The PS3 is still going for well above retail on Ebay so I doubt very much that there's a much lower demand than reported.
Actually, if you check out eBay most PS3 systems are not going for dramatically over the retail price ($100-$200 about MSRP typically http://search.ebay.com/PS3_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8 ) which is why I didn't buy a PS3 to eBay it; I'm not trying to bash the PS3 or anything, but the days of the PS3 'selling' for $1500 on eBay are long gone.
I bet in the more rural areas it's easier to find the PS3 as people probably don't have as much money to throw around.
I live in a pretty wealthy city which is full of oil executives with more money then sense so I don't think it is really a matter of money. Personally, I suspect that most people who were desperately looking for a PS3 called up every store from the launch (Nov 17th) until early December and heard a clerk say "We don't have any PS3 systems in stock, we don't know when we will have a shipment and are not expecting a steady supply until after christmas." At that point I suspect that anyone (with any sense) would probably give up and wait until January/February to pick one up; if they were looking for a Christmas gift for their family they probably decided on something else; being so close to Christmas I expect that there are few people who will impulse buy a $600 videogame system.
Anything that brings the usability of a console with the flexibility of a PC together is a good thing in my book. An XBox Live system for the PC+XBox would be welcome too.
Honestly, I think Microsoft has the right idea except they're only 10 years too late. 10 years ago, in the wake of Window's 95, everyone wanted someone to make PC gaming a more user friendly experience that didn't require endless patches and work to play games; today if people want something that is inexpensive and easily plays games they're going to buy a console without even considering a PC.
The PS3 may launch in Europe but unless they get the supply issues resolved it is unlikely that any europeans will be able to get their hands on one.
On a side note, I noticed a store near work had several PS3 systems for sale and (after the initial surprise wore off) asked the clerk about them; he said that he expected the systems to stay there for awhile because no one has inquired about the PS3 for a couple of weeks. I wonder whether people who want a PS3 have simply "given-up" looking for one until they know supplies are more abundant.
Which is better, a company which openly accepts money in exchange for better reviews/hype or a company which (behind closed doors) exchanges better reviews for money; because that is (pretty much) what print game magazines all are.
With a few exceptions, you will notice that many magazines have a tendency to give higher reviews to games that have "invested" in several issues worth of full page advertizements.
Don't we wail about Newbies everywhere else? There could be a side benefit that only certain people "get it" and stay. Anyone who doesn't... "doesn't deserve to be there".
And the benefit is that you have a Massively Multiplayer Game that lacks the Massively Multiplayer part...
I could be wrong, but from my understanding Second Life was a game that was largely based around user generated content; the game gets better as you attract more people to develop interesting content within your game. If you actively discourage people from playing a game like this you will probably scare away a lot of people who could bring a lot of value to it; consider that a lot of "artistic" people have a great deal of difficulty just "getting" a user interface that makes sense to technical people.
I was AC for about 3 years (2001-2003), created an account for 2 years (2003-2005) and then got tired of that account (my username was lamely-leet) and created a new one in 2006...
The terrorists were remarkably successful in their objective; they destroyed their target, made Americans fear terrorism and (if it weren't for quick thinking by the American fed) almost caused a massive crash in the American ecconomy. As far as civilian casualties (about 5,000 wasn't it) they were really not that bad in the grand scheme of things; just considering my 100,000 single attack in the tokyo fire bombing.
What?
You expected a different response?
That's right, as I said earlier I'm not an American... I don't really care who's president and I can be far more objective about the Military invasion in Iraq (or the terrorist attacks on 9/11) than most Americans can be.
You can disagree with the motivations, but the results (of both the war and the terrorist attacks) were highly successful.
Again, you fail to define what "successful" means. Was the INVASION successful? Sure. Was the WAR successful? You need to state the objective. If that objective included a secure, stable Iraq, then obviously it's been a catastrophic failure.
Honestly, I don't think that Iraq is stable (and think it may take a decade before Iraq becomes truly stable) but I think that the instability in Iraq is largely overstated. In my opinion, the US Military can not do anything to increase stability in Iraq at this point. The reason for this is you can not "give" someone democracy and freedom they have to want it. Until the citizens of Iraq are willing to (on the whole) support their government and reject the Militants the insurgents will exist.
