Ohhh... ok, so that explains why the "white man" doesn't get AIDS.
It is perhaps possible that you are not from Africa, and thus do not know that there are actually a lot of blacks in Africa that insist AIDS is a white conspiracy of some sort. The exact conspiracy changes, but the disbelief in AIDS doesn't.
There are several areas in Africa with 70% + HIV infection rates among blacks. On the whole, the whites dont get AIDS and the blacks do. There has been quite a bit of headscratching about this, and there seem to be several factors involved:
1) Male circumcision - Recent studies seem to show that male circumcision decreases the chance of a male becoming infected by a factor of around 7. That's a huge factor. A lot of whites are circumcised, but very few blacks are (in the high infection areas I am speaking about). 2) Social mores and ignorance - Several of the black cultures involved have very different attitudes to sex and safe sex. In many areas its almost impossible for the woman to get the man to wear a condom, because of both ignorance and the low social status of women. There is often basic ignorance of the concept of a germ theory of disease. 3) Whites tend to have fewer concurrent sexual partners. For those steeped in Western social mores or with a penchant for political correctness, I'm not saying either whites or blacks are heedless and promiscuous. However, I am saying that it is a lot more acceptable to have more than one concurrent stable sexual relationship in many black cultures, and this makes it easier for AIDS to spread than the white cultural tendency to have many partners in succession. 4) Fundamental disbelief in AIDS - It's hard to get people to take precautions when they think you are talking out your ass. When people die, the disease that killed them is pointed to as the cause of death, not AIDS. So, malaria, tuberculosis, and the flu have been really bad lately.
This means there are areas with near 100% infection rates in blacks, and very low infection rates in whites. It has nothing to do with race, and probably everything to do with social mores, conventions, and culture.
I don't claim to be the last word on this, but I came to the conclusions above after speaking to a fair number of people, some of them paramedics, and some of them farmers in remote areas.
Special case. If you can be sure the money will go to something simple like first aid and stop-gap supplies, then a donation is okay. Even in a case like this, you have to be ultra-paranoid about who you give your money to. Most NGOs are no good, but some of the really well known names might be okay for a limited case like this. Anecdotally, I think the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army are reasonable candidates. Make sure its the American Red Cross, not one of the other ones.
Avoid anything affiliated with the UN; they are among the worst. You would be better off feeding the money to your dog.
Generally the US Military do a good job, but I'm not sure if you can donate money to them for disaster relief. They come in and help before anyone else can get there (which is the most crucial time), mainly because they have their own logistics train and lots of equipment. They help by doing, which beats a bunch of NGOs and the UN pitching up two months after the fact and driving their fancy SUVs around and throwing around money.
Um, yeah, in restrospect, I would have to say the US Military beat all the rest hands down for disaster relief. I guess American Red Cross and Salvation Army would be my guarded recommendation for donations for disaster relief.
I'm sure there are better candidates on a case by case basis, but you would have to do some very serious research to figure out if they are worth your money. Sorry to be so negative, but from my experience I would have to say the rule is "distrust first" when talking about charities and the third world.
The problems are pretty simple to solve, but would involve telling people to "Think locally, act locally". In other words, stick to what you know and only pay money for real value. The fact that your money is associated with a real thing means it's hard for corrupt politicians to steal it. The rest will sort itself out. Giving donations is a way to feel good while hurting people. Don't do it.
Explain to me the part where my money somehow travels from Japan to China? We are talking about Sony.
Yes, we are, and yet a large proportion of the parts in the PS3 will come from China, one way or another. Although Sony is a Japanese company, it now has several factories in China. Similarly for Toshiba and friends. Ignoring factories, many of the smaller parts and connectors will be sourced from China.
I'm not a liberal weenie by any stretch of the imagination, but I just get annoyed that many people will buy a $600 PS3 than would donate that amount to the suffering in our world.
As someone who has spent a fair amount of time in the parts of the world where people are suffering, I will say that I really wish people would keep their donations to themselves.
If you want to kill someone in the third world, donate money or food. Because:
1) The money or food will be stolen by local politicians, because the donators don't care, and it's easier to steal foreign donations than local monies. Money will be used to support local or state militias, and food will be denied those that dare to vote for the opposition. 2) The organisations organising the donations try to make people dependent on them, so they have people who will need support next year. 3) Even the organisations that think they are doing good are usually just destroying local markets. How do you make a farmer starve? Easy, just give away product just like his for free. Two years later, we have no farmers. Nifty, eh? 4) Do-gooders come from overseas and install stuff that the locals simply don't care about. The end result is some righteous feeling Westerners, and a bunch of useless hardare that doesn't get used. 5) Institutions facilitating donations do so in order to have a stream of money that they can siphon off of for the institution. The more money the better. Where it goes is immaterial. Typically, less than 10% of it goes anywhere psuedo-useful. 6) The more idealistic the people handing out the money, the more chance that items 1, 3 and 4 will come into play.
If you want to help third world countries, buy stuff made in those countries. Tell anyone who screams about "sweat shops" to shut up. They are usually complaining about what workers are being paid, without any concept of just how much money that is in a third world environment. They complain about working conditions without comparing them to average conditions in those areas. Generally, people who are involved in making things actually get paid, unlike people who are supposedly being supported by donations. People who make things are part of an economy and are being paid for what they do. Grow that economy and you will help them.
Another way to help is to invest in companies in the third world, and insist on a return on investment, and insist on a rule of law before investing your money. Punish corruption and ruthlessly withdraw your investment if you don't get what you want.
So, think of your $600 PS3 as a way of supporting the little guy in China. The Chinese government can attempt to suppress its people, but the more trade it has with the rest of the world, the more uppity its people get as they get richer and the more difficult it is for the government to do something stupid without tanking their own economy.
What you're saying doesn't disprove the price breakdowns.
No it doesn't, but I don't feel any urge to disprove "Alice in Wonderland" either. The breakdowns were a joke.
