Germany's been reactingverybadly to violent games. Their reactions towards games are much, much worse than the US's (from my perspective, anyway).
Also, part of me feels like I should make some comment about nazis, but I can't think of anything. Go ahead and pretend that I said something witty, please.
I'm going to have to disagree with your assessment that it's a valid gripe. 99% of the people who are going to read this slashdot article have heard about the RROD fiasco already because it's been covered many times before in many places (including slashdot). In addition, the original XBox isn't worth any screen time at this point, since the 360's been out for a few years now.
The future profits that the company once hoped for are now likely to wind up in Nintendo's pockets.
Right, just like a defective Audi will drive people towards purchasing a Toyota Yaris. Nintendo and Microsoft aren't competing for the same market niche, and apparently the author doesn't realize that. The Wii is for casual gaming, the XBox and PS are for hardcore gaming. Might as well say that peggle is taking sales from Half Life 2.
The XBox360 is getting a lot of negative press, but I think they made the right call by launching early. They've been able to displace a lot of the negative press by extending the warranty and making sure that people get their xbox's replaced. Also, the PS3 is too expensive and the controllers are crap; it gives an overall feel of not being worth the money. The mass exodus as exclusive titles left Playstation to go multi-platform says it all, really.
As I understand it, the difference is that a loss leader can legitimately expect to make money indirectly from the sales. Walmart can afford to sell its most popular items at a loss so that other items can be sold for a profit. Microsoft does this with the XBox, where they sell the XBox in an attempt to get more sales for their software.
Dumping, on the other hand, is selling at a loss so that you can drive the other company out of business and then raise the price of that same item.
Re:Back in school..
on
Google Turns 10
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Agreed. Search engines were horrible back then, and google was no exception (for me, anyway). It was about a year and a half after they debuted that I started using them, and I haven't looked back.
As for the 'do no evil' part, I find it funny that the people who hate google so badly still use it. They're so much better than the competition that the people who hate it come up with convultedmethods to try to use it without their information getting tracked.
This is like your company showing you a picture of a nice lunch every Friday, then showing you a picture of their logo, and expecting that, since you like lunch, you will associate the positive feelings you get from seeing a picture of lunch with positive feelings towards your employer
Not quite, since they're genuinely trying to entertain you. If they failed, then they also failed to create the association.
A better analogy for marketing would be, every Friday your boss comes into your office, hits you over the head with a frying pan, jerks off into your eyes, and steals your wallet.
Not quite, because I have what scienticians call a "brain", and I use this to make my own decisions about what products to buy. If marketing is so effective against people that it's equivalent to stealing their wallet, whose fault is that?
It presents something enjoyable (here it is assumed that Seinfeld+Gates==Enjoyable) and then presents the branding that they want to be associated with that enjoyable feeling.
How is this bad? It's roughly equivalent to making their user interface a pleasure to work with so that the pleasure will be associated with their brand. They want you to like them, and they're showing you that they're willing to do what it takes to get you to like them.
Put another way, this is like my company getting my department lunch every friday. It doesn't directly relate to my job or my paycheck (the actual reason that I'm there), but it makes me like the company more and shows me that they care about making my life a little more enjoyable. Everything a business does to make its customers happy is really an attempt to get them to like the product so they buy more of it, why should marketing be different?
There's no generation on the horizon. PS2 still dominates the market by large numbers. The best selling of the new batch is the one most like the last generation. The 360 et al are certainly not yet the current generation by most measurements.
I'm not trying to flame or troll or anything, but until the 360 or ps3 dominate the landscape or the generation after them is announced, they're going to be next generation. For the majority of users, the ps3 or xbox 360 are not their current consoles, they're the next one.
Agreed. The worst part is that there's no apparent reason to forge packets instead of just slowing them down. If it were just a matter of throttling my usage, that's one thing, but they're going beyond that for whatever reason.