GWB is not so much stupid as he is foolish; not so much lacking in IQ as he lacks EQ. He was too willing to be lead by party ideologues and "yes men". He doesn't seem to have his own philosophy. He's too much of a "company man", the "company" being the right-wing "Christian" fundamentalists in his party. He probably has slightly above average IQ, but in the presidency you want someone who is both smart and wise. You don't want a slighly above average man in there. You want a superlative person, and superlative people usually have some independant thinking.
I don't disagree with you...
I'm (mostly) just tired of the constant partisan politics on Slashdot and become really frustrated when I see (reasonably) intelligent people attempt to discredt others through childish name calling rather than a mature debate. There are hundreds of questionable policies and decisions that the Bush Administration was responsible for where it would make sense to debate whether they were good/bad and what should have been done; instead you will hear "Bush is stupid". 10/20/30 years from now it is likely that similar circumstances will apear and no one will be better able to handle the situation.
I never said it was a good war or that winning it achieved any grand victory but from a Military perspective it has been a very successful and reasonably casualty free war. I would agree with someone when they say that the war was unnecessary, or that it was an illegal war (if there is such a thing) but if you say that it has been anything except for successful for the American Military (or that there are a lot of civilian casulaties in this war) you're demonstrating a lack of objectivity in the discussion.
"After 2 hours of bombardment, Tokyo was engulfed in a firestorm. The fires were so hot they would ignite the clothing on individuals as they were fleeing. Many women were wearing what were called 'air-raid turbans' around their heads and the heat would ignite those turbans like a wick on a candle. The aftermath of the incendiary bombings lead to an estimated 100,000 Japanese dead. This may have been the most devastating single raid ever carried out by aircraft in any war including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the firebombing of Dresden"
Remember, the 100,000 number was the number of people who died directly from the bombing and doesn't include the thousands that would have died from famine/disease in the weeks and months following the bombing (which is what the estimate of 100,000 of Iraq's citizens is based off of).
Even today the number of those killed, military and civilian, in the period covered (1959-1975) is open to debate and uncertainty. To illustrate the problem, below are three reference works by three or more authors listing casualty figures. What is remarkable about them is that the only ones that seem to match are the ones that must be, at best, approximations. None of the figures include the members of South Vietnamese forces killed in the final campaign. Nor do they include the Royal Lao Armed Forces, thousands of Laotian and Thai irregulars, or Laotian civilians who all perished in that peculiar conflict. They do not include the tens of thousands of Cambodians killed during the civil war or the estimated one and one-half to two million that perished in the genocide that followed Khmer Rouge victory
1. Harry G. Summers, The Vietnam War Almanac. Novato CA: Presidio Press, 1985.
U.S. killed in action, died of wounds, died of other causes, missing and declared dead - 57,690. South Vietnamese military killed - 243,748. Republic of Korea killed - 4,407. Australia and New Zealand (combined) - 469. Thailand - 351. The Vietnam People's Army and NLF (combined) - 666,000. North Vietnamese civilian fatalities - 65,000. South Vietnamese civilian dead - 300,000.
2. Marc Leepson, ed, Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.
U.S. killed in action, etc. - 58,159. South Vietnamese military - 224,000. Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand - not listed. DRV military - not listed. DRV civilians - 65,000. South Vietnamese civilians - 300,000.
3. Edward Doyle, Samuel Lipsman, et al, Setting the Stage. Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1981.
U.S. - 57,605. South Vietnamese military - 220,357. Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand - not listed. DRV and NLF deaths - 444,000. Combined DRV and RVN civilian deaths -587,000.
A fourth Source, John Rowe's Vietnam: The Australian Experience. Sydney: Time-Life Books Australia, 1987, gives a figure of 496 Australians killed in action or died of wounds.
100,000 is a lot of people, and is larger than many of the cities that people will be reading Slashdot from but when you look at casualties of wars the US has been in the number has been steadily declining since World War 2.
Or is it that only people with the additional brain mass CAN memorize all those items?
Trust me, memorization has very little to do with intelligence and more to do with exposure and motivation to memorize a subject...
I honestly don't think it should be a surprise that working with an area of your brain would increase its "strength." This is (effectively) what practice is...
Take any person who has never learned a musical instrument before and examine the impact of musical stimulus on their brain. Spend 8 hours a day for the next year teaching them musical theory and composition as well as several instruments and then examine the impact of musical stimulus on their brain. Being that they've practiced and learned a lot about music, one would expect that their brain would suddenly become far more involved in the musical experience.