There is no doubt that MS lost money on the XBox, but that is because they produced something that couldn't be cost reduced. They didn't own all the parts and their suppliers had no reason to integrate their chips more to reduce costs. The reason the PS2 is so profitable is it has been reduced to almost one chip, a drive mechanism, an enclosure and some connectors.
My prediction is that Sony will make a slight loss on the PS3 bill of materials for the first six months or so. Once yields on the cell cpu and GPU are up, and they have real volume production going they'll be able to reduce the price and still cover costs. In the end, the PS3 is a drive, some chips, some connectors and an enclosure. The chips are expensive right now, but those costs will go down fast. The drive is expensive, but not as expensive as claimed, judging from the raw Blu-Ray drives you can buy, and that cost will go down fast too.
This is probably the best argument I have heard against my argument. It doesn't appeal to emotions, and makes a good argument about rational decisions people will make given current conditions.
I think that the number of people that will be swung over to the 360 in the interim won't have a significant long-term affect, but I could easily be wrong. I think you are right in that people stick with whatever they happened to buy first, so sales lost in the next six months cut into the future forever after. However, I don't think that the price announcement will change the number of people that go one way or the other all that much. In other words, I think Sony are in the hole for six months, and the other stuff is secondary.
I agree. Sony is not an innovator. I think this touches on concepts covered in "The Innovator's Dilemma", which I have heard a lot about, but have yet to read.
I think the argument goes something like this: Little companies become big companies by figuring out what people really need and then giving it to them, regardless of the current status quo. Their size means they can respond quickly, and occasionally they get lucky and take over the world with a new idea. Once they are big companies though, they listen to their customers and give them what they want. However, as big companies they are very unlikely to do anything truly disruptive again, because they cannot thrive in a disruptive environment, and they listen for what their average customer wants. I think it's because they have too many fingers in other parts of the pie, and they like the security that comes with knowing the pie won't change. Also, customers tell you what they want, which is not a very good way of thinking of out the box ways to satisfy what they actually need.
Microsoft is unusual in console gaming, because they don't have any fingers in that pie. As a result, they are trying to be disruptive, in the hope that when the dust settles, they will be on top, and can then become boring and safe again.
Sony is trying (well, Kutaragi is), but the internal fights within Sony have already crushed most of that. Kutaragi was the anointed future leader of Sony. Instead he got ousted by Stringer, who is Welsh. Stringer is an "Intellectual Property" person. He works in the media side of Sony, and his vision for Sony is as closed as possible, with DRM on everything. Kutaragi was at this time talking about Linux and other such concepts.
Typically, electronics companies do everything they can to avoid DRM, because it loses them sales. However, most of the big electronics companies now have media arms, and the media people are convinced that only mind control and DRM will save their sales in a digital era. Stringer ousting Kutaragi is an unfortunate sign of which camp currently has ascendancy within Sony. Anyway, rest assured that Sony won't be rocking any boats.
I have a theory that the cheaper PS3 (without HDMI) is a subtle ploy by Kutaragi. He is destroying the homogenous HDMI base out there. By releasing a player that can play DRM protected HD content, but that doesn't insist on a DRM capable TV, he is helping torpedo DRM. At least, I really really hope so. *sigh*
Sony makes lots of things that people want. They make average things that on average, people want, and they are pretty successful at it. I think it's just what they are today.
In an abstract world where pure free market economies reach immediate equilibrium, maybe this is true, but that's completely discounting the real-world backlash of much of the gaming world and the terrible perception this gave people of Sony. Sure, there will still be people lining up to buy them on release, but for long afterward, people will still have bad associations going with this announcement. In the real world, you can't fix a PR fiasco like this just by lowering the price to a reasonable value (assuming they could even afford to).
I think you drastically overestimate the importance of the "gaming world". Magazines and some online forums may whine about the cost now and over Christmas, and all PS3s will still be sold out while they are whining. Later on, when the price comes down, they will have a hard time whining about what the cost used to be. Their subscribers couldn't care less. If they can afford it and it provides them with enough value, they will buy it. That goes double for people who don't read the gaming press.
Meanwhile, a large proportion of the whiners will slink off and buy one when the price comes down, or they won't, and the world at large won't care.
When it comes to a price war, the PS3 and 360 are pretty much on an even footing after the first six months of production. The Wii will be a little cheaper, but as time goes on, the relevant costs will become irrelevant, and towards the end of the Wii's life, the 360 and PS3 could conceivably come within a few tens of dollars of its cost, and most of the difference will be in costs for connectors and casing, not chips. This will never be true for the XBOX, though, as it uses too many third party parts.
One thing that may make a difference will be the difference in the Sony and MS pricing schemes for their online gaming. Seeing as all the details aren't out yet, I can't really guess which way it will affect things.
This announcement had a much larger effect on the overall gaming world than just "Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait for the price to drop."
Actually, it sounds a whole lot more like "Waaah, I want that and I can't afford it" to me. The first half of that sentence is unlikely to change, assuming there are good games out there for the PS3 and Blu-Ray isn't a disaster. The second half will. The rest is just so much water under the bridge.
The production costs for the PS3 are very high. Even at these high retail prices they are taking a significant loss, probably $200 per console. They simply cannot sell it for less without taking a real bath. Holding out and expecting it will magically go down to $400 soon is not a good idea. The only way it gets cut in price like that is desperation for a failing console, which seems likely at this point.
I used to design consumer electronic devices for a living, and the price breakdowns I have seen for the PS3 are so obviously wrong that they arent worth talking about.
This ignores the timing of the release and the fact that Sony is not the only console maker. Come Christmas, MS and Nintendo will probably be making a lot of extra sales thanks to Sony's pricing, and dropping the price later won't bring back the holiday buying frenzy.
You are claiming that Sony won't sell every PS3 they can make over Christmas, right? I think you are wrong. Demand will outstrip supply. So, guess what, it makes no difference to Sony what MS and Nintendo are doing. They will sell all their consoles, and make more money because they charged more for the them.
