Nintendo is a great point. Once Nintendo did some lame stuff, exploiting their position by refusing to allow third party developers to give gamers great games. Now, Nintendo spends its money innovating. It's not that they a re the good guys, it's that they are the smart guys.
Sony paid its full penalty for their horrible rootkit, and they paid it many times over. I don't hold it against them for a nanosecond. I would, but they backlash was severe and they simply got their just deserts. I understand why you would never want to do business with Sony, though. DRM is a terribly silly way to make more money. When it's Sony vs. Microsoft, you can't really say one beats the other in this area, which was your point.
Sony indeed was arrogant to think Microsoft wouldn't be able to compete. And MS can't compete on a truly level playing field (imagine if MS hadn't spent enormous sums to buy up Halo, GTA4 content, etc etc, and of course subsidize product quality issues, and Sony would do it too if they had the cash and need).
Frankly, I don't think this is as good for the customer as it should be. We see each company screw the other. For example, XBOX gamers can't play GTA 4 on time because Sony paid for a launch parity. Playstation 3 owners don't get the full game on the ample Bluray disc because MS paid Rockstar for this crippling. It goes on and on, and frankly, it probably is much worse than we know. EA is cozying up to MS, and released a needlessly inferior Madden 2008 for PS3. Call me paranoid, but things like that could be deliberate.
Anyway, like I said above, no need to pick sides. I think Nintendo has the right idea about spending their money on R&D and not on bribes. Sony and Microsoft will learn (or maybe not, in our success-measured-quarterly economy, it's hard for companies to be smart).
And companies end up in hot water all the time. Saying that Apple could get in trouble is not a very good piece of evidence that I'm wrong. And you never made clear exactly how Apple could get into trouble.
AT&T is the largest provider because it is more competitive on a cost basis and service basis in the United States. By making the iphone superior to other products, I can absolutely guarantee that iphone sales are enhanced. YOu claim that customers can go elsehwere is also true. Some will, some won't. So you're obviously wrong that this doesn't help Apple. And does it help AT&T? AT&T thinks it does, or they wouldn't have done it. How does it help them? Because they get to sell the most interesting phone on the market, and no one else gets to. All this stuff is obvious. Change Apple to Sony or Microsoft and many more would admit I have a point.
The practice of crippling phones is standard trade practice, and it's extremely unlikely that AT&T or Apple is going to get into any trouble over this instance of it. For one thing, it's just product differentiation. You can't have too many products at the same level. If you spread out the quality and price, you attract more sales.
Again, of course this helps Apple. Just as much as it helps BMW not to be next to a Mercedes dealership, or if it is, if that Mercedes dealership doesn't offer repairs but the BMW dealership does.
Anyway, I find it amusing that people don't accept the obvious. It's not even that big of a sin.
No need to censor me. I wasn't criticizing Apple, but pointing out its conventional business practice. By allowing one provider only to have the elite iphone, Apple expected to receive some special treatment to maximize sales.
Too bad that some people view Apple as the "good guy' rather than as a company whose products they prefer.
Don't forget that you can get 5 free movies witht he XBOX ad-ona s well.
Oh, I see that you already know that. Oh well, I'll leave it up anyway to highlight the point. XBOXs are great deals right now. The online content is unparalleled, and this is the deal breaker for me.
But it's unfortunate that buying one rewards MS for lining pockets to further destroy a poorer competitor. This doesn't help the consumer at all. HD DVD clearly lost in the marketplace. Blu Ray movies just sound a lot better, and I'm glad that things were going this way. Microsoft is spending more money in backroom deals than it is spending making the next awesome technology.
As you say, Sony is having a hard time with the PS3, and if Bluray doesn't win, you can't understate just how screwed that company is. Sony took Microsoft on, head on, with Linux support and other obvious aspects of their system. And the arrogance that goes along with thinking they can beat a company as ruthless as Microsoft. I'd like to think they can survive, even thrive, by competing. That's going to be a tall order. I wouldn't be surprised to see more underhanded deals that don't benefit MS so much as they hurt Sony.
