That's kind of what I was thinking. If the deal somehow restricts someone from redistributing code, then it's a clear violation of the original license. And if it doesn't, I don't see how it can be used to stop people from acquiring the relevant code.
I R'd the FA, and I don't have the first clue what this perceived threat is. How does signing this deal threaten commercial use of OSS? Don't the existing OSS licensing terms still hold? Why should it matter that MS can now show there's an MS-licensed path?
Is this threat a software patent one? If so, how does this deal change the threat - if the patents already exist, couldn't they be used just as easily without the deal as with it?
I'm no lawyer, I don't swim in corporate mega-deal circles, and I didn't even stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night, so it's possible (probable, even) that there's something obvious here that I'm missing. Can someone who knows more about it elaborate for me? Because as it stands, I don't see how MS controlling one licensing path for OSS can suddenly mean that all other methods of acquiring OSS become illegal.
I need to be more aware of what hardware I'm running? How so? I just did a cold install of a dual boot XP Pro/Vista build 57something machine. I didn't have to know diddly jack about my hardware. XP installed, and the box worked. Vista installed, and the box worked (!).
I didn't have to run sound setup. I didn't have to pick my monitor's capabilities. I can change desktop resolutions from a GUI on the fly. I did have to install updated graphics card drivers...but that was just a matter of inserting the vendor-provided CD, and clicking "install." It was trivial to set up my computer to print to and scan from my fiancee's printer/scanner across the network. My wireless NIC worked without me doing anything. I didn't have to run any kind of sound configuration utility. I didn't have to worry about mounting/unmounting drives to use CDs. It was trivial (three clicks, or thereabouts) to set up shared directories. It was trivial to set up my iPod. Music and movies played by double-clicking, no questions asked. My Cisco VPN client just worked to connect to my office network. It was trivial (three clicks, or thereabouts) to set up remote desktop sharing so I can log into my machine from work.
Now, I haven't installed a version of Linux since Mandrake 7.something, IIRC, so maybe this is all transparent in new distros, but these are all things that have caused me to switch back from Linux in the past. And this isn't even touching whether or not I want to play games on my PC, or whether I want to stream media to my 360.
The point is, XP did "just work" for me, and I make enough money that the freeness of Linux distros is outweighed by the time I'd need to get up to speed using Linux.
Sure, this can all be blamed on MS leveraging their monopoly so all the hardware vendors bend over backwards to do MS' work for them, but it really doesn't matter to me when it comes down to sitting down and using the machine I've just built.
Now, MS came very close to forcing me to spend the time with their licensed-to-the-device scheme with Vista, and they may still depending on how the lockdown of the kernel in 64-bit Vista plays out. Once Windows no longer "just works" for me, then I'll be more willing to explore alternatives that will work better. But for the moment, there just isn't impetus for me to change.
Is this fair to Linux from an objective standpoint? No, it isn't; Linux developers and the Linux community have to bear burdens that MS has managed to foist off on the industry as a whole. But when I get home from work, I'm not as interested in "fair" as I am "functioning."
While doing so, he found a famous Green Bay Packers Wide Receiver (American Football) trying to buy their PS3 system off them for $100 extra. He ran into the same guy later at the Casino and found out he bribed a Circuit City employee to put his name at the top of the Pre-order list.
As a Wisconsinite and a Packers fan, I have to ask - who was it? We're sort of short on famous wide outs, right now, so am I safe in assuming it's #80? Or are we not talking about a current player?
You're right, no other work can - and if I sounded like I was criticizing Wikipedia, I apologize; that wasn't my intent. The fact that Wikipedia exists and is as content-full as it is actually brings out optimism in me for the whole of the species.
Nonetheless, I don't think it's going to replace archeology.
While the potential to preserve information perfectly for arbitrary lengths of time exists, much (I'd even venture to guess most, if not almost all) of the information being routinely generated is being just as routinely deleted.
