to paraphrase a song "nothing divided by nothing is nothing".
To me the funny thing is while I (mostly think I) get the mathematical problems of div by zero, conceptually it's a no-brainer. I have four apples. I split them among zero people. I still have 4 apples.;) I remember pissing off math teachers early on grade school that way. "Honestly, dividing by zero is equal to not dividing, so the original quantity remains, what's so hard about that? After all zero is essentially a placeholder for nothing". Ahh the naivete of youth.
Either way, if the guy's so concerned, why hasn't he registered deanhunt.biz? If you think I'm out of my mind, you've never encountered a lawyer before.
I have encountered many lawyers. Hence.ass would be a better TLD for lawyer sites. Generally speaking of course.
Wii projectors or wee projectors? Wii projectors, body movements, and arm mounted Wii projectors and things could get dangerous. We just need portable power for the Wii and projectors.:^D
Grocery shopping and walking down the sidewalk are required for participation in society. Hunting is not.
Neither is browsing the web, shopping online, posting to slashdot, using a computer, shopping at a grocery store, gardening. Requirement for 'participating in society' is a poor choice justification for allowing someone to do something. indeed this is the wrong approach at a more fundamental level. Government is about limiting things, that is all it can do. The natural state of humanity is self-limitation. By expressing things in terms of what the government should allow we erode everyone's human rights by removing their primary one: self-determination.
Anyway, he's legally blind, just invested a very nice new car's worth of money into a Guide Dog, and has better groupings than most of the first-time shooters I've yet met.
Sounds like a damned good dog. Now if they can teach it to fetch ducks that's worth some money.;) Around here though most first time shooters are about 8-10 years of age and are just as likely to throw a stick for the dog.
Seriously though, the difference is 'legally blind' versus 'blind'. Contrary to popular belief these are not the same thing. One can see well enough to shoot through a scope, but not enough to drive. Legally blind is (IIRC) defined by vision level, not total lack of sight capability. Personally I wouldn't want a legally blind person to NOT use a scope. The scope would serve to bring the 'picture' of down range to within normal sight capability.
That said, there should still be a limit. 100% blindness, for example should not be allowed to shoot guns in the open if at all. That's asking for trouble. Certain types, if not all types, of color blindness also should be limited if allowed. Anything that prevents you from making an easy unmistakable differentiation between orange and anything nature colored (browns, greys, blacks, yellows, whites, etc.).
That said, the reference is to enjoying the sport of hunting. The sport of hunting does not consist solely of pulling a trigger. If that were the case you could do just fine at your local gun range. Any real hunter (as opposed to keyboard/joystick/controller jockeys) will tell you that the shootign of the game is only the peak. Said peak can only be achieved by going through the hunting process - camping, tracking, sneaking, etc.. I've had my targets picked for me as a kid. It was nowhere near what the full process was.
If you're unable to hunt safely, you probably won't actually want to hunt.
Change hunting to "drive a car" (or "vote" hehe). Still stand by that statement? Google for "Dick+Cheney+hunting".;)
I've seen *many* people want to and go hunting who are very much unable to hunt safely. No offense to Californians but nearly all of them have been CA transplants to mountainous areas. It isn't inherent to CA people, just big city people (wow that sounds hickish) who haven't had experience and training in it.
The only reason anyone would find this funny is if they are willing to completely ignore what the hunting entails
IMO by claiming hunting is about pulling the trigger on something aimed at a living creature, you are ignoring 'what the hunting entails'. It is called hunting and not 'shooting living targets' for a good reason.
It's why there is a much larger number of applications written for windows than for Unix like systems.
Methinks someone isn't paying attention. There may well be more commercial applications, but not necesarily applications overall. What do you think SuSE stuck on those ten discs or so it needed before they moved to DVD. Freshmeat alone lists about 50,000 projects for posix/unix/linux. Gentoo has about 12k. Some of those are libraries, but most are applications. I've seen counts of over 100,000 apps available.