With such a high initial price, Sony is basically souring a bunch of people on the PS3. Many of them will buy one of the other consoles, and if they later have a few hundred bucks lying around, they'll probably buy a pile of games for what they have rather than spend it on a PS3. In my view, Sony has just handed over a big hunk of market share.
I think you assume too much emotion stored over time. The average person will go "Gee whizz, that thing must be cool to be so expensive. Maybe I'll get it next year when it's cheaper". The hardcore religious gamer will buy the brand he supports when he can afford it, and the rest of the gamers will buy the system that supports the games they want to play, when they can afford it and the games.
Don't forget that the PS2 is still on sale, with an incredible number of games, second hand and new. Grannies buying their Christmas presents for the kids are just as likely to buy a PS2 as something else. Sony has their "cheap" entry into the console market.
Does anyone remember how long it took before the PS2 price dropped after launch? Didn't it take several years?
It's not relevant. Sony will maintain a particular price as long as people are willing to pay it. If all the whining on slashdot is correct, then the price will come down quickly. However, if people think that it is worth the money then Sony will see strong sales and the price won't come down.
Either way, complaining about the initial asking price is silly. The PS3 price will come down over time. The only thing affecting this is demand. Sony has to cover its costs, which aren't as bad as people have been claiming, and it also knows how many units it wants to sell. Those things affect the price more than anything else.
Sony could sell the PS3 at the same price as the XBOX 360, but they won't because that would make them less money (or maybe push them into a loss), and they will still sell everything they can make at the higher price, at least for the first few months.
Sony will charge high prices for the initial release of the PS3 and they will sell them as fast as they can make them. After demand decreases at that price, they will adjust the price to match the competition.
They can do this because there are people that will pay the initial release price and be happy to do so. The XBOX 360 was arguably underpriced on release: how many were sold on ebay for prices way above the MSRP?
Freaking about the price of the PS3 is meaningless, because the price is temporary, and will come down when it makes sense for it to do so. In the meantime, Sony will recoup their costs on a production line that is still scaling up to volume production, early adopters will voluntarily get screwed and appreciate the experience, and life will go on for everyone else.
Until then, I'll be playing games on my GameCube, PSP, and PS2, and will be generally chilling out. I suggest everyone else do the same.
I can't help but feel that this new "motion sensitive" feature will go the way of the "pressure sensitive" buttons - very few games will bother using them, since they're not really a core feature of the controller. Try as I might, I cannot imagine twisting a PS2 controller around for any length of time. It's just too heavy and too unweildy to continuely wave around. Imagine having to hold your PS2 controller steady, because accidently tipping it might do something unintended. (To be fair, I can't imagine twisting the Wii remote around for any length of time either, but not having held that, I'm willing to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt.)
I can see one potential use, and if anyone gets it right, I think it will take the world by storm. I think the orientation sensor should be used to control the camera in platformers. Many people complain about squirelly cameras in 3D platformers, as do I. I often find myself hankering after the 2D platformers I played on my Amiga, for just this reason.
Anyway, if the tilt sensor just sets the camera angle relative to the default "auto camera" position, I could see this being really useful. It could become a really intuitive unconscious way of controlling the camera in realtime.
Oh, the PS3 controller is a lot lighter than the PS2 controller, BTW.
The catch is that by the time it is proven beyond any doubt, the worst predictions may have occurred. It seems foolish to do nothing until it's too late, especially because the risk is so great and the cost is so minor.
*snort* Riiiiight, the cost is minor.
So far, global warming "solutions" I have seen fall into three categories:
1) They completely destroy the economies of a random selection of first world countries, and might make a tiny difference to the temperature of the planet one century from now. 2) They result in the deaths of millions of third world inhabitants due to starvation or exposure, and might make a tiny difference to the temperature of the planet one century from now. 3) They do some weaker variation of (1) and/or (2), but make no measurable difference to any temperatures anywhere, ever.
Seeing as there are studies out there that show we may actually enter into an ice age in the next few decades, and they are just as believable (if not more so) as any of the global warming work I have seen, maybe we should rush outside and burn things just in case?
I agree with your post. One article should be taken with a grain of salt.
However, there is much evidence to suggest that global warming is bad science; the scientific equivalent of a fad. If you have been paying attention, you will have found that many respected scientists have expressed a variation of the following:
1) Global warming is bad science. 2) I only say this, I don't write about it, because I like my funding and my job.
There has been a serious fight over the initial data that started the whole ball rolling, and the primary difference between the two camps is that the anti global warming people don't receive funding, promotion, or positive media coverage.
There is a massive bias, and it is affecting the science done at the root - the opposing view is simply being starved of man hours.
To make my point in another way, if I gave a scientist a large amount of random data, he would find within that data a poem that is a letter perfect copy of a poem by David Frost. However, by finding that poem, he would not have proved the existence of David Frost. Without specifying just how hard he was looking, and without specifying the probability that a random result would provide data to match his hypothesis, he is doing bad science. He should allow himself to be biased by reality, and the only way to do that is weigh all sides against reality. Finding something that one is looking for is a very weak result.
BTW, I take "global warming" to mean the rough idea that man is causing a catastrophic rise in the temperature of the earth, through known mechanisms involving fossil fuel and CO2. It does not mean "the world is getting warmer". On the other hand proving that the world is getting cooler is sufficient to invalidate global warming.
Now, maybe global warming is real. Unfortunately, we don't know because of all the bad science in this area. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and I have seen precious little unrebuttable proof that was actually relevant. In my judgement, global warming is an untested hypothesis, because the environment in which it grew is so uncritical as to be worthless. Similarly, many of the current findings make an implicit assumptions that previous findings prove some aspect of global warming, and yet claim to provide further evidence of its existance. It's a huge self-referential circular mess.
"A Mathematician Plays The Stock Market", by John Allen Paulos.