You would have had a point if you mentioned UMD, but Sony made a lot of money on the Minidisc. Just because something isn't true in the United States, does mean it isn't everywhere.
Of course consumers want there to be a clear winner so they can make a safer investment int he next technology.
What kind of a hack assumes someone works for Sony based on such a banal assessment?
The most fascinating thing these days is how easy it is to be accused of being a Sony employee or shill.
Pretty dirty what Microsoft is being accused of, eh? I have no idea if that's true though. That kind of money is serious cash, even for MS. They've been spending a lot on that GTA 4 game and on the XBOX division (which makes the XBOX a great bargain, but it's still very cutthroat to undercut below profit margin just to kill a poorer competitor).
We all know that Microsoft intends to get all this money back by screwing the customer over with DRM expiring movies. It's bad business, and it's obvious that Microsoft won't be able to hold onto any kind of living room monopoly even if it does manage to destroy Sony. Bad business, all around.
Look, a lot of people are pretending that this has nothing to do with apple. Obviously this only helps AT&T insofar as it helps Apple. Apple chose Cingular for a reason, and that reason was that it would promote this device in various ways. This is one of them.
Apple probably insisted that AT&T do this. No other explanation makes sense. It's not evil, it's just business. The iPhone is supposed to be the ultimate phone with maximum flexibility. I'm sure to many people, it actually seems that way. No reason to hate Apple for this. It's the way this industry works.
If you really really want your flexibility, you can't buy subsidized products. These companies are paying for your phones so they can have some control over them. If you don't mind, then it is win-win.
If you do mind, just buy an unlocked phone and use a carrier that supports your phone.
I love this dismissive and arrogant tone from someone who admits he doesn't understand what I'm talking about (while seeing that a lot of people share my opinion).
I'm not in the minority. If you aren't familiar with constant gripes about how long acrobat takes to load a normal pdf (by folks who haven't learns to work around this issue) you are simply out of touch.
Adobe, in the eyes of John Q Public, makes shoddy and slow software because of Adobe's bloat obsession. Is it true that some of this stuff helps some people that Adobe cares more about? Perhaps, but there is a reason that people avoid.pdf files at all cost. Does that helps the "enterprise clients?"
There will always be some cool feature you can add to virtually any program. The secret is to not load the unused stuff on startup. You load them when they are called for. Adobe fundamentally misunderstands how.pdf files are usually used (briefly).
opera isn't really a decent competitor for firefox. It's a good browser, but it's just not in the same niche. With firefox, I can tinker with extensions and settings a lot more than with opera.
To be fair, no I have not. I didn't want to pay for this (I can overlook UI issues if I need to, but I can't overlook my light wallet).
I'm probably going to have to look at it eventually, so I appreciate the suggestion. Adobe makes software that I need, and it would be nice if they made it well. But it's pretty easy to create a bad reputation, and they can't wait ten years to fix their office competitor as they perhaps have done with photoshop.
They might have a winner for you if they do this, but that would not make them as much money as the lock-in idea.
No reasonable company is about to do this well (in such a way that Microsoft would also support the new format, and the format is really flexible). We need MIT or some other academic institution to create a document file format that will get the job done well, and encourage Office and others to come to support it. Even this is far fetched. But it's all about the upgrades for adobe and MS. They can't let you move on easily with hippy file formats.
Photoshop, from a UI perspective isn't very good at all.
Acrobat is unbelievably bloated for such a simple thing that is barely more than viewing a fucking image.
Adobe isn't ready for prime time. Could they hope to create something as good as word perfect? OF course not, and word perfect was stomped into oblivion by Office.
And this crap software is supposed to compete with MS Office and a huge monpoly in the industry? It's going to be a big waste of investment. When Adobe can't even make a damn pdf reader correctly, they suck. You load the idiosynchratic things... only when you need them. Jeez.
