It's not up to a bunch of yahoos on the interbutt to decide if they meet the burden of proof in a civil case
Not sure how the ramblings of us yahoos interferes with that. Sorry, but I always get a little miffed when it is implied that a discussion online (or elsewhere) is somehow obligated to grant the same rights as the court, or somehow is interefering with the court.
Also, you might want to check on the meaning of the word litigious before getting mad at how other people are using it.
I love all the posters in this thread suggsting you get multiple phone lines; clearly demonstrating their lack of understanding of rural telecom.
I think what you need to do is talk to whomever lives on the other side of the hill, and see if they'll let you run a line over to them; and if they don't have satillite already see if they'll go halvsies with you.
Well, in all fairness, any government could do this to any debt; the reason they don't is that if you tell someone you owe a trillion dollars to that they are never going to see their money, you will never find anyone willing to lend you money ever again. You also might find it more difficult to collet on the debts owed to you.
Not as meaningful as you imply; its quite common for countries to not extradite their own citizens when the crime and/or punishment is quite different from what they would experience for committing the same action at home. (regardless of extradition treaties)
As a matter of example, Canada often will not extradite to the U.S. if the death penalty is a possibility.
I thought rumble was supposed to be a last-gen technology fad.
Sony contridicting itself? Say it ain't so.
In fairness to Sony though, this is actually a good sign. They thought that when they couldn't continue using their old rumble technology, the way to go was to ditch rumble altogether. They spent a whole lot of time trying to convince the world that rumble doesn't matter, but now, threatened with being third place, they are looking to address a complaint that people have with the system.
Listening to a complaint people have with your product and addressing it is always good in my books. And considering that they are getting this done so early in the console's life, the rumbless controller may well be forgotten by the time this gen is over.
There isn't a job field of any size that does not have its own culture and a tendency to make those who don't fit the culture feel like outsiders (regardless of their ability to perform the job). It may not be right, but it is human.
You wrote it yourself, but still completely missed the kicker.
Oh I get it, I just happen to see profit differently than you do. I see anything that makes the average Canadian have a better quality of life as profit and the high dollar does that.
What you seem to miss is that the dollar is high because the economy is strong; if that changes so will the dollar.
And before I address any of your other points individually, how would any of your concerns be different if the dollar was weak? Would we be taking less oil out of the ground if it were cheaper to do so? No, of course not.
Once the current resource bubble bursts, then where do you think we'll be?
If we continue to lean on a low dollar between now and then, when it happens we'll have nothing left going for us except the exchange rate. If the government manipulates the dollar to push it down to say.80US for the next twenty years, then expect the news headlines in 2032 to read Cdn$ on par with Peso.
If one is to presume, as you do that the dollar is high only for a short time, then it is the best thing that could have happenned to us. The reason Canada does far less manufacturing than the US is that while the US has been able to take advantage of newer technologies to keep its manufacturing competive(relative to us); Canada's manufacturing has had the worst of both worlds; more expensive than a third world country, but less advanced/efficient than a first. Having industries subsidized by a low dollar does not create strength, it creates a dependency on said dollar.
we're not even the ones profiting off of most of the resources we're exporting
And thirty years of a low dollar did not solve that problem, so how would thirty-one years solve it?
How much more primary forest do you think we have left to give away?
I have no idea. I have never been part of the forestry industry nor followed it closely. How much do you think, and based on hearsay or can you actually link to some numbers?
How much longer do you think we can sustain raping northern Alberta? (Hint: Look at a recent satellite image...all of that, done since 2000)
Hint, oilsands is an ugly, ugly business. Don't count on the ugly pictures to get your reserve estimates. According to the Alberta Energy website aproximately 2% of the oilsands have been extracted to date. There is an estimated 174 billion barrels in the oilsands alone; there is more oil under Canada than any other country in the world except Saudi Arabia. The oil won't last forever, but don't act like we're going to run out any time soon. (or to put it in your term, we'll be raping it for at least the next 30 years)
Most of our resources are controlled by foreign companies, we're making next to NOTHING on all of this, and leaving NOTHING for the future.
I love the foreign ownership debate, mostly because its a load of crap. If its true that companies with foreign holdings are ripping off the countries they are doing business, just plundering and taking all the loot home, then we're in great shape; Canadian companies have greater foreign holdings than foreign companies have in Canada. (I however, tend to think its largely irrellevant to the local economy who owns the company)
we don't have much to celebrate as an exporting nation.
