The machine worked so well that every molecule in his extremities was accelerated beyond the speed of light. There were two side effects. One - He could mess up a guy just by touching him. And two - He became a humorless dick!
One thing to keep in mind is that "western" medicine has went through several stages before arriving at today's version. Looking back into the past, there have been some incredibly ridiculous theories. Take a look at the history of blood, for example. But where we are at today in western medicine is fairly amazing. No other medical system in the world was ever able to do a thing about smallpox, measles, polio, etc. But western medicine has been able to wipe out these diseases and even know how it wiped them out. Sometimes theories turn out to be completely wrong, such as in the theory that stomach ulcers were primary caused by eating spicy food. But eventually someone was able to come along and show results proving that it was usually bacteria that could be treated by antibiotics.
There are other areas where western medicine has a lot of work to do, such as in treating cardiovascular problems. But at least there is hope that eventually we'll figure out the answers, and more importantly we'll be able to prove that they are the right answer. The problem with more traditional medicines is that there's no real progress. There's no way to show that one treatment is really better than another, since it's all approached anecdotally. And the emphasis is on "traditional". The reason you use a certain technique or medicine is simply because that's the tradition based on a theory that has never been and can never be proven. Western medicine falls into the "traditional" trap as well, mainly because I think humans are kind of predisposed that way. But the great thing is that we keep getting advances because those who don't follow tradition can eventually bring people around by showing actual clinical results. Sometimes it takes decades, but at least it happens.
The other major component of western medicine is how it is integrated and presented. THAT definitely needs a lot of work. When you have a handful of doctors, each prescribing a different medication in their own field without being very familiar with how it will interact with others, you are actually straying from the scientific method. We need better research and focus on how all these pieces fit together. And we need more focus on preventing symptoms (such as stress management, the role of exercise in preventing disease, etc.) rather than simply treating them. But I do have hope that progress will continue.
On the other hand, when I hear about some traditional system of medicine that must be work because "it's been used for thousand's of years", that's a red flag to me. It also means that another thousand years from now, that system of medicine will probably still be the same. But in all those hundreds/thousands of years, it never figured out how to reattach a finger, how to do a skin graft for a burn victim, how to keep someone from dying from rabies, how to cure malaria, etc. It's a dead end.
You do know that the point of veterinary medicine is generally to make pets live longer than they would "naturally" and survive injuries that would "naturally" kill them? "Natural" dog lifestyle is to be riddled with worms and crawling with flees. They would breed and pass on their genes, then they would "naturally" die about the time they were too old to hunt or broke a leg.
I don't disagree on your various suggestions to liven up your dogs life in a modern setting. Though it is very possible it will knock a few years off the end of his life. Then again, at least he will have lived a happy, exciting life.
Errr, the people who would be taking it? How many drugs do you think got weeded out that might have made you feel fine now but in 10% of the population made the pain permanently worse? Or caused you to be fine but three years later your fingers fall off? Or caused you to have schitzoid delusions, decide the government was trying to poison you through your orange juice and go down to the minimart and start blowing people away?
There have been some very notable drug failures in the past. It's not just an "off chance", it's a very real possibility. I don't want the next step after animal testing to be the general population. I know it sucks that we ask people with very serious problems to "take one for the team" by waiting 5-10 years. But you have to keep it in perspective. They have benefitted from all the OTHER people in the past who have done the same. The whole reason our medical science has progressed to the point it has is through rigorous scientific testing. If you get stuck with the short term perspective, it seems completely unfair. But you have to see the long term perspective.
The only cases where I support short circuiting a longer testing phase is for people who are very likely to die from their illness before the process is completed. Chronic pain is on the boundary due to the suicide issue noted. But I think it falls just barely outside, considering many (most?) people go on to live decades after they would have been willing to try experimental drugs that would have had unknown side effects.
I'm a little suprised I haven't heard about this before. Has this been widely known among the space elevator set before now? My experience with space elevators has mostly been through the gloss-over-the-problems world of scifi. I thought the only real problem was in the construction and maintenance, not in the actual use once it's constructed.
How is it a lie? I myself have voted for third party candidates at times I would have still went out and voted even if they weren't running. I didn't say it was true for 100% of the people who voted for a third party candidate. Hopefully you're not claiming that it's NOT true in 100% of cases. Somewhere in the middle is the fact that in some close races, a vote for a third party candidate can and does end up in voting in someone who would have been the third choice by the majority of the people. That's why I strongly support instant runoff voting.
