We see it has shot its load under the pressure of various conservative nerds that can't get enough of this item. Is there a conceal-carry permit that defends webservers from spikes in traffic?
Someone who made a ton of money from investing in something worthless is telling the rest of us we shouldn't invest in things that are worthless? Sure thing.
The bigger problem with the banks right now is that it is nearly impossible to get a savings account (or CD) that has an interest rate above the inflation rate. If the banks can't provide an incentive for people to keep their money there, then why would people do it? Sure a lot of people don't want to carry large amounts of money on them regularly, but most people don't need a large amount of money on them at any given time. They can keep the rest under the mattress and do just as well.
I didn't even know it had online multi-player, and no, I wouldn't have cared either way.
It's worth noting that some games did and others did not. Mario Kart was a great example of one that did; you could play in 12 player online matches against random people from around the world, and get ranked on leaderboards. They also did a great job of setting it up to make the entire online multiplayer experience G-rated as there was no way to communicate with other racers at any time. They really optimized the online for minimal lag, I hardly ever had a race die from someone's connection failing. IMHO it may have been the best online multiplayer I've ever played.
On the other hand none of the Mario platform games had online multiplayer. Nor did any Zelda, Metroid, or Donkey Kong game that I knew of.
I'm surprised by the notion that Sony and Microsoft both need to survive.
They do, in the sense that Ford and Chevy need each other and Coke and Pepsi need each other.
I would say the relationship between Sony and Microsoft - when discussing their consoles - is actually much closer than the examples you gave. Save very few specific examples, the consoles are interchangeable to the vast majority of people who have even the slightest interest in video gaming. The technical capabilities are very similar, the prices are pretty close, the game selection is 90% the same. Indeed Ford and Chevy compete in a way that makes their products better, but Sony and Microsoft are on a path of convergent evolution where they make their products very nearly the same. They really are more like VW and Audi, or Chevy and GMC.
Nintendo has to make money with their console and games, it is their only income source.
Actually, it is their primary income source, but Nintendo has other avenues where they make money as well. They still make coin-op arcade games. They still make money licensing their characters for various other things (toys, t-shirts, etc). If tomorrow morning they decided to stop making consoles and console games altogether they would have to lay off a lot of their workforce, but they wouldn't have to close up shop completely either.
It is not easy to compete with a company that can afford to lose a billion dollars and shrug, while you have to make money.
You're absolutely right on that but even Microsoft and Sony can only afford to keep fuelling losing ventures for so long.
XBox One is well known to have inferior hardware to PS4,
The stats are so close between the two that most consumers aren't aware of it.
Another point that Nintendo failed to market well is the fact that out of the three current consoles, theirs is the only one that did not break backwards compatibility.
While this is true, keep in mind the WiiU doesn't come with a WiiMote, so if you didn't have a Wii, you have to buy one. You can't just buy a WiiU without anything prior, then go out and buy Wii games, and play them.
That is a good point. I will point out though that the WiiMote is the least expensive wireless controller out there. There are plenty of decent third-party clones of it that work well for less money as well. I will say though that it was a bit of a bone-headed move for Nintendo to have not included at least one with the console. I don't know if they were counting on people to buy them (or perhaps buy a game like FlingSmash that comes with one to go with the console?) or what but yeah it should have been included. Making the consumer buy another controller to have access to a large part of the library is stupid.
Simply saying "all your old games work on this and the new games are much prettier" was nowhere near sufficient to convince most owners to go put down $250-300 on a new system.
Have you considered that the Wii U might be a solution in search of a problem?
That is an excellent point. You could argue that Nintendo even attempted to force users to move to WiiU by shutting down certain features from the original Wii (it's now been almost two years since online multiplayer was shut down by Nintendo, along with other features). A lot of Wii owners weren't bothered enough by that to care.
Just because you make it doesn't mean the world wants it.:)
Absolutely true. However there have been products that have been made before the world realized it wanted it, and then it took off. Few people expected that the original Wii - which dared to buck the trend and release a controller with fewer buttons than the controller of the system that came before it. Yet the Wii went on to become one of the best selling consoles of all time.
Today you have Microsoft and Sony, there isn't a place for Nintendo anymore, not in the console market.
I'm surprised by the notion that Sony and Microsoft both need to survive. From my vantage point their latest consoles are interchangeable. Most of their titles are the same, their controllers are very similar, and their price points are similar. If someone threw $400 at me and insisted I spend it on one or the other I'd have a hard time deciding which as I don't like either company and have never owned a console from either before. In fact, if we look at at console sales the WiiU has sold more consoles than the latest XBox - and Nintendo has actually made money selling the WiiU while Microsoft has lost money on the latest XBox - yet people are so sure that Nintendo is the company that will be going away.
Another point that Nintendo failed to market well is the fact that out of the three current consoles, theirs is the only one that did not break backwards compatibility. You cannot play any discs from previous generation consoles of the same manufacturer in either the Sony or Microsoft consoles; yet the WiiU can play every game ever released for the original Wii. Hence while Sony and Microsoft owners are out re-purchasing their old libraries the Wii owners can keep on going with what they've had all this time.
There is a big difference, though. With all the examples you gave - which are very good examples I will add - the consoles were all trying to compete for the same market. They each had exclusive titles, of course, but they were trying to compete for the same "gamer" market.
That is a fair point... The SNES and Genesis were the XBox and PlayStation of their day...
The Wii U clearly is not...
Thank you. This is why I say that the sales problem with the WiiU is primarily a marketing failure; Nintendo couldn't find a good way to convert the new hardware into sales - or more importantly to convince owners of the Wii to go out and buy a WiiU. Simply saying "all your old games work on this and the new games are much prettier" was nowhere near sufficient to convince most owners to go put down $250-300 on a new system.