Our economy is stronger than it has been in my entire life. At.70 US,.80 US and.90 US there were people predicting the imminent collapse of the economy, but as a whole it has just gotten stronger.
And while we may export resources, we largely import manufactured goods, so for some one looking to buy just about anything, this is good news.
Its also worth noting that while the loonie has gotten a little stronger, this is largely a story of the US dollar weakening and the Canadian dollar not following (as it has often done in the past). This means that the price of Canadian goods have not increased globally, leaving plenty of opportunity to sell to other markets.
We have long considered diversity and fairness to be worthy goals alongside productivity. One hopes that diversity allows for different perspectives, new ideas, and draws on talent that would otherwise be untapped. If that's not the case, then we hope that a little lost productivity buys us less built-in racism and sexism.
If this were true, as much effort and money would go into getting more men into nursing and child care as goes into getting more women into computers and engineering.
3) Little replay factor. Moving up in rankings gives players a completely new and fun way to play.
Depends on the player if rankings is a plus or a minus (though at Slashdot plus is probably in the majority). Just as an example, amoungst a group of friends I used to play GC games with was one player who despite gaming as much as we did was never very good at any games. In games that either didn't keep detailed ongoing stats, or at least didn't make them highly visible during game play(like SSBM), he could go all night without winning a match without a care in the world; in games that constantly reminded you of who has won the most (like MK Double Dash), he would start getting really depressed after about an hour.
4) Competitiveness. You will find many players just goofing off since the game has no impact on anything. If you are a competitive player, it is no fun to play someone who isn't. The opposite is also true.
I totally agree with you, its just that I happen to see this as a plus for SSBB, not a minus. If the ultra-competitive players are going to go off and play Halo 3, rather than matching up against me, I won't shed a tear.
I would wager that moves like "Evan Almighty" cost the industry more then piracy.
I know you were joking, but I thought that its worth pointing out, there is no longer such a thing as a bomb in Hollywood. Between the globalization of the film market(by which I mean that Hollywood is now king almost everywhere), DVD sales, PPV, broadcast rights, and merchandizing it is virtually impossible for a Hollywood film to lose money anymore. "Evan Almighty" made back $100 mil of its $175 mil budget just in domestic box office, and given that Hollywood films now generally make more money abroad than at home, its sure to show a profit before its done with theatres.
If he's really one of those 'Any publicity is good publicity people' then cracking jokes at his expense are really the best service we can do him and everyone else
If he really believed that then he would not include tv appearances in his campaigns to stop video games; after all, he is giving the games free publicity.
resource starvation has been one of the most efficient ways of coercion, as any army laying siege can tell you.
Laying seige was never efficient; the reason it was commonly used was that the attacker risked far less by laying seige as opposed to a direct assault.
I'm also now defined as a "generation Xer" even though five years ago, I was considered several years too young.
When I first read about "generation X" (actually in the Time issue pictured in the Wiki page for gen X), I was too young for it, but by the time the term "generation Y" came around I was reclassified as a gen X.
In fact according to the Wiki article, in its earliest uses Gen X reffered just to those born 1960 - 1965, whereas now it commonly includes 1961 - 1981.
All this does is create uncertainty among their customers,
Perhaps it is just that they assumed that most of their customers would think that expressing it in GB is too technical.
Better yet, it could be that the actual value, expressed in GB, was passed on to their PR department who looked at it and said "what the hell does that mean?" Some tech gave the PR department some examples of how much data might be contained in the stated value, and the PR department released the examples (because it made sense to them) rather than the GB.
I'm curious why you think that. Windows 98 and XP both had features that users wanted/needed. For example. USB support in W98, a non-crashing kernel with decent hardware support in XP. I can't see one single feature in Vista that I or most other users do or will give a damn about. The last time Microsoft released an OS with those characteristics was Windows Millenium and it was NOT a success.
General perception of 98 and XP were quite negative when they first came out; people placed about as much importance on the features you mention as you place on the new features in Vista. In fact I think that every OS MS has released after Win 95 has been met with resitance. And with the exception of ME, which was only around for less than a year, every OS has eventually built a loyal following. (has it really been so long since XP came out that you can't remember the endless cries of "XP SUCKS" and the countless people who swore they'd never abandon 98?)
I am not speculating as to why this shift occurs, only noting that it does, and expecting that trend to continue.
Its not a question of how many issues there are, its a question of perception. Neither 98 nor XP were significantly different at 1 year old compared to 3 years old, but the perception of them changed massively in that time.
In all likelyhood that pattern will repeat with Vista.