At the same time, one of the questions of a study like this would be what would the consequence of television be on a person's brain? For the most part television would be training the brain in a way which would not be particularly useful in any pursuit and yet many/most people have a ton of exposure to this influence.
I'm going to start off by saying that I'm not an American...
Honestly, George Bush has not been a very good president but I don't think the problem with his performance has anything to do with lack of intelligence. The War in Iraq is often mentioned as a "disaster" but has been one of the most successful and casualty free wars in history; the main problem with it is that it was sold to Americans on false information which brings up questions on the motivation for war (many people belive in a deeper conspiracy but if there was a successful conspiracy it would imply that GW was smarter than people suspected). The ecconomy is running into difficulty but a large portion of that is caused by the dramatic reduction in interest rates post 9-11 which drove up consumer spending and created massive inflationary pressures; ultimately, the recession that would have occured after 9-11 was delayed and it is difficult to know if it is for the better or for the worse.
Ultimately, GW was probably not a good president, but I don't think it is fair to say that he was all that dumb.
As a guess, I would say that it is a matter of scale...
The Gamecube sold 12 Million systems in North America and I think it is pretty safe to assume the Wii will sell more than that...
If 1% of person-play-sessions result in a dropped controller and 1% of those are thrown with enough force to cause damage to a TV and if you assume 1-person-playsession/console-day you would get 1,200 Wiimotes thrown a day or about 420,000/year; if 1% of those caused an exploding TV you'd have 4,200 exploding TVs/year.
Do I think that the rate would be that high? No, but I think that is the reason they're investigating it...
Likely, many people will express their anger over the incompatibilities, but not attach any hard consequences.
The unfortunate problem is what kind of consequences can actually be "given" to Microsoft?
From a buisness perspective, if you stop using Microsoft's operating system you'll have dozens (or possibly hundreds) of applications which are either not supported or not functional on Linux/Unix/OSX; these applications represent Millions of dollars in licences or development that would have to be re-spent immediately.
From a personal standpoint, I (like most people) am lazy and don't want to switch operating systems and learn another office suite unless I have to.
Personally, I have spent most of my time convincing companies to switch to web-based development using Java and Hibernate with a focus on abstracting the product from both the Operating System and the Database; one of about 12 products I have developed in the past few years have taken this approach.
Essentially, we're stuck with Microsoft/Windows until something drastic happens
By being so unconventionally honest and open Nintendo has also probably limited (most of) the legal fall out from this recall. I'm not a lawyer but from my limited understanding of the law (which varies from country to contry and state to state) if you can demonstrate that you practiced due-diligence the legal consequences are far less severe.
This is actually one of the more interesting things I noticed with the Wii...
I, and most of the gamers I know who are between 25-40, really wanted to get a Wii as early as I could; my Sister-in-Law's nephew (14) and most young teenage boys (13-17) say that the Wii is "Too Kiddie". It seems to me that, in general, what teenagers (and teenagers at heart) think of as 'Mature' most adults think of as immature.
try again, according to the NPD number 197,000 PS3's were sold at launch. Correct me if I am wrong but at its height I only saw about 1,000 PS3's up for sale on ebay. Leaving 196,000 in the wild. Let's say 2,000 parents have this sitting under their tree for little Billy, leaving 195,000 not including the Asian launch. That's not a million but with all the bleeding edge tech in the PS3 to say we've had as few problems as have been reported I think is impressive
In the weeks leading up to Black Friday (and the weekend itself), the PS3 shifted 28,233 units over eBay
So approximately 15% of all PS3's sold in November were resold on eBay in November... When you include Craig's list and people who attempted to sell their system locally a safe assumption would be 20%-25% of PS3s were resold in November... When you add people who bought them for Christmas the number of unopened systems would jump to 30%-40%...
So (in general) there would be 100,000-115,000 PS3 systems that have seen more that a week or two of actual use; in Contrast the number of Wii systems seeing similar use would be somewhere between 400,000-500,000 units. To what extent do you think having less systems on the market would lead to their being less errors reported about a system?
But if you satisfy the hardcore fans wouldn't it be a fairly safe assumption that casual fans will be pleased as well? I really can't think of an issue that hardcore fans would love but be a negative to casual fans.
The general rule is that a hardcore fan will likely be looking to add complexity to a game whereas a casual fan will likely be looking to reduce complexity.