He explains how a market can aggregate information efficiently (and how it sometimes doesn't). He doesn't cover some of the chaos theory experimental results I have read about elsewhere, but other than that, it's a wonderful and fun book to read.
I have helped design consumer electronics devices for several large companies as a contractor, and we have a simple rule of thumb for consumer electronics devices called the "5 times rule". If someone wants to sell something for $500 retail, the parts and construction can't cost you more than $100. If you aren't including enclosure costs and other such things, the quick rule of thumb is the "ten times rule".
Shocking, I know, but if Samsung sell something for $1000, they would be fools if it cost them more than $200 to make. You can break these rules when your volumes get insane, but most of the time it's not a bad rule to follow for the initial release price of a product.
Now, most people claim that consoles are sold at a loss. This is not really true. Most consoles are very profitable over most of their lives, and pretty early into the sales cycle. However, you can break the five times rule if you like (well, partially--retailers still expect some profit, even if it's less than other products). That means you can sell it at cost, or close to it, not make a loss, and make money off games and accessories.
Compared to the "normal" way of doing things, selling at cost or a little more than that is equivalent to selling at a loss. But, for a console, it's not actually selling at a loss, it's just covering your costs and making the real profit elsewhere.
Sony could make a PS3 that costs $400 to make, and sell it for $500, and they would be selling something that would cost $2000 on the first day of release in another industry.
*sigh* No, they just just take as long as they need to take. That means that when things are easy there isn't much change. Strong selection pressure (picky females/males, hostile environments, parasites) all make for faster change, that we know of. For example, 85% of the variation in the human genome is due to the Malaria parasite. We think Malawi Cichlids speciate so fast because their females are so picky. Etc.
Anyway, your original post used the "it's obvious" proof technique, and, well, it's not. Saying something is obvious because you can see a plethora of examples that may not apply doesn't make something obvious.
Your post is fundamentally wrong. Evolution is capable of producing new species of macroscopic organisms in a matter of months. For example, new species of Malawi Cichlids (a kind of fish) have been observed developing over a six month period, in the wild, by scientific researchers.
In short: Evolution does NOT work on geological timescales. It is quite capable of working WAY faster than that.
All the factors that affect how fast changes will occur in a particular species are not understood yet, but fast changes have been observed and documented.
So.. is your email address at dynamicblue still good? I'm trying to get hold of you, and am having a hard time figuring out how (locut.us is down with a DNS error, at least where I am).
Another thing you might want to do is read every original transcript of everything Pres. Bush has said since 9/11. You'll never trust a newspaper again.
Another thing that works well is to compare newspapers against themselves six months later. You'll never trust a newspaper again.
God I hope the media don't get any sort of protection. I can't think of many groups that would deserve it less.
I have no problem with an international body controlling the root servers. I just can't think of one that I would be willing to hand them over to. I can think of the last body I would hand it over to though: the UN.
One attribute I notice of people that come from the US or the EU, is that they think the UN is a noble institution. It's easy to think the UN is noble if you aren't paying attention, or just listen to the media, or if you don't do business with them.
The reality is that the UN is the largest, most corrupt institution in the world. It is run by the scions of dictators and fascists, who get their positions because of the power and the money they can steal. The UN is implicated in multiple genocides, and in embezzlement of at least 10s and maybe 100s of billions of US dollars in the last decade alone.
There are one or two parts of the UN that may be worth saving, like the World Health Organisation. UNICEF too, maybe, if we can shut down the UN child prositution rings running in Africa.
Think Enron, with the combined corruption of every third world country you know, and vested interests that have everything to do with prolonging war, dictatorship, and famine. Add hundreds of billions of dollars of money that isn't audited, and a media that gives you a free pass. That is the UN.
If the UN disappeared tomorrow, the world would be a better place.
The worlds DNS servers are WAY better off being controlled by the USA. Americans who think otherwise should travel a little more widely.
I'm going to put some noses out of joint here, but education in the USA sucks, and it doesn't really get better until you've got all the way through a PhD programme. Sure, there are good schools, but they aren't exactly in the majority. They also have to deal with incoming students who were given a woeful high school education, which has an effect that ripples through the entire system. Also, schools here don't seem to see it as their job to try teach you and flunk you. The number of people that make it through such as system is only vaguely proportional to the number of people you can employ for the jobs they are technically trained for.
I've been involved in the hiring process, although I am an engineer. Generally, if you are hiring someone with less than a PhD, an H1B applicant will often be a better bet than someone local with an "equivalent" degree. You'll pay more and it will be worth it. Amusingly, when applying for an H1B, your foreign degree is often deemed by the government to be equivalent to an inferior local degree.
Also, I suspect that the extra effort an applicant has to go to to get a job overseas is a good filter - you only get the bright and motivated who have passed the extra hurdles.
Anyone who says that H1Bs are cheap hasn't checked the lawyers bills that are required to get them into the country (and doesn't count in the cost of a six to nine month wait before they arrive). Also, companies are obligated to pay a minimum salary set by the government. For example, an "Embedded Software Programmer" gets > $70K per year. I know because I was classified as that once.
I am an H1B worker, and get paid quite a lot better than most, and usually have three or four job offers on the table regardless of my job status. I realise I am just a single data point, but the job market I see isn't one that thinks it can make do with local talent and education systems. Not all foreign degrees are equal, but HR will know how to rank them.
To be fair, the calibre of a person is often more important than their education, but education systems should only allow high-calibre people to do well. In other words, when you are hiring you want a filter that tells you when someone is high-calibre, and the US education system isn't it.
Slashdot Mirror
Ohhh... ok, so that explains why the "white man" doesn't get AIDS.
It is perhaps possible that you are not from Africa, and thus do not know that there are actually a lot of blacks in Africa that insist AIDS is a white conspiracy of some sort. The exact conspiracy changes, but the disbelief in AIDS doesn't.