One thing is for sure, in terms of software, the 360 is top dog. This system flat out moves games.
I've seen this claim quite a bit and it stands to reason; xbox appeals to hardcore gamers and they buy lots of games. But I've been wanting to seen some actual hard numbers.
Unfortunately, my searches done just now did not find me the numbers I wanted - all time software sales worldwide by console, but I did find one thing that was food for thought. (all numbers from www.vgchartz.com)
For week ending September 8, 2007 the software sales of xbox360 vs wii in America were 993574 vs 615084, while the number of consoles (total not sales) in America at that time were 7.03M vs 4.69M.
In other words the 360 sold 0.14 games per unit last week while the Wii sold 0.13 games per unit. Hardly the massive difference everyone assumes.
I have to say that while Nintendo is selling lots of Wii's the game is not over yet, developers have to be successful in releasing games on the Wii and see if the demographic which purchased the Wii will bite.
I think the Wii will subsidize the hardcore segment of the market, but I have doubts that the people who bought the Wii for wii sports / Wii play will have much of an interest in hardcore games. I'm taking a wait and see approach. It looks to me like the Xbox and Wii will be king in North america and the PS3 and Wii will be king in Japan.
I think you've got it half right. I think that either through market research or just by watching sales the software companies are going to come to the conclusion that hardcore games aren't going to sell as well on the Wii as the size of install base would indicate. But while you see this as a reason for them to lean away from the Wii, I suspect it will just mean that they lean away from releasing "hardcore" games on the Wii.
Remember that often times its much cheaper to create games that are non-hardcore, and if that's what is most popular amoungst Wii owners, expect the software companies to go where the money is. And while the effect may be suttle, any time a programer is working on "mini-game collection 99" for the Wii, he's not working on "FPS 99" for the PS3/xbox360
You know the Apple switcher ads? My thoughts on them are that they aren't to entice people to come to apple as they are so ridiculously silly as anyone who would switch would likely return the box because it didn't come with windows. The ads however comically play to What Apples user base already thinks. It re-enforces brand value in the people who already reside in the apple camp. So its not a ad campaign seeking new customers but re-enforcing value in current customers.
Ditto with the Halo 3 ad campaign. It re-enforces the value of peoples purchase. Saying "hey you bought a winner."
I think your analysis of the Apple ads is spot on, and it explains the phenomina that Apple users seem to think the ads are brilliant, but other generally not as much (ranging anywhere from "kinda funny" down to "I HATE THEM").
But if that is the strategy of the Halo 3 ads, then it it hugely misplaced. Apple has a customer base that is going to need more computers in the future, but who on earth would need multiple copies of Halo 3?
I think it is far more likely that MS knows where the money is coming from. Do you really think that Halo 2 did as well as it did solely from the wallet's of fanbois? Without a doubt there were more than a few casual gamers who bought a copy, never mind the countless parents who bought a copy for their little brat.
This ad campaign may not be targeted at anyone who visits Slashdot, but that doesn't mean its money down the drain or "feel-good" money.
That joke got me wondering which actually is bigger, the number of Christians or the number of Windows users. A couple of google searches found me these pages:
Slashdot Mirror
If by "we all" you mean the main stream media, then sure. If you mean Slashdot, then no.
I'm sure he doesn't know or care how much coverage he gets on a website meant for the very people he opposes.
Not sure how the ramblings of us yahoos interferes with that. Sorry, but I always get a little miffed when it is implied that a discussion online (or elsewhere) is somehow obligated to grant the same rights as the court, or somehow is interefering with the court.
Also, you might want to check on the meaning of the word litigious before getting mad at how other people are using it.
I love all the posters in this thread suggsting you get multiple phone lines; clearly demonstrating their lack of understanding of rural telecom.
I think what you need to do is talk to whomever lives on the other side of the hill, and see if they'll let you run a line over to them; and if they don't have satillite already see if they'll go halvsies with you.
Well, in all fairness, any government could do this to any debt; the reason they don't is that if you tell someone you owe a trillion dollars to that they are never going to see their money, you will never find anyone willing to lend you money ever again. You also might find it more difficult to collet on the debts owed to you.
Not as meaningful as you imply; its quite common for countries to not extradite their own citizens when the crime and/or punishment is quite different from what they would experience for committing the same action at home. (regardless of extradition treaties)
As a matter of example, Canada often will not extradite to the U.S. if the death penalty is a possibility.
Sony contridicting itself? Say it ain't so.