Well, FPS and TPS (third person), I would lump those together). Sports is a big market as well, bigger than I think a lot of people give it credit for. The "other category" isn't small either, but it is smaller than those two markets.
My informal assessment of sales volume is based in part on retail displays. I know that of course Best Buy is not the top seller of video games any more, but they do allocate space in proportion to sales (both real and expected) volume.
When I walk down the PS or XB aisles, over half of the space for the games for sale is dedicated to FPS titles. They are at the front of nearly every row and stocked at vastly higher copy numbers than anything else. Easily 2/3 - 3/4 of the total volume of discs is FPS. Of what remains, 1/2 - 3/4 of that is sports titles. You have to dig a fair bit in the displays to find something else; if you don't know their name you might not find them at all.
Nintendo doesn't make any effort to attract FPS titles to the Wii or Wii U. They go for a different demographic entirely. Unfortunately, Nintendo never launched a competent marketing campaign for the WiiU that explained to Wii owners why they should upgrade; a large segment of the gaming public thought the Wii U was just a tablet add-on for the Wii and because of that never paid any attention to it.
Meh, even if they had, I don't know that it would have mattered.
The WiiU brought some neat new "next generation" titles, with some neat new capabilities. I think Nintendo dropped the ball on emphasizing them. It seemed like they couldn't decide how to market this console, whether they wanted people to look at it as an alternative to the Sony and Microsoft consoles, or whether they wanted people to look at it as a valuable upgrade from the original Wii. Tragically it seems that when they couldn't decide on a pathway for selling it, they chose to not do good at any.
It reminds me of the old Sega Genesis ads = 'we do what Nintendon't'. Only this time they provided the "don't" themselves and nobody else needed to attack it.
I know the Wii U has been out for several years. I know its sales numbers are poor compared to the original Wii. I know that the price has not come drown dramatically since launch.
However I also know more people who have purchased it in the past 8 months than in the first 2+ years it was out. I also know that I've been seriously considering purchasing one for myself some time after I figure out my taxes for 2015. I also know that my son really wants to play Mario Maker, Mario Kart 8, and Disney Infinity 2 and 3.
I also know that I have zero interest in ever purchasing a console from Microsoft or Sony. I don't want to play Halo 8 or any Sony exclusive title. Microsoft and Sony have too much of my money already, I will do everything I can to keep them from getting any more of it.
There simply isn't room for 3 consoles. There never really was. Look back in time at:
There is a big difference, though. With all the examples you gave - which are very good examples I will add - the consoles were all trying to compete for the same market. They each had exclusive titles, of course, but they were trying to compete for the same "gamer" market.
Right now we have three consoles, but only two are competing for the same market. Microsoft and Sony are both competing for one market; if you look at game sales numbers this is abundantly clear as both companies see the majority of all games sold for their consoles are from the FPS genre. The next biggest segment is sports, and beyond that it's just "novelty" as far and Microsoft and Sony are concerned.
Nintendo doesn't make any effort to attract FPS titles to the Wii or Wii U. They go for a different demographic entirely. Unfortunately, Nintendo never launched a competent marketing campaign for the WiiU that explained to Wii owners why they should upgrade; a large segment of the gaming public thought the Wii U was just a tablet add-on for the Wii and because of that never paid any attention to it.
I'd rather they require that any software developed at taxpayer expense be released as open source.
That's not as clear of a metric as one might expect. We have lots of research efforts now that are jointly funded by government and private funds; would they need to be released as open source? And how do you dictate the release schedule for the code? Does it need to be updated regularly or can it just be released when there is something relating to it published somewhere? And who will host it, for how long? Will the authors be held responsible for making sure that their code compiles on other peoples' hardware?
It's a good idea but the execution of it is not trivial. I can think of plenty of software in my field of work that has been at least partially funded by the government that I would love to see released but some of the above matters make it impossible or impractical to get a good release of it out publicly.
That is assuming that Hillary isn't put in jail before then
Here's something a lot of people are conveniently forgetting in this case - we don't tend to imprison the accused, especially when their trials are an unknown distance out in the future and no charges have yet been brought up. Regardless of what you think about the email situation, the chances of it making it to trial before November are about zero at this point - the government simply doesn't move that fast regardless of who is pulling the levers. Being as right now the allegations all come down to "it looks like she might have thought about doing something nefarious" there is no reason to get excited about this.
emails in a server that any hacker could get
Do you have information on the security of the email server? I haven't seen any information on the security of its setup one way or the other. There has been plenty made of it being "in her house" or something like that but I haven't heard anything on how secure the setup was - or was not. Considering a standard conservative mantra is to never trust the government, why would it be automatically less secure at her house than in a government installation? It's accepted that she had someone else do the setup, are you assuming that person to have been technologically incompetent?
The polls that show Hillary beats Trumps are made up
That is a whole lot of fabrication, there. We've seen a large number of national polls support that, and not a single one showing the opposite. Why would all these different polling organizations make up the same results?
Hillary can beat Drumpf without working too hard. Sanders can beat Drumpf without even needing to open his mouth. Frankly the democrats could run a ficus tree and almost certainly defeat Drumpf.
The only person who has anything to gain from having Drumpf defeated before November is Cruz as he is the only GOP contender left who could possibly win the nomination if Drumpf was run out.
My bad, my fingers got ahead of me. Indeed should have just been "ultimate".
I'm still not convinced that he actually wants to be president, but he is certainly enjoying the publicity of running for the office.
He's been talking about running since 1988. He wants the publicity of being the president. The work/policy making, probably not so much.