As an example, how many times have you been writing a reply or a post on/., only to accidentally switch control focus before hitting backspace, thereby losing forever everything you just wrote? That sort of information loss alone represents a giant bit bucket that vast amounts of information have fallen into. Add on top of that information loss for the reasons you describe, and I think we're losing information at a rate completely unprecedented in human history, both absolutely and relative to the amount of information we're creating.
But that depends on accurate preservation of historical information in the first place - is that happening with Wikipedia? If it is, I'm unaware of it. And if it is, where would I go to see what Wikipedia looked like last week? Last year? Five years ago? I'd be very curious to look at what people were writing about some topics a few years ago, as compared to now.
Unless I'm missing a significant data storage project (which I may be), once the article is changed, the only remaining copy of it is in human memory and some cache files.
If that's not happening, then I don't see what techniques can possibly be used to analyze the change trends of information (which I agree would be a fascinating long-term study), since the information that's changed is now gone.
That sounds fantastic in an idealistic, theoretical way...but considering the volatility of Wikipedia just on a day-to-day (sometimes hour-to-hour) basis, what makes anyone think the content of Wikipedia in a decade, much less a century, will say anything about what we were like today?
The advent of the digital age has made storing data for arbitrary lengths of time a possibility; as long as it's maintained, there need be no information loss. But at the very same time, the volatility of the information has skyrocketed, such that information that isn't being constantly maintained is routinely vanishing forever.
Contrast this to past eras, where the capacity for information preservation was nowhere near as comprehensive or as close to perfect as it is today. While at the same time being much less volatile: much of the information we've uncovered from human history wasn't intended to be preserved, it just happened to last.
Not that this is in any way surprising; it is, in fact, a restatement of the fundamental difference between analog and digital. Digital information is either preserved or not, there's no middle ground. Meanwhile, analog information can't be perfectly preserved, but it degrades more gracefully.
Sure, barring some sort of cataclysm, our "important" information will be around in far greater quantity two hundred years from now than anything from two hundred years ago. But how much "unimportant" information will we have irretrievably lost? As diaries are replaced with blogs, and letters are replaced with email, and telegrams are replaced with IMs and phone calls, a huge amount of information that might have survived previously as worn scraps of paper is destroyed as soon as it's consumed, thereby denying a window into the everyday culture of the time to future archeo- and anthropologists.
We'll never again lose the Library of Alexandria, but we'll never again have the journals of Da Vinci.
But is it so much harder to do here that we can trust all the coders in this country?
That's the question. Like I said, offshored code is less trustworthy. I don't believe, however, that locally sourced code is more trustworthy enough to not need review.
And if the review process is the problem, as the article says, than it doesn't matter where the code comes from.
"Pentagon officials report that 'maliciously placed code' could compromise the security of the Defense Department and, ultimately, hurt its ability to fight wars. The culprits: offshore programmers. While the Pentagon has stepped up its vendor screening and software testing of late, it's becoming more difficult and costly to test every line of software code on increasingly sophisticated weapons systems. The task force assigned to this issue will be soon presenting its report, and most likely will determine that offshoring presents too great a risk." Blaming "offshoring" is a neat wave of the bloody shirt, but I don't think it's relevant to the problem. Take the word "offshoring" out of that quote, and replace it with "outsourcing." Does it still make sense? Let's see:
"Pentagon officials report that 'maliciously placed code' could compromise the security of the Defense Department and, ultimately, hurt its ability to fight wars. The culprits: offshore programmers. While the Pentagon has stepped up its vendor screening and software testing of late, it's becoming more difficult and costly to test every line of software code on increasingly sophisticated weapons systems. The task force assigned to this issue will be soon presenting its report, and most likely will determine that outsourcing presents too great a risk."
Looks like it does.
If the problem is that there aren't enough resources (including time) to do a sufficiently thorough audit of all the code, then it doesn't matter where the code was written, does it? Do we really suppose that a malicious actor would have that much harder a time getting a job for a DoD contractor in the US than overseas? Do we really suppose that it would be that much more difficult to suborn a programmer overseas than here?