I'm sure the parent knows how to delete those components or not load them. The point is that adobe is still using a dumb process that all the competent people work around.
If I were a shareholder in Aobe, I'd be ticked at them wasting money fighting Microsoft. Microsoft's monopoly cannot be reasonably defeated by better products.
You're obviously right. Open Office, which is basically a great clone of pre-ribbon office, but is free, is a terrific bargain and no one could claim office is actually a comparatively good deal.
But. People are paranoid about files being compatible and getting support, so a mere few hundred bucks really isn't that important when you pay your staff thirty thousand a year to use office 90% of the time they are working.
Microsoft has a monopoly. Again. They know what they are doing. I wouldn't be surprised if MS started having XBOX 360s installed in TVs at a radical discount. This has been a great business model for them (and it's not always a bad thing).
Oh, and wtf is with Office 2007? I just installed it ten minutes ago and it's crazy different. I hope I can fix the settings.
You're truly a psycho paranoid. I'm sorry, but you really think attacking people as paid shills is effective? Argue with the merits of his claims. I think that shouldn't be hard to do, XBOX live is very popular and that speaks for itself. But dedicated servers, 40 man games, and free access are all cool. Home is probably cool too (not really relevant, but it's free and online and second life is popular with weirdos, so sort of)
Also, some people don't want to bother registering if they don't have to. Sony fans get attacked here, so you have to expect some normal folks to post AC. Certainty Sony isn't above the viral marketing we see from it and its competitors, but I'm sure they could just pay for friendlier articles like Microsoft seems to. Do you really think it's worth Sony's time to come here, where they are hated, and try to convince you to buy a PS3? No, if that's occurring it's on youtube, fark, myspace, etc.
Am I a paid shill or a raving fanboy? No, of course not. Is it possible in your world for someone to be a Sony fan without being raving and evil? I like some of Sony's cool stuff. I like Nintendo's recent console for it's ingenuity, and I like how Sony has made a system that is quite versatile. The XBOX isn't too appealing to me, though it's obviously very appealing to many, and I wouldn't say that someone who claims to love it is a paid shill.
What's with this "shill" word, by the way. It's used so frequently by the anti-Sony contigent. Is that supposed to be irritating? It makes you look uncreative and easy to mentally filter as a wacko. Anyway, the PS3 is superior in many ways to the XBOX (and also inferior). IF you have nothing to say when someone points out why the Sony is his preference beyond accusing him of being paid or raving, then you are admitting you have no real argument. And frankly you don't. There is no reason for anyone to contend that Sony's online experience is not a better value than XBOX's expensive and limited version. Sony has idiot marketing and a terrible attitude, but on this issue they seem to have the better argument.
You didn't understand the parent. He didn't claim the PS3 can't read dvds or cds. And frankly, it's not that impressive that the PS3 can do so. Yes, USB peripherals, be them HD DVD players or dvd burners, do work fine.
The parent thinks that skipping the components in the PS3 not related to this game would save money. IE, no need for the optical audio output or the flash card readers or any optical disc reader. Makes sense, but it may be cheaper not to go through the customization trouble since Sony has plenty of stock (and there was that 20 gig return issue).
Kasparov assumed this computer would act as it had been acting and he played accordingly. Whether a person omitted the computer's actual move and just made their own specifically to counter Kasparov knowledge of computer-chess or if this computer was meant to act in this anomalous manner, Kasparov acted correctly by playing his opponent.
Almost all the time he played a computer, this tactic was effective.
I think these rules show that big blue simply didn't accomplish very much. With all the secrecy, it's possible or likely that IBM just substituted a person for a computer at this juncture. That's not in the spirit of the contest. A computer cannot be programed so that it can beat a person. It would have to be interacted with by that person's actual opponent in order to win. That sentence may not be true, but big blue certainly failed to disprove it.