If you take a fairly typical PC, it's not going to play the awesome, leading edge sort of games that real gamers play
Right, which is why I never said that. Though moving from there to Mahjongg is quite a stretch. There's quite a bit in-between, you know.
As far as you second bit about "ridiculing a company for an ad that doesn't exist", what I said was based on the ad that does exist. That ad is ridiculous in its implications. And yes, I think MOST advertising is ridiculous, I will continue to ridicule it for being so.
But anyway, my point was that these big differences between the Mac and PC just don't exist.
Once again, you have to come back with a personal attack. First my posts are due to me being off my medication, now it's because I'm some sort of invalid? Is it that difficult to just stick to the discussion and not try to insult someone you are arguing with?
Okay, so back to the article. You keep pointing out the number of households being 11 million at the end of 2004. Yes, it's impressive that "millions" of people have HDTVs. But isn't it more sensible to actually put it in the context of percentages? Notice the line where it said the total number of households is 110 million. So it's more like 9%. This is not an incredibly shocking number to me.
Also, one data point is not a "huge trend." Current data says that there were around 15 million HDTV households in mid-2006. Most projections I've read say that this is expected to be about 20 million by the end of 2006. And before you say "look, that's proof, it DOUBLED in two years, that's a huge trend!", another way to look at it is that they only picked up another 9% of the total households in two years. So now they're at 18%. I wouldn't call 9% over two years a huge trend. At that rate, it would take them six years to reach the household penetration DVD has right now.
For an actual huge trend, lets look at DVDs. I googled around for a bit and found this data:
4q1999: 8.5 million 1q2001: 14 million 2q2002: 30 million 2q2003: 46 million 2q2004: 63 million 2q2005: 75 million 2q2006: 80 million
DVD is considered to be one of the biggest consumer electronics successes of all time. Yet it still took around five years to reach 73% household penetration from around the point we are at right now with HDTVs. And there are far more complicating factors for HDTVs than there are DVD players. At their most expensive, DVD players cost around $300. Sales really started to ramp up when they got in the $200 territory and took off in the $100 territory. As is the case with almost all consumer electronics, newer players came out every year that were both CHEAPER and BETTER than the ones sold in previous years. It was no big deal to buy a new DVD player a year or two after your first, moving the old one to the bedroom or the kids room. That's simply not going to be the case with HDTVs. Unlike traditional TVs, CD players, DVD players, stereos, computers, etc., HDTVs are prices are not rapidly dropping into the area where it's a "no brainer" purchase for most people. For people with a lot of disposable income like yourself, yes. Instead they're dropping from the "oh my god how could you spend that much money on a TV" to the "wow, that's incredibly expensive for a TV" by the end of the decade they'll be into the range of "that's kind of expensive for a tv."
So say you buy an HDTV at around $2000 in 2003. When will you buy your next HDTV? It's going to be a while, I can tell you that. We're talking 10 years if you're like most people. And what would you do with the old one? Well, it's unlikely you're going to stick the sucker in the bedroom or kids room, unless you have a whole lot of square footage in your house or it's one of those REALLY expensive thin screen plasmas or something. You can try to sell it, but who wants to spend that kind of money on an HDTV when the newer ones are out that are probably much better?
Personally, I believe HDTV will eventually be the only TV. But I think it will take far longer than most consumer electronics. Going back to the studies at that link, you will see that they agree with me. One study says 55% of households will have HDTVs by the end of 2010. The other says 63% and the other says 82%. Even taking the best estimate, that means they'll be getting to present day DVD penetration by the end of 2009. But that's the best estimate. Taking the worst estimate, at the end of 2010, HDTV will be where DVD was at the end of 2003. At that rate, it will be more like 2015 before HDTV gets to where DVD is right now.
No, he wasn't imagining it, he was just misremembering it.
The Mac says he does "music, movies, podcasts - stuff like that". The PC says he does "timesheets and spreadsheets and pie charts". He does not says "games." Definitely implies it, though. The whole thrust of the ad is that PCs are built to do business apps and Macs are not. It's fairly ludicrous.
Also, it's very interesting that you should link to that article. Your statement was: Mark my words, within 2 years there will be few modern households without a HDTV capable set.
Wow, you responded to points I didn't even make, are you reading off a sheet of talking points or something?
Perhaps the confusion lies in the fact that I'm not responding to your post? Unless you are also the user greentoad. Still, I appreciate the ad hominem remarks at the end. Or were those intended for some other user who actually did respond to you on a totally different article?