Hit up youtube to give it exposure and link to your webpage where you provide a torrent for the better quality files. Put some simple ads on that page and you're good to go.
Agreed. I would think that an IP based on a single person in each generation would make for a lousy MMO. Everything in the Buffyverse is about exceptions to rules, and that's believable when you follow a few characters around. But when you get into an MMO environment, the exception quickly becomes the rule as everyone takes the "chosen one" class or the "vampire with a soul" class.
If only there were an IP they could acquire where it's a whole ass-load of people in far flung areas, maybe like the old west, or space or something, where small groups of people move around performing missions. That's the sort of IP that'd make for a great MMO, IMHO.
Quite frankly, it must be horrendously embarrassing for Sony to be unable to compete against their own last-gen console
I don't know how embarrassing this is considering history. The original playstation was sold for a long time after the PS2 was released, and in a way it's still selling as the PSP. Having its last generation console going strong while its next generation console is still competing strongly against the XBox is a position I'm sure the sony executives are glad to be in. At the $120 price point that the PS2 sits at right now, it's not cannibalizing a significant number of PS3 sales, and it keeps developers and consumers in the Sony brand.
Which isn't going to happen until both competitors can afford to lower their console prices into the $199 range. (And I DON'T mean the stripped down versions.)
I expect that price point is actually at $250, right where the Wii is sitting. $200 was about the price point for the last generation, but disposable income has gone up and oil prices have hit the economy with the inflation stick. However, I believe you're right in saying that it's got to be the full thing, not a stripped down version. The best thing that Nintendo has going for it right now is that it's got one console out on the market, so that people know that they aren't going to go down the road and regret not buying the upgrade or regret having bought a worthless upgrade. They remove a lot of uncertainty by providing one version.
*sigh* the ingenuity of trolls seems to have reached its limit. Since the political trolling started, everything kind of froze in place. For a while there was the strange sex story troll, but he didn't last too long. Frosty piss evolved over the course of about a year, and now he's stuck doing the same thing.
Not really. The google one's funny, although wikis which were made with a predominantly chrome-using user base might have a problem with it. The facebook one is blatantly taking a right that it doesn't have a legitimate reason to take.
AIM probably has that in case someone goes crazy swearing at some kids and a bunch of soccer moms get angry, and the youtube one is probably some CYA, since services like that can often store copies that are hard if not impossible to find.
Overall, the terms of service (like most ToS's) are overkill and not something that people would agree to if they actually read it. The problem is that they put them in legalese, which might as well be japanese for most people.
What struck me about this is that these are people who would never, in a million years, lift a finger to try Safari/Windows - yet here they are drooling over how snappy a WebKit-based browser is.
Because safari on windows is buggy as hell. Apple doesn't care about the windows implementation of Safari nearly as much as it cares about its itunes implementation, and itunes itself runs badly on windows.
I'm not saying that this reflects poorly on apple or anything, of course their software's going to be better on a mac than on windows, but blaming them for not using apple's software seems a little overboard.
I know, say something bad about the US of A and be modded down, so be it
Exactly what site do you think you're on? Blaming the US is like blaming religion; it's almost certain to get you modded up, even if it's a non-sequitur or blatantly false.
This is a trademark issue. If you ask for money for a domain name that includes their trademark, then they have a legal case against you for domain squatting.
In the end, like most ask slashdot posts, the submitter should go to a lawyer and ask their opinion. The company's offering to buy it, so I don't see any reason that the submitter shouldn't be able to legally ask what price they're willing to pay, but I don't know the particulars of the law.
Because I know that a man can have 10 children? Or because you're assuming that, because I said that, I support the practice, when in reality I never said anything for or against having that many children?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm guessing there still is a 20-80 ratio, with another 15% using 30% of the bandwidth. But saying 5-50 gives you a more dramatic statement.
especially if their favorite Party gets another four years in office
If only we could avoid electing politicians, we'd be fine.