There are several areas in Africa with 70% + HIV infection rates among blacks. On the whole, the whites dont get AIDS and the blacks do. There has been quite a bit of headscratching about this, and there seem to be several factors involved:
1) Male circumcision - Recent studies seem to show that male circumcision decreases the chance of a male becoming infected by a factor of around 7. That's a huge factor. A lot of whites are circumcised, but very few blacks are (in the high infection areas I am speaking about).
2) Social mores and ignorance - Several of the black cultures involved have very different attitudes to sex and safe sex. In many areas its almost impossible for the woman to get the man to wear a condom, because of both ignorance and the low social status of women. There is often basic ignorance of the concept of a germ theory of disease.
3) Whites tend to have fewer concurrent sexual partners. For those steeped in Western social mores or with a penchant for political correctness, I'm not saying either whites or blacks are heedless and promiscuous. However, I am saying that it is a lot more acceptable to have more than one concurrent stable sexual relationship in many black cultures, and this makes it easier for AIDS to spread than the white cultural tendency to have many partners in succession.
4) Fundamental disbelief in AIDS - It's hard to get people to take precautions when they think you are talking out your ass. When people die, the disease that killed them is pointed to as the cause of death, not AIDS. So, malaria, tuberculosis, and the flu have been really bad lately.
This means there are areas with near 100% infection rates in blacks, and very low infection rates in whites. It has nothing to do with race, and probably everything to do with social mores, conventions, and culture.
I don't claim to be the last word on this, but I came to the conclusions above after speaking to a fair number of people, some of them paramedics, and some of them farmers in remote areas.
What about a natural disaster in the 3rd world?
Special case. If you can be sure the money will go to something simple like first aid and stop-gap supplies, then a donation is okay. Even in a case like this, you have to be ultra-paranoid about who you give your money to. Most NGOs are no good, but some of the really well known names might be okay for a limited case like this. Anecdotally, I think the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army are reasonable candidates. Make sure its the American Red Cross, not one of the other ones.
Avoid anything affiliated with the UN; they are among the worst. You would be better off feeding the money to your dog.
Generally the US Military do a good job, but I'm not sure if you can donate money to them for disaster relief. They come in and help before anyone else can get there (which is the most crucial time), mainly because they have their own logistics train and lots of equipment. They help by doing, which beats a bunch of NGOs and the UN pitching up two months after the fact and driving their fancy SUVs around and throwing around money.
Um, yeah, in restrospect, I would have to say the US Military beat all the rest hands down for disaster relief. I guess American Red Cross and Salvation Army would be my guarded recommendation for donations for disaster relief.
I'm sure there are better candidates on a case by case basis, but you would have to do some very serious research to figure out if they are worth your money. Sorry to be so negative, but from my experience I would have to say the rule is "distrust first" when talking about charities and the third world.
See http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=186894&thresho ld=2&commentsort=0&mode=nested&cid=15423253
The problems are pretty simple to solve, but would involve telling people to "Think locally, act locally". In other words, stick to what you know and only pay money for real value. The fact that your money is associated with a real thing means it's hard for corrupt politicians to steal it. The rest will sort itself out. Giving donations is a way to feel good while hurting people. Don't do it.
Explain to me the part where my money somehow travels from Japan to China? We are talking about Sony.
Yes, we are, and yet a large proportion of the parts in the PS3 will come from China, one way or another. Although Sony is a Japanese company, it now has several factories in China. Similarly for Toshiba and friends. Ignoring factories, many of the smaller parts and connectors will be sourced from China.
I'm not a liberal weenie by any stretch of the imagination, but I just get annoyed that many people will buy a $600 PS3 than would donate that amount to the suffering in our world.
As someone who has spent a fair amount of time in the parts of the world where people are suffering, I will say that I really wish people would keep their donations to themselves.
If you want to kill someone in the third world, donate money or food. Because:
1) The money or food will be stolen by local politicians, because the donators don't care, and it's easier to steal foreign donations than local monies. Money will be used to support local or state militias, and food will be denied those that dare to vote for the opposition.
2) The organisations organising the donations try to make people dependent on them, so they have people who will need support next year.
3) Even the organisations that think they are doing good are usually just destroying local markets. How do you make a farmer starve? Easy, just give away product just like his for free. Two years later, we have no farmers. Nifty, eh?
4) Do-gooders come from overseas and install stuff that the locals simply don't care about. The end result is some righteous feeling Westerners, and a bunch of useless hardare that doesn't get used.
5) Institutions facilitating donations do so in order to have a stream of money that they can siphon off of for the institution. The more money the better. Where it goes is immaterial. Typically, less than 10% of it goes anywhere psuedo-useful.
6) The more idealistic the people handing out the money, the more chance that items 1, 3 and 4 will come into play.
If you want to help third world countries, buy stuff made in those countries. Tell anyone who screams about "sweat shops" to shut up. They are usually complaining about what workers are being paid, without any concept of just how much money that is in a third world environment. They complain about working conditions without comparing them to average conditions in those areas. Generally, people who are involved in making things actually get paid, unlike people who are supposedly being supported by donations. People who make things are part of an economy and are being paid for what they do. Grow that economy and you will help them.
Another way to help is to invest in companies in the third world, and insist on a return on investment, and insist on a rule of law before investing your money. Punish corruption and ruthlessly withdraw your investment if you don't get what you want.
So, think of your $600 PS3 as a way of supporting the little guy in China. The Chinese government can attempt to suppress its people, but the more trade it has with the rest of the world, the more uppity its people get as they get richer and the more difficult it is for the government to do something stupid without tanking their own economy.
What you're saying doesn't disprove the price breakdowns.
No it doesn't, but I don't feel any urge to disprove "Alice in Wonderland" either. The breakdowns were a joke.
There is no doubt that MS lost money on the XBox, but that is because they produced something that couldn't be cost reduced. They didn't own all the parts and their suppliers had no reason to integrate their chips more to reduce costs. The reason the PS2 is so profitable is it has been reduced to almost one chip, a drive mechanism, an enclosure and some connectors.