I only responded to you in the post you made on a different slashdot story where you talked about not batting an eye on dropping $600 for a PS3 after also dropping $2500 for an HDTV. I linked to HDTV prices to try to clue you in to your $2500 purchase being on the high end of the range. From your reply on that thread, you still don't get it. I don't know how much clearer I can explain it, so I'm going to assume it isn't a case of you not being able to understand but rather you actively avoiding it.
Anyway, as far as losing my credibility, I'm not really worried. You clearly can't believe anything other than the picture of "reality" you've created for yourself. I actually believe your anecdotes, you know. I just know that there are a lots of different kinds of people. My stories are absolutely true, too. What I'd like you to consider is that your "sampling" isn't necessarily representative. Mine isn't necessarily, either. I bring it up only to highlight that you shouldn't believe your sample is the be-all end-all.
Also, it's very interesting that you should link to that article. Your statement was: Mark my words, within 2 years there will be few modern households without a HDTV capable set. Even the most optimistic prediction in the article was 82% of households by the end of 2010. One said 63% by 2010. Another said 55% and the fourth said 50%. By 2010. Unless by "few" you mean 18-50% and by "2 years" you mean 4 years, your prediction seems to be way outside of even the broad range of research-backed estimates.
Oh wait, let me guess, you'll say that you're right because those households without an HDTV aren't "modern" households.
I will agree that there is little point in discussing this with you further. You seem to draw your points out of thin air rather than basing them on actual research and published data.
Yeah, lousy Democrats! They even managed to do it in New Hampshire, too! They had to be pretty devious, given that both senators and both congressmen where Republicans. But that just goes to show when Kerry and Kennedy get together, there's nothing they can't do!
Every time a console gets launched, it's exactly the same story. And yet the media always reports it the same way, as if it's some undeniable sign of breakneck success. When in reality, it's simply intentionally supplying a fraction of enough units to meet demand so you get get the idiot press to advertise for you.
The REAL story is when a console maker can't manage this, like the case of the Xbox/Xbox360 failures. That's when it's actually news.
Not really, unless you want to call everybody who plans to purchase a HD TV this year an outlier. That would be how many million outliers?
Your logic is a bit problematic. How does your statement I personally won't bat an eye about dropping $600 on this box. After all, I'm picking up a $2,500 flat screen tv to go with it. equal to everybody who plans to purchase a HD TV this year?
Suddenly your other post I replied to is making sense.
Personally, I am not a fanboy of any console. As I posted before, I used to be a Nintendo fanboy but had that habit firmly broken by the N64. And if anything, I'm biased against the Xbox because it's sold by Microsoft. I have no reason at all to be prejudiced against Sony. And I agree 100% with the parent post. The PS3 would have sold out 80k units in Japan even if the PS3 was priced at $1000 at launch. Even if it was $1000 and smelled like burning hair.
Problem #6: Even your own claim is that there will be few "modern" households without HDTVs within the next 2 years. That really doesn't do necessarily put an impetus behind PS3, Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. As others have pointed out, when we jumped from VHS to DVD is was a major jump. It was still only a single piece of equipment being upgraded. The next jump will be from TV to HDTV. People will still be watching their plane jane DVDs on these HDTVs for quite some time. Right now you're expecting consumers to upgrade both their TV to HDTV and their DVD to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD at practically the same time. There is a market for that, but it's not the mass market.
I have quite a few problems with your post and the predictions you make.
Problem #1: This prediction is that people have been making it every year for the last 5 years or so. Do you have any actual sources you can point to that have done surveys asking households if they plan to buy an HDTV next year?
Problem #2: The bulk of the people who have HDTVs now are those with money to burn. The rest are those who will be making a major purchase getting an HDTV. These people will be unlikely to have another $600-700 dollars. Even at $500, if you are buying the PS3 for gaming you will likely buy at least one game, an additional controller and a cable to output to HD (it only comes with RCA cables). If you're buying it to play Blu-Ray movies on, you'll also probaby want to buy a remote ($25). So they can spend this kind of money, or they can spend much less on an Xbox or Wii.
Problem #3: It is far from proven that mainstream consumers will even notice the difference in resolution between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD or between the Xbox, Wii and the PS3. How many times have you been to someone's house with an HDTV only to have a SD signal in stretch mode? I don't mean the GOOD stretch mode either, I mean the "squish their heads" stretch mode. I've been to more than one airport that has replaced every tv with widescreen LCDs that are in squish mode. Keep in mind, the study showed that over half of those people with HDTVs didn't even watch HD programming. And these are supposedly the semi-early adopters.