Or, more accurately, is it enough more difficult in either case for us to be confident of code written inside the country as opposed to outside?
It's not that I do think that offshored code is trustworthy, it's that I don't think "onshored" code is. And if we can't trust either, what does offshoring have to do with anything?
For isc.sans.org (which is probably not your typical site), 50% of Firefox users already use Firefox 2.0, and 23% of Internet Explorer users use MSIE 7.0. Overall, we got about a 50/50 split between Firefox and Internet Explorer users.
The stats on the site don't say much at all about the uptake of IE7 (or FF2, for that matter) among the general internet-using population. As you can see in the quote, the article doesn't make any pretensions that they do, either, noting that sans.org isn't a typical site.
Which is obvious, given the breakdown of FF vs IE users. A 50/50 split is obviously not a representative sample.
The second half of this blurb is blatantly misleading.
No one worries about people writing kernel code, accusing them of being "Dr. Frankensteins" because they might accidentally create a virus that will escape their machine, infect the Pentagon, and launch all our nuclear missiles.
Biological viruses aren't any more magic than their machine counterparts.
I know that, in terms of real purchasing power, it's cheaper than previous consoles. This doesn't change the fact that I paid $200 for each previous iteration, irrespective of what that $200 was worth (and, from a personal standpoint, two of those consoles were from HS/college, when I was making a hell of a lot less money than I am now, so the actual value of that $200 was much, much higher than the $250 will be, to me, in November).
Perhaps I'm being unfair to Nintendo, and they're taking blame from me because they've been so good about this in the past. That still doesn't change my psychological response to it.
But that's just it, this is one of the systems I'm looking for. I'll be standing in line on launch day, hoping to get one, and I'll fork over my $250 + an extra controller + Z:TP if given the opportunity.
The extra $50 isn't a deal breaker, it's just something I'm not happy about.
My point about the bells and whistles is that I've got by 360 for those things, and I expected to pay the premium for the gimmicks and the cutting-edge graphics. That's the role they marketed it to fill, and that's the role I bought it to fill.
The Wii, so far, has been marketed to fill a much different role, centered on fun gameplay, and that's the role I'll buy it to fill. From that point of view, the extra money for the extra gimmicks just isn't satisfying to me.
I guess it boils down to "do what you do best, outsource the rest." Nintendo's focus on gameplay and innovation is what makes me hungry for the system. The extra stuff just seems like it's outside that focus, and they shouldn't have bothered.
(As to being not in their target market, perhaps I'm not, insofar as they're aiming for a non-traditional market segment, and I'm very much a member of the traditional gaming market)
But that's like justifying $580 for the PS3 by saying it has a Blu-Ray drive.
When I go to buy a new console, I want the new console excitement. That means I want the games that are going to justify me purchasing a new console, the things I can do now that I couldn't do before.
Back compat is cool (and, if you look around the net hard enough, you can probably see me railing against MS on the BC issue for the 360), but it's not why I buy a new console. I'll make use of it when I've got it, but it's not a real selling point.
Built in wireless - that's neat, yes. But I'm not sold on how valuable the online experience of the Wii is going to be. Again, it's something I'll use when I've got it, but it's not a real selling point. I was perfectly happy with my GC without any networking ability.
This leaves the bundled game and the power consumption. The bundled game is a definite benefit; I won't deny it. Personally, however, I'd rather spend the $250 on just the console and Z:TP. But I agree, the bundled game is notable. The power consumption is too intangible for me to really get jazzed over, but you make a good point regarding the long-term cost recovery.
I guess what it comes down to is that the Wii has a bunch of extra bells and whistles that I'm getting for the extra $250...but if it's a bells-and-whistles console I'm looking for, I'm looking at the 360/PS3. The Wii is supposed to be all about the games; fun, innovative gameplay is supposed to be the order of the day. The extra stuff that doesn't directly contribute to that (Opera, back compat, power consumption, built in wireless) doesn't help sell me on the system.
*shrug*
I recognize that this is purely personal opinion, and I don't expect to "win" any arguments over it. This is just a statement of fact regarding my response to the price.