In fairness to Sony though, this is actually a good sign. They thought that when they couldn't continue using their old rumble technology, the way to go was to ditch rumble altogether. They spent a whole lot of time trying to convince the world that rumble doesn't matter, but now, threatened with being third place, they are looking to address a complaint that people have with the system.
Listening to a complaint people have with your product and addressing it is always good in my books. And considering that they are getting this done so early in the console's life, the rumbless controller may well be forgotten by the time this gen is over.
There isn't a job field of any size that does not have its own culture and a tendency to make those who don't fit the culture feel like outsiders (regardless of their ability to perform the job). It may not be right, but it is human.
The argument is that game designers and artists come from the same budget, so if a company invests heavily in one, the other suffers.
Oh I get it, I just happen to see profit differently than you do. I see anything that makes the average Canadian have a better quality of life as profit and the high dollar does that.
What you seem to miss is that the dollar is high because the economy is strong; if that changes so will the dollar.
And before I address any of your other points individually, how would any of your concerns be different if the dollar was weak? Would we be taking less oil out of the ground if it were cheaper to do so? No, of course not.
Once the current resource bubble bursts, then where do you think we'll be?If we continue to lean on a low dollar between now and then, when it happens we'll have nothing left going for us except the exchange rate. If the government manipulates the dollar to push it down to say .80US for the next twenty years, then expect the news headlines in 2032 to read Cdn$ on par with Peso.
If one is to presume, as you do that the dollar is high only for a short time, then it is the best thing that could have happenned to us. The reason Canada does far less manufacturing than the US is that while the US has been able to take advantage of newer technologies to keep its manufacturing competive(relative to us); Canada's manufacturing has had the worst of both worlds; more expensive than a third world country, but less advanced/efficient than a first. Having industries subsidized by a low dollar does not create strength, it creates a dependency on said dollar.
we're not even the ones profiting off of most of the resources we're exportingAnd thirty years of a low dollar did not solve that problem, so how would thirty-one years solve it?
How much more primary forest do you think we have left to give away?I have no idea. I have never been part of the forestry industry nor followed it closely. How much do you think, and based on hearsay or can you actually link to some numbers?
How much longer do you think we can sustain raping northern Alberta? (Hint: Look at a recent satellite image...all of that, done since 2000)Hint, oilsands is an ugly, ugly business. Don't count on the ugly pictures to get your reserve estimates. According to the Alberta Energy website aproximately 2% of the oilsands have been extracted to date. There is an estimated 174 billion barrels in the oilsands alone; there is more oil under Canada than any other country in the world except Saudi Arabia. The oil won't last forever, but don't act like we're going to run out any time soon. (or to put it in your term, we'll be raping it for at least the next 30 years)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Oil_Sands
- http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/OurBusiness/oilsands.asp
- http://www.rense.com/general37/petrol.htm
Most of our resources are controlled by foreign companies, we're making next to NOTHING on all of this, and leaving NOTHING for the future.I love the foreign ownership debate, mostly because its a load of crap. If its true that companies with foreign holdings are ripping off the countries they are doing business, just plundering and taking all the loot home, then we're in great shape; Canadian companies have greater foreign holdings than foreign companies have in Canada. (I however, tend to think its largely irrellevant to the local economy who owns the company)
Our economy is stronger than it has been in my entire life. At .70 US, .80 US and .90 US there were people predicting the imminent collapse of the economy, but as a whole it has just gotten stronger.
And while we may export resources, we largely import manufactured goods, so for some one looking to buy just about anything, this is good news.
Its also worth noting that while the loonie has gotten a little stronger, this is largely a story of the US dollar weakening and the Canadian dollar not following (as it has often done in the past). This means that the price of Canadian goods have not increased globally, leaving plenty of opportunity to sell to other markets.
If this were true, as much effort and money would go into getting more men into nursing and child care as goes into getting more women into computers and engineering.
Change the words "sue" to "levy" and "broadband connection" to "writable media" and you've basically described the situation in Canada.
Depends on the player if rankings is a plus or a minus (though at Slashdot plus is probably in the majority). Just as an example, amoungst a group of friends I used to play GC games with was one player who despite gaming as much as we did was never very good at any games. In games that either didn't keep detailed ongoing stats, or at least didn't make them highly visible during game play(like SSBM), he could go all night without winning a match without a care in the world; in games that constantly reminded you of who has won the most (like MK Double Dash), he would start getting really depressed after about an hour.