My prediction is that Sony will make a slight loss on the PS3 bill of materials for the first six months or so. Once yields on the cell cpu and GPU are up, and they have real volume production going they'll be able to reduce the price and still cover costs. In the end, the PS3 is a drive, some chips, some connectors and an enclosure. The chips are expensive right now, but those costs will go down fast. The drive is expensive, but not as expensive as claimed, judging from the raw Blu-Ray drives you can buy, and that cost will go down fast too.
This is probably the best argument I have heard against my argument. It doesn't appeal to emotions, and makes a good argument about rational decisions people will make given current conditions.
I think that the number of people that will be swung over to the 360 in the interim won't have a significant long-term affect, but I could easily be wrong. I think you are right in that people stick with whatever they happened to buy first, so sales lost in the next six months cut into the future forever after. However, I don't think that the price announcement will change the number of people that go one way or the other all that much. In other words, I think Sony are in the hole for six months, and the other stuff is secondary.
I agree. Sony is not an innovator. I think this touches on concepts covered in "The Innovator's Dilemma", which I have heard a lot about, but have yet to read.
I think the argument goes something like this: Little companies become big companies by figuring out what people really need and then giving it to them, regardless of the current status quo. Their size means they can respond quickly, and occasionally they get lucky and take over the world with a new idea. Once they are big companies though, they listen to their customers and give them what they want. However, as big companies they are very unlikely to do anything truly disruptive again, because they cannot thrive in a disruptive environment, and they listen for what their average customer wants. I think it's because they have too many fingers in other parts of the pie, and they like the security that comes with knowing the pie won't change. Also, customers tell you what they want, which is not a very good way of thinking of out the box ways to satisfy what they actually need.
Microsoft is unusual in console gaming, because they don't have any fingers in that pie. As a result, they are trying to be disruptive, in the hope that when the dust settles, they will be on top, and can then become boring and safe again.
Sony is trying (well, Kutaragi is), but the internal fights within Sony have already crushed most of that. Kutaragi was the anointed future leader of Sony. Instead he got ousted by Stringer, who is Welsh. Stringer is an "Intellectual Property" person. He works in the media side of Sony, and his vision for Sony is as closed as possible, with DRM on everything. Kutaragi was at this time talking about Linux and other such concepts.
Typically, electronics companies do everything they can to avoid DRM, because it loses them sales. However, most of the big electronics companies now have media arms, and the media people are convinced that only mind control and DRM will save their sales in a digital era. Stringer ousting Kutaragi is an unfortunate sign of which camp currently has ascendancy within Sony. Anyway, rest assured that Sony won't be rocking any boats.
I have a theory that the cheaper PS3 (without HDMI) is a subtle ploy by Kutaragi. He is destroying the homogenous HDMI base out there. By releasing a player that can play DRM protected HD content, but that doesn't insist on a DRM capable TV, he is helping torpedo DRM. At least, I really really hope so. *sigh*
Sony makes lots of things that people want. They make average things that on average, people want, and they are pretty successful at it. I think it's just what they are today.
So, my version would be:
Sony = teh average.
In an abstract world where pure free market economies reach immediate equilibrium, maybe this is true, but that's completely discounting the real-world backlash of much of the gaming world and the terrible perception this gave people of Sony. Sure, there will still be people lining up to buy them on release, but for long afterward, people will still have bad associations going with this announcement. In the real world, you can't fix a PR fiasco like this just by lowering the price to a reasonable value (assuming they could even afford to).
I think you drastically overestimate the importance of the "gaming world". Magazines and some online forums may whine about the cost now and over Christmas, and all PS3s will still be sold out while they are whining. Later on, when the price comes down, they will have a hard time whining about what the cost used to be. Their subscribers couldn't care less. If they can afford it and it provides them with enough value, they will buy it. That goes double for people who don't read the gaming press.
Meanwhile, a large proportion of the whiners will slink off and buy one when the price comes down, or they won't, and the world at large won't care.
When it comes to a price war, the PS3 and 360 are pretty much on an even footing after the first six months of production. The Wii will be a little cheaper, but as time goes on, the relevant costs will become irrelevant, and towards the end of the Wii's life, the 360 and PS3 could conceivably come within a few tens of dollars of its cost, and most of the difference will be in costs for connectors and casing, not chips. This will never be true for the XBOX, though, as it uses too many third party parts.
One thing that may make a difference will be the difference in the Sony and MS pricing schemes for their online gaming. Seeing as all the details aren't out yet, I can't really guess which way it will affect things.
This announcement had a much larger effect on the overall gaming world than just "Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait for the price to drop."
Actually, it sounds a whole lot more like "Waaah, I want that and I can't afford it" to me. The first half of that sentence is unlikely to change, assuming there are good games out there for the PS3 and Blu-Ray isn't a disaster. The second half will. The rest is just so much water under the bridge.
The production costs for the PS3 are very high. Even at these high retail prices they are taking a significant loss, probably $200 per console. They simply cannot sell it for less without taking a real bath. Holding out and expecting it will magically go down to $400 soon is not a good idea. The only way it gets cut in price like that is desperation for a failing console, which seems likely at this point.
7 53283
I used to design consumer electronic devices for a living, and the price breakdowns I have seen for the PS3 are so obviously wrong that they arent worth talking about.
Have a look at this comment for opinion on the PS3 cost:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=177857&cid=14
This ignores the timing of the release and the fact that Sony is not the only console maker. Come Christmas, MS and Nintendo will probably be making a lot of extra sales thanks to Sony's pricing, and dropping the price later won't bring back the holiday buying frenzy.
You are claiming that Sony won't sell every PS3 they can make over Christmas, right? I think you are wrong. Demand will outstrip supply. So, guess what, it makes no difference to Sony what MS and Nintendo are doing. They will sell all their consoles, and make more money because they charged more for the them.