I'm not sure that he really has more publicity to gain by being president. He's getting absurd amounts of publicity by running for president, but how could he keep pulling in that kind of publicity for four years if he were to somehow win? For comparison plenty of people thought Obama was good at pulling in press, but how often does he make the news now? Even before Drumpf announced his candidacy Obama was barely making the news daily. I actually think Drumpf wants to lose this election so that he can launch into something else - maybe a cable news network of his own, or a radio network?
It seems to me that Drumpf just got tired of seeing newer billionaires (in particular Musk and Zuckerberg) getting more press than him. Once he's straightened that out to his liking he'll go back to declaring bankruptcy.
A lot of the GOP heads see Drumpf as too liberal. I expect he'll pick someone out of deep-deep-deep-deep-deeper-than-deep right field.
I mean, he'll pick someone with more conservative economic and healthcare policies to appease the base
The healthcare bit amuses me greatly. Basically every candidate for the GOP has been running with the same message of repeal the ACA. Some of them have stated that they want to repeal the ACA and then re-pass it with their own name on it, but most of them don't bother going that far into planning. I have yet to see a GOP candidate anywhere actually propose an alternative to the ACA that is less than 95% identical in action to the ACA. The last time the GOP candidates talked about it in a debate it came down to who could come up with the most arbitrarily short window of time post-inauguration in which to repeal the bill.
but more moderate immigrant/Islam rhetoric to de-frighten the normals.
If Clinton is the democratic nominee, he won't need that as Clinton will frighten as many of the "normals" towards him as he could ever hope to pull in with a less-loony VP.
And someone with political experience as well to balance the "need to manipulate Congress" part.
I disagree on that one. Look at how much enthusiasm the "outsider" candidates have pulled in this cycle in the GOP. He doesn't want to risk losing that.
I'm thinking a sane Republican governor with a track records of conservatism. I'd guess Walker or Kasich.
I would attach the adjective sane to the latter governor but not the former. That said I suspect Walker is already on the phone regularly with his friend "Teflon" Tim Pawlenty from MN working to figure out their plans for running in 2020. While Walker isn't very smart on his own he is smart enough to put smart people around him (as Dennis Miller said about GWB - "the same way a hole surrounds itself with a donut") and he realizes that the GOP has almost no chance of winning this election; hence his best move is to get ready for 2020. Walker and Pawlenty each took very, very long starts at their failed runs for the white house, so they wouldn't be afraid to lay the ground early again.
I think Trump has proven that he, more than any other Republican, can look straight at the camera and slam an opponent with a smear that works. He's really gifted at that.
He is the penultimate opportunist. I'm still not convinced that he actually wants to be president, but he is certainly enjoying the publicity of running for the office.
The main selling point from the Clinton camp seems to be that Sanders' message is too "pie in the sky" to be something that can actually be done.
Which is so stupid. Of course, he's going to fail hard on a lot of his goals. But so is Hillary. Aim at the stars and fall on the moon and all that.
I couldn't agree more. It's like the Clinton camp decided to take on the fact that the Obama Administration has accomplished almost none of their original goals and then use that as a selling point for them to continue to accomplish none of them in the future because they are too lofty. To see foot dragging like that embraced that much is more than a bit disheartening for me.
Well, a lot of establishment Republicans have promised to support him
Yeah, but those are the talking heads of the establishment. A couple hundred talking heads are just that - a couple hundred talking heads. There is no guarantee that they can get the millions of GOP voters who dislike Drumpf to show up at the polls and vote for him.
And a lot will vote against Hillary.
That, I would say, is the biggest weakness that Hillary presents. Plenty of republicans will show up just to vote against her. The name Clinton evokes a Pavlovian response in many GOP'ers, they instantly go into hate mode. If she filed for divorce this afternoon she'd likely fare better.
I'd expect a moderating VP pick
That I disagree with. A lot of the GOP heads see Drumpf as too liberal. I expect he'll pick someone out of deep-deep-deep-deep-deeper-than-deep right field. I could see him even picking someone with little to no actual political experience, like Glenn Beck, Ted Nugent, Jesse Ventura, etc. I would be shocked if he chose someone less conservative than himself.
He has months to convince them he came to Jesus.
That ship may have already sailed. Fortunately for his cause the Jesus crew harbors plenty of hatred towards Clinton so he can pick up some of them off of that.
Trump will keep going Benghazi, Emails, etc. over and over again
As opposed to any other republican? It will get their attention but will be be enough?
It's kinda shocking that Hillary is still the frontrunner at this point.
I can't really figure that one out either. The main selling point from the Clinton camp seems to be that Sanders' message is too "pie in the sky" to be something that can actually be done.
Taking down the Trump campaign at this stage won't benefit the democrats, either as they can easily defeat him in the general election.
The Democrats can easily take down Cruz.
I don't think Cruz believes that, and frankly he polls much better against democrats than any other candidate they've had on stage this time through.
Donald Trump is likely to beat Hillary.
Quite unlikely, actually. Drumpf has hit the ceiling in his own party, at ~40% approval. It is highly likely that a large number of GOP'ers will stay home in the 2016 election if he gets the nomination as they can't stand him.
The best thing Drumpf has going for himself at this point is the high likelihood of Clinton winning the nomination, as while many republicans hate him they have all things named Clinton even more and will likely show up to vote against her without concern for who the name is on the GOP ticket. However if the GOP manages to knock off Clinton one way or another, they'll be facing Sanders who is the only candidate with positive approval ratings in national polling and their goose will be cooked. Nearly nobody will vote Drumpf to spite Sanders, in fact Sanders even polls well with conservatives in part due to being perceived as the most honest candidate in this election cycle.
I'm used to slashdot instructing us on why to hate Obama and democrats in general, but this story is a bit of a stretch. Yeah, there is politics involved but this is not simply a democrat-republican issue.
Most academic papers are published with financial support from federal funding agencies. Too bad publishing academic papers is a private industry with a profit motive to keep you from accessing them.