In WoW (as an example) there was a debate about what type of content should be added to the game, most hardcore fans wanted 40+ person raid instances which required long hours for multiple days in a week to complete while most casual fans wanted 5-10 man instances which could be completed in shorter bursts (possibly a multi-stage dungeon that could be completed in 2-4 hour bursts over multiple weeks). 40+ person raids are content which the majority of gamers would get little use out of, whereas the 5-10 man instances were content which did not satisfy the hard-core fan.
"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait a minute people. Nintendo doesn't properly test and ships a shaky/cheap strap prone to breakage and all we have is praise for them?! How does Nintendo get a pass on this as "how to handle the situation". Had this been Sony the post would have been 1,563 comments long with 95% of them saying, "Sony sucks and should burn in hell", "rootkit"! Heck to be honest outside of shipment numbers...
Its called Karma...
Nintendo has spent years producing high-quality products while providing excellent customer service; at the same time, I haven't heard of anyone being "screwed" by any direct or indirect action of Nintendo. You can't (necessarily) say the same about Sony.
Ultimately, you hear about people using the Wiimote at a level which could be called excessive and the wrist-strap not being able to handle the forces involved; rather than acting like Sony (or even like Apple has in the past) and saying that it is user error, Nintendo redesigned the straps and is willing to replace all existing straps for their customers. Essentially, this is like people's PSP not working in the bathtub and Sony making future PSPs waterproof...
Sony's had the best launch so far. No widespread red circles of death, bad updates, controllers killing TV's...as hard as it is to admit, for the most part the PS3's in the market have worked flawlessly."
Besides people selling them on eBay does anyone even own a PS3 yet?
When the PS3 has been out for 3 months, and over 1 Million people own one, if it has no known hardware problems I think it will be a candidate for having the best build quality at launch; being that they cut their shipment from 2 Million consoles worldwide, to 500,000 in North America and Japan and only actually shipped half of those I don't think it would approach the top 10 console launches though.
Let's call a spade a spade here people...this is a mistake on Nintendo's part. To assert that people "should be more careful" is just stupid. Nintendo knew their console encouraged movement and this could potentially happen (why they included a strap in the first place) but they cheaped out on them and these are the consequences. I'm as big a Ninty fan as anyone and proud Wii owner but Let's stop drinking Ninty's kool-aid, get off our knees, and see the forest for the trees. This launch has had its share of mishaps: limited to no online play, bad update (I'm on my second Wii), straps, lower than expected shipment numbers to the UK...) yet gamers, and slashdot especially, keep giving Nintendo a pass. I don't get it.
A company has to make assumptions about reasonable use of their product...
The wrist strap was designed based off of their assumptions on how most people would use the Wii and (for the most part) they were correct; they extended their assumptions to now include complete morons into their target user group and have adjusted their design appropriately.
Personally, I am an ass...
If it were up to me, anyone who was stupid enough to use the Wiimote in a way where they would throw it with enough force to both break the strap and break their TV would get exactly what they earned (a broken TV and, hopefully, a broken Wiimote).
I'm going to wait for the announcement 2 months from the recall about gamers who's wrists are being injured because when they throw the Wiimote the strap doesn't brake and there is too much force put on their wrist.
I think my point was essentially that Zelda, unlike Final Fantasy and Pokemon (and more recently Animal Crossing: Wild World and brain training), gets a larger portion of its sales from North America than Japan and is unlikely to sell at an unbelieveable rate in Japan. Being close to 200,000 sales in 2 weeks with only 400,000 Wiis sold in Japan is a pretty good start for Zelda; over the next 2 months it will probably be picked up with about 1/3-1/4 Wiis sold and will likely break a Million units sold in Japan.
I agree that you can enjoy playing Wii sports in little bursts every day for a year (or more) my "shallow" comment is that (from a single player perspective) there is very little that you have to accomplish and you're unlikely to play it for hours on end.
Yeah, I've been wondering to what extent a company should have to anticipate how badly abused their product will be; if you assume that the Wii wrist strap needed to be able to tolerate a 280 pound man widly throwing a Wiimote, wouldn't you also assume that a Plasma/LCD screen should be able to tolerate the impact of the Wiimote on the screen?
There is probably no nice, clean aswer to this, but I wonder to what extent companies should be liable for damage caused by their product when used inappropriately.
Honestly, Wii sports is remarkably shallow (and basically a tech-demo) from a single player perspective but is (by far) the best local multiplayer game released in 2006.
Slashdot Mirror
The PS3 is still going for well above retail on Ebay so I doubt very much that there's a much lower demand than reported.