I disagree. Most folks have standard TVs, so for the wii to be sociable, it should avoid relying on something that is less common.
When you are playing a part game, you're paying attention to people and their enjoyment, not the crisp lines on your screen. If anything, blurier graphics are easier to see for less focused players. nintendo didn't hit that out of the park on purpose, they just realized they could succeed with less.
And hey, that goes to show that after a couple of flops, nintendo learned and is back with a cooler system than the 64 or the cube. Sony could just as easily come out with a winner PS5 in fifteen years. I'm pretty sure they are happy with where they are, with a lackluster PS3 paving the way for billions on bluray royalties.
There was a recent article on Slashdot's main page explaining that the new PS3 has 80 gigs of memory. "If you're pedantic enough, yeah, that's memory" was the defense.
Computers are becoming appliances. That's part of why laptops are so popular. They seem more robust because there are fewer components that have to be plugged in. microsoft is going to be tough to beat if they can keep being the default. If you spend a lot of money on a computer, it's working ok but you don't understand it, there is no way you're going to mess with the OS.
Look, I'm on your side, but Linux isn't easier and faster to install than Windows if windows was already installed.
Also, ubuntu takes time to learn (like windows), but most folks have a handle on the "start button" thingie. I have to say, Ubuntu is already too easy, but to appeal to the lowest common denominator, it would have to approach fisher-price user friendliness.
I've also noticed that many colleges have that campus agreement with Microsoft. I'm sure it's partly meant to keep poor college kids, smart people who could figure out ubuntu, from having financial incentive to do so.
Apparently the world's greatest chess master has a lot to learn from you. Must be nice to have absolute platitudes to rely on.
Fact is, in poker, chess, and life, you need to play the opponent. Risk takers are beaten in a different way.
Slashdot Mirror
hehehe,
well, that was very funny then. I eat my crow. Gotta admit, it was funny because it was believable.
Nintendo is a great point. Once Nintendo did some lame stuff, exploiting their position by refusing to allow third party developers to give gamers great games. Now, Nintendo spends its money innovating. It's not that they a re the good guys, it's that they are the smart guys.
Sony paid its full penalty for their horrible rootkit, and they paid it many times over. I don't hold it against them for a nanosecond. I would, but they backlash was severe and they simply got their just deserts. I understand why you would never want to do business with Sony, though. DRM is a terribly silly way to make more money. When it's Sony vs. Microsoft, you can't really say one beats the other in this area, which was your point.
Sony indeed was arrogant to think Microsoft wouldn't be able to compete. And MS can't compete on a truly level playing field (imagine if MS hadn't spent enormous sums to buy up Halo, GTA4 content, etc etc, and of course subsidize product quality issues, and Sony would do it too if they had the cash and need).
Frankly, I don't think this is as good for the customer as it should be. We see each company screw the other. For example, XBOX gamers can't play GTA 4 on time because Sony paid for a launch parity. Playstation 3 owners don't get the full game on the ample Bluray disc because MS paid Rockstar for this crippling. It goes on and on, and frankly, it probably is much worse than we know. EA is cozying up to MS, and released a needlessly inferior Madden 2008 for PS3. Call me paranoid, but things like that could be deliberate.
Anyway, like I said above, no need to pick sides. I think Nintendo has the right idea about spending their money on R&D and not on bribes. Sony and Microsoft will learn (or maybe not, in our success-measured-quarterly economy, it's hard for companies to be smart).
And companies end up in hot water all the time. Saying that Apple could get in trouble is not a very good piece of evidence that I'm wrong. And you never made clear exactly how Apple could get into trouble.
AT&T is the largest provider because it is more competitive on a cost basis and service basis in the United States. By making the iphone superior to other products, I can absolutely guarantee that iphone sales are enhanced. YOu claim that customers can go elsehwere is also true. Some will, some won't. So you're obviously wrong that this doesn't help Apple. And does it help AT&T? AT&T thinks it does, or they wouldn't have done it. How does it help them? Because they get to sell the most interesting phone on the market, and no one else gets to. All this stuff is obvious. Change Apple to Sony or Microsoft and many more would admit I have a point.