Regarding availability of development, the cell architecture has software development tools available and non-hw specific software (i.e. not games etc.) should run fine between them, and the Sony PS3 SDK includes hardware.
matrix algorithms, and scene data are specified by the Khronos Group, and are intended to work with nVidia's Cg programming language. Scene data are stored with COLLADA v1.4, an open, XML-based file format.[51] Rendering uses PSGL, a modified version of OpenGL ES 1.0 (OpenGL ES 2.0 compliant except for the use of Cg instead of GLSL), with extensions specifically aimed at the PS3.[52] Other specifications include OpenMAX, a collection of fast, cross-platform tools for general "media acceleration," such as matrix calculations, and OpenVG, for hardware-accelerated 2D vector graphics. These specifications have GPL, free for any use, and/or commercial implementations by third parties.
Sublicensed technology includes complete game engines, physics libraries, and special libraries. Engines include Epic's Unreal engine 3.0. Physics libraries include AGEIA's PhysX SDK, NovodeX,[53] and Havok's physics and animation engines.[54] Other tools include Nvidia's Cg 1.5 (a C-like shading language, which HLSL was based upon), SpeedTree RT by Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. (high-quality virtual foliage in real time), and Kynogon's Kynapse 4.0 "large scale A.I.".
Most of those have commercial backing and good documentation. So no slouching on the Sony/IBM/Toshiba side either.
Downloading a pre-made model and making it move is something that can easily be done, or made easy by a toolkit. But games are a lot more than that. There is the interaction between objects, AIs, pathing, all sorts of things needed. How does XNA compare when doing these items? Just because you can make a demo of a model being moved by a controller doesn't mean that making games will be easy. For all we know the rest may well be difficult.
It says in their FAQ: "kvm today supports non-live migration, where there is a pause while memory content is transferred. Pauseless live migration is work in progress."
I doubt he has seen the code to the Mars Rovers, Google, or many other applications that he/we consider quality. He's judging it based on the software's function.
Why doubt it? Why not *gasp* research it? Indications are he has in fact seen (some of) the code. Given his position in the field, and his position in the research field, it is not unlikely that he has consulted with JPL or Google, or especially the HGP. His connections and links run deep and wide.
That depends on the definition of tailgating. No, this isn't a play on semantics. The comments so far clearly indicate that most people think they know what tailgating is: following "too close". That is not tailgating in all jurisdictions - there are different definitions in different areas.
In some places, tailgating is when you follow close AND have to ride your brakes to do it. If the car in front of you is following a car and constantly applying and releasing the brakes, it is tailgating regardless of distance to the next car. The constantly changing speed of the car in front of you produces a potentially dangerous situation to those following it - your attention fixes to the car in front of you causing you to miss peripheral changes.
There is another problem with technology like this. Local laws. For example, Idaho laws say that if someone is following "too close" YOU are to pull over to let them pass, especially if there are three cars behind you. Many states last I knew had the three car (or similar quantity) law. If you do not do so, YOU are the one breaking the law.
"Too close" is a very broad concept that people are not taught, and varies with the conditions as well as the vehicle and driver. For example driving a sedan and following a motorcycle increases the range of "too close" because they can stop a helluva lot faster than you can. In the reverse case, it is much shorter (lower mass, more relatively effective brakes, and less net reaction time due to shorter finger/foot travel).
This type of technology applied to a general rule is a really bad idea. It will take a rough guideline and turn it into a legally defined number that will more often than not be far from accurate, and often counter to reasonable estimation of the conditions. This will "alleviate" drivers from the need to actually learn what is safe and instead rely on a little readout to tell them.