Actually, most publicly funded research is now required to be published in publicly accessible ways:
Granted, those came in to existence in the past decade or so, which leaves a lot of old papers not covered and subject to the whims of the publisher. Regardless, pretty well every existing research grant in the US from the federal government is now subject to those terms. The big for-profit publishers (think Nature and others) have made accommodations to allow for researchers to publish in their journals while still meeting the open access requirements.
Swartz died over this.
No, he didn't. He was over zealous, afraid, and likely fraught with unmanaged mental health problems. He was trying to make a name for himself and then didn't know what to do once he accomplished that. Regardless his goal was not to free all the data, if it had been he could have used other means that would not have landed him so quickly in so much trouble.
The only person who stands to benefit from this is Ted Cruz. Marco Rubio is already pretty much out of the race, Kasich is irrelevant. Taking down the Trump campaign at this stage won't benefit the democrats, either as they can easily defeat him in the general election. If the Trump campaign is somehow completely destroyed between now and the GOP convention the only person who would stand to win is Cruz, who also has consistently posted far better general polling numbers than Rubio or Trump against either Sanders or Clinton.
Furthermore, what is the benefit of destroying Trump right now when the GOP nomination contest is still officially undecided? It would make more sense to try to derail him later when it is down to the general election. If there is anything Drumpf hates above all else it is losing.
Considering President Obama has approval ratings on slashdot that are about even with the Ebola Virus or Kim Jong-Un, I would expect that his endorsement of recycling code would encourage the monkeys that write slashdot to cough up some all-new code very soon. This might be the greatest gift Obama has given to the slashdot community since... well, likely ever.
most gun owners have no problem telling a friend they have guns
That should be most responsible gun owners. This is where the problem really lies, here. Responsible owners will tell their friends about their weapons, and keep them in places where they won't cause problems anyways. Irresponsible owners will not be inclined to answer the question honestly (if they even know an honest answer to it).
your argument amounts to "im too lazy to know who is hanging out with my kids make the government do it"
I don't know what kind of drugs you are on to reach that conclusion. What I am asking for would not harm a responsible gun owner in any way, shape, or form. If you want to own dozens of weapons, that's fine; just keep them locked up. If you feel you need a weapon on your person at all times that is fine too, just don't set it within reach of a child.
This is all about responsibility. Aren't conservatives supposed to be in favor of personal responsibility? Be responsible with your weapons and you have nothing to fear from this at all.
"There is an appalling rate of gun accidents in this country. "
Really? I've seen the rates of gun accidents in the past years and I don't recall them increasing. While the death of every child is tragic I don't believe that the gun control laws that The Lancet proposes would do anything to reduce it.
What I proposed is not the same as any of the proposals in The Lancet. I consider The Lancet a quality publication but I'm not sold on their proposals here.
School gun free zones or armed guards at schools?
First of all, that does not relate to my point. These accidents are not school shootings. These accidents that I refer to are the direct result of irresponsible gun owners.
That said, there are two important points to consider. One, school shootings are actually very very rare. Two, proposing armed guards but not proposing any way to pay for them without sacrificing the education budget is irresponsible. A full-time armed guard generally is paid more than a teacher in their first year of full-time teaching (often quite a bit more) so does the school have to fire a teacher to pay a guard? You said guards with an s, so do they need to fire two (or perhaps three) teachers to hire two armed guards? And if they want to have two at all times shouldn't they hire at least three so they can cover in shifts?
Parents keeping the firearm on their person in a holster or keeping it on a high shelf in the closet?
Actually, I'm fine with the owner keeping it in a holster, as long as they are responsible and the holster is always on them, with the gun always in it. The problem is when the gun comes out and is carelessly left in the open where a kid can get it. If you want to be armed around the clock, I'm OK with that as long as you are responsible with where the weapon goes.
Locking up guns in a basement safe or having it in a quick access security box on the bedside table?
I consider a security box to be responsible as long as it properly deters a child from opening it. I'm not trying to take the guns away, I'm just trying to keep them from causing fatal accidents involving kids.
I remember reading about an experiment done by a TV station, they put a gun (unloaded) in a toy box at a preschool and watched with cameras recording. The children from gun owning homes stayed far away while the children from homes that did not own a gun played with it like any other toy.
I'd really like to see a citation for that. I haven't heard of that experiment. It doesn't sound unreasonable.
In the US we average one accidental gun death of a child every day.
So about 300-400 a year? That matches the number of children who drown in swimming pools. I don't see concerned mothers running around demanding that we ban pools.
That is only a useful comparison in terms of numbers, but not by responsibility. If I bring my children to someone else's house and that person has a swimming pool I can generally see that immediately and know that I need to make sure my kids are safe around it. I can even choose to just not go to that house if I am concerned that for some reason my kids cannot be safe around it. Hence with the swimming pool it is very easy to place responsibility with the parent.
However if I go to someone else's house I generally have no way to know if there is a loaded gun sitting around some place where my kids can get to it. Should I methodically sweep through every room of someone else's house before letting my kids in? I suspect privacy advocates would be opposed to such a thing, and considering that kids left alone might go under beds or into drawers such a sweep could take quite a while and be quite invasive. Hence the guns need to be the responsibility of the owners.
I don't care how many guns a gun owner wants to own. I own a few myself. I don't care how many rounds they want to shoot at a proper facility. I just want the owners to be responsible with their guns and be held responsible by the law when they are irresponsible with them. I don't even care if they want to carry a gun on their person all day long, as long as they don't set it down some place where a kid can get it. That should be standard policy for gun ownership.
Slashdot Mirror
Alfred P, of course. But I'm not worried.
We see it has shot its load under the pressure of various conservative nerds that can't get enough of this item. Is there a conceal-carry permit that defends webservers from spikes in traffic?