Yes, and $200 in 1985 money was more than $200 in 1991 money, and $200 in 1991 money was more than $200 in 1996 money, and $200 in 1996 money was more than $200 in 2001 money.
You're right in every respect, of course, and I'll still be buying a Wii.
And maybe it's a function of Nintendo's previous track record, and I'm giving them flak because they've done too well in the past.
That may all be the case.
Nonetheless, it still feels like I'm getting pretty much the same tech for $50 more than it cost five years ago, when I'm accustomed (in the computer hardware world) to paying the same money for better tech as time passes. That's not a response that's good for Nintendo (and may explain, in part, why they've been so close-mouthed about the actual specs). And if that's my response, I have to think it's the response a lot of other people will also have.
*shrug*
Like I said, I'll be getting one anyway, so maybe it's just not a big deal. But it doesn't help me like it.
That's more than slightly disingenuous. Maintaining the x86 instruction set does not, in any way, even remotely imply that the processor you're working on right now is just a 386, but faster. There have been fundamental, major evolutions in CPU technology between that 386 and your current CPU, which make them completely different animals that just happen to look (sort of) the same from the OS' point of view.
This isn't true for the Wii hardware vs the GC hardware, if Hannibal's supposition is correct. In that case, we're talking about a die shrink and a clock increase.
And if you think your current CPU is just a 386 + die shrink + clock increase...well, either you're using a CPU that's twelve years old, or you don't really have any grasp of CPU technology.
Slashdot Mirror
That's kind of what I was thinking. If the deal somehow restricts someone from redistributing code, then it's a clear violation of the original license. And if it doesn't, I don't see how it can be used to stop people from acquiring the relevant code.
I R'd the FA, and I don't have the first clue what this perceived threat is. How does signing this deal threaten commercial use of OSS? Don't the existing OSS licensing terms still hold? Why should it matter that MS can now show there's an MS-licensed path?
Is this threat a software patent one? If so, how does this deal change the threat - if the patents already exist, couldn't they be used just as easily without the deal as with it?
I'm no lawyer, I don't swim in corporate mega-deal circles, and I didn't even stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night, so it's possible (probable, even) that there's something obvious here that I'm missing. Can someone who knows more about it elaborate for me? Because as it stands, I don't see how MS controlling one licensing path for OSS can suddenly mean that all other methods of acquiring OSS become illegal.
I need to be more aware of what hardware I'm running? How so? I just did a cold install of a dual boot XP Pro/Vista build 57something machine. I didn't have to know diddly jack about my hardware. XP installed, and the box worked. Vista installed, and the box worked (!).
I didn't have to run sound setup. I didn't have to pick my monitor's capabilities. I can change desktop resolutions from a GUI on the fly. I did have to install updated graphics card drivers...but that was just a matter of inserting the vendor-provided CD, and clicking "install." It was trivial to set up my computer to print to and scan from my fiancee's printer/scanner across the network. My wireless NIC worked without me doing anything. I didn't have to run any kind of sound configuration utility. I didn't have to worry about mounting/unmounting drives to use CDs. It was trivial (three clicks, or thereabouts) to set up shared directories. It was trivial to set up my iPod. Music and movies played by double-clicking, no questions asked. My Cisco VPN client just worked to connect to my office network. It was trivial (three clicks, or thereabouts) to set up remote desktop sharing so I can log into my machine from work.
Now, I haven't installed a version of Linux since Mandrake 7.something, IIRC, so maybe this is all transparent in new distros, but these are all things that have caused me to switch back from Linux in the past. And this isn't even touching whether or not I want to play games on my PC, or whether I want to stream media to my 360.
The point is, XP did "just work" for me, and I make enough money that the freeness of Linux distros is outweighed by the time I'd need to get up to speed using Linux.
Sure, this can all be blamed on MS leveraging their monopoly so all the hardware vendors bend over backwards to do MS' work for them, but it really doesn't matter to me when it comes down to sitting down and using the machine I've just built.