The practice of crippling phones is standard trade practice, and it's extremely unlikely that AT&T or Apple is going to get into any trouble over this instance of it. For one thing, it's just product differentiation. You can't have too many products at the same level. If you spread out the quality and price, you attract more sales.
Again, of course this helps Apple. Just as much as it helps BMW not to be next to a Mercedes dealership, or if it is, if that Mercedes dealership doesn't offer repairs but the BMW dealership does.
Anyway, I find it amusing that people don't accept the obvious. It's not even that big of a sin.
No need to censor me. I wasn't criticizing Apple, but pointing out its conventional business practice. By allowing one provider only to have the elite iphone, Apple expected to receive some special treatment to maximize sales.
Too bad that some people view Apple as the "good guy' rather than as a company whose products they prefer.
Don't forget that you can get 5 free movies witht he XBOX ad-ona s well.
Oh, I see that you already know that. Oh well, I'll leave it up anyway to highlight the point. XBOXs are great deals right now. The online content is unparalleled, and this is the deal breaker for me.
But it's unfortunate that buying one rewards MS for lining pockets to further destroy a poorer competitor. This doesn't help the consumer at all. HD DVD clearly lost in the marketplace. Blu Ray movies just sound a lot better, and I'm glad that things were going this way. Microsoft is spending more money in backroom deals than it is spending making the next awesome technology.
As you say, Sony is having a hard time with the PS3, and if Bluray doesn't win, you can't understate just how screwed that company is. Sony took Microsoft on, head on, with Linux support and other obvious aspects of their system. And the arrogance that goes along with thinking they can beat a company as ruthless as Microsoft. I'd like to think they can survive, even thrive, by competing. That's going to be a tall order. I wouldn't be surprised to see more underhanded deals that don't benefit MS so much as they hurt Sony.
It's not necessary to pick sides, thank goodness.
You would have had a point if you mentioned UMD, but Sony made a lot of money on the Minidisc. Just because something isn't true in the United States, does mean it isn't everywhere.
Of course consumers want there to be a clear winner so they can make a safer investment int he next technology.
What kind of a hack assumes someone works for Sony based on such a banal assessment?
The most fascinating thing these days is how easy it is to be accused of being a Sony employee or shill.
Pretty dirty what Microsoft is being accused of, eh? I have no idea if that's true though. That kind of money is serious cash, even for MS. They've been spending a lot on that GTA 4 game and on the XBOX division (which makes the XBOX a great bargain, but it's still very cutthroat to undercut below profit margin just to kill a poorer competitor).
We all know that Microsoft intends to get all this money back by screwing the customer over with DRM expiring movies. It's bad business, and it's obvious that Microsoft won't be able to hold onto any kind of living room monopoly even if it does manage to destroy Sony. Bad business, all around.
Look, a lot of people are pretending that this has nothing to do with apple. Obviously this only helps AT&T insofar as it helps Apple. Apple chose Cingular for a reason, and that reason was that it would promote this device in various ways. This is one of them.
Apple probably insisted that AT&T do this. No other explanation makes sense. It's not evil, it's just business. The iPhone is supposed to be the ultimate phone with maximum flexibility. I'm sure to many people, it actually seems that way. No reason to hate Apple for this. It's the way this industry works.
If you really really want your flexibility, you can't buy subsidized products. These companies are paying for your phones so they can have some control over them. If you don't mind, then it is win-win.
If you do mind, just buy an unlocked phone and use a carrier that supports your phone.
I love this dismissive and arrogant tone from someone who admits he doesn't understand what I'm talking about (while seeing that a lot of people share my opinion).
.pdf files at all cost. Does that helps the "enterprise clients?"
