's tactics are not quite as predictable as the computers.
Now for a third game, Neverwinter Nights. Since it's hard for my friends and I to get together and play D&D like we used too, usually a couple nights a week we will fire up Neverwinter Nights and play a DMed quest. This game definitly involves heavy thinking. Not only are there puzzles to be solved and tactics to be developed, but you must also manage inventory, remember to play in character, keep track of your health, spells/special abilities, the status of your party. If you are the DM for that particular game things get even more complicated as you have to have interesting and realistic in character text for NPCs, keep the flow of the story going etc.
Now, lets look at what non-gamers see when the look at each of these games:
Kolf and KBounce - a bunch of clicking
Soul Caliber II - pressing buttons and beating eachother up.
Neverwinter Nights - clicking on monsters and IMing your friends (remeber to someone who has never played D&D there is no challenge to playing in character, in fact few of them probably even realise there is such a thing as in character)
The thing is, most people have played solitaire (pretty brainless), or have played those brainless games on Pogo or the click the box game or whatever. Those are brainless games for (mostly) brainless people. When these people look at other games being played, they do not realize the though requied and associate the difficult level as being the same as the games they play. One has to realize that it is difficult to "see" thinking.

Here

Wonder how many workers there have considered investing in This.

(I'll stop myself from explaining my plan to use a webcam, my Pentium running Linux, 20 10-foot USB extension cords, and a wind-up NunZilla to explore the corridor...)