"But this is not onboard" you say? Right, it isn't. But how long before it becomes mandated? Consider that it is used like a radar gun. Consider that a cop sitting on the side of the road has allegedly precise measurement of what you are supposed to guess at. How long before some group rather than preventing the police from using it, say it is only fair you have that ability onboard and mandate it "for safety of the children". Consider what happens if someone challenges one of these tickets and the court decides (rightly) that it is not "fair or just" for the police to be able to measure something accurately and ticket you for something you can not measure. If vehicles did not have speedometers, and cops had radar and could ticket you for exceeding a speed that you had to estimate, would we think that a good thing? How long before either the cops could not use radar guns, or the cars had to have speedometers?
Personally, I'd be challenging such a ticket. According to the article, it is not actually a crime to follow at less than two seconds, merely a recommendation. What authority is given to ticket for not following a suggestion? Particularly when the conditions make it a general rule of thumb?
Now as to a certain claim in the article. A cop reports he has measured people at ".04 seconds" apart. At 60MPH that is a mere 3.5 feet. Are DPS cops so poorly trained and motivated that they could not see that at 60MPH someone less than four feet from the person in front of them is driving dangerously? What about slower? Well at 30MPH that is 1.76 feet. Honestly, that this cop needed the "Lidar" in any way to justify pulling those people over is a poor indication for the DPS, IMO. I find it difficult to believe that people pulled over for being 2-4 feet from the car in front to them at 30 and 60 MPH are genuinely suprised they are following too close.
Just for reference, two seconds of distance at 60 and 30 MPH are 176 and 88 feet respectively. If your car is about 12 feet long that is 14.67 and 7.33 car lengths respectively.
Why? The PS3's performance effect's Sony's bottom line NOW. We know plenty, like the significant loss Sony is taking on each console sold, the exceptionally low number of units available, and the increasing number of former exclusives dumping Sony and going multi-platform. The linked stories include facts such as Sony having to sell 30 titles per console to make a profit, versus 8 for the PS2, Namco has to sell 500,000 units to break even, etc.
What we don't know is what additional revenue Sony will get for licensing the technology, or for providing a means for Blue-Ray to become the dominant choice in High Density/High Definition DVD. And nobody I've seen has considered this. How much will they get for licensing Blur-Ray to most everyone if and when the abundance of Blue-Ray means it becomes the one every DVD player/burner Manufacturer has to pay licensing fees? How does that affect the bottom line? Consider the licensing of the Cell technology, the cross-licensing financial benefits, etc..
In a company like Sony, you can't look at a single-use of a multi-use technology, or a product that combines multiple new technology.
Seriously. Sony is such a large company with fingers in so many pies that to expect a significant stock switch based on a quarter in which they launched the PS3 is naive.
xXx State of the Union LOST Sony 60 Million. Did that affect their stock? Nope. Their entire movie studio division posted a net loss of some 65 Million for 2005. Did that affect their stock price? Nope. What did shareholders have to say about that? Not a damned thing.
From Sony's site:
In the year ended March 31, 2006, consolidated sales and operating revenue rose 4.4% from the previous year, to ¥7,475.4 billion. This result was largely attributable to increases in the Game and Financial Services businesses.
At current rates, that's about 64 billion US, with a pre-tax proft of just under 2.5 billion. Do you know how many consoles sold at a $300 loss it would take to make a dent in that? Answer: a lot more than they can make in a quarter.;)
Dude, you've got to apply some reality to the fantasy. In this case, fantasy loses out. 30 million dollar loss. Not a big deal to a company posting pre-tax profits in the 2.5 billion dollar range. Additionally, they had revenue from the PS3 prior to a single console being sold. Game companies started licensing deals with Sony over a year ago.
Wall Street and shareholders will have no net effective opinion to Sony about the PS3. That is a pro AND con about a company the size of Sony. They can do stuff like the PS3 and not care so much about the shareholders' opinion. Same with MS and the XBOX division which also still loses money on console sales.
