It's not silly that it bugs you. You're seeing through a cheese-ball marketing tactic for what it is, and that shows you are intelligent and not really a sucker.
These results include all games, including those that are sold in cheese-ball bundle fashion or low-cost, because the true intended audience for these -- market researchers for game companies -- need to see raw data without applying any rules to them. If Wii Play is selling well because it bundles a Wiimote, then that's a hint to these people that if they can bundle a desirable and hard-to-find accessory with a cheaply-made game, then they can potentially sell a lot more of both than if they don't. I think you'll find in the future 3rd-party controllers shipping with cheap games in order to try and draw more sales as a result of this, sort of in the same way "Deer Hunter" sales at Wal-Mart created a ton of imitators.
Look at this from NPD's perspective -- why they compile this information. If your rule here were applied to all products: Should we not consider Rock Band because it comes with controllers? Should we not consider Forza sales since it was bundled with some 360's? Should we not consider the first-year PS2/PS3 game console sales because many people purchased them at the time as DVD/Blu-Ray players? Should we not consider Peggle because it is inexpensive? This kind of arbitrary distinction here as to what is a "proper" game or a "proper" way to sell it is very difficult for NPD to make; it works against the value that their figures are meant to provide.
While NPD is responsible for providing accurate information to their customers, they are not responsible for the decisions made by their customers. If I'm a market researcher for a game company, how I interpret Wii Play's sales is putting my job on the line and my company's future on the line. It is up to me to use my own brain to figure out what you have.
But I must know what the real data is, which is why NPD includes Wii Play as a top seller.
Step 2: Write a simple game with graphics and sound. (It doesn't even have to be good).
You'll need to teach yourself some 6502 ASM to write anything of note, especially for sound. You can't learn ASM without learning architecture, and the 6502 is a very simple, clean design.
MIPS-1 is a better alternative for modern superscalar/pipelined architectures, and it's also a load-store architecture (vs. the accumulator arch. of the 6502), but the system's size being what it is -- 64kB, simple graphics (16 colors low-res, 6 hi-res), 2 general-purpose registers, 8-bit everything -- will allow you to really explore a variety of different things. It keeps things simple.
It doesnt really matter what your usability studies say, a one button mose is really annoying. Whats even more annoying is people who have started to dual boot macbooks which only have one mouse button on their trackpad (!!). In addition to this, you cant tap the pad, like every single other computer, and have it count as a click. You have to use this huge ass stupid button that constantly reminds you that there should be two.
Who modded this comment up?
1.) You can tap the pad. It's just disabled by default. Which is a good thing, because every time I try to drag one of my heavy fingers across the pad, it registers as a click on any PC out there.
2.) Doing a double-click (on Macbooks/Pros that can run Windows) is as easy as putting two fingers on the trackpad and clicking.
You can also do all sorts of nice tricks like using two fingers to scroll (horiz. and vert.) and things like that. And, of course, you can always plug in a Bluetooth or USB mouse -- the blindingly obvious solution that every Mac critic seems to know about.
All that said, the Mighty Mouse is dogshit. You have to hit it -just so- to do a right-click, and while that's ok when you're not e.g. gaming, it's really awful when you're trying to zoom in with the sniper rifle and instead fire off a shot that gives away your position. And the little scroll-ball is in exactly the perfectly WRONG place for it to be.
Are you saying that some random editor knows more about the Iraq invasion, or is less likely to lie about it or change things to suit a political end, than the US Government?
The whole point of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. And of course, that includes members of the US Government, the Chinese government, The Russian government, the Iranian government, the North Korean government, the Venezuelan government, the Brazilian government, the UK government, the Latvian government, the Jamaican government...
If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with the basic philosophy of Wikipedia.
Did your dad know that the instructions were deliberately limited?
Yes, he did. He'd known it all along. That's one reason why he was so impressed with it. Another is, well, FischerTechnik is just damned impressive.
My son turns 3 on Thursday. And under the Christmas tree, he's going to have his first-ever FischerTechnik toy waiting for him, courtesy of his Dad and his Dad's Dad.