4) Competitiveness. You will find many players just goofing off since the game has no impact on anything. If you are a competitive player, it is no fun to play someone who isn't. The opposite is also true.I totally agree with you, its just that I happen to see this as a plus for SSBB, not a minus. If the ultra-competitive players are going to go off and play Halo 3, rather than matching up against me, I won't shed a tear.
I know you were joking, but I thought that its worth pointing out, there is no longer such a thing as a bomb in Hollywood. Between the globalization of the film market(by which I mean that Hollywood is now king almost everywhere), DVD sales, PPV, broadcast rights, and merchandizing it is virtually impossible for a Hollywood film to lose money anymore. "Evan Almighty" made back $100 mil of its $175 mil budget just in domestic box office, and given that Hollywood films now generally make more money abroad than at home, its sure to show a profit before its done with theatres.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0413099/business
If he really believed that then he would not include tv appearances in his campaigns to stop video games; after all, he is giving the games free publicity.
No, and neither do you.
Laying seige was never efficient; the reason it was commonly used was that the attacker risked far less by laying seige as opposed to a direct assault.
When I first read about "generation X" (actually in the Time issue pictured in the Wiki page for gen X), I was too young for it, but by the time the term "generation Y" came around I was reclassified as a gen X.
In fact according to the Wiki article, in its earliest uses Gen X reffered just to those born 1960 - 1965, whereas now it commonly includes 1961 - 1981.
Perhaps it is just that they assumed that most of their customers would think that expressing it in GB is too technical.
Better yet, it could be that the actual value, expressed in GB, was passed on to their PR department who looked at it and said "what the hell does that mean?" Some tech gave the PR department some examples of how much data might be contained in the stated value, and the PR department released the examples (because it made sense to them) rather than the GB.
General perception of 98 and XP were quite negative when they first came out; people placed about as much importance on the features you mention as you place on the new features in Vista. In fact I think that every OS MS has released after Win 95 has been met with resitance. And with the exception of ME, which was only around for less than a year, every OS has eventually built a loyal following. (has it really been so long since XP came out that you can't remember the endless cries of "XP SUCKS" and the countless people who swore they'd never abandon 98?)
I am not speculating as to why this shift occurs, only noting that it does, and expecting that trend to continue.
Its not a question of how many issues there are, its a question of perception. Neither 98 nor XP were significantly different at 1 year old compared to 3 years old, but the perception of them changed massively in that time.
In all likelyhood that pattern will repeat with Vista.
I've seen this claim quite a bit and it stands to reason; xbox appeals to hardcore gamers and they buy lots of games. But I've been wanting to seen some actual hard numbers.
Unfortunately, my searches done just now did not find me the numbers I wanted - all time software sales worldwide by console, but I did find one thing that was food for thought. (all numbers from www.vgchartz.com)
For week ending September 8, 2007 the software sales of xbox360 vs wii in America were 993574 vs 615084, while the number of consoles (total not sales) in America at that time were 7.03M vs 4.69M.
In other words the 360 sold 0.14 games per unit last week while the Wii sold 0.13 games per unit. Hardly the massive difference everyone assumes.
I think you've got it half right. I think that either through market research or just by watching sales the software companies are going to come to the conclusion that hardcore games aren't going to sell as well on the Wii as the size of install base would indicate. But while you see this as a reason for them to lean away from the Wii, I suspect it will just mean that they lean away from releasing "hardcore" games on the Wii.
Remember that often times its much cheaper to create games that are non-hardcore, and if that's what is most popular amoungst Wii owners, expect the software companies to go where the money is. And while the effect may be suttle, any time a programer is working on "mini-game collection 99" for the Wii, he's not working on "FPS 99" for the PS3/xbox360
I think your analysis of the Apple ads is spot on, and it explains the phenomina that Apple users seem to think the ads are brilliant, but other generally not as much (ranging anywhere from "kinda funny" down to "I HATE THEM").
But if that is the strategy of the Halo 3 ads, then it it hugely misplaced. Apple has a customer base that is going to need more computers in the future, but who on earth would need multiple copies of Halo 3?
I think it is far more likely that MS knows where the money is coming from. Do you really think that Halo 2 did as well as it did solely from the wallet's of fanbois? Without a doubt there were more than a few casual gamers who bought a copy, never mind the countless parents who bought a copy for their little brat.
This ad campaign may not be targeted at anyone who visits Slashdot, but that doesn't mean its money down the drain or "feel-good" money.
That joke got me wondering which actually is bigger, the number of Christians or the number of Windows users. A couple of google searches found me these pages:
- http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
- http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2163005,00.asp
which makes me think that the Christians still have the edge.