With such a high initial price, Sony is basically souring a bunch of people on the PS3. Many of them will buy one of the other consoles, and if they later have a few hundred bucks lying around, they'll probably buy a pile of games for what they have rather than spend it on a PS3. In my view, Sony has just handed over a big hunk of market share.
I think you assume too much emotion stored over time. The average person will go "Gee whizz, that thing must be cool to be so expensive. Maybe I'll get it next year when it's cheaper". The hardcore religious gamer will buy the brand he supports when he can afford it, and the rest of the gamers will buy the system that supports the games they want to play, when they can afford it and the games.
Don't forget that the PS2 is still on sale, with an incredible number of games, second hand and new. Grannies buying their Christmas presents for the kids are just as likely to buy a PS2 as something else. Sony has their "cheap" entry into the console market.
Does anyone remember how long it took before the PS2 price dropped after launch? Didn't it take several years?
It's not relevant. Sony will maintain a particular price as long as people are willing to pay it. If all the whining on slashdot is correct, then the price will come down quickly. However, if people think that it is worth the money then Sony will see strong sales and the price won't come down.
Either way, complaining about the initial asking price is silly. The PS3 price will come down over time. The only thing affecting this is demand. Sony has to cover its costs, which aren't as bad as people have been claiming, and it also knows how many units it wants to sell. Those things affect the price more than anything else.
Sony could sell the PS3 at the same price as the XBOX 360, but they won't because that would make them less money (or maybe push them into a loss), and they will still sell everything they can make at the higher price, at least for the first few months.
-Nurf
I really don't know what the fuss is about.
Sony will charge high prices for the initial release of the PS3 and they will sell them as fast as they can make them. After demand decreases at that price, they will adjust the price to match the competition.
They can do this because there are people that will pay the initial release price and be happy to do so. The XBOX 360 was arguably underpriced on release: how many were sold on ebay for prices way above the MSRP?
Freaking about the price of the PS3 is meaningless, because the price is temporary, and will come down when it makes sense for it to do so. In the meantime, Sony will recoup their costs on a production line that is still scaling up to volume production, early adopters will voluntarily get screwed and appreciate the experience, and life will go on for everyone else.
Until then, I'll be playing games on my GameCube, PSP, and PS2, and will be generally chilling out. I suggest everyone else do the same.
-Nurf
I can't help but feel that this new "motion sensitive" feature will go the way of the "pressure sensitive" buttons - very few games will bother using them, since they're not really a core feature of the controller. Try as I might, I cannot imagine twisting a PS2 controller around for any length of time. It's just too heavy and too unweildy to continuely wave around. Imagine having to hold your PS2 controller steady, because accidently tipping it might do something unintended. (To be fair, I can't imagine twisting the Wii remote around for any length of time either, but not having held that, I'm willing to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt.)
I can see one potential use, and if anyone gets it right, I think it will take the world by storm. I think the orientation sensor should be used to control the camera in platformers. Many people complain about squirelly cameras in 3D platformers, as do I. I often find myself hankering after the 2D platformers I played on my Amiga, for just this reason.
Anyway, if the tilt sensor just sets the camera angle relative to the default "auto camera" position, I could see this being really useful. It could become a really intuitive unconscious way of controlling the camera in realtime.
Oh, the PS3 controller is a lot lighter than the PS2 controller, BTW.
-Nurf
The catch is that by the time it is proven beyond any doubt, the worst predictions may have occurred. It seems foolish to do nothing until it's too late, especially because the risk is so great and the cost is so minor.
*snort* Riiiiight, the cost is minor.
So far, global warming "solutions" I have seen fall into three categories:
1) They completely destroy the economies of a random selection of first world countries, and might make a tiny difference to the temperature of the planet one century from now.
2) They result in the deaths of millions of third world inhabitants due to starvation or exposure, and might make a tiny difference to the temperature of the planet one century from now.
3) They do some weaker variation of (1) and/or (2), but make no measurable difference to any temperatures anywhere, ever.
Seeing as there are studies out there that show we may actually enter into an ice age in the next few decades, and they are just as believable (if not more so) as any of the global warming work I have seen, maybe we should rush outside and burn things just in case?
I agree with your post. One article should be taken with a grain of salt.
However, there is much evidence to suggest that global warming is bad science; the scientific equivalent of a fad. If you have been paying attention, you will have found that many respected scientists have expressed a variation of the following:
1) Global warming is bad science.
2) I only say this, I don't write about it, because I like my funding and my job.
There has been a serious fight over the initial data that started the whole ball rolling, and the primary difference between the two camps is that the anti global warming people don't receive funding, promotion, or positive media coverage.
There is a massive bias, and it is affecting the science done at the root - the opposing view is simply being starved of man hours.
To make my point in another way, if I gave a scientist a large amount of random data, he would find within that data a poem that is a letter perfect copy of a poem by David Frost. However, by finding that poem, he would not have proved the existence of David Frost. Without specifying just how hard he was looking, and without specifying the probability that a random result would provide data to match his hypothesis, he is doing bad science. He should allow himself to be biased by reality, and the only way to do that is weigh all sides against reality. Finding something that one is looking for is a very weak result.
BTW, I take "global warming" to mean the rough idea that man is causing a catastrophic rise in the temperature of the earth, through known mechanisms involving fossil fuel and CO2. It does not mean "the world is getting warmer". On the other hand proving that the world is getting cooler is sufficient to invalidate global warming.
Now, maybe global warming is real. Unfortunately, we don't know because of all the bad science in this area. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and I have seen precious little unrebuttable proof that was actually relevant. In my judgement, global warming is an untested hypothesis, because the environment in which it grew is so uncritical as to be worthless. Similarly, many of the current findings make an implicit assumptions that previous findings prove some aspect of global warming, and yet claim to provide further evidence of its existance. It's a huge self-referential circular mess.
This book is worth reading:
1 40328404/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-4569797-48609 03?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
"A Mathematician Plays The Stock Market", by John Allen Paulos.