One of the brilliant things about this (which I didn't find out until just last year) was that the diagrams on how to build things would deliberately hide steps. For example, in-between step two and step four something would be added on the back half that wasn't shown. You, the child trying to build the toy, had to figure out what was missing on your own to get the thing finished. At the time, I remember noticing it, but attributing it to sloppiness; it took some effort and thought, but I always figured out what was missing. So you couldn't just build things by following the steps shown. You had to know what you were doing.
This helped me much later in life when buying furniture from Ikea.
Now that my son's turned 3, Dad's sending me the starter set to give to him for Christmas... he kept every last piece of it, all these years.
One thing I'll say for Wall's writing -- he gets me thinking.
And while he's discussing the new language paradigms we're moving towards and the changes that have occurred, in the back of my mind I'm thinking of the old complaint, that computer hardware keeps getting faster, but the software gets slower, or stays the same.
As a geek, I find that I'm always going to be at odds with salesmen -- assuming the salesman is good at his job. This is true for two reasons. One, salesmen don't really have a grasp of what I do; two, I don't really have a grasp of what a salesman is trying to do. I work on things because they are interesting to me for one reason or another, not because I think these things will make the product more useful to someone else. And good salesmen will know what the customer wants, and are going to be upset when I tell them that I need to refactor the code or rewrite it, which will cause a delay in shipping the feature they've been asking for.
And when I'm looking at what Wall is talking about here, while I agree with the concept that new language features make up for the increased slowness in favor of producing paradigms that make coding easier, I hear this buzzing in my ears that I've heard before: "Why is my 3GHz dual-core PC so slow?"
And when I look at most of the code I've ever seen, what I see is that whenever a language allows people to use a new paradigm, they use it to death. I've seen a lot of Android developers comment on how nice it is that Google doesn't recommend building factories and iterators and accessors for efficiency. And coming back to Java after having been doing embedded C work for a while, I find myself accessing: Well, why would you do it any other way? Why would you use an iterator class rather than a simple integer index, when only on rare occasions you would need anything else?
What it all comes down to is that there needs to be less thought about how various languages do things and more thought about how to do things in various languages.
I've read comments from a dev on AC who expressed surprise that anyone would claim the PS3 version was better. His experience was that the 360 version was much better, and was made better in less time, than the PS3 version.
This, combined with the high starting price of the console, is what's killing the PS3. If developers can't afford to develop for it and make money off of their games, what point is there?
In fact, come to think of it, the entire article summary is built in a certain way:
1. Mention of Google Apps, a product that competes with Microsoft.
2. Mention of something being "broken."
A couple of important notes about that:
2.1. The thing with a potential issue, E-mail sending, has nothing to do with Google Apps, however it's mentioned to create a negative association with them.
2.2. The potential issue is exaggeration to the point of idiocy. Nothing actually gets broken; you just have to change a certain setting on a certain date, and if you don't, it's not like your house catches fire or anything. OR MAYBE IT DOES?!?!?! WHO CAN BE SURE?
And then, the coup de grace:
3. Mention of a Microsoft proprietary technology as a solution.
And of course, can't let that go by without adding:
3.1. A technology that forces everyone into vendor lock-in with the Microsoft Way Of Doing Things, and 3.2. A cure that is far worse than a disease, a technology that opens your system up to all kinds of hacks and attacks for the sake of preventing something that Grandma can easily be walked through fixing. (If you don't believe me, look at all the Grandmas who are walked through setting up their Email by Apple tech help and Evolution e-mail wizards every day.)
In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the summary above has all the hallmarks of a professionally-written Microsoft FUD-job.
Someone was paid to write this article and submit it to Slashdot so that all of our geeky eyes can see it and wonder, "Oh, the horrors of Google Apps! They should have gone with Microsoft," when not only do Google Apps have nothing to do with the problem, the problem itself would have been made worse by the proposed solution.
And they would have gotten away with it if it hadn't 've been for you kids!
The article summary seems to be overblowing the problems to me. Having email "broken" isn't even an accurate way to put things; it just means your email temporarily doesn't work.
For some reason, your comment reminds me of the power switch on some IBM PS/2 models.