You can also look at it anotehr way. One of the deals with the PS3 for Sony is the rapid commoditization of the Cell processor set. While the Gaming division may have funde dmuch of Sony's investment, Gaming will not be the only beneficiary of the Cell. Same is true of the BlueRay component. If you look at strictly Gaming Division numbers, there is likely cause for concern. However, when you factor in the advantages to establishing Blue-Ray as the dominant choice (more licensing), as well as the use of the Cell (and requisite licensing) in computers and multimedia devices as well as who knows where else, Sony would actually be wise to continue this trend. GM, as well as Ford, does the same thing. The C5 Corvette's engine, the LS1, was funded not by the sports car/performance division but by the Truck division. The Truck division moved it's base engine to the LSx design, the Corvette group benefitted. Sony is likely doing this in reverse.
So PS4? Absolutely. The only question is when and what advantages/advancements/improvements over the PS3? Multiple Cells? Large solid state drives instead of spinning hard drives? Obviously they'll keep PS1-3 compatibility, it works so well for them to have that, and to be the ONLY one to say that all prior [platform] games will continue to be usable. Which means it will still had a drive capable of reading them, even if they moved to a non-disc format for some reason. Who knows. I see absolutely nothing to indicate they won't make a PS3 and a PS5.
We don't have a democracy, in either the pure form (which is an unworkable ideal anyway) or the popular interpretation (which is much more sensible approach in practice).
Blair has an absolute majority of MPs in Parliament, which effectively means he can force through almost anything. That doesn't mean an absolute majority of the electorate support him.
And that doesn't mean you don't have a democracy. Just because there exists a majority in a representative body does not mean you don't have a democracy (or republic). The terms Democracy, Republic, and combinations thereof are systems descriptions. They define how it is done, not the result.
What you are describing fits the description of democracy quite well: Tyranny of the majority; two wolves and a lamb voting on dinner.
For those who pay it. That is how we determine what something is worth. Worth is relative. A given thing (product/service) is worth no more than the buyer will pay and no less than the seller will accept. Everything else is opinion.
Furthermore, selling legally purchased legal products on Ebay does not a black market make. Black markets are defined as markets trading illegal goods, or legal goods illegally. AFAIK, there is nothing illegal about someone in India or France buying a PS3 on EBay, provided the unit isn't stolen and known to be (It is only illegal to knowingly buy stolen goods). To say these people standing in line to buy one to sell on Ebay are selling on a black market is tantamount to calling them criminals in the legal sense.
If he is seriously suggesting that Dick Cheney is interested free markets why does Halliburton [halliburtonwatch.org] get no-bid contracts... DOH!
Because perhaps he has given thought to it. Those two are not mutually exclusive. Haliburton recevied no-bid contracts because they were the only ones capable of doing the desired task. Nto all of their contracts were no-bid. If you've got a requirement to put an experiment into orbit that requires human activity on it over the course of 5 days, and you need it done soon, are you going to put out a bid request, or are you going to go to NASA and offer them the contract? Lets say you need to rebuild your render farm. You need (or think you need) a veritable army of Cell based blade servers to create a powerful render farm. Who are going to? Do you set it out for bid, or do you go to IBM. Maybe a few years from now you might put it out to bid, but right now nobody else will have the capability to do it. So you go to IBM. Further, in issues of security, putting something to bid may breach needed security. Maybe you don't want your potential competitors to know what you are building your render farm on until it's too late for them to catch up quickly. So even if there might be another company available, you have to pick one.
It's funny, those who complained about Haliburton "doing" these things were silent when Haliburton was doing the same things (getting no-bid contracts) while a Democrat was in office. Gore singled Halliburton out as a model to be used. yet you dont' see sites such as halliburtonwatch.org talking about that. Why? sadly, it isn't about Halliburton or the process, it is about who is in the Oval Office - and who isn't. In a company the size of Halliburton there are bound to be problems, and said problems need investigating. but tying it to who is in the WH is an injustice and a disgrace.