Germany's been reacting very badly to violent games. Their reactions towards games are much, much worse than the US's (from my perspective, anyway).
Also, part of me feels like I should make some comment about nazis, but I can't think of anything. Go ahead and pretend that I said something witty, please.
I'm going to have to disagree with your assessment that it's a valid gripe. 99% of the people who are going to read this slashdot article have heard about the RROD fiasco already because it's been covered many times before in many places (including slashdot). In addition, the original XBox isn't worth any screen time at this point, since the 360's been out for a few years now.
The future profits that the company once hoped for are now likely to wind up in Nintendo's pockets.
Right, just like a defective Audi will drive people towards purchasing a Toyota Yaris. Nintendo and Microsoft aren't competing for the same market niche, and apparently the author doesn't realize that. The Wii is for casual gaming, the XBox and PS are for hardcore gaming. Might as well say that peggle is taking sales from Half Life 2.
The XBox360 is getting a lot of negative press, but I think they made the right call by launching early. They've been able to displace a lot of the negative press by extending the warranty and making sure that people get their xbox's replaced. Also, the PS3 is too expensive and the controllers are crap; it gives an overall feel of not being worth the money. The mass exodus as exclusive titles left Playstation to go multi-platform says it all, really.
As I understand it, the difference is that a loss leader can legitimately expect to make money indirectly from the sales. Walmart can afford to sell its most popular items at a loss so that other items can be sold for a profit. Microsoft does this with the XBox, where they sell the XBox in an attempt to get more sales for their software.
Dumping, on the other hand, is selling at a loss so that you can drive the other company out of business and then raise the price of that same item.
Agreed. Search engines were horrible back then, and google was no exception (for me, anyway). It was about a year and a half after they debuted that I started using them, and I haven't looked back.
As for the 'do no evil' part, I find it funny that the people who hate google so badly still use it. They're so much better than the competition that the people who hate it come up with convulted methods to try to use it without their information getting tracked.
This is like your company showing you a picture of a nice lunch every Friday, then showing you a picture of their logo, and expecting that, since you like lunch, you will associate the positive feelings you get from seeing a picture of lunch with positive feelings towards your employer
Not quite, since they're genuinely trying to entertain you. If they failed, then they also failed to create the association.
A better analogy for marketing would be, every Friday your boss comes into your office, hits you over the head with a frying pan, jerks off into your eyes, and steals your wallet.
Not quite, because I have what scienticians call a "brain", and I use this to make my own decisions about what products to buy. If marketing is so effective against people that it's equivalent to stealing their wallet, whose fault is that?
It presents something enjoyable (here it is assumed that Seinfeld+Gates==Enjoyable) and then presents the branding that they want to be associated with that enjoyable feeling.
How is this bad? It's roughly equivalent to making their user interface a pleasure to work with so that the pleasure will be associated with their brand. They want you to like them, and they're showing you that they're willing to do what it takes to get you to like them.
Put another way, this is like my company getting my department lunch every friday. It doesn't directly relate to my job or my paycheck (the actual reason that I'm there), but it makes me like the company more and shows me that they care about making my life a little more enjoyable. Everything a business does to make its customers happy is really an attempt to get them to like the product so they buy more of it, why should marketing be different?
If only there were another option, a third option...
Go ahead, throw your vote away!
There's no generation on the horizon. PS2 still dominates the market by large numbers. The best selling of the new batch is the one most like the last generation. The 360 et al are certainly not yet the current generation by most measurements.
I'm not trying to flame or troll or anything, but until the 360 or ps3 dominate the landscape or the generation after them is announced, they're going to be next generation. For the majority of users, the ps3 or xbox 360 are not their current consoles, they're the next one.
Agreed. The worst part is that there's no apparent reason to forge packets instead of just slowing them down. If it were just a matter of throttling my usage, that's one thing, but they're going beyond that for whatever reason.
Hit up youtube to give it exposure and link to your webpage where you provide a torrent for the better quality files. Put some simple ads on that page and you're good to go.