In several of the early models, e.g. the Model 55sx... well, take a look at the photo of the interior. You'll notice that the power switch is in the front of the machine, but the power supply is in the back. And on the inside of the case, there is an additional power button on the power supply. Toggling the front switch moves a lever which then punches the power switch on the power supply.
The PS/2 series had some lovely interior design, but that bit was a head-scratcher for me.
"Tell me why we need to change from a tested, reliable, working system to a new-fangled system with huge concerns as to the accuracy and security?"
HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT OF 2002
[[Page 116 STAT. 1666]]
Public Law 107-252 107th Congress
An Act
To establish a program to provide funds to States to replace punch card
voting systems, to establish the Election Assistance Commission to
assist in the administration of Federal elections and to otherwise
provide assistance with the administration of certain Federal election
laws and programs, to establish minimum election administration
standards for States and units of local government with responsibility
for the administration of Federal elections, and for other
purposes.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "work." See, if what you mean by "work" is "to represent the voter's intent," well, then I guess you're right. But if what you mean by "work" is, "to ensure that only the right people get elected," well, then we have a problem with the existing system, don't we?
This comment will probably be lost in all of the stuff that happens anytime anyone even casually mentions "God" in any context, but one minor quibble with TFA. And I think you'll find it actually weakens his argument to say this, and what I'm about to say actually strengthens what TFA is saying. From the article:
...evolution by natural selection -- the strongest argument against an Old Testament-type creator...
Evolution by natural selecton isn't the strongest argument against an Old Testament-type creator. The story of Creation as given by the Old Testament follows the form of Hebrew poetry. And the author of it clearly could not have been at the point of Creation. Those who say that the author was somehow inspired to write the exact sequence of events of the creation of the world by God such that they would be exact are... well, putting things into the Bible that aren't there. Trying to apply scientific logic to fails even in the absence of evolutionary theory, given that there is day and night as early as the first day, but no sun until later. Only the dim-witted would consider the Creation myth a literal retelling of the story of Creation.
The theory of Evolution, our growing understanding of our universe and how we apply it are, if anything, fulfillment of Genesis 1, verses 27-28: "(27) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (28) God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.'"
So it's hardly accurate to call Evolution a strong argument against an OT-type Creator. The text of Genesis 1 itself is the strongest argument against Creationism, but hardly any argument at all against the existence of a Creator as the Bible describes.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Young Earth Creationists can claim that their interpretation is derived from neither a literal nor an educated interpretation of the Bible. Creationism is ultimately anti-Biblical. But it's taking that silliness to an extreme to then say that Evolution somehow is an argument against the existence of a God.
Wow, did you just express disgust at Microsoft's monopoly and use an Atlas Shrugged reference in the same post? I fear my head may explode.
I was hoping that there'd be someone out there who'd see the irony in that juxtaposition. I'd like to think it's because I'm just really clever, but the truth is, I just finished BioShock last weekend so naturally have Ayn Rand on the brain.
Well, your data is certainly more complete than his, to the point that it shows an entirely different picture. Since you're supporting my point, I don't mean to bug you, but an anecdote is a valid datum and the plural of datum is data, thus anecdotes are a subset of data. So the phrase "the plural of anecdote is not data" is not entirely correct.
But your point is correct: The Wii is outselling the crap out of everything worldwide, because it appeals to a larger set of the population than the others and has a lower price point.
I want to repeat what the AC posted in case you (or others) are ignoring AC's: "The difference is that with CD Baby, the artist sets the price, not the cartels." CD Baby charges $15 for "Rimbosity" because I told 'em to. (I had a low intro price of $11.38 when I first released it. I lost my saving throw vs. Geekiness. Raised it this year, and sales improved. Natch!)
But the same album is offered through CD Baby's deals through other stores. (Although a quick amazon.com store search shows one seller offering it for $39.98. Dude, WTF? That's $25 more than anyone should be paying for it! *sends email to seller offering him assistance in lowering his costs*)
And of course you can get it through e.g. iTunes for $10, which is just fine, because this isn't a museum-quality masterpiece of brilliant sonic symphonic quality or anything. It's a pop CD.