Actually, if you check out eBay most PS3 systems are not going for dramatically over the retail price ($100-$200 about MSRP typically http://search.ebay.com/PS3_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8 ) which is why I didn't buy a PS3 to eBay it; I'm not trying to bash the PS3 or anything, but the days of the PS3 'selling' for $1500 on eBay are long gone.
I bet in the more rural areas it's easier to find the PS3 as people probably don't have as much money to throw around.
I live in a pretty wealthy city which is full of oil executives with more money then sense so I don't think it is really a matter of money. Personally, I suspect that most people who were desperately looking for a PS3 called up every store from the launch (Nov 17th) until early December and heard a clerk say "We don't have any PS3 systems in stock, we don't know when we will have a shipment and are not expecting a steady supply until after christmas." At that point I suspect that anyone (with any sense) would probably give up and wait until January/February to pick one up; if they were looking for a Christmas gift for their family they probably decided on something else; being so close to Christmas I expect that there are few people who will impulse buy a $600 videogame system.
Anything that brings the usability of a console with the flexibility of a PC together is a good thing in my book. An XBox Live system for the PC+XBox would be welcome too.
Honestly, I think Microsoft has the right idea except they're only 10 years too late. 10 years ago, in the wake of Window's 95, everyone wanted someone to make PC gaming a more user friendly experience that didn't require endless patches and work to play games; today if people want something that is inexpensive and easily plays games they're going to buy a console without even considering a PC.
The PS3 may launch in Europe but unless they get the supply issues resolved it is unlikely that any europeans will be able to get their hands on one.
On a side note, I noticed a store near work had several PS3 systems for sale and (after the initial surprise wore off) asked the clerk about them; he said that he expected the systems to stay there for awhile because no one has inquired about the PS3 for a couple of weeks. I wonder whether people who want a PS3 have simply "given-up" looking for one until they know supplies are more abundant.
Which is better, a company which openly accepts money in exchange for better reviews/hype or a company which (behind closed doors) exchanges better reviews for money; because that is (pretty much) what print game magazines all are.
With a few exceptions, you will notice that many magazines have a tendency to give higher reviews to games that have "invested" in several issues worth of full page advertizements.
Don't we wail about Newbies everywhere else? There could be a side benefit that only certain people "get it" and stay. Anyone who doesn't ... "doesn't deserve to be there".
...
And the benefit is that you have a Massively Multiplayer Game that lacks the Massively Multiplayer part
I could be wrong, but from my understanding Second Life was a game that was largely based around user generated content; the game gets better as you attract more people to develop interesting content within your game. If you actively discourage people from playing a game like this you will probably scare away a lot of people who could bring a lot of value to it; consider that a lot of "artistic" people have a great deal of difficulty just "getting" a user interface that makes sense to technical people.
I was AC for about 3 years (2001-2003), created an account for 2 years (2003-2005) and then got tired of that account (my username was lamely-leet) and created a new one in 2006 ...
I don't disagree ...
... I don't really care who's president and I can be far more objective about the Military invasion in Iraq (or the terrorist attacks on 9/11) than most Americans can be.
The terrorists were remarkably successful in their objective; they destroyed their target, made Americans fear terrorism and (if it weren't for quick thinking by the American fed) almost caused a massive crash in the American ecconomy. As far as civilian casualties (about 5,000 wasn't it) they were really not that bad in the grand scheme of things; just considering my 100,000 single attack in the tokyo fire bombing.
What?
You expected a different response?
That's right, as I said earlier I'm not an American
You can disagree with the motivations, but the results (of both the war and the terrorist attacks) were highly successful.
Again, you fail to define what "successful" means. Was the INVASION successful? Sure. Was the WAR successful? You need to state the objective. If that objective included a secure, stable Iraq, then obviously it's been a catastrophic failure.
Honestly, I don't think that Iraq is stable (and think it may take a decade before Iraq becomes truly stable) but I think that the instability in Iraq is largely overstated. In my opinion, the US Military can not do anything to increase stability in Iraq at this point. The reason for this is you can not "give" someone democracy and freedom they have to want it. Until the citizens of Iraq are willing to (on the whole) support their government and reject the Militants the insurgents will exist.
GWB is not so much stupid as he is foolish; not so much lacking in IQ as he lacks EQ. He was too willing to be lead by party ideologues and "yes men". He doesn't seem to have his own philosophy. He's too much of a "company man", the "company" being the right-wing "Christian" fundamentalists in his party. He probably has slightly above average IQ, but in the presidency you want someone who is both smart and wise. You don't want a slighly above average man in there. You want a superlative person, and superlative people usually have some independant thinking.