(last I knew Slate wasn't exactly a bastion of the Dick Cheney Fan Club, or the Republican party)
Halliburton primary does a lot of what the US Army used to do during peacetime: build and military installations. Not many companies have the reach and scope they do and have been doing for over a decade. That alone gave them better contacts with decisionmakers in the DoD than Cheney ever could have been.
Slashdot Mirror
> Shouldn't that be "Windows grabs ass"?
According to a recent Mac/PC commercial it should probably be "Windows shows it's ass". Talk about peripherals.
Did that just pop into your fron?
the result of all of your computations is nullity:
Someone set us up the nullity.
to paraphrase a song "nothing divided by nothing is nothing".
;) I remember pissing off math teachers early on grade school that way. "Honestly, dividing by zero is equal to not dividing, so the original quantity remains, what's so hard about that? After all zero is essentially a placeholder for nothing". Ahh the naivete of youth.
To me the funny thing is while I (mostly think I) get the mathematical problems of div by zero, conceptually it's a no-brainer. I have four apples. I split them among zero people. I still have 4 apples.
Then there is HTML...
Zero<div>
Either way, if the guy's so concerned, why hasn't he registered deanhunt.biz? If you think I'm out of my mind, you've never encountered a lawyer before.
.ass would be a better TLD for lawyer sites. Generally speaking of course.
I have encountered many lawyers. Hence
as well as two wee projectors on each arm
:^D
Wii projectors or wee projectors? Wii projectors, body movements, and arm mounted Wii projectors and things could get dangerous. We just need portable power for the Wii and projectors.
woudl you prefer the term hunting-crazed? ;)
Seriously thought, I don't think the author knew what that word means.
To muddle or stupefy, as with alcoholic liquor or infatuation.
Nop, doesn't qualify. Not even in jest or parody.
Grocery shopping and walking down the sidewalk are required for participation in society. Hunting is not.
Neither is browsing the web, shopping online, posting to slashdot, using a computer, shopping at a grocery store, gardening. Requirement for 'participating in society' is a poor choice justification for allowing someone to do something. indeed this is the wrong approach at a more fundamental level. Government is about limiting things, that is all it can do. The natural state of humanity is self-limitation. By expressing things in terms of what the government should allow we erode everyone's human rights by removing their primary one: self-determination.
Anyway, he's legally blind, just invested a very nice new car's worth of money into a Guide Dog, and has better groupings than most of the first-time shooters I've yet met.
;) Around here though most first time shooters are about 8-10 years of age and are just as likely to throw a stick for the dog.
;)
Sounds like a damned good dog. Now if they can teach it to fetch ducks that's worth some money.
Seriously though, the difference is 'legally blind' versus 'blind'. Contrary to popular belief these are not the same thing. One can see well enough to shoot through a scope, but not enough to drive. Legally blind is (IIRC) defined by vision level, not total lack of sight capability. Personally I wouldn't want a legally blind person to NOT use a scope. The scope would serve to bring the 'picture' of down range to within normal sight capability.
That said, there should still be a limit. 100% blindness, for example should not be allowed to shoot guns in the open if at all. That's asking for trouble. Certain types, if not all types, of color blindness also should be limited if allowed. Anything that prevents you from making an easy unmistakable differentiation between orange and anything nature colored (browns, greys, blacks, yellows, whites, etc.).
That said, the reference is to enjoying the sport of hunting. The sport of hunting does not consist solely of pulling a trigger. If that were the case you could do just fine at your local gun range. Any real hunter (as opposed to keyboard/joystick/controller jockeys) will tell you that the shootign of the game is only the peak. Said peak can only be achieved by going through the hunting process - camping, tracking, sneaking, etc.. I've had my targets picked for me as a kid. It was nowhere near what the full process was.
If you're unable to hunt safely, you probably won't actually want to hunt.
Change hunting to "drive a car" (or "vote" hehe). Still stand by that statement? Google for "Dick+Cheney+hunting".