Problem #4: The DRM crap in both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are not going to help adoption of either format. I still have to explain to my relatives why the DVD player has to hook directly into the TV. And they still don't get it. HDTV and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD throw a bunch more problems on the pile. A good portion will be watching downsampled video due to incorrect wiring but never even realize it.
Problem #5: You say "DVD is really crap with its letterboxed widescreen format that dvd players or tvs have to scale up." This is a bizarre statement. The DVD format is not letterboxed. DVDs have supported anamorphic transfers since day one. The problem is that some studios either a) haven't had new transfers that would look decent at HD or b) haven't cared and just want to shovel something out there and make some money. Blu-Ray doesn't solve either of these problems any better than DVD does. A new anamorphic DVD transfer looks great, even in HD. With my projector, I have a screen that is 8 feet wide. I can definitely tell the difference between a good transfer and a bad one. So Blu-Ray or DVD, it's up to the company to do a good transfer. Believe me, you're going to see the exact same problems with Blu-Ray that you see with DVD. Not as frequently, as DVD was the first time in the whole digital disc/widescreen tv era. But Blu-Ray won't be competing with DVD anyway, it will be competing with HD-DVD.
Problem #6: You cite several friends planning to get a 1080p HDTV. That's great. But are they planning on buying a PS3, too? I have several gamer friends, and not a one of them does anything but laugh at the idea of buying a PS3. And these are single friends making $50k+ a year, living in low cost of living cities.
So, again, I just don't buy it. Literally, I suppose. I used to be a HUGE supporter of Blu-Ray. I felt it was far superior in terms of capacity and there was just no reason to go to HD-DVD where you didn't have as much room to breathe. But Sony has really dropped the ball on this one. If Blu-Ray ever wins the format war, it won't be due to selling a console for the price of a used car.
Please note that I said "Even at $500, it's a bad deal." I was addressing the $500 version.
But since you bring it up, this actually makes matters worse. If they had ONLY sold the crippled version, they might have had more success with the $500 price point. As it stands, now a buyer will be faced with paying "real money" for the second tier. That's going to cause even more problems for Sony.
The PS2 didn't reach 40 million until September 2002, 2.5 years after it went on sale in March 2000. It took it until November 2005 to reach 100 million. I couldn't find any reference to the PS2 hitting 150 million. All I could find was a cite from this month saying the entire "installed base" for all gaming number 150 million.
So I really don't forsee this as being a coup for Sony. It might be, but I don't think so. I bought an N65 and then a Playstation. I bought a Playstation2 and then a Gamecube. I would have bought an original Xbox if any of my friends had them.
At $600, I will never buy a PS3, regardless of the fact that I've already pre-ordered a Wii. Ken was right - at that price, it's not a gaming machine anymore. If I buy a second console, it will be an Xbox 360, even though I loathe Microsoft.
With the high price of the PS3, the initial install base will grow very slowly. This will cause a low volume of game sales, which will further cause fewer games to come out, which will cause fewer people to buy a PS3. It will just snowball from there. Sony simply does not have the first party games to pull this off. I think Nintendo MIGHT be able to do it, but it would take a radical marketing and focus shift. But their first party titles would guarantee an initial install base to get the ball rolling. Microsoft might be able to get it going due to Halo and its penchant for just buying up game developers. Sony would have a small chance of doing it based on games that tend to be exclusive to it (at least initially), but with the pricing they have just guaranteed it will not happen.
It really just comes down to a VERY simple fact - $600. Even at $500, it's a bad deal. $500 is right around the price for a lot of people where purchases move from "do I want this?" to "do I need this?". And when you add on the price of a game and an extra controller, bumping it up around $100, most people will decide they don't need it. I think this would be true even if the Xbox and Wii were launching two years later than the PS3.
And Blu-Ray will do absolutely nothing to help sell more than a few million or so PS3s. Studies have shown that the average household income for HDTV owners is nearly $90k. The people with that kind of money would probably have bought the PS3 anyway. But the people at the lower end of the scale who really stretched their finances to buy the HDTV to begin with will be hard put to shell out for the PS3. And if you look at that study, only about half the people watch HD programming on their HDTVs. These people aren't exactly clamoring for higher quality video.
So while I could completely be wrong, I predict this could be a complete catastrophe for Sony. This opinion doesn't come from fanboism. Nintendo cured me of that with the N64 debacle. Since then I have been fairly platform neutral. Even my disgust with Microsoft wouldn't have kept me from buying an Xbox if I could have convinced my brother to get broadband so we could play online.