Aren't there RP servers for WoW that enforce things like that?
Agreed. I would think that an IP based on a single person in each generation would make for a lousy MMO. Everything in the Buffyverse is about exceptions to rules, and that's believable when you follow a few characters around. But when you get into an MMO environment, the exception quickly becomes the rule as everyone takes the "chosen one" class or the "vampire with a soul" class.
If only there were an IP they could acquire where it's a whole ass-load of people in far flung areas, maybe like the old west, or space or something, where small groups of people move around performing missions. That's the sort of IP that'd make for a great MMO, IMHO.
They will. plugins and addons will have their own processes.
Quite frankly, it must be horrendously embarrassing for Sony to be unable to compete against their own last-gen console
I don't know how embarrassing this is considering history. The original playstation was sold for a long time after the PS2 was released, and in a way it's still selling as the PSP. Having its last generation console going strong while its next generation console is still competing strongly against the XBox is a position I'm sure the sony executives are glad to be in. At the $120 price point that the PS2 sits at right now, it's not cannibalizing a significant number of PS3 sales, and it keeps developers and consumers in the Sony brand.
Which isn't going to happen until both competitors can afford to lower their console prices into the $199 range. (And I DON'T mean the stripped down versions.)
I expect that price point is actually at $250, right where the Wii is sitting. $200 was about the price point for the last generation, but disposable income has gone up and oil prices have hit the economy with the inflation stick. However, I believe you're right in saying that it's got to be the full thing, not a stripped down version. The best thing that Nintendo has going for it right now is that it's got one console out on the market, so that people know that they aren't going to go down the road and regret not buying the upgrade or regret having bought a worthless upgrade. They remove a lot of uncertainty by providing one version.
*sigh* the ingenuity of trolls seems to have reached its limit. Since the political trolling started, everything kind of froze in place. For a while there was the strange sex story troll, but he didn't last too long. Frosty piss evolved over the course of about a year, and now he's stuck doing the same thing.
I'm very disappointed.
Three words: work for hire.
Not really. The google one's funny, although wikis which were made with a predominantly chrome-using user base might have a problem with it. The facebook one is blatantly taking a right that it doesn't have a legitimate reason to take.
AIM probably has that in case someone goes crazy swearing at some kids and a bunch of soccer moms get angry, and the youtube one is probably some CYA, since services like that can often store copies that are hard if not impossible to find.
Overall, the terms of service (like most ToS's) are overkill and not something that people would agree to if they actually read it. The problem is that they put them in legalese, which might as well be japanese for most people.
Copyrights on laws may be unenforceable but they are not illegal.
I sure am glad you popped up to split that hair. Without comments like this, where would we be?
What struck me about this is that these are people who would never, in a million years, lift a finger to try Safari/Windows - yet here they are drooling over how snappy a WebKit-based browser is.
Because safari on windows is buggy as hell. Apple doesn't care about the windows implementation of Safari nearly as much as it cares about its itunes implementation, and itunes itself runs badly on windows.
I'm not saying that this reflects poorly on apple or anything, of course their software's going to be better on a mac than on windows, but blaming them for not using apple's software seems a little overboard.
I know, say something bad about the US of A and be modded down, so be it
Exactly what site do you think you're on? Blaming the US is like blaming religion; it's almost certain to get you modded up, even if it's a non-sequitur or blatantly false.
This is a trademark issue. If you ask for money for a domain name that includes their trademark, then they have a legal case against you for domain squatting.
In the end, like most ask slashdot posts, the submitter should go to a lawyer and ask their opinion. The company's offering to buy it, so I don't see any reason that the submitter shouldn't be able to legally ask what price they're willing to pay, but I don't know the particulars of the law.
Clearly you are part of the problem.
Because I know that a man can have 10 children? Or because you're assuming that, because I said that, I support the practice, when in reality I never said anything for or against having that many children?