And also note that the artist is getting all but like $2 of that money you spend through CD Baby. (Well, I've got some licensing fees to cover and royalties and an artist to pay that means I only get to keep whatever I make above $7, but it's still better than anything a major label would ever give me.) So you're really supporting the artist when you go through there, so much more than when you go through a major label.
So keep that in mind. That artist may be charging $30, but that artist is the one who decided to charge that, and who is getting almost all of that $30. And that's the way it ought to be.
The unwillingness of actual scientific communities to challenge the misapplication of their methods by unscientific ones has lead to a dilution of the authority of science as a whole....
There's only one way to deal with Cargo Cult Scientists. You have to call them out. You have to show how flimsy and false their supposed science really is.
I agree with you. There are two reasons why your method does not happen more often.
The first is that failure in science is perceived to be a failure of reason. Almost all societies have entrenched anti-intellectual subcultures; this makes it hard enough to make legitimate science accepted in society. This is one thing that makes scientists hesitant to call out their peers' mistakes. The irony in this is that they and their peers become themselves part of the anti-intellectual subculture by perverting science in this way.*
The second reason is that we are social animals. Our survival is based on forming good relationships with others. Scientists, like all others, succeed based largely on their abilities to be a good member of a team in their field, in their university/business and in their chosen departments. If you publicly "call out" a peer for being mistaken, you will offend him, and he will both become defensive and resentful of you. And as a recent Slashdot-sponsored study shows, making the statement "X is not true" frequently has the effect of reinforcing the statement "X is true."** In other words, calling someone out usually only serves to piss people off and reinforce the false statement, and it's bad for your career as a scientist as well.
There are ways to correct people when they are mistaken, but the time-tested way that works is to do so with the individual in private, to begin by pointing out where one is right, and to give them information so that they will come to the conclusion that they are wrong on their own. Unfortunately, such social skills are generally not taught in school.
It's a tough problem, maybe unsolvable. But we can make things better by doing a better job individually and, as intellectuals and men of reason, choosing not to give up just because the lunatics are running the asylum.
* To some extent, one can blame the decrease in intellectual approaches to religion for this. The belief that science must be intellectual and that religion cannot be polarizes both. For religion it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, as intellectuals both run away from and are booted out from churches. But for Science, it ironically has the same effect of eliminating proper principles of reason from it, rather than improving the level of discourse.
** The solution, then, is to make a statement of the form "Y is true," where Y is some positively-worded statement. For example, if it is 90 degrees fahrenheit, and someone says "It's cold outside," rather than correcting him with "It's not cold outside," make the statement "It's hot outside."
Slashdot Mirror
He's probably one of those Amiga types.
It's not silly that it bugs you. You're seeing through a cheese-ball marketing tactic for what it is, and that shows you are intelligent and not really a sucker.
These results include all games, including those that are sold in cheese-ball bundle fashion or low-cost, because the true intended audience for these -- market researchers for game companies -- need to see raw data without applying any rules to them. If Wii Play is selling well because it bundles a Wiimote, then that's a hint to these people that if they can bundle a desirable and hard-to-find accessory with a cheaply-made game, then they can potentially sell a lot more of both than if they don't. I think you'll find in the future 3rd-party controllers shipping with cheap games in order to try and draw more sales as a result of this, sort of in the same way "Deer Hunter" sales at Wal-Mart created a ton of imitators.
Look at this from NPD's perspective -- why they compile this information. If your rule here were applied to all products: Should we not consider Rock Band because it comes with controllers? Should we not consider Forza sales since it was bundled with some 360's? Should we not consider the first-year PS2/PS3 game console sales because many people purchased them at the time as DVD/Blu-Ray players? Should we not consider Peggle because it is inexpensive? This kind of arbitrary distinction here as to what is a "proper" game or a "proper" way to sell it is very difficult for NPD to make; it works against the value that their figures are meant to provide.
While NPD is responsible for providing accurate information to their customers, they are not responsible for the decisions made by their customers. If I'm a market researcher for a game company, how I interpret Wii Play's sales is putting my job on the line and my company's future on the line. It is up to me to use my own brain to figure out what you have.
But I must know what the real data is, which is why NPD includes Wii Play as a top seller.
Step 2: Write a simple game with graphics and sound. (It doesn't even have to be good).