My prediction for hitting the different milestones are: 5 million sales in the first 9 months 30 million sales three years from launch 50 million sales five years from launch
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One thing to keep in mind is that "western" medicine has went through several stages before arriving at today's version. Looking back into the past, there have been some incredibly ridiculous theories. Take a look at the history of blood, for example. But where we are at today in western medicine is fairly amazing. No other medical system in the world was ever able to do a thing about smallpox, measles, polio, etc. But western medicine has been able to wipe out these diseases and even know how it wiped them out. Sometimes theories turn out to be completely wrong, such as in the theory that stomach ulcers were primary caused by eating spicy food. But eventually someone was able to come along and show results proving that it was usually bacteria that could be treated by antibiotics.
There are other areas where western medicine has a lot of work to do, such as in treating cardiovascular problems. But at least there is hope that eventually we'll figure out the answers, and more importantly we'll be able to prove that they are the right answer. The problem with more traditional medicines is that there's no real progress. There's no way to show that one treatment is really better than another, since it's all approached anecdotally. And the emphasis is on "traditional". The reason you use a certain technique or medicine is simply because that's the tradition based on a theory that has never been and can never be proven. Western medicine falls into the "traditional" trap as well, mainly because I think humans are kind of predisposed that way. But the great thing is that we keep getting advances because those who don't follow tradition can eventually bring people around by showing actual clinical results. Sometimes it takes decades, but at least it happens.
The other major component of western medicine is how it is integrated and presented. THAT definitely needs a lot of work. When you have a handful of doctors, each prescribing a different medication in their own field without being very familiar with how it will interact with others, you are actually straying from the scientific method. We need better research and focus on how all these pieces fit together. And we need more focus on preventing symptoms (such as stress management, the role of exercise in preventing disease, etc.) rather than simply treating them. But I do have hope that progress will continue.
On the other hand, when I hear about some traditional system of medicine that must be work because "it's been used for thousand's of years", that's a red flag to me. It also means that another thousand years from now, that system of medicine will probably still be the same. But in all those hundreds/thousands of years, it never figured out how to reattach a finger, how to do a skin graft for a burn victim, how to keep someone from dying from rabies, how to cure malaria, etc. It's a dead end.
You do know that the point of veterinary medicine is generally to make pets live longer than they would "naturally" and survive injuries that would "naturally" kill them? "Natural" dog lifestyle is to be riddled with worms and crawling with flees. They would breed and pass on their genes, then they would "naturally" die about the time they were too old to hunt or broke a leg.
I don't disagree on your various suggestions to liven up your dogs life in a modern setting. Though it is very possible it will knock a few years off the end of his life. Then again, at least he will have lived a happy, exciting life.
Errr, the people who would be taking it? How many drugs do you think got weeded out that might have made you feel fine now but in 10% of the population made the pain permanently worse? Or caused you to be fine but three years later your fingers fall off? Or caused you to have schitzoid delusions, decide the government was trying to poison you through your orange juice and go down to the minimart and start blowing people away?
There have been some very notable drug failures in the past. It's not just an "off chance", it's a very real possibility. I don't want the next step after animal testing to be the general population. I know it sucks that we ask people with very serious problems to "take one for the team" by waiting 5-10 years. But you have to keep it in perspective. They have benefitted from all the OTHER people in the past who have done the same. The whole reason our medical science has progressed to the point it has is through rigorous scientific testing. If you get stuck with the short term perspective, it seems completely unfair. But you have to see the long term perspective.
The only cases where I support short circuiting a longer testing phase is for people who are very likely to die from their illness before the process is completed. Chronic pain is on the boundary due to the suicide issue noted. But I think it falls just barely outside, considering many (most?) people go on to live decades after they would have been willing to try experimental drugs that would have had unknown side effects.
I'm a little suprised I haven't heard about this before. Has this been widely known among the space elevator set before now? My experience with space elevators has mostly been through the gloss-over-the-problems world of scifi. I thought the only real problem was in the construction and maintenance, not in the actual use once it's constructed.
...if you measure it per capita!
How is it a lie? I myself have voted for third party candidates at times I would have still went out and voted even if they weren't running. I didn't say it was true for 100% of the people who voted for a third party candidate. Hopefully you're not claiming that it's NOT true in 100% of cases. Somewhere in the middle is the fact that in some close races, a vote for a third party candidate can and does end up in voting in someone who would have been the third choice by the majority of the people. That's why I strongly support instant runoff voting.
If you take a fairly typical PC, it's not going to play the awesome, leading edge sort of games that real gamers play
Right, which is why I never said that. Though moving from there to Mahjongg is quite a stretch. There's quite a bit in-between, you know.