I've seen *many* people want to and go hunting who are very much unable to hunt safely. No offense to Californians but nearly all of them have been CA transplants to mountainous areas. It isn't inherent to CA people, just big city people (wow that sounds hickish) who haven't had experience and training in it.
The only reason anyone would find this funny is if they are willing to completely ignore what the hunting entails
IMO by claiming hunting is about pulling the trigger on something aimed at a living creature, you are ignoring 'what the hunting entails'. It is called hunting and not 'shooting living targets' for a good reason.
That's easy, the mallet shot.
Methinks someone isn't paying attention. There may well be more commercial applications, but not necesarily applications overall. What do you think SuSE stuck on those ten discs or so it needed before they moved to DVD. Freshmeat alone lists about 50,000 projects for posix/unix/linux. Gentoo has about 12k. Some of those are libraries, but most are applications. I've seen counts of over 100,000 apps available.
Regarding availability of development, the cell architecture has software development tools available and non-hw specific software (i.e. not games etc.) should run fine between them, and the Sony PS3 SDK includes hardware.
Regarding game development: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3#Game_d
Most of those have commercial backing and good documentation. So no slouching on the Sony/IBM/Toshiba side either.
Downloading a pre-made model and making it move is something that can easily be done, or made easy by a toolkit. But games are a lot more than that. There is the interaction between objects, AIs, pathing, all sorts of things needed. How does XNA compare when doing these items? Just because you can make a demo of a model being moved by a controller doesn't mean that making games will be easy. For all we know the rest may well be difficult.
yet they say OSS doesn't innovate.
It says in their FAQ:
"kvm today supports non-live migration, where there is a pause while memory content is transferred. Pauseless live migration is work in progress."
I doubt he has seen the code to the Mars Rovers, Google, or many other applications that he/we consider quality. He's judging it based on the software's function.
Why doubt it? Why not *gasp* research it? Indications are he has in fact seen (some of) the code. Given his position in the field, and his position in the research field, it is not unlikely that he has consulted with JPL or Google, or especially the HGP. His connections and links run deep and wide.
Tailgating in-and-of-itself is dangerous.
That depends on the definition of tailgating. No, this isn't a play on semantics. The comments so far clearly indicate that most people think they know what tailgating is: following "too close". That is not tailgating in all jurisdictions - there are different definitions in different areas.
In some places, tailgating is when you follow close AND have to ride your brakes to do it. If the car in front of you is following a car and constantly applying and releasing the brakes, it is tailgating regardless of distance to the next car. The constantly changing speed of the car in front of you produces a potentially dangerous situation to those following it - your attention fixes to the car in front of you causing you to miss peripheral changes.
There is another problem with technology like this. Local laws. For example, Idaho laws say that if someone is following "too close" YOU are to pull over to let them pass, especially if there are three cars behind you. Many states last I knew had the three car (or similar quantity) law. If you do not do so, YOU are the one breaking the law.
"Too close" is a very broad concept that people are not taught, and varies with the conditions as well as the vehicle and driver. For example driving a sedan and following a motorcycle increases the range of "too close" because they can stop a helluva lot faster than you can. In the reverse case, it is much shorter (lower mass, more relatively effective brakes, and less net reaction time due to shorter finger/foot travel).
This type of technology applied to a general rule is a really bad idea. It will take a rough guideline and turn it into a legally defined number that will more often than not be far from accurate, and often counter to reasonable estimation of the conditions. This will "alleviate" drivers from the need to actually learn what is safe and instead rely on a little readout to tell them.
"But this is not onboard" you say? Right, it isn't. But how long before it becomes mandated? Consider that it is used like a radar gun. Consider that a cop sitting on the side of the road has allegedly precise measurement of what you are supposed to guess at. How long before some group rather than preventing the police from using it, say it is only fair you have that ability onboard and mandate it "for safety of the children". Consider what happens if someone challenges one of these tickets and the court decides (rightly) that it is not "fair or just" for the police to be able to measure something accurately and ticket you for something you can not measure. If vehicles did not have speedometers, and cops had radar and could ticket you for exceeding a speed that you had to estimate, would we think that a good thing? How long before either the cops could not use radar guns, or the cars had to have speedometers?