He explains how a market can aggregate information efficiently (and how it sometimes doesn't). He doesn't cover some of the chaos theory experimental results I have read about elsewhere, but other than that, it's a wonderful and fun book to read.
Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465054811/qid=1
Hi,
I have helped design consumer electronics devices for several large companies as a contractor, and we have a simple rule of thumb for consumer electronics devices called the "5 times rule". If someone wants to sell something for $500 retail, the parts and construction can't cost you more than $100. If you aren't including enclosure costs and other such things, the quick rule of thumb is the "ten times rule".
Shocking, I know, but if Samsung sell something for $1000, they would be fools if it cost them more than $200 to make. You can break these rules when your volumes get insane, but most of the time it's not a bad rule to follow for the initial release price of a product.
Now, most people claim that consoles are sold at a loss. This is not really true. Most consoles are very profitable over most of their lives, and pretty early into the sales cycle. However, you can break the five times rule if you like (well, partially--retailers still expect some profit, even if it's less than other products). That means you can sell it at cost, or close to it, not make a loss, and make money off games and accessories.
Compared to the "normal" way of doing things, selling at cost or a little more than that is equivalent to selling at a loss. But, for a console, it's not actually selling at a loss, it's just covering your costs and making the real profit elsewhere.
Sony could make a PS3 that costs $400 to make, and sell it for $500, and they would be selling something that would cost $2000 on the first day of release in another industry.
-Nurf
*sigh* No, they just just take as long as they need to take. That means that when things are easy there isn't much change. Strong selection pressure (picky females/males, hostile environments, parasites) all make for faster change, that we know of. For example, 85% of the variation in the human genome is due to the Malaria parasite. We think Malawi Cichlids speciate so fast because their females are so picky. Etc.
Anyway, your original post used the "it's obvious" proof technique, and, well, it's not. Saying something is obvious because you can see a plethora of examples that may not apply doesn't make something obvious.
Your post is fundamentally wrong. Evolution is capable of producing new species of macroscopic organisms in a matter of months. For example, new species of Malawi Cichlids (a kind of fish) have been observed developing over a six month period, in the wild, by scientific researchers.
In short: Evolution does NOT work on geological timescales. It is quite capable of working WAY faster than that.
All the factors that affect how fast changes will occur in a particular species are not understood yet, but fast changes have been observed and documented.
So.. is your email address at dynamicblue still good? I'm trying to get hold of you, and am having a hard time figuring out how (locut.us is down with a DNS error, at least where I am).
The other reply to your polite request was a bit rude, so here are some useful links:
a _tporleans/archives/print082732.html1 21515-2539r.htm- na-rumors27sep27,0,5492806,full.story?coll=la-home -headlines
http://www.nola.com/weblogs/print.ssf?/mtlogs/nol
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050928-
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la
Another thing you might want to do is read every original transcript of everything Pres. Bush has said since 9/11. You'll never trust a newspaper again.
Another thing that works well is to compare newspapers against themselves six months later. You'll never trust a newspaper again.
God I hope the media don't get any sort of protection. I can't think of many groups that would deserve it less.
I have no problem with an international body controlling the root servers. I just can't think of one that I would be willing to hand them over to. I can think of the last body I would hand it over to though: the UN.
One attribute I notice of people that come from the US or the EU, is that they think the UN is a noble institution. It's easy to think the UN is noble if you aren't paying attention, or just listen to the media, or if you don't do business with them.
The reality is that the UN is the largest, most corrupt institution in the world. It is run by the scions of dictators and fascists, who get their positions because of the power and the money they can steal. The UN is implicated in multiple genocides, and in embezzlement of at least 10s and maybe 100s of billions of US dollars in the last decade alone.
There are one or two parts of the UN that may be worth saving, like the World Health Organisation. UNICEF too, maybe, if we can shut down the UN child prositution rings running in Africa.
Think Enron, with the combined corruption of every third world country you know, and vested interests that have everything to do with prolonging war, dictatorship, and famine. Add hundreds of billions of dollars of money that isn't audited, and a media that gives you a free pass. That is the UN.
If the UN disappeared tomorrow, the world would be a better place.
The worlds DNS servers are WAY better off being controlled by the USA. Americans who think otherwise should travel a little more widely.
-- Nurf, who is not a US citizen.
I'm going to put some noses out of joint here, but education in the USA sucks, and it doesn't really get better until you've got all the way through a PhD programme. Sure, there are good schools, but they aren't exactly in the majority. They also have to deal with incoming students who were given a woeful high school education, which has an effect that ripples through the entire system. Also, schools here don't seem to see it as their job to try teach you and flunk you. The number of people that make it through such as system is only vaguely proportional to the number of people you can employ for the jobs they are technically trained for.
I've been involved in the hiring process, although I am an engineer. Generally, if you are hiring someone with less than a PhD, an H1B applicant will often be a better bet than someone local with an "equivalent" degree. You'll pay more and it will be worth it. Amusingly, when applying for an H1B, your foreign degree is often deemed by the government to be equivalent to an inferior local degree.
Also, I suspect that the extra effort an applicant has to go to to get a job overseas is a good filter - you only get the bright and motivated who have passed the extra hurdles.
Anyone who says that H1Bs are cheap hasn't checked the lawyers bills that are required to get them into the country (and doesn't count in the cost of a six to nine month wait before they arrive). Also, companies are obligated to pay a minimum salary set by the government. For example, an "Embedded Software Programmer" gets > $70K per year. I know because I was classified as that once.
I am an H1B worker, and get paid quite a lot better than most, and usually have three or four job offers on the table regardless of my job status. I realise I am just a single data point, but the job market I see isn't one that thinks it can make do with local talent and education systems. Not all foreign degrees are equal, but HR will know how to rank them.
To be fair, the calibre of a person is often more important than their education, but education systems should only allow high-calibre people to do well. In other words, when you are hiring you want a filter that tells you when someone is high-calibre, and the US education system isn't it.
Thanks!