As far as you second bit about "ridiculing a company for an ad that doesn't exist", what I said was based on the ad that does exist. That ad is ridiculous in its implications. And yes, I think MOST advertising is ridiculous, I will continue to ridicule it for being so.
But anyway, my point was that these big differences between the Mac and PC just don't exist.
Once again, you have to come back with a personal attack. First my posts are due to me being off my medication, now it's because I'm some sort of invalid? Is it that difficult to just stick to the discussion and not try to insult someone you are arguing with?
Okay, so back to the article. You keep pointing out the number of households being 11 million at the end of 2004. Yes, it's impressive that "millions" of people have HDTVs. But isn't it more sensible to actually put it in the context of percentages? Notice the line where it said the total number of households is 110 million. So it's more like 9%. This is not an incredibly shocking number to me.
Also, one data point is not a "huge trend." Current data says that there were around 15 million HDTV households in mid-2006. Most projections I've read say that this is expected to be about 20 million by the end of 2006. And before you say "look, that's proof, it DOUBLED in two years, that's a huge trend!", another way to look at it is that they only picked up another 9% of the total households in two years. So now they're at 18%. I wouldn't call 9% over two years a huge trend. At that rate, it would take them six years to reach the household penetration DVD has right now.
For an actual huge trend, lets look at DVDs. I googled around for a bit and found this data:
4q1999: 8.5 million
1q2001: 14 million
2q2002: 30 million
2q2003: 46 million
2q2004: 63 million
2q2005: 75 million
2q2006: 80 million
DVD is considered to be one of the biggest consumer electronics successes of all time. Yet it still took around five years to reach 73% household penetration from around the point we are at right now with HDTVs. And there are far more complicating factors for HDTVs than there are DVD players. At their most expensive, DVD players cost around $300. Sales really started to ramp up when they got in the $200 territory and took off in the $100 territory. As is the case with almost all consumer electronics, newer players came out every year that were both CHEAPER and BETTER than the ones sold in previous years. It was no big deal to buy a new DVD player a year or two after your first, moving the old one to the bedroom or the kids room. That's simply not going to be the case with HDTVs. Unlike traditional TVs, CD players, DVD players, stereos, computers, etc., HDTVs are prices are not rapidly dropping into the area where it's a "no brainer" purchase for most people. For people with a lot of disposable income like yourself, yes. Instead they're dropping from the "oh my god how could you spend that much money on a TV" to the "wow, that's incredibly expensive for a TV" by the end of the decade they'll be into the range of "that's kind of expensive for a tv."
So say you buy an HDTV at around $2000 in 2003. When will you buy your next HDTV? It's going to be a while, I can tell you that. We're talking 10 years if you're like most people. And what would you do with the old one? Well, it's unlikely you're going to stick the sucker in the bedroom or kids room, unless you have a whole lot of square footage in your house or it's one of those REALLY expensive thin screen plasmas or something. You can try to sell it, but who wants to spend that kind of money on an HDTV when the newer ones are out that are probably much better?
Personally, I believe HDTV will eventually be the only TV. But I think it will take far longer than most consumer electronics. Going back to the studies at that link, you will see that they agree with me. One study says 55% of households will have HDTVs by the end of 2010. The other says 63% and the other says 82%. Even taking the best estimate, that means they'll be getting to present day DVD penetration by the end of 2009. But that's the best estimate. Taking the worst estimate, at the end of 2010, HDTV will be where DVD was at the end of 2003. At that rate, it will be more like 2015 before HDTV gets to where DVD is right now.
Things could change, I'll be the fir
No, he wasn't imagining it, he was just misremembering it.
The Mac says he does "music, movies, podcasts - stuff like that". The PC says he does "timesheets and spreadsheets and pie charts". He does not says "games." Definitely implies it, though. The whole thrust of the ad is that PCs are built to do business apps and Macs are not. It's fairly ludicrous.
I only responded to you in the post you made on a different slashdot story where you talked about not batting an eye on dropping $600 for a PS3 after also dropping $2500 for an HDTV. I linked to HDTV prices to try to clue you in to your $2500 purchase being on the high end of the range. From your reply on that thread, you still don't get it. I don't know how much clearer I can explain it, so I'm going to assume it isn't a case of you not being able to understand but rather you actively avoiding it.
Anyway, as far as losing my credibility, I'm not really worried. You clearly can't believe anything other than the picture of "reality" you've created for yourself. I actually believe your anecdotes, you know. I just know that there are a lots of different kinds of people. My stories are absolutely true, too. What I'd like you to consider is that your "sampling" isn't necessarily representative. Mine isn't necessarily, either. I bring it up only to highlight that you shouldn't believe your sample is the be-all end-all.