.pdf files are usually used (briefly).
I'm not in the minority. If you aren't familiar with constant gripes about how long acrobat takes to load a normal pdf (by folks who haven't learns to work around this issue) you are simply out of touch.
Adobe, in the eyes of John Q Public, makes shoddy and slow software because of Adobe's bloat obsession. Is it true that some of this stuff helps some people that Adobe cares more about? Perhaps, but there is a reason that people avoid
There will always be some cool feature you can add to virtually any program. The secret is to not load the unused stuff on startup. You load them when they are called for. Adobe fundamentally misunderstands how
opera isn't really a decent competitor for firefox. It's a good browser, but it's just not in the same niche. With firefox, I can tinker with extensions and settings a lot more than with opera.
To be fair, no I have not. I didn't want to pay for this (I can overlook UI issues if I need to, but I can't overlook my light wallet).
I'm probably going to have to look at it eventually, so I appreciate the suggestion. Adobe makes software that I need, and it would be nice if they made it well. But it's pretty easy to create a bad reputation, and they can't wait ten years to fix their office competitor as they perhaps have done with photoshop.
foxit reader sucks! I hate that program. It's so poorly made.
But I do use it! Because acrobat is even worse.
They might have a winner for you if they do this, but that would not make them as much money as the lock-in idea.
No reasonable company is about to do this well (in such a way that Microsoft would also support the new format, and the format is really flexible). We need MIT or some other academic institution to create a document file format that will get the job done well, and encourage Office and others to come to support it. Even this is far fetched. But it's all about the upgrades for adobe and MS. They can't let you move on easily with hippy file formats.
Photoshop, from a UI perspective isn't very good at all.
Acrobat is unbelievably bloated for such a simple thing that is barely more than viewing a fucking image.
Adobe isn't ready for prime time. Could they hope to create something as good as word perfect? OF course not, and word perfect was stomped into oblivion by Office.
And this crap software is supposed to compete with MS Office and a huge monpoly in the industry? It's going to be a big waste of investment. When Adobe can't even make a damn pdf reader correctly, they suck. You load the idiosynchratic things... only when you need them. Jeez.
I'm sure the parent knows how to delete those components or not load them. The point is that adobe is still using a dumb process that all the competent people work around.
If I were a shareholder in Aobe, I'd be ticked at them wasting money fighting Microsoft. Microsoft's monopoly cannot be reasonably defeated by better products.
You're obviously right. Open Office, which is basically a great clone of pre-ribbon office, but is free, is a terrific bargain and no one could claim office is actually a comparatively good deal.
But. People are paranoid about files being compatible and getting support, so a mere few hundred bucks really isn't that important when you pay your staff thirty thousand a year to use office 90% of the time they are working.
Microsoft has a monopoly. Again. They know what they are doing. I wouldn't be surprised if MS started having XBOX 360s installed in TVs at a radical discount. This has been a great business model for them (and it's not always a bad thing).
Oh, and wtf is with Office 2007? I just installed it ten minutes ago and it's crazy different. I hope I can fix the settings.
You're truly a psycho paranoid. I'm sorry, but you really think attacking people as paid shills is effective? Argue with the merits of his claims. I think that shouldn't be hard to do, XBOX live is very popular and that speaks for itself. But dedicated servers, 40 man games, and free access are all cool. Home is probably cool too (not really relevant, but it's free and online and second life is popular with weirdos, so sort of)
Also, some people don't want to bother registering if they don't have to. Sony fans get attacked here, so you have to expect some normal folks to post AC. Certainty Sony isn't above the viral marketing we see from it and its competitors, but I'm sure they could just pay for friendlier articles like Microsoft seems to. Do you really think it's worth Sony's time to come here, where they are hated, and try to convince you to buy a PS3? No, if that's occurring it's on youtube, fark, myspace, etc.