...
I don't disagree with you
I'm (mostly) just tired of the constant partisan politics on Slashdot and become really frustrated when I see (reasonably) intelligent people attempt to discredt others through childish name calling rather than a mature debate. There are hundreds of questionable policies and decisions that the Bush Administration was responsible for where it would make sense to debate whether they were good/bad and what should have been done; instead you will hear "Bush is stupid". 10/20/30 years from now it is likely that similar circumstances will apear and no one will be better able to handle the situation.
I never said it was a good war or that winning it achieved any grand victory but from a Military perspective it has been a very successful and reasonably casualty free war. I would agree with someone when they say that the war was unnecessary, or that it was an illegal war (if there is such a thing) but if you say that it has been anything except for successful for the American Military (or that there are a lot of civilian casulaties in this war) you're demonstrating a lack of objectivity in the discussion.
"After 2 hours of bombardment, Tokyo was engulfed in a firestorm. The fires were so hot they would ignite the clothing on individuals as they were fleeing. Many women were wearing what were called 'air-raid turbans' around their heads and the heat would ignite those turbans like a wick on a candle. The aftermath of the incendiary bombings lead to an estimated 100,000 Japanese dead. This may have been the most devastating single raid ever carried out by aircraft in any war including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the firebombing of Dresden"
W orld_War_II
e s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_in_
Remember, the 100,000 number was the number of people who died directly from the bombing and doesn't include the thousands that would have died from famine/disease in the weeks and months following the bombing (which is what the estimate of 100,000 of Iraq's citizens is based off of).
Even today the number of those killed, military and civilian, in the period covered (1959-1975) is open to debate and uncertainty. To illustrate the problem, below are three reference works by three or more authors listing casualty figures. What is remarkable about them is that the only ones that seem to match are the ones that must be, at best, approximations. None of the figures include the members of South Vietnamese forces killed in the final campaign. Nor do they include the Royal Lao Armed Forces, thousands of Laotian and Thai irregulars, or Laotian civilians who all perished in that peculiar conflict. They do not include the tens of thousands of Cambodians killed during the civil war or the estimated one and one-half to two million that perished in the genocide that followed Khmer Rouge victory
1. Harry G. Summers, The Vietnam War Almanac. Novato CA: Presidio Press, 1985.
U.S. killed in action, died of wounds, died of other causes, missing and declared dead - 57,690. South Vietnamese military killed - 243,748. Republic of Korea killed - 4,407. Australia and New Zealand (combined) - 469. Thailand - 351. The Vietnam People's Army and NLF (combined) - 666,000. North Vietnamese civilian fatalities - 65,000. South Vietnamese civilian dead - 300,000.
2. Marc Leepson, ed, Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.
U.S. killed in action, etc. - 58,159. South Vietnamese military - 224,000. Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand - not listed. DRV military - not listed. DRV civilians - 65,000. South Vietnamese civilians - 300,000.
3. Edward Doyle, Samuel Lipsman, et al, Setting the Stage. Boston: Boston Publishing Company, 1981.
U.S. - 57,605. South Vietnamese military - 220,357. Republic of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand - not listed. DRV and NLF deaths - 444,000. Combined DRV and RVN civilian deaths -587,000.
A fourth Source, John Rowe's Vietnam: The Australian Experience. Sydney: Time-Life Books Australia, 1987, gives a figure of 496 Australians killed in action or died of wounds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_war#Casualti
100,000 is a lot of people, and is larger than many of the cities that people will be reading Slashdot from but when you look at casualties of wars the US has been in the number has been steadily declining since World War 2.
Or is it that only people with the additional brain mass CAN memorize all those items?
...
...
Trust me, memorization has very little to do with intelligence and more to do with exposure and motivation to memorize a subject
I honestly don't think it should be a surprise that working with an area of your brain would increase its "strength." This is (effectively) what practice is
Take any person who has never learned a musical instrument before and examine the impact of musical stimulus on their brain. Spend 8 hours a day for the next year teaching them musical theory and composition as well as several instruments and then examine the impact of musical stimulus on their brain. Being that they've practiced and learned a lot about music, one would expect that their brain would suddenly become far more involved in the musical experience.