Also, it's very interesting that you should link to that article. Your statement was: Mark my words, within 2 years there will be few modern households without a HDTV capable set. Even the most optimistic prediction in the article was 82% of households by the end of 2010. One said 63% by 2010. Another said 55% and the fourth said 50%. By 2010. Unless by "few" you mean 18-50% and by "2 years" you mean 4 years, your prediction seems to be way outside of even the broad range of research-backed estimates.
Oh wait, let me guess, you'll say that you're right because those households without an HDTV aren't "modern" households.
I will agree that there is little point in discussing this with you further. You seem to draw your points out of thin air rather than basing them on actual research and published data.
Yeah, lousy Democrats! They even managed to do it in New Hampshire, too! They had to be pretty devious, given that both senators and both congressmen where Republicans. But that just goes to show when Kerry and Kennedy get together, there's nothing they can't do!
Because stupidity makes him/her angry?
Every time a console gets launched, it's exactly the same story. And yet the media always reports it the same way, as if it's some undeniable sign of breakneck success. When in reality, it's simply intentionally supplying a fraction of enough units to meet demand so you get get the idiot press to advertise for you.
The REAL story is when a console maker can't manage this, like the case of the Xbox/Xbox360 failures. That's when it's actually news.
Hint: To get you started, first look at the pricing of the models that all these people will be buying. Ask yourself - will most people be buying the $2,500 models, or does that perhaps skew a bit high? Then ask yourself - how many of the people who buy an HDTV will also be paying $600 for a PS3? Last, ask yourself "how many will be paying $600 for a PS3 without having to think hard about it." Then pick up a dictionary and look up outlier.
Suddenly your other post I replied to is making sense.
Personally, I am not a fanboy of any console. As I posted before, I used to be a Nintendo fanboy but had that habit firmly broken by the N64. And if anything, I'm biased against the Xbox because it's sold by Microsoft. I have no reason at all to be prejudiced against Sony. And I agree 100% with the parent post. The PS3 would have sold out 80k units in Japan even if the PS3 was priced at $1000 at launch. Even if it was $1000 and smelled like burning hair.
Please locate your disposable income on the bell curve for all Americans. As the other poster noted, you are an outlier.
I meant to include:
Problem #6:
Even your own claim is that there will be few "modern" households without HDTVs within the next 2 years. That really doesn't do necessarily put an impetus behind PS3, Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. As others have pointed out, when we jumped from VHS to DVD is was a major jump. It was still only a single piece of equipment being upgraded. The next jump will be from TV to HDTV. People will still be watching their plane jane DVDs on these HDTVs for quite some time. Right now you're expecting consumers to upgrade both their TV to HDTV and their DVD to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD at practically the same time. There is a market for that, but it's not the mass market.
I have quite a few problems with your post and the predictions you make.
Problem #1:
This prediction is that people have been making it every year for the last 5 years or so. Do you have any actual sources you can point to that have done surveys asking households if they plan to buy an HDTV next year?
Problem #2:
The bulk of the people who have HDTVs now are those with money to burn. The rest are those who will be making a major purchase getting an HDTV. These people will be unlikely to have another $600-700 dollars. Even at $500, if you are buying the PS3 for gaming you will likely buy at least one game, an additional controller and a cable to output to HD (it only comes with RCA cables). If you're buying it to play Blu-Ray movies on, you'll also probaby want to buy a remote ($25). So they can spend this kind of money, or they can spend much less on an Xbox or Wii.
Problem #3:
It is far from proven that mainstream consumers will even notice the difference in resolution between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD or between the Xbox, Wii and the PS3. How many times have you been to someone's house with an HDTV only to have a SD signal in stretch mode? I don't mean the GOOD stretch mode either, I mean the "squish their heads" stretch mode. I've been to more than one airport that has replaced every tv with widescreen LCDs that are in squish mode. Keep in mind, the study showed that over half of those people with HDTVs didn't even watch HD programming. And these are supposedly the semi-early adopters.
Problem #4:
The DRM crap in both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are not going to help adoption of either format. I still have to explain to my relatives why the DVD player has to hook directly into the TV. And they still don't get it. HDTV and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD throw a bunch more problems on the pile. A good portion will be watching downsampled video due to incorrect wiring but never even realize it.