Motor Trend would be disappointed. They dedicated 3 paragraphs of SUV of the year to the Volvo key fob...
Someone who made a ton of money from investing in something worthless is telling the rest of us we shouldn't invest in things that are worthless? Sure thing.
The bigger problem with the banks right now is that it is nearly impossible to get a savings account (or CD) that has an interest rate above the inflation rate. If the banks can't provide an incentive for people to keep their money there, then why would people do it? Sure a lot of people don't want to carry large amounts of money on them regularly, but most people don't need a large amount of money on them at any given time. They can keep the rest under the mattress and do just as well.
I didn't even know it had online multi-player, and no, I wouldn't have cared either way.
It's worth noting that some games did and others did not. Mario Kart was a great example of one that did; you could play in 12 player online matches against random people from around the world, and get ranked on leaderboards. They also did a great job of setting it up to make the entire online multiplayer experience G-rated as there was no way to communicate with other racers at any time. They really optimized the online for minimal lag, I hardly ever had a race die from someone's connection failing. IMHO it may have been the best online multiplayer I've ever played.
On the other hand none of the Mario platform games had online multiplayer. Nor did any Zelda, Metroid, or Donkey Kong game that I knew of.
I'm surprised by the notion that Sony and Microsoft both need to survive.
They do, in the sense that Ford and Chevy need each other and Coke and Pepsi need each other.
I would say the relationship between Sony and Microsoft - when discussing their consoles - is actually much closer than the examples you gave. Save very few specific examples, the consoles are interchangeable to the vast majority of people who have even the slightest interest in video gaming. The technical capabilities are very similar, the prices are pretty close, the game selection is 90% the same. Indeed Ford and Chevy compete in a way that makes their products better, but Sony and Microsoft are on a path of convergent evolution where they make their products very nearly the same. They really are more like VW and Audi, or Chevy and GMC.
Nintendo has to make money with their console and games, it is their only income source.
Actually, it is their primary income source, but Nintendo has other avenues where they make money as well. They still make coin-op arcade games. They still make money licensing their characters for various other things (toys, t-shirts, etc). If tomorrow morning they decided to stop making consoles and console games altogether they would have to lay off a lot of their workforce, but they wouldn't have to close up shop completely either.
It is not easy to compete with a company that can afford to lose a billion dollars and shrug, while you have to make money.
You're absolutely right on that but even Microsoft and Sony can only afford to keep fuelling losing ventures for so long.
XBox One is well known to have inferior hardware to PS4,
The stats are so close between the two that most consumers aren't aware of it.
Another point that Nintendo failed to market well is the fact that out of the three current consoles, theirs is the only one that did not break backwards compatibility.
While this is true, keep in mind the WiiU doesn't come with a WiiMote, so if you didn't have a Wii, you have to buy one. You can't just buy a WiiU without anything prior, then go out and buy Wii games, and play them.
That is a good point. I will point out though that the WiiMote is the least expensive wireless controller out there. There are plenty of decent third-party clones of it that work well for less money as well. I will say though that it was a bit of a bone-headed move for Nintendo to have not included at least one with the console. I don't know if they were counting on people to buy them (or perhaps buy a game like FlingSmash that comes with one to go with the console?) or what but yeah it should have been included. Making the consumer buy another controller to have access to a large part of the library is stupid.
Simply saying "all your old games work on this and the new games are much prettier" was nowhere near sufficient to convince most owners to go put down $250-300 on a new system.
Have you considered that the Wii U might be a solution in search of a problem?
That is an excellent point. You could argue that Nintendo even attempted to force users to move to WiiU by shutting down certain features from the original Wii (it's now been almost two years since online multiplayer was shut down by Nintendo, along with other features). A lot of Wii owners weren't bothered enough by that to care.
Just because you make it doesn't mean the world wants it. :)
Absolutely true. However there have been products that have been made before the world realized it wanted it, and then it took off. Few people expected that the original Wii - which dared to buck the trend and release a controller with fewer buttons than the controller of the system that came before it. Yet the Wii went on to become one of the best selling consoles of all time.
Today you have Microsoft and Sony, there isn't a place for Nintendo anymore, not in the console market.
I'm surprised by the notion that Sony and Microsoft both need to survive. From my vantage point their latest consoles are interchangeable. Most of their titles are the same, their controllers are very similar, and their price points are similar. If someone threw $400 at me and insisted I spend it on one or the other I'd have a hard time deciding which as I don't like either company and have never owned a console from either before. In fact, if we look at at console sales the WiiU has sold more consoles than the latest XBox - and Nintendo has actually made money selling the WiiU while Microsoft has lost money on the latest XBox - yet people are so sure that Nintendo is the company that will be going away.
Another point that Nintendo failed to market well is the fact that out of the three current consoles, theirs is the only one that did not break backwards compatibility. You cannot play any discs from previous generation consoles of the same manufacturer in either the Sony or Microsoft consoles; yet the WiiU can play every game ever released for the original Wii. Hence while Sony and Microsoft owners are out re-purchasing their old libraries the Wii owners can keep on going with what they've had all this time.
There is a big difference, though. With all the examples you gave - which are very good examples I will add - the consoles were all trying to compete for the same market. They each had exclusive titles, of course, but they were trying to compete for the same "gamer" market.
That is a fair point... The SNES and Genesis were the XBox and PlayStation of their day...
The Wii U clearly is not...
Thank you. This is why I say that the sales problem with the WiiU is primarily a marketing failure; Nintendo couldn't find a good way to convert the new hardware into sales - or more importantly to convince owners of the Wii to go out and buy a WiiU. Simply saying "all your old games work on this and the new games are much prettier" was nowhere near sufficient to convince most owners to go put down $250-300 on a new system.