Personally, I'd be challenging such a ticket. According to the article, it is not actually a crime to follow at less than two seconds, merely a recommendation. What authority is given to ticket for not following a suggestion? Particularly when the conditions make it a general rule of thumb?
Now as to a certain claim in the article. A cop reports he has measured people at ".04 seconds" apart. At 60MPH that is a mere 3.5 feet. Are DPS cops so poorly trained and motivated that they could not see that at 60MPH someone less than four feet from the person in front of them is driving dangerously? What about slower? Well at 30MPH that is 1.76 feet. Honestly, that this cop needed the "Lidar" in any way to justify pulling those people over is a poor indication for the DPS, IMO. I find it difficult to believe that people pulled over for being 2-4 feet from the car in front to them at 30 and 60 MPH are genuinely suprised they are following too close.
Just for reference, two seconds of distance at 60 and 30 MPH are 176 and 88 feet respectively. If your car is about 12 feet long that is 14.67 and 7.33 car lengths respectively.
Perso
Those are not mutually exclusive conditions!
Send them to Mars instead.
Soon they'll have people actively monitoring your cell phone's microphone so they can tell you to stop doing what you are doing as you do it.
Why? The PS3's performance effect's Sony's bottom line NOW. We know plenty, like the significant loss Sony is taking on each console sold, the exceptionally low number of units available, and the increasing number of former exclusives dumping Sony and going multi-platform. The linked stories include facts such as Sony having to sell 30 titles per console to make a profit, versus 8 for the PS2, Namco has to sell 500,000 units to break even, etc.
What we don't know is what additional revenue Sony will get for licensing the technology, or for providing a means for Blue-Ray to become the dominant choice in High Density/High Definition DVD. And nobody I've seen has considered this. How much will they get for licensing Blur-Ray to most everyone if and when the abundance of Blue-Ray means it becomes the one every DVD player/burner Manufacturer has to pay licensing fees? How does that affect the bottom line? Consider the licensing of the Cell technology, the cross-licensing financial benefits, etc..
In a company like Sony, you can't look at a single-use of a multi-use technology, or a product that combines multiple new technology.
In other news, Microsoft hopes to sell software in the future.
But get paid for it both today and in the future.
xXx State of the Union LOST Sony 60 Million. Did that affect their stock? Nope. Their entire movie studio division posted a net loss of some 65 Million for 2005. Did that affect their stock price? Nope. What did shareholders have to say about that? Not a damned thing.
From Sony's site:
At current rates, that's about 64 billion US, with a pre-tax proft of just under 2.5 billion. Do you know how many consoles sold at a $300 loss it would take to make a dent in that? Answer: a lot more than they can make in a quarter.
Dude, you've got to apply some reality to the fantasy. In this case, fantasy loses out. 30 million dollar loss. Not a big deal to a company posting pre-tax profits in the 2.5 billion dollar range. Additionally, they had revenue from the PS3 prior to a single console being sold. Game companies started licensing deals with Sony over a year ago.
Wall Street and shareholders will have no net effective opinion to Sony about the PS3. That is a pro AND con about a company the size of Sony. They can do stuff like the PS3 and not care so much about the shareholders' opinion. Same with MS and the XBOX division which also still loses money on console sales.
You can also look at it anotehr way. One of the deals with the PS3 for Sony is the rapid commoditization of the Cell processor set. While the Gaming division may have funde dmuch of Sony's investment, Gaming will not be the only beneficiary of the Cell. Same is true of the BlueRay component. If you look at strictly Gaming Division numbers, there is likely cause for concern. However, when you factor in the advantages to establishing Blue-Ray as the dominant choice (more licensing), as well as the use of the Cell (and requisite licensing) in computers and multimedia devices as well as who knows where else, Sony would actually be wise to continue this trend. GM, as well as Ford, does the same thing. The C5 Corvette's engine, the LS1, was funded not by the sports car/performance division but by the Truck division. The Truck division moved it's base engine to the LSx design, the Corvette group benefitted. Sony is likely doing this in reverse.