Now, MS came very close to forcing me to spend the time with their licensed-to-the-device scheme with Vista, and they may still depending on how the lockdown of the kernel in 64-bit Vista plays out. Once Windows no longer "just works" for me, then I'll be more willing to explore alternatives that will work better. But for the moment, there just isn't impetus for me to change.
Is this fair to Linux from an objective standpoint? No, it isn't; Linux developers and the Linux community have to bear burdens that MS has managed to foist off on the industry as a whole. But when I get home from work, I'm not as interested in "fair" as I am "functioning."
And I've yet to see horrible load times on the 360, except for Oblivion
You obviously haven't played PGR3. Oblivion's got nothing on the load screen bonanza that is PGR3.
Anyway, interesting take on the PS3 HDD; I hadn't put 2 and 2 together on that one yet.
While doing so, he found a famous Green Bay Packers Wide Receiver (American Football) trying to buy their PS3 system off them for $100 extra. He ran into the same guy later at the Casino and found out he bribed a Circuit City employee to put his name at the top of the Pre-order list.
As a Wisconsinite and a Packers fan, I have to ask - who was it? We're sort of short on famous wide outs, right now, so am I safe in assuming it's #80? Or are we not talking about a current player?
...the xbox, I will be throwing that in the trash.
Tell you what. When you decide to throw your xbox in the trash, let me know. I'll gladly pay shipping for you to send it to me, instead.
You're right, no other work can - and if I sounded like I was criticizing Wikipedia, I apologize; that wasn't my intent. The fact that Wikipedia exists and is as content-full as it is actually brings out optimism in me for the whole of the species.
Nonetheless, I don't think it's going to replace archeology.
Exactly.
/., only to accidentally switch control focus before hitting backspace, thereby losing forever everything you just wrote? That sort of information loss alone represents a giant bit bucket that vast amounts of information have fallen into. Add on top of that information loss for the reasons you describe, and I think we're losing information at a rate completely unprecedented in human history, both absolutely and relative to the amount of information we're creating.
While the potential to preserve information perfectly for arbitrary lengths of time exists, much (I'd even venture to guess most, if not almost all) of the information being routinely generated is being just as routinely deleted.
As an example, how many times have you been writing a reply or a post on
But that depends on accurate preservation of historical information in the first place - is that happening with Wikipedia? If it is, I'm unaware of it. And if it is, where would I go to see what Wikipedia looked like last week? Last year? Five years ago? I'd be very curious to look at what people were writing about some topics a few years ago, as compared to now.
Unless I'm missing a significant data storage project (which I may be), once the article is changed, the only remaining copy of it is in human memory and some cache files.
If that's not happening, then I don't see what techniques can possibly be used to analyze the change trends of information (which I agree would be a fascinating long-term study), since the information that's changed is now gone.
That sounds fantastic in an idealistic, theoretical way...but considering the volatility of Wikipedia just on a day-to-day (sometimes hour-to-hour) basis, what makes anyone think the content of Wikipedia in a decade, much less a century, will say anything about what we were like today?
The advent of the digital age has made storing data for arbitrary lengths of time a possibility; as long as it's maintained, there need be no information loss. But at the very same time, the volatility of the information has skyrocketed, such that information that isn't being constantly maintained is routinely vanishing forever.
Contrast this to past eras, where the capacity for information preservation was nowhere near as comprehensive or as close to perfect as it is today. While at the same time being much less volatile: much of the information we've uncovered from human history wasn't intended to be preserved, it just happened to last.
Not that this is in any way surprising; it is, in fact, a restatement of the fundamental difference between analog and digital. Digital information is either preserved or not, there's no middle ground. Meanwhile, analog information can't be perfectly preserved, but it degrades more gracefully.
Sure, barring some sort of cataclysm, our "important" information will be around in far greater quantity two hundred years from now than anything from two hundred years ago. But how much "unimportant" information will we have irretrievably lost? As diaries are replaced with blogs, and letters are replaced with email, and telegrams are replaced with IMs and phone calls, a huge amount of information that might have survived previously as worn scraps of paper is destroyed as soon as it's consumed, thereby denying a window into the everyday culture of the time to future archeo- and anthropologists.