You'll need to teach yourself some 6502 ASM to write anything of note, especially for sound. You can't learn ASM without learning architecture, and the 6502 is a very simple, clean design.
MIPS-1 is a better alternative for modern superscalar/pipelined architectures, and it's also a load-store architecture (vs. the accumulator arch. of the 6502), but the system's size being what it is -- 64kB, simple graphics (16 colors low-res, 6 hi-res), 2 general-purpose registers, 8-bit everything -- will allow you to really explore a variety of different things. It keeps things simple.
Beat me to it. The research just seems to be an excuse to justify an expensive technology that we don't really need.
Yes, that is a much better description of what's wrong with right-clicking on the Mighty Mouse.
I've found the Mighty Mouse somewhat more useful as a paperweight.
Who modded this comment up?
1.) You can tap the pad. It's just disabled by default. Which is a good thing, because every time I try to drag one of my heavy fingers across the pad, it registers as a click on any PC out there.
2.) Doing a double-click (on Macbooks/Pros that can run Windows) is as easy as putting two fingers on the trackpad and clicking.
You can also do all sorts of nice tricks like using two fingers to scroll (horiz. and vert.) and things like that. And, of course, you can always plug in a Bluetooth or USB mouse -- the blindingly obvious solution that every Mac critic seems to know about.
All that said, the Mighty Mouse is dogshit. You have to hit it -just so- to do a right-click, and while that's ok when you're not e.g. gaming, it's really awful when you're trying to zoom in with the sniper rifle and instead fire off a shot that gives away your position. And the little scroll-ball is in exactly the perfectly WRONG place for it to be.
Are you saying that some random editor knows more about the Iraq invasion, or is less likely to lie about it or change things to suit a political end, than the US Government?
The whole point of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it. And of course, that includes members of the US Government, the Chinese government, The Russian government, the Iranian government, the North Korean government, the Venezuelan government, the Brazilian government, the UK government, the Latvian government, the Jamaican government...
If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with the basic philosophy of Wikipedia.
Yes, he did. He'd known it all along. That's one reason why he was so impressed with it. Another is, well, FischerTechnik is just damned impressive.
My son turns 3 on Thursday. And under the Christmas tree, he's going to have his first-ever FischerTechnik toy waiting for him, courtesy of his Dad and his Dad's Dad.
When I grew up, my Dad discovered FischerTechnik.
One of the brilliant things about this (which I didn't find out until just last year) was that the diagrams on how to build things would deliberately hide steps. For example, in-between step two and step four something would be added on the back half that wasn't shown. You, the child trying to build the toy, had to figure out what was missing on your own to get the thing finished. At the time, I remember noticing it, but attributing it to sloppiness; it took some effort and thought, but I always figured out what was missing. So you couldn't just build things by following the steps shown. You had to know what you were doing.
This helped me much later in life when buying furniture from Ikea.
Now that my son's turned 3, Dad's sending me the starter set to give to him for Christmas... he kept every last piece of it, all these years.
One thing I'll say for Wall's writing -- he gets me thinking.
And while he's discussing the new language paradigms we're moving towards and the changes that have occurred, in the back of my mind I'm thinking of the old complaint, that computer hardware keeps getting faster, but the software gets slower, or stays the same.
As a geek, I find that I'm always going to be at odds with salesmen -- assuming the salesman is good at his job. This is true for two reasons. One, salesmen don't really have a grasp of what I do; two, I don't really have a grasp of what a salesman is trying to do. I work on things because they are interesting to me for one reason or another, not because I think these things will make the product more useful to someone else. And good salesmen will know what the customer wants, and are going to be upset when I tell them that I need to refactor the code or rewrite it, which will cause a delay in shipping the feature they've been asking for.
And when I'm looking at what Wall is talking about here, while I agree with the concept that new language features make up for the increased slowness in favor of producing paradigms that make coding easier, I hear this buzzing in my ears that I've heard before: "Why is my 3GHz dual-core PC so slow?"