Well, FPS and TPS (third person), I would lump those together). Sports is a big market as well, bigger than I think a lot of people give it credit for. The "other category" isn't small either, but it is smaller than those two markets.
My informal assessment of sales volume is based in part on retail displays. I know that of course Best Buy is not the top seller of video games any more, but they do allocate space in proportion to sales (both real and expected) volume.
When I walk down the PS or XB aisles, over half of the space for the games for sale is dedicated to FPS titles. They are at the front of nearly every row and stocked at vastly higher copy numbers than anything else. Easily 2/3 - 3/4 of the total volume of discs is FPS. Of what remains, 1/2 - 3/4 of that is sports titles. You have to dig a fair bit in the displays to find something else; if you don't know their name you might not find them at all.
Nintendo doesn't make any effort to attract FPS titles to the Wii or Wii U. They go for a different demographic entirely. Unfortunately, Nintendo never launched a competent marketing campaign for the WiiU that explained to Wii owners why they should upgrade; a large segment of the gaming public thought the Wii U was just a tablet add-on for the Wii and because of that never paid any attention to it.
Meh, even if they had, I don't know that it would have mattered.
The WiiU brought some neat new "next generation" titles, with some neat new capabilities. I think Nintendo dropped the ball on emphasizing them. It seemed like they couldn't decide how to market this console, whether they wanted people to look at it as an alternative to the Sony and Microsoft consoles, or whether they wanted people to look at it as a valuable upgrade from the original Wii. Tragically it seems that when they couldn't decide on a pathway for selling it, they chose to not do good at any.
It reminds me of the old Sega Genesis ads = 'we do what Nintendon't'. Only this time they provided the "don't" themselves and nobody else needed to attack it.
I know the Wii U has been out for several years. I know its sales numbers are poor compared to the original Wii. I know that the price has not come drown dramatically since launch.
However I also know more people who have purchased it in the past 8 months than in the first 2+ years it was out. I also know that I've been seriously considering purchasing one for myself some time after I figure out my taxes for 2015. I also know that my son really wants to play Mario Maker, Mario Kart 8, and Disney Infinity 2 and 3.
I also know that I have zero interest in ever purchasing a console from Microsoft or Sony. I don't want to play Halo 8 or any Sony exclusive title. Microsoft and Sony have too much of my money already, I will do everything I can to keep them from getting any more of it.
There simply isn't room for 3 consoles. There never really was. Look back in time at:
There is a big difference, though. With all the examples you gave - which are very good examples I will add - the consoles were all trying to compete for the same market. They each had exclusive titles, of course, but they were trying to compete for the same "gamer" market.
Right now we have three consoles, but only two are competing for the same market. Microsoft and Sony are both competing for one market; if you look at game sales numbers this is abundantly clear as both companies see the majority of all games sold for their consoles are from the FPS genre. The next biggest segment is sports, and beyond that it's just "novelty" as far and Microsoft and Sony are concerned.
Nintendo doesn't make any effort to attract FPS titles to the Wii or Wii U. They go for a different demographic entirely. Unfortunately, Nintendo never launched a competent marketing campaign for the WiiU that explained to Wii owners why they should upgrade; a large segment of the gaming public thought the Wii U was just a tablet add-on for the Wii and because of that never paid any attention to it.
I'd rather they require that any software developed at taxpayer expense be released as open source.
That's not as clear of a metric as one might expect. We have lots of research efforts now that are jointly funded by government and private funds; would they need to be released as open source? And how do you dictate the release schedule for the code? Does it need to be updated regularly or can it just be released when there is something relating to it published somewhere? And who will host it, for how long? Will the authors be held responsible for making sure that their code compiles on other peoples' hardware?
It's a good idea but the execution of it is not trivial. I can think of plenty of software in my field of work that has been at least partially funded by the government that I would love to see released but some of the above matters make it impossible or impractical to get a good release of it out publicly.
That is assuming that Hillary isn't put in jail before then
Here's something a lot of people are conveniently forgetting in this case - we don't tend to imprison the accused, especially when their trials are an unknown distance out in the future and no charges have yet been brought up. Regardless of what you think about the email situation, the chances of it making it to trial before November are about zero at this point - the government simply doesn't move that fast regardless of who is pulling the levers. Being as right now the allegations all come down to "it looks like she might have thought about doing something nefarious" there is no reason to get excited about this.
emails in a server that any hacker could get
Do you have information on the security of the email server? I haven't seen any information on the security of its setup one way or the other. There has been plenty made of it being "in her house" or something like that but I haven't heard anything on how secure the setup was - or was not. Considering a standard conservative mantra is to never trust the government, why would it be automatically less secure at her house than in a government installation? It's accepted that she had someone else do the setup, are you assuming that person to have been technologically incompetent?
The polls that show Hillary beats Trumps are made up
That is a whole lot of fabrication, there. We've seen a large number of national polls support that, and not a single one showing the opposite. Why would all these different polling organizations make up the same results?
Hillary can beat Drumpf without working too hard. Sanders can beat Drumpf without even needing to open his mouth. Frankly the democrats could run a ficus tree and almost certainly defeat Drumpf.
The only person who has anything to gain from having Drumpf defeated before November is Cruz as he is the only GOP contender left who could possibly win the nomination if Drumpf was run out.
He is the penultimate opportunist.
Query: penultimate?
My bad, my fingers got ahead of me. Indeed should have just been "ultimate".
I'm still not convinced that he actually wants to be president, but he is certainly enjoying the publicity of running for the office.
He's been talking about running since 1988. He wants the publicity of being the president. The work/policy making, probably not so much.