Am I a paid shill or a raving fanboy? No, of course not. Is it possible in your world for someone to be a Sony fan without being raving and evil? I like some of Sony's cool stuff. I like Nintendo's recent console for it's ingenuity, and I like how Sony has made a system that is quite versatile. The XBOX isn't too appealing to me, though it's obviously very appealing to many, and I wouldn't say that someone who claims to love it is a paid shill.
What's with this "shill" word, by the way. It's used so frequently by the anti-Sony contigent. Is that supposed to be irritating? It makes you look uncreative and easy to mentally filter as a wacko. Anyway, the PS3 is superior in many ways to the XBOX (and also inferior). IF you have nothing to say when someone points out why the Sony is his preference beyond accusing him of being paid or raving, then you are admitting you have no real argument. And frankly you don't. There is no reason for anyone to contend that Sony's online experience is not a better value than XBOX's expensive and limited version. Sony has idiot marketing and a terrible attitude, but on this issue they seem to have the better argument.
You didn't understand the parent. He didn't claim the PS3 can't read dvds or cds. And frankly, it's not that impressive that the PS3 can do so. Yes, USB peripherals, be them HD DVD players or dvd burners, do work fine.
The parent thinks that skipping the components in the PS3 not related to this game would save money. IE, no need for the optical audio output or the flash card readers or any optical disc reader. Makes sense, but it may be cheaper not to go through the customization trouble since Sony has plenty of stock (and there was that 20 gig return issue).
Kasparov assumed this computer would act as it had been acting and he played accordingly. Whether a person omitted the computer's actual move and just made their own specifically to counter Kasparov knowledge of computer-chess or if this computer was meant to act in this anomalous manner, Kasparov acted correctly by playing his opponent.
Almost all the time he played a computer, this tactic was effective.
I think these rules show that big blue simply didn't accomplish very much. With all the secrecy, it's possible or likely that IBM just substituted a person for a computer at this juncture. That's not in the spirit of the contest. A computer cannot be programed so that it can beat a person. It would have to be interacted with by that person's actual opponent in order to win. That sentence may not be true, but big blue certainly failed to disprove it.
I disagree. Most folks have standard TVs, so for the wii to be sociable, it should avoid relying on something that is less common. When you are playing a part game, you're paying attention to people and their enjoyment, not the crisp lines on your screen. If anything, blurier graphics are easier to see for less focused players. nintendo didn't hit that out of the park on purpose, they just realized they could succeed with less. And hey, that goes to show that after a couple of flops, nintendo learned and is back with a cooler system than the 64 or the cube. Sony could just as easily come out with a winner PS5 in fifteen years. I'm pretty sure they are happy with where they are, with a lackluster PS3 paving the way for billions on bluray royalties.
In other news, 94% of XBOX owners didn't know that their console had next gen format capabilities.
There was a recent article on Slashdot's main page explaining that the new PS3 has 80 gigs of memory. "If you're pedantic enough, yeah, that's memory" was the defense. Computers are becoming appliances. That's part of why laptops are so popular. They seem more robust because there are fewer components that have to be plugged in. microsoft is going to be tough to beat if they can keep being the default. If you spend a lot of money on a computer, it's working ok but you don't understand it, there is no way you're going to mess with the OS.
Look, I'm on your side, but Linux isn't easier and faster to install than Windows if windows was already installed. Also, ubuntu takes time to learn (like windows), but most folks have a handle on the "start button" thingie. I have to say, Ubuntu is already too easy, but to appeal to the lowest common denominator, it would have to approach fisher-price user friendliness. I've also noticed that many colleges have that campus agreement with Microsoft. I'm sure it's partly meant to keep poor college kids, smart people who could figure out ubuntu, from having financial incentive to do so.
Apparently the world's greatest chess master has a lot to learn from you. Must be nice to have absolute platitudes to rely on. Fact is, in poker, chess, and life, you need to play the opponent. Risk takers are beaten in a different way.