And when I look at most of the code I've ever seen, what I see is that whenever a language allows people to use a new paradigm, they use it to death. I've seen a lot of Android developers comment on how nice it is that Google doesn't recommend building factories and iterators and accessors for efficiency. And coming back to Java after having been doing embedded C work for a while, I find myself accessing: Well, why would you do it any other way? Why would you use an iterator class rather than a simple integer index, when only on rare occasions you would need anything else?
What it all comes down to is that there needs to be less thought about how various languages do things and more thought about how to do things in various languages.
Sometimes, if you can scare enough people with the threat of the end of all they hold dear, people will let you rob them blind.
I've read comments from a dev on AC who expressed surprise that anyone would claim the PS3 version was better. His experience was that the 360 version was much better, and was made better in less time, than the PS3 version.
This, combined with the high starting price of the console, is what's killing the PS3. If developers can't afford to develop for it and make money off of their games, what point is there?
In fact, come to think of it, the entire article summary is built in a certain way:
1. Mention of Google Apps, a product that competes with Microsoft.
2. Mention of something being "broken."
A couple of important notes about that:
2.1. The thing with a potential issue, E-mail sending, has nothing to do with Google Apps, however it's mentioned to create a negative association with them.
2.2. The potential issue is exaggeration to the point of idiocy. Nothing actually gets broken; you just have to change a certain setting on a certain date, and if you don't, it's not like your house catches fire or anything. OR MAYBE IT DOES?!?!?! WHO CAN BE SURE?
And then, the coup de grace:
3. Mention of a Microsoft proprietary technology as a solution.
And of course, can't let that go by without adding:
3.1. A technology that forces everyone into vendor lock-in with the Microsoft Way Of Doing Things, and
3.2. A cure that is far worse than a disease, a technology that opens your system up to all kinds of hacks and attacks for the sake of preventing something that Grandma can easily be walked through fixing. (If you don't believe me, look at all the Grandmas who are walked through setting up their Email by Apple tech help and Evolution e-mail wizards every day.)
In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the summary above has all the hallmarks of a professionally-written Microsoft FUD-job.
Someone was paid to write this article and submit it to Slashdot so that all of our geeky eyes can see it and wonder, "Oh, the horrors of Google Apps! They should have gone with Microsoft," when not only do Google Apps have nothing to do with the problem, the problem itself would have been made worse by the proposed solution.
And they would have gotten away with it if it hadn't 've been for you kids!
Precisely my thoughts.
The article summary seems to be overblowing the problems to me. Having email "broken" isn't even an accurate way to put things; it just means your email temporarily doesn't work.
Ray --
Will this set a precedent that will affect any other districts or cases?
For some reason, your comment reminds me of the power switch on some IBM PS/2 models.
In several of the early models, e.g. the Model 55sx... well, take a look at the photo of the interior. You'll notice that the power switch is in the front of the machine, but the power supply is in the back. And on the inside of the case, there is an additional power button on the power supply. Toggling the front switch moves a lever which then punches the power switch on the power supply.
The PS/2 series had some lovely interior design, but that bit was a head-scratcher for me.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "work." See, if what you mean by "work" is "to represent the voter's intent," well, then I guess you're right. But if what you mean by "work" is, "to ensure that only the right people get elected," well, then we have a problem with the existing system, don't we?
Evolution by natural selecton isn't the strongest argument against an Old Testament-type creator. The story of Creation as given by the Old Testament follows the form of Hebrew poetry. And the author of it clearly could not have been at the point of Creation. Those who say that the author was somehow inspired to write the exact sequence of events of the creation of the world by God such that they would be exact are... well, putting things into the Bible that aren't there. Trying to apply scientific logic to fails even in the absence of evolutionary theory, given that there is day and night as early as the first day, but no sun until later. Only the dim-witted would consider the Creation myth a literal retelling of the story of Creation.
The theory of Evolution, our growing understanding of our universe and how we apply it are, if anything, fulfillment of Genesis 1, verses 27-28: "(27) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (28) God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.'"
So it's hardly accurate to call Evolution a strong argument against an OT-type Creator. The text of Genesis 1 itself is the strongest argument against Creationism, but hardly any argument at all against the existence of a Creator as the Bible describes.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Young Earth Creationists can claim that their interpretation is derived from neither a literal nor an educated interpretation of the Bible. Creationism is ultimately anti-Biblical. But it's taking that silliness to an extreme to then say that Evolution somehow is an argument against the existence of a God.