At the same time, one of the questions of a study like this would be what would the consequence of television be on a person's brain? For the most part television would be training the brain in a way which would not be particularly useful in any pursuit and yet many/most people have a ton of exposure to this influence.
I'm going to start off by saying that I'm not an American ...
Honestly, George Bush has not been a very good president but I don't think the problem with his performance has anything to do with lack of intelligence. The War in Iraq is often mentioned as a "disaster" but has been one of the most successful and casualty free wars in history; the main problem with it is that it was sold to Americans on false information which brings up questions on the motivation for war (many people belive in a deeper conspiracy but if there was a successful conspiracy it would imply that GW was smarter than people suspected). The ecconomy is running into difficulty but a large portion of that is caused by the dramatic reduction in interest rates post 9-11 which drove up consumer spending and created massive inflationary pressures; ultimately, the recession that would have occured after 9-11 was delayed and it is difficult to know if it is for the better or for the worse.
Ultimately, GW was probably not a good president, but I don't think it is fair to say that he was all that dumb.
As a guess, I would say that it is a matter of scale ...
...
The Gamecube sold 12 Million systems in North America and I think it is pretty safe to assume the Wii will sell more than that...
If 1% of person-play-sessions result in a dropped controller and 1% of those are thrown with enough force to cause damage to a TV and if you assume 1-person-playsession/console-day you would get 1,200 Wiimotes thrown a day or about 420,000/year; if 1% of those caused an exploding TV you'd have 4,200 exploding TVs/year.
Do I think that the rate would be that high? No, but I think that is the reason they're investigating it
Likely, many people will express their anger over the incompatibilities, but not attach any hard consequences.
The unfortunate problem is what kind of consequences can actually be "given" to Microsoft?
From a buisness perspective, if you stop using Microsoft's operating system you'll have dozens (or possibly hundreds) of applications which are either not supported or not functional on Linux/Unix/OSX; these applications represent Millions of dollars in licences or development that would have to be re-spent immediately.
From a personal standpoint, I (like most people) am lazy and don't want to switch operating systems and learn another office suite unless I have to.
Personally, I have spent most of my time convincing companies to switch to web-based development using Java and Hibernate with a focus on abstracting the product from both the Operating System and the Database; one of about 12 products I have developed in the past few years have taken this approach.
Essentially, we're stuck with Microsoft/Windows until something drastic happens
By being so unconventionally honest and open Nintendo has also probably limited (most of) the legal fall out from this recall. I'm not a lawyer but from my limited understanding of the law (which varies from country to contry and state to state) if you can demonstrate that you practiced due-diligence the legal consequences are far less severe.
This is actually one of the more interesting things I noticed with the Wii ...
I, and most of the gamers I know who are between 25-40, really wanted to get a Wii as early as I could; my Sister-in-Law's nephew (14) and most young teenage boys (13-17) say that the Wii is "Too Kiddie". It seems to me that, in general, what teenagers (and teenagers at heart) think of as 'Mature' most adults think of as immature.
try again, according to the NPD number 197,000 PS3's were sold at launch. Correct me if I am wrong but at its height I only saw about 1,000 PS3's up for sale on ebay. Leaving 196,000 in the wild. Let's say 2,000 parents have this sitting under their tree for little Billy, leaving 195,000 not including the Asian launch. That's not a million but with all the bleeding edge tech in the PS3 to say we've had as few problems as have been reported I think is impressive
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http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/wii/ps3-wii-ebay-fig
11.30.2006
In the weeks leading up to Black Friday (and the weekend itself), the PS3 shifted 28,233 units over eBay
So approximately 15% of all PS3's sold in November were resold on eBay in November...
When you include Craig's list and people who attempted to sell their system locally a safe assumption would be 20%-25% of PS3s were resold in November...
When you add people who bought them for Christmas the number of unopened systems would jump to 30%-40%
So (in general) there would be 100,000-115,000 PS3 systems that have seen more that a week or two of actual use; in Contrast the number of Wii systems seeing similar use would be somewhere between 400,000-500,000 units. To what extent do you think having less systems on the market would lead to their being less errors reported about a system?
But if you satisfy the hardcore fans wouldn't it be a fairly safe assumption that casual fans will be pleased as well? I really can't think of an issue that hardcore fans would love but be a negative to casual fans.
The general rule is that a hardcore fan will likely be looking to add complexity to a game whereas a casual fan will likely be looking to reduce complexity.