Problem #5:
You say "DVD is really crap with its letterboxed widescreen format that dvd players or tvs have to scale up." This is a bizarre statement. The DVD format is not letterboxed. DVDs have supported anamorphic transfers since day one. The problem is that some studios either a) haven't had new transfers that would look decent at HD or b) haven't cared and just want to shovel something out there and make some money. Blu-Ray doesn't solve either of these problems any better than DVD does. A new anamorphic DVD transfer looks great, even in HD. With my projector, I have a screen that is 8 feet wide. I can definitely tell the difference between a good transfer and a bad one. So Blu-Ray or DVD, it's up to the company to do a good transfer. Believe me, you're going to see the exact same problems with Blu-Ray that you see with DVD. Not as frequently, as DVD was the first time in the whole digital disc/widescreen tv era. But Blu-Ray won't be competing with DVD anyway, it will be competing with HD-DVD.
Problem #6:
You cite several friends planning to get a 1080p HDTV. That's great. But are they planning on buying a PS3, too? I have several gamer friends, and not a one of them does anything but laugh at the idea of buying a PS3. And these are single friends making $50k+ a year, living in low cost of living cities.
So, again, I just don't buy it. Literally, I suppose. I used to be a HUGE supporter of Blu-Ray. I felt it was far superior in terms of capacity and there was just no reason to go to HD-DVD where you didn't have as much room to breathe. But Sony has really dropped the ball on this one. If Blu-Ray ever wins the format war, it won't be due to selling a console for the price of a used car.
Please note that I said "Even at $500, it's a bad deal." I was addressing the $500 version.
But since you bring it up, this actually makes matters worse. If they had ONLY sold the crippled version, they might have had more success with the $500 price point. As it stands, now a buyer will be faced with paying "real money" for the second tier. That's going to cause even more problems for Sony.
They already have several.
The PS2 didn't reach 40 million until September 2002, 2.5 years after it went on sale in March 2000. It took it until November 2005 to reach 100 million. I couldn't find any reference to the PS2 hitting 150 million. All I could find was a cite from this month saying the entire "installed base" for all gaming number 150 million.
So I really don't forsee this as being a coup for Sony. It might be, but I don't think so. I bought an N65 and then a Playstation. I bought a Playstation2 and then a Gamecube. I would have bought an original Xbox if any of my friends had them.
At $600, I will never buy a PS3, regardless of the fact that I've already pre-ordered a Wii. Ken was right - at that price, it's not a gaming machine anymore. If I buy a second console, it will be an Xbox 360, even though I loathe Microsoft.
With the high price of the PS3, the initial install base will grow very slowly. This will cause a low volume of game sales, which will further cause fewer games to come out, which will cause fewer people to buy a PS3. It will just snowball from there. Sony simply does not have the first party games to pull this off. I think Nintendo MIGHT be able to do it, but it would take a radical marketing and focus shift. But their first party titles would guarantee an initial install base to get the ball rolling. Microsoft might be able to get it going due to Halo and its penchant for just buying up game developers. Sony would have a small chance of doing it based on games that tend to be exclusive to it (at least initially), but with the pricing they have just guaranteed it will not happen.
It really just comes down to a VERY simple fact - $600. Even at $500, it's a bad deal. $500 is right around the price for a lot of people where purchases move from "do I want this?" to "do I need this?". And when you add on the price of a game and an extra controller, bumping it up around $100, most people will decide they don't need it. I think this would be true even if the Xbox and Wii were launching two years later than the PS3.
And Blu-Ray will do absolutely nothing to help sell more than a few million or so PS3s. Studies have shown that the average household income for HDTV owners is nearly $90k. The people with that kind of money would probably have bought the PS3 anyway. But the people at the lower end of the scale who really stretched their finances to buy the HDTV to begin with will be hard put to shell out for the PS3. And if you look at that study, only about half the people watch HD programming on their HDTVs. These people aren't exactly clamoring for higher quality video.
So while I could completely be wrong, I predict this could be a complete catastrophe for Sony. This opinion doesn't come from fanboism. Nintendo cured me of that with the N64 debacle. Since then I have been fairly platform neutral. Even my disgust with Microsoft wouldn't have kept me from buying an Xbox if I could have convinced my brother to get broadband so we could play online.
My prediction for hitting the different milestones are:
5 million sales in the first 9 months
30 million sales three years from launch
50 million sales five years from launch
Losing control at this point does not change things for them other than they now have to deal with some oversight.
If you truly believe that, you must not have read the bills signed into law the last four years. Or read slashdot.
They've passed plenty of laws, plenty of them really awful ones.
Why is it so hard for pundits and posters to understand this basic concept?
Because they don't live in your fantasy world?