I've never understood why the Wii performing well would really be a surprise to anyone.
Nintendo has an excellent track record, with both software and hardware. There have been some mistakes made, but they have an excellent business acumen. They've been in the game a long time, they know how the waters flow. Not to mention a near lock on the handheld market, which allows them to play only on one front and still be competitive in the world of consoles overall.
Furthermore, while a lot of us gamers are growing old, I think we seem to forget that a very large portion of the console market is parents buying for kids. While they may balk at spending half a grand on a console, two-fifty is a lot more manageable, especially when the price is compared to the PS3 and 360. Add into that mix college students, who are rarely a well-spring of money, and that adds up to a lower price point dominating. While the Wii doesn't have the flash-bang of the PS3 or 360, it's affordable and it's still fun, and that's what matters.
Nintendo knew this a long while ago. They probably dropped a bomb in their collective pants when Sony announced the PS3 price, because that played right into their strategy. I fully expect the next-gen consoles to be a lot cheaper, seeing the success Nintendo had.
This is Slashdot, and the tubes, so I fully expect a large outcry against governmental control versus personal liberties.
The fact is, either way there's going to be opposition, whether it's regulation or deregulation of video game ratings. At least here in New York, there's a tradition to protect a parent's rights to determine what their children can watch or play. That is exactly what the enforcement of the law does; it protects the rights of parental enforcement by disallowing retailers from selling games rated for adults to teens. There is nothing in this law (or its enforcement, which is what TFA is about) that dictates a parent can't buy any video game for thier kids, even if it's the newest edition of EA Sports Circle Jerk 2007 (tm).
Furthermore, this law protects retailers, so these games can still be sold, and even made. In a day and age where people are so quick to assign blame for the horrible things that happen, the retailers and producers need to be protected. How many anti-violent gaming laws are proposed every year? What prevents these from passing is the ESRB rating system. Enforcement allows a retailer to point back at the parent for buying the game in the first place, or point at the child for duping the retailer in the first place. Either way absolves the retailer of responsibility.
Now, I understand that at sixteen, people are probably capable of making decisions and recognizing the difference between a game and real life. I know if someone told me I couldn't buy a game when I was that age, I would have been upset as well. Unfortunately, it is simply much to inefficient to judge everyone on a case-by-case basis (and whose responsibility would that be?), not to mention dealing with the various ethical textures of assigning people an "age." Therefore, an age limit needs to be set.
While it is true that cognitive ability (not so much bipedalism) has allowed us to avoid selection pressure to some degree, that by no means says that H. sapiens is inured to evolution. Two prominent examples of human evolution are the increases in height and more recently, the disappearance of wisdom teeth (due to smaller jaw sizes). Both are probably influenced by selection pressure sans human involvement, and the former arguably still is, given societal pressures on mating.
Exactly. Not only that, but bacteria are well known within the biological community to not only mutate, but mutate enough so as to be highly adaptable. Even with redundant copies - and mutation in junk DNA is higher than in "essential" DNA - there's too much data loss to make this any sort of reliable.
Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo has an excellent track record, with both software and hardware. There have been some mistakes made, but they have an excellent business acumen. They've been in the game a long time, they know how the waters flow. Not to mention a near lock on the handheld market, which allows them to play only on one front and still be competitive in the world of consoles overall.
Furthermore, while a lot of us gamers are growing old, I think we seem to forget that a very large portion of the console market is parents buying for kids. While they may balk at spending half a grand on a console, two-fifty is a lot more manageable, especially when the price is compared to the PS3 and 360. Add into that mix college students, who are rarely a well-spring of money, and that adds up to a lower price point dominating. While the Wii doesn't have the flash-bang of the PS3 or 360, it's affordable and it's still fun, and that's what matters.
Nintendo knew this a long while ago. They probably dropped a bomb in their collective pants when Sony announced the PS3 price, because that played right into their strategy. I fully expect the next-gen consoles to be a lot cheaper, seeing the success Nintendo had.
This is Slashdot, and the tubes, so I fully expect a large outcry against governmental control versus personal liberties. The fact is, either way there's going to be opposition, whether it's regulation or deregulation of video game ratings. At least here in New York, there's a tradition to protect a parent's rights to determine what their children can watch or play. That is exactly what the enforcement of the law does; it protects the rights of parental enforcement by disallowing retailers from selling games rated for adults to teens. There is nothing in this law (or its enforcement, which is what TFA is about) that dictates a parent can't buy any video game for thier kids, even if it's the newest edition of EA Sports Circle Jerk 2007 (tm). Furthermore, this law protects retailers, so these games can still be sold, and even made. In a day and age where people are so quick to assign blame for the horrible things that happen, the retailers and producers need to be protected. How many anti-violent gaming laws are proposed every year? What prevents these from passing is the ESRB rating system. Enforcement allows a retailer to point back at the parent for buying the game in the first place, or point at the child for duping the retailer in the first place. Either way absolves the retailer of responsibility. Now, I understand that at sixteen, people are probably capable of making decisions and recognizing the difference between a game and real life. I know if someone told me I couldn't buy a game when I was that age, I would have been upset as well. Unfortunately, it is simply much to inefficient to judge everyone on a case-by-case basis (and whose responsibility would that be?), not to mention dealing with the various ethical textures of assigning people an "age." Therefore, an age limit needs to be set.
While it is true that cognitive ability (not so much bipedalism) has allowed us to avoid selection pressure to some degree, that by no means says that H. sapiens is inured to evolution. Two prominent examples of human evolution are the increases in height and more recently, the disappearance of wisdom teeth (due to smaller jaw sizes). Both are probably influenced by selection pressure sans human involvement, and the former arguably still is, given societal pressures on mating.
Exactly. Not only that, but bacteria are well known within the biological community to not only mutate, but mutate enough so as to be highly adaptable. Even with redundant copies - and mutation in junk DNA is higher than in "essential" DNA - there's too much data loss to make this any sort of reliable.