I'm not sure that he really has more publicity to gain by being president. He's getting absurd amounts of publicity by running for president, but how could he keep pulling in that kind of publicity for four years if he were to somehow win? For comparison plenty of people thought Obama was good at pulling in press, but how often does he make the news now? Even before Drumpf announced his candidacy Obama was barely making the news daily. I actually think Drumpf wants to lose this election so that he can launch into something else - maybe a cable news network of his own, or a radio network?
It seems to me that Drumpf just got tired of seeing newer billionaires (in particular Musk and Zuckerberg) getting more press than him. Once he's straightened that out to his liking he'll go back to declaring bankruptcy.
A lot of the GOP heads see Drumpf as too liberal. I expect he'll pick someone out of deep-deep-deep-deep-deeper-than-deep right field.
I mean, he'll pick someone with more conservative economic and healthcare policies to appease the base
The healthcare bit amuses me greatly. Basically every candidate for the GOP has been running with the same message of repeal the ACA. Some of them have stated that they want to repeal the ACA and then re-pass it with their own name on it, but most of them don't bother going that far into planning. I have yet to see a GOP candidate anywhere actually propose an alternative to the ACA that is less than 95% identical in action to the ACA. The last time the GOP candidates talked about it in a debate it came down to who could come up with the most arbitrarily short window of time post-inauguration in which to repeal the bill.
but more moderate immigrant/Islam rhetoric to de-frighten the normals.
If Clinton is the democratic nominee, he won't need that as Clinton will frighten as many of the "normals" towards him as he could ever hope to pull in with a less-loony VP.
And someone with political experience as well to balance the "need to manipulate Congress" part.
I disagree on that one. Look at how much enthusiasm the "outsider" candidates have pulled in this cycle in the GOP. He doesn't want to risk losing that.
I'm thinking a sane Republican governor with a track records of conservatism. I'd guess Walker or Kasich.
I would attach the adjective sane to the latter governor but not the former. That said I suspect Walker is already on the phone regularly with his friend "Teflon" Tim Pawlenty from MN working to figure out their plans for running in 2020. While Walker isn't very smart on his own he is smart enough to put smart people around him (as Dennis Miller said about GWB - "the same way a hole surrounds itself with a donut") and he realizes that the GOP has almost no chance of winning this election; hence his best move is to get ready for 2020. Walker and Pawlenty each took very, very long starts at their failed runs for the white house, so they wouldn't be afraid to lay the ground early again.
I think Trump has proven that he, more than any other Republican, can look straight at the camera and slam an opponent with a smear that works. He's really gifted at that.
He is the penultimate opportunist. I'm still not convinced that he actually wants to be president, but he is certainly enjoying the publicity of running for the office.
The main selling point from the Clinton camp seems to be that Sanders' message is too "pie in the sky" to be something that can actually be done.
Which is so stupid. Of course, he's going to fail hard on a lot of his goals. But so is Hillary. Aim at the stars and fall on the moon and all that.
I couldn't agree more. It's like the Clinton camp decided to take on the fact that the Obama Administration has accomplished almost none of their original goals and then use that as a selling point for them to continue to accomplish none of them in the future because they are too lofty. To see foot dragging like that embraced that much is more than a bit disheartening for me.
Well, a lot of establishment Republicans have promised to support him
Yeah, but those are the talking heads of the establishment. A couple hundred talking heads are just that - a couple hundred talking heads. There is no guarantee that they can get the millions of GOP voters who dislike Drumpf to show up at the polls and vote for him.
And a lot will vote against Hillary.
That, I would say, is the biggest weakness that Hillary presents. Plenty of republicans will show up just to vote against her. The name Clinton evokes a Pavlovian response in many GOP'ers, they instantly go into hate mode. If she filed for divorce this afternoon she'd likely fare better.
I'd expect a moderating VP pick
That I disagree with. A lot of the GOP heads see Drumpf as too liberal. I expect he'll pick someone out of deep-deep-deep-deep-deeper-than-deep right field. I could see him even picking someone with little to no actual political experience, like Glenn Beck, Ted Nugent, Jesse Ventura, etc. I would be shocked if he chose someone less conservative than himself.
He has months to convince them he came to Jesus.
That ship may have already sailed. Fortunately for his cause the Jesus crew harbors plenty of hatred towards Clinton so he can pick up some of them off of that.
Trump will keep going Benghazi, Emails, etc. over and over again
As opposed to any other republican? It will get their attention but will be be enough?
It's kinda shocking that Hillary is still the frontrunner at this point.
I can't really figure that one out either. The main selling point from the Clinton camp seems to be that Sanders' message is too "pie in the sky" to be something that can actually be done.
Taking down the Trump campaign at this stage won't benefit the democrats, either as they can easily defeat him in the general election.
The Democrats can easily take down Cruz.
I don't think Cruz believes that, and frankly he polls much better against democrats than any other candidate they've had on stage this time through.
Donald Trump is likely to beat Hillary.
Quite unlikely, actually. Drumpf has hit the ceiling in his own party, at ~40% approval. It is highly likely that a large number of GOP'ers will stay home in the 2016 election if he gets the nomination as they can't stand him.
The best thing Drumpf has going for himself at this point is the high likelihood of Clinton winning the nomination, as while many republicans hate him they have all things named Clinton even more and will likely show up to vote against her without concern for who the name is on the GOP ticket. However if the GOP manages to knock off Clinton one way or another, they'll be facing Sanders who is the only candidate with positive approval ratings in national polling and their goose will be cooked. Nearly nobody will vote Drumpf to spite Sanders, in fact Sanders even polls well with conservatives in part due to being perceived as the most honest candidate in this election cycle.
I'm used to slashdot instructing us on why to hate Obama and democrats in general, but this story is a bit of a stretch. Yeah, there is politics involved but this is not simply a democrat-republican issue.