So PS4? Absolutely. The only question is when and what advantages/advancements/improvements over the PS3? Multiple Cells? Large solid state drives instead of spinning hard drives? Obviously they'll keep PS1-3 compatibility, it works so well for them to have that, and to be the ONLY one to say that all prior [platform] games will continue to be usable. Which means it will still had a drive capable of reading them, even if they moved to a non-disc format for some reason. Who knows. I see absolutely nothing to indicate they won't make a PS3 and a PS5.
We don't have a democracy, in either the pure form (which is an unworkable ideal anyway) or the popular interpretation (which is much more sensible approach in practice).
Blair has an absolute majority of MPs in Parliament, which effectively means he can force through almost anything. That doesn't mean an absolute majority of the electorate support him.
And that doesn't mean you don't have a democracy. Just because there exists a majority in a representative body does not mean you don't have a democracy (or republic). The terms Democracy, Republic, and combinations thereof are systems descriptions. They define how it is done, not the result.
What you are describing fits the description of democracy quite well: Tyranny of the majority; two wolves and a lamb voting on dinner.
For those who pay it. That is how we determine what something is worth. Worth is relative. A given thing (product/service) is worth no more than the buyer will pay and no less than the seller will accept. Everything else is opinion.
Furthermore, selling legally purchased legal products on Ebay does not a black market make. Black markets are defined as markets trading illegal goods, or legal goods illegally. AFAIK, there is nothing illegal about someone in India or France buying a PS3 on EBay, provided the unit isn't stolen and known to be (It is only illegal to knowingly buy stolen goods). To say these people standing in line to buy one to sell on Ebay are selling on a black market is tantamount to calling them criminals in the legal sense.
If he is seriously suggesting that Dick Cheney is interested free markets why does Halliburton [halliburtonwatch.org] get no-bid contracts... DOH!
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Because perhaps he has given thought to it. Those two are not mutually exclusive. Haliburton recevied no-bid contracts because they were the only ones capable of doing the desired task. Nto all of their contracts were no-bid. If you've got a requirement to put an experiment into orbit that requires human activity on it over the course of 5 days, and you need it done soon, are you going to put out a bid request, or are you going to go to NASA and offer them the contract? Lets say you need to rebuild your render farm. You need (or think you need) a veritable army of Cell based blade servers to create a powerful render farm. Who are going to? Do you set it out for bid, or do you go to IBM. Maybe a few years from now you might put it out to bid, but right now nobody else will have the capability to do it. So you go to IBM. Further, in issues of security, putting something to bid may breach needed security. Maybe you don't want your potential competitors to know what you are building your render farm on until it's too late for them to catch up quickly. So even if there might be another company available, you have to pick one.
It's funny, those who complained about Haliburton "doing" these things were silent when Haliburton was doing the same things (getting no-bid contracts) while a Democrat was in office. Gore singled Halliburton out as a model to be used. yet you dont' see sites such as halliburtonwatch.org talking about that. Why? sadly, it isn't about Halliburton or the process, it is about who is in the Oval Office - and who isn't. In a company the size of Halliburton there are bound to be problems, and said problems need investigating. but tying it to who is in the WH is an injustice and a disgrace.
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze1tvxm/thepoliticalar
http://www.slate.com/id/2090636
(last I knew Slate wasn't exactly a bastion of the Dick Cheney Fan Club, or the Republican party)
Halliburton primary does a lot of what the US Army used to do during peacetime: build and military installations. Not many companies have the reach and scope they do and have been doing for over a decade. That alone gave them better contacts with decisionmakers in the DoD than Cheney ever could have been.