We'll never again lose the Library of Alexandria, but we'll never again have the journals of Da Vinci.
But is it so much harder to do here that we can trust all the coders in this country?
That's the question. Like I said, offshored code is less trustworthy. I don't believe, however, that locally sourced code is more trustworthy enough to not need review.
And if the review process is the problem, as the article says, than it doesn't matter where the code comes from.
"Pentagon officials report that 'maliciously placed code' could compromise the security of the Defense Department and, ultimately, hurt its ability to fight wars. The culprits: offshore programmers. While the Pentagon has stepped up its vendor screening and software testing of late, it's becoming more difficult and costly to test every line of software code on increasingly sophisticated weapons systems. The task force assigned to this issue will be soon presenting its report, and most likely will determine that offshoring presents too great a risk."
Blaming "offshoring" is a neat wave of the bloody shirt, but I don't think it's relevant to the problem. Take the word "offshoring" out of that quote, and replace it with "outsourcing." Does it still make sense? Let's see:
"Pentagon officials report that 'maliciously placed code' could compromise the security of the Defense Department and, ultimately, hurt its ability to fight wars. The culprits: offshore programmers. While the Pentagon has stepped up its vendor screening and software testing of late, it's becoming more difficult and costly to test every line of software code on increasingly sophisticated weapons systems. The task force assigned to this issue will be soon presenting its report, and most likely will determine that outsourcing presents too great a risk."
Looks like it does.
If the problem is that there aren't enough resources (including time) to do a sufficiently thorough audit of all the code, then it doesn't matter where the code was written, does it? Do we really suppose that a malicious actor would have that much harder a time getting a job for a DoD contractor in the US than overseas? Do we really suppose that it would be that much more difficult to suborn a programmer overseas than here?
Or, more accurately, is it enough more difficult in either case for us to be confident of code written inside the country as opposed to outside?
It's not that I do think that offshored code is trustworthy, it's that I don't think "onshored" code is. And if we can't trust either, what does offshoring have to do with anything?
I would argue that it's common knowledge
that Firefox
doesn't have
anything like
50% of
the browser market,
with most estimates
coming in
at less than
25%.
For isc.sans.org (which is probably not your typical site), 50% of Firefox users already use Firefox 2.0, and 23% of Internet Explorer users use MSIE 7.0. Overall, we got about a 50/50 split between Firefox and Internet Explorer users.
The stats on the site don't say much at all about the uptake of IE7 (or FF2, for that matter) among the general internet-using population. As you can see in the quote, the article doesn't make any pretensions that they do, either, noting that sans.org isn't a typical site.
Which is obvious, given the breakdown of FF vs IE users. A 50/50 split is obviously not a representative sample.
The second half of this blurb is blatantly misleading.
But it shouldn't.
No one worries about people writing kernel code, accusing them of being "Dr. Frankensteins" because they might accidentally create a virus that will escape their machine, infect the Pentagon, and launch all our nuclear missiles.
Biological viruses aren't any more magic than their machine counterparts.
As opposed to everyone else's comments on the value of the consoles, which are completely objective and lacking in any shade of personal opinion.
True, but that doesn't mean I have to like it when it goes away.
That's, ah...quite the comeback, there.
Well done, or something.
See my previous comment on this.
I know that, in terms of real purchasing power, it's cheaper than previous consoles. This doesn't change the fact that I paid $200 for each previous iteration, irrespective of what that $200 was worth (and, from a personal standpoint, two of those consoles were from HS/college, when I was making a hell of a lot less money than I am now, so the actual value of that $200 was much, much higher than the $250 will be, to me, in November).
Perhaps I'm being unfair to Nintendo, and they're taking blame from me because they've been so good about this in the past. That still doesn't change my psychological response to it.