I was hoping that there'd be someone out there who'd see the irony in that juxtaposition. I'd like to think it's because I'm just really clever, but the truth is, I just finished BioShock last weekend so naturally have Ayn Rand on the brain.
Blaming the customer is just as bad for business... again, assuming you don't have a massive monopoly.
If Microsoft were anything other than one of the most dominant monopolies the world has ever seen, this would be a hideous and grave error.
As it is, people just shrug their shoulders and say, "Who is John Galt?"
Well, your data is certainly more complete than his, to the point that it shows an entirely different picture. Since you're supporting my point, I don't mean to bug you, but an anecdote is a valid datum and the plural of datum is data, thus anecdotes are a subset of data. So the phrase "the plural of anecdote is not data" is not entirely correct.
But your point is correct: The Wii is outselling the crap out of everything worldwide, because it appeals to a larger set of the population than the others and has a lower price point.
"Family gamers" don't spend $300 or more on a console.
I want to repeat what the AC posted in case you (or others) are ignoring AC's: "The difference is that with CD Baby, the artist sets the price, not the cartels." CD Baby charges $15 for "Rimbosity" because I told 'em to. (I had a low intro price of $11.38 when I first released it. I lost my saving throw vs. Geekiness. Raised it this year, and sales improved. Natch!)
But the same album is offered through CD Baby's deals through other stores. (Although a quick amazon.com store search shows one seller offering it for $39.98. Dude, WTF? That's $25 more than anyone should be paying for it! *sends email to seller offering him assistance in lowering his costs*)
And of course you can get it through e.g. iTunes for $10, which is just fine, because this isn't a museum-quality masterpiece of brilliant sonic symphonic quality or anything. It's a pop CD.
And also note that the artist is getting all but like $2 of that money you spend through CD Baby. (Well, I've got some licensing fees to cover and royalties and an artist to pay that means I only get to keep whatever I make above $7, but it's still better than anything a major label would ever give me.) So you're really supporting the artist when you go through there, so much more than when you go through a major label.
So keep that in mind. That artist may be charging $30, but that artist is the one who decided to charge that, and who is getting almost all of that $30. And that's the way it ought to be.
I agree with you. There are two reasons why your method does not happen more often.
The first is that failure in science is perceived to be a failure of reason. Almost all societies have entrenched anti-intellectual subcultures; this makes it hard enough to make legitimate science accepted in society. This is one thing that makes scientists hesitant to call out their peers' mistakes. The irony in this is that they and their peers become themselves part of the anti-intellectual subculture by perverting science in this way.*
The second reason is that we are social animals. Our survival is based on forming good relationships with others. Scientists, like all others, succeed based largely on their abilities to be a good member of a team in their field, in their university/business and in their chosen departments. If you publicly "call out" a peer for being mistaken, you will offend him, and he will both become defensive and resentful of you. And as a recent Slashdot-sponsored study shows, making the statement "X is not true" frequently has the effect of reinforcing the statement "X is true."** In other words, calling someone out usually only serves to piss people off and reinforce the false statement, and it's bad for your career as a scientist as well.
There are ways to correct people when they are mistaken, but the time-tested way that works is to do so with the individual in private, to begin by pointing out where one is right, and to give them information so that they will come to the conclusion that they are wrong on their own. Unfortunately, such social skills are generally not taught in school.
It's a tough problem, maybe unsolvable. But we can make things better by doing a better job individually and, as intellectuals and men of reason, choosing not to give up just because the lunatics are running the asylum.
* To some extent, one can blame the decrease in intellectual approaches to religion for this. The belief that science must be intellectual and that religion cannot be polarizes both. For religion it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, as intellectuals both run away from and are booted out from churches. But for Science, it ironically has the same effect of eliminating proper principles of reason from it, rather than improving the level of discourse.
** The solution, then, is to make a statement of the form "Y is true," where Y is some positively-worded statement. For example, if it is 90 degrees fahrenheit, and someone says "It's cold outside," rather than correcting him with "It's not cold outside," make the statement "It's hot outside."