Florida legalized murder a while back, I thought they said that was going to solve the population-related problems. What happened?
Most academic papers are published with financial support from federal funding agencies. Too bad publishing academic papers is a private industry with a profit motive to keep you from accessing them.
Actually, most publicly funded research is now required to be published in publicly accessible ways:
Granted, those came in to existence in the past decade or so, which leaves a lot of old papers not covered and subject to the whims of the publisher. Regardless, pretty well every existing research grant in the US from the federal government is now subject to those terms. The big for-profit publishers (think Nature and others) have made accommodations to allow for researchers to publish in their journals while still meeting the open access requirements.
Swartz died over this.
No, he didn't. He was over zealous, afraid, and likely fraught with unmanaged mental health problems. He was trying to make a name for himself and then didn't know what to do once he accomplished that. Regardless his goal was not to free all the data, if it had been he could have used other means that would not have landed him so quickly in so much trouble.
The only person who stands to benefit from this is Ted Cruz. Marco Rubio is already pretty much out of the race, Kasich is irrelevant. Taking down the Trump campaign at this stage won't benefit the democrats, either as they can easily defeat him in the general election. If the Trump campaign is somehow completely destroyed between now and the GOP convention the only person who would stand to win is Cruz, who also has consistently posted far better general polling numbers than Rubio or Trump against either Sanders or Clinton.
Furthermore, what is the benefit of destroying Trump right now when the GOP nomination contest is still officially undecided? It would make more sense to try to derail him later when it is down to the general election. If there is anything Drumpf hates above all else it is losing.
Considering President Obama has approval ratings on slashdot that are about even with the Ebola Virus or Kim Jong-Un, I would expect that his endorsement of recycling code would encourage the monkeys that write slashdot to cough up some all-new code very soon. This might be the greatest gift Obama has given to the slashdot community since ... well, likely ever.
most gun owners have no problem telling a friend they have guns
That should be most responsible gun owners. This is where the problem really lies, here. Responsible owners will tell their friends about their weapons, and keep them in places where they won't cause problems anyways. Irresponsible owners will not be inclined to answer the question honestly (if they even know an honest answer to it).
your argument amounts to "im too lazy to know who is hanging out with my kids make the government do it"
I don't know what kind of drugs you are on to reach that conclusion. What I am asking for would not harm a responsible gun owner in any way, shape, or form. If you want to own dozens of weapons, that's fine; just keep them locked up. If you feel you need a weapon on your person at all times that is fine too, just don't set it within reach of a child.
This is all about responsibility. Aren't conservatives supposed to be in favor of personal responsibility? Be responsible with your weapons and you have nothing to fear from this at all.
"There is an appalling rate of gun accidents in this country. "
Really? I've seen the rates of gun accidents in the past years and I don't recall them increasing. While the death of every child is tragic I don't believe that the gun control laws that The Lancet proposes would do anything to reduce it.
What I proposed is not the same as any of the proposals in The Lancet. I consider The Lancet a quality publication but I'm not sold on their proposals here.
School gun free zones or armed guards at schools?
First of all, that does not relate to my point. These accidents are not school shootings. These accidents that I refer to are the direct result of irresponsible gun owners.
That said, there are two important points to consider. One, school shootings are actually very very rare. Two, proposing armed guards but not proposing any way to pay for them without sacrificing the education budget is irresponsible. A full-time armed guard generally is paid more than a teacher in their first year of full-time teaching (often quite a bit more) so does the school have to fire a teacher to pay a guard? You said guards with an s, so do they need to fire two (or perhaps three) teachers to hire two armed guards? And if they want to have two at all times shouldn't they hire at least three so they can cover in shifts?
Parents keeping the firearm on their person in a holster or keeping it on a high shelf in the closet?
Actually, I'm fine with the owner keeping it in a holster, as long as they are responsible and the holster is always on them, with the gun always in it. The problem is when the gun comes out and is carelessly left in the open where a kid can get it. If you want to be armed around the clock, I'm OK with that as long as you are responsible with where the weapon goes.
Locking up guns in a basement safe or having it in a quick access security box on the bedside table?
I consider a security box to be responsible as long as it properly deters a child from opening it. I'm not trying to take the guns away, I'm just trying to keep them from causing fatal accidents involving kids.
I remember reading about an experiment done by a TV station, they put a gun (unloaded) in a toy box at a preschool and watched with cameras recording. The children from gun owning homes stayed far away while the children from homes that did not own a gun played with it like any other toy.
I'd really like to see a citation for that. I haven't heard of that experiment. It doesn't sound unreasonable.
In the US we average one accidental gun death of a child every day.
So about 300-400 a year? That matches the number of children who drown in swimming pools. I don't see concerned mothers running around demanding that we ban pools.
That is only a useful comparison in terms of numbers, but not by responsibility. If I bring my children to someone else's house and that person has a swimming pool I can generally see that immediately and know that I need to make sure my kids are safe around it. I can even choose to just not go to that house if I am concerned that for some reason my kids cannot be safe around it. Hence with the swimming pool it is very easy to place responsibility with the parent.
However if I go to someone else's house I generally have no way to know if there is a loaded gun sitting around some place where my kids can get to it. Should I methodically sweep through every room of someone else's house before letting my kids in? I suspect privacy advocates would be opposed to such a thing, and considering that kids left alone might go under beds or into drawers such a sweep could take quite a while and be quite invasive. Hence the guns need to be the responsibility of the owners.
I don't care how many guns a gun owner wants to own. I own a few myself. I don't care how many rounds they want to shoot at a proper facility. I just want the owners to be responsible with their guns and be held responsible by the law when they are irresponsible with them. I don't even care if they want to carry a gun on their person all day long, as long as they don't set it down some place where a kid can get it. That should be standard policy for gun ownership.