But that's just it, this is one of the systems I'm looking for. I'll be standing in line on launch day, hoping to get one, and I'll fork over my $250 + an extra controller + Z:TP if given the opportunity.
The extra $50 isn't a deal breaker, it's just something I'm not happy about.
My point about the bells and whistles is that I've got by 360 for those things, and I expected to pay the premium for the gimmicks and the cutting-edge graphics. That's the role they marketed it to fill, and that's the role I bought it to fill.
The Wii, so far, has been marketed to fill a much different role, centered on fun gameplay, and that's the role I'll buy it to fill. From that point of view, the extra money for the extra gimmicks just isn't satisfying to me.
I guess it boils down to "do what you do best, outsource the rest." Nintendo's focus on gameplay and innovation is what makes me hungry for the system. The extra stuff just seems like it's outside that focus, and they shouldn't have bothered.
(As to being not in their target market, perhaps I'm not, insofar as they're aiming for a non-traditional market segment, and I'm very much a member of the traditional gaming market)
That may successfully shift the blame, but it doesn't help me when I'm handing over my card to the cashier.
But that's like justifying $580 for the PS3 by saying it has a Blu-Ray drive.
When I go to buy a new console, I want the new console excitement. That means I want the games that are going to justify me purchasing a new console, the things I can do now that I couldn't do before.
Back compat is cool (and, if you look around the net hard enough, you can probably see me railing against MS on the BC issue for the 360), but it's not why I buy a new console. I'll make use of it when I've got it, but it's not a real selling point.
Built in wireless - that's neat, yes. But I'm not sold on how valuable the online experience of the Wii is going to be. Again, it's something I'll use when I've got it, but it's not a real selling point. I was perfectly happy with my GC without any networking ability.
This leaves the bundled game and the power consumption. The bundled game is a definite benefit; I won't deny it. Personally, however, I'd rather spend the $250 on just the console and Z:TP. But I agree, the bundled game is notable. The power consumption is too intangible for me to really get jazzed over, but you make a good point regarding the long-term cost recovery.
I guess what it comes down to is that the Wii has a bunch of extra bells and whistles that I'm getting for the extra $250...but if it's a bells-and-whistles console I'm looking for, I'm looking at the 360/PS3. The Wii is supposed to be all about the games; fun, innovative gameplay is supposed to be the order of the day. The extra stuff that doesn't directly contribute to that (Opera, back compat, power consumption, built in wireless) doesn't help sell me on the system.
*shrug*
I recognize that this is purely personal opinion, and I don't expect to "win" any arguments over it. This is just a statement of fact regarding my response to the price.
Yes, and $200 in 1985 money was more than $200 in 1991 money, and $200 in 1991 money was more than $200 in 1996 money, and $200 in 1996 money was more than $200 in 2001 money.
You're right in every respect, of course, and I'll still be buying a Wii.
And maybe it's a function of Nintendo's previous track record, and I'm giving them flak because they've done too well in the past.
That may all be the case.
Nonetheless, it still feels like I'm getting pretty much the same tech for $50 more than it cost five years ago, when I'm accustomed (in the computer hardware world) to paying the same money for better tech as time passes. That's not a response that's good for Nintendo (and may explain, in part, why they've been so close-mouthed about the actual specs). And if that's my response, I have to think it's the response a lot of other people will also have.
*shrug*
Like I said, I'll be getting one anyway, so maybe it's just not a big deal. But it doesn't help me like it.
And my PC is just a supercharged 386. So what?
That's more than slightly disingenuous. Maintaining the x86 instruction set does not, in any way, even remotely imply that the processor you're working on right now is just a 386, but faster. There have been fundamental, major evolutions in CPU technology between that 386 and your current CPU, which make them completely different animals that just happen to look (sort of) the same from the OS' point of view.
This isn't true for the Wii hardware vs the GC hardware, if Hannibal's supposition is correct. In that case, we're talking about a die shrink and a clock increase.
And if you think your current CPU is just a 386 + die shrink + clock increase...well, either you're using a CPU that's twelve years old, or you don't really have any grasp of CPU technology.