In WoW (as an example) there was a debate about what type of content should be added to the game, most hardcore fans wanted 40+ person raid instances which required long hours for multiple days in a week to complete while most casual fans wanted 5-10 man instances which could be completed in shorter bursts (possibly a multi-stage dungeon that could be completed in 2-4 hour bursts over multiple weeks). 40+ person raids are content which the majority of gamers would get little use out of, whereas the 5-10 man instances were content which did not satisfy the hard-core fan.
"Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait a minute people. Nintendo doesn't properly test and ships a shaky/cheap strap prone to breakage and all we have is praise for them?! How does Nintendo get a pass on this as "how to handle the situation". Had this been Sony the post would have been 1,563 comments long with 95% of them saying, "Sony sucks and should burn in hell", "rootkit"! Heck to be honest outside of shipment numbers...
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Its called Karma...
Nintendo has spent years producing high-quality products while providing excellent customer service; at the same time, I haven't heard of anyone being "screwed" by any direct or indirect action of Nintendo. You can't (necessarily) say the same about Sony.
Ultimately, you hear about people using the Wiimote at a level which could be called excessive and the wrist-strap not being able to handle the forces involved; rather than acting like Sony (or even like Apple has in the past) and saying that it is user error, Nintendo redesigned the straps and is willing to replace all existing straps for their customers. Essentially, this is like people's PSP not working in the bathtub and Sony making future PSPs waterproof
Sony's had the best launch so far. No widespread red circles of death, bad updates, controllers killing TV's...as hard as it is to admit, for the most part the PS3's in the market have worked flawlessly."
Besides people selling them on eBay does anyone even own a PS3 yet?
When the PS3 has been out for 3 months, and over 1 Million people own one, if it has no known hardware problems I think it will be a candidate for having the best build quality at launch; being that they cut their shipment from 2 Million consoles worldwide, to 500,000 in North America and Japan and only actually shipped half of those I don't think it would approach the top 10 console launches though.
Let's call a spade a spade here people...this is a mistake on Nintendo's part. To assert that people "should be more careful" is just stupid. Nintendo knew their console encouraged movement and this could potentially happen (why they included a strap in the first place) but they cheaped out on them and these are the consequences. I'm as big a Ninty fan as anyone and proud Wii owner but Let's stop drinking Ninty's kool-aid, get off our knees, and see the forest for the trees. This launch has had its share of mishaps: limited to no online play, bad update (I'm on my second Wii), straps, lower than expected shipment numbers to the UK...) yet gamers, and slashdot especially, keep giving Nintendo a pass. I don't get it.
A company has to make assumptions about reasonable use of their product
The wrist strap was designed based off of their assumptions on how most people would use the Wii and (for the most part) they were correct; they extended their assumptions to now include complete morons into their target user group and have adjusted their design appropriately.
Personally, I am an ass
If it were up to me, anyone who was stupid enough to use the Wiimote in a way where they would throw it with enough force to both break the strap and break their TV would get exactly what they earned (a broken TV and, hopefully, a broken Wiimote).
I'm going to wait for the announcement 2 months from the recall about gamers who's wrists are being injured because when they throw the Wiimote the strap doesn't brake and there is too much force put on their wrist.
I think my point was essentially that Zelda, unlike Final Fantasy and Pokemon (and more recently Animal Crossing: Wild World and brain training), gets a larger portion of its sales from North America than Japan and is unlikely to sell at an unbelieveable rate in Japan. Being close to 200,000 sales in 2 weeks with only 400,000 Wiis sold in Japan is a pretty good start for Zelda; over the next 2 months it will probably be picked up with about 1/3-1/4 Wiis sold and will likely break a Million units sold in Japan.
I agree that you can enjoy playing Wii sports in little bursts every day for a year (or more) my "shallow" comment is that (from a single player perspective) there is very little that you have to accomplish and you're unlikely to play it for hours on end.
Yeah, I've been wondering to what extent a company should have to anticipate how badly abused their product will be; if you assume that the Wii wrist strap needed to be able to tolerate a 280 pound man widly throwing a Wiimote, wouldn't you also assume that a Plasma/LCD screen should be able to tolerate the impact of the Wiimote on the screen?
There is probably no nice, clean aswer to this, but I wonder to what extent companies should be liable for damage caused by their product when used inappropriately.
Wii sports is not bundled in Japan ...
Honestly, Wii sports is remarkably shallow (and basically a tech-demo) from a single player perspective but is (by far) the best local multiplayer game released in 2006.