Remember that the three companies engineering and sell their consoles on very different models. Microsoft slapped the orginal X-Box together with whatever off-the-shelf PC hardware they could get from the lowest bidders. Microsoft did a little better job at engineering the 360, but it's still off-the-shelf PC stuff, for the most part. They sell both systems at a loss, but they also have massive cash reserves to protect themselves. So Microsoft's model is low fixed cost, low manufacturing cost, sell at a loss, absorb the loss until the other players in the market are squished.
Sony is a big R&D company. They can manufacture most of the components for the PlayStation line themselves, so their manufacturing costs are low. They pour a lot into the intial R&D and, until the PS3, sold the unit at a profit. The PS1 looked like it was going to be initially sold at a loss in North America, but then RAM prices dropped, allowing them to sell at a profit by launch time. They had to recoup that big R&D loss, but as long as they sold a lot of units, they'd be OK. PS3 is something of a departure, in that it's sold at a loss and is tied to the company's overall Blue-Ray strategy. Sony can't afford for the PS3 to be flop, or even for it to just sell "pretty well". It has to be a smash hit or they'll never get their R&D cost back. So Sony's model is high fixed cost, low manufacturing cost (reletively), sell at a loss, make it up on licensing games.
Nintendo spends comparitively little on R&D. Like Microsoft, they rely on third-parties to manufacture most of the components, but those components are usually specifically developed or modified for the console. They spend a lot of time keeping the manufacturing cost down (for example, the DS doesn't have a z80 processor like the Advanced does for playing old GameBoy games, which lowers manufacturing cost without loosing too many customers). So their model is low fixed cost, low manufacturing cost, sell at a profit, rake in more cash by licensing games.
I have little doubt that Nintendo recouped their R&D cost for the GC before the $99 price drop. The system simply isn't that sophsticated. The Wii might be different, though, since it has such a wildly different controler design.
I can provide a link showing that they definately aren't loosing money on the GC. While you may or may not like to buy Nintendo's consoles, it's abundantly clear which company you'd want to buy stock in.
Eve tends to accept scams as all part of the game. So in this particular case, the developers would only give items/money back if the scam did something against the game rules (which isn't the case here).
So you're an ignorant fool now for asking for scientific verification before claiming something is better?
Maybe double-blind testing will come back and say the next-gen formats are noticably better. I just haven't read about any such tests yet, and until I do, I refuse to take quality claims at face value.
What I really want is to throw all my movies on a hard drive. Then I'll throw the discs into storage and play the movies directly to my TV from my server. I can do that right now with DVDs. The DRM in next-gen formats actively hinders that (though I'm sure it'll be broken with little to no decrease in quality).
I'll spare comments on the quality increases, since I've already stated my opinions in another reply above.
VHS to DVD was a 3X improvement at BEST... DVD to hi-def (1080) is a 6X improvement.
What's that based on? Just the resolution (as another reply noted)? Resolution is a raw number that doesn't necessarily correspond to how much better you perceive the increase in quality.
VHS -> DVD is a huge increase, even over brand-new first-generation VHS tapes. VHS images are noticably fuzzy around edges, for instance. DVDs fix that (excepting the occasional encoding problem) and they don't get worse with age and copies. Plus there is a huge cost in manufacturing difference between the two, which makes it possible for independent productions like Red vs Blue to mass-market movie sales.
What the next-gen formats offer is only an improvement in image quality, which may not be perceptible even with an expensive HDTV. If you can run a double-blind tests between DVDs and next-gen formats using a variety of TV equiptment, then you can tell me that there is a reason to be excited about the improvements in quality. Talking only about the resolution numbers is meaningless if your eye can't tell the differences.
Plain and simple FUD. HD-DVD and Blu-ray players will play all your current DVDs just fine. Implying that you have to go rebuy your collection is unbelivably stupid.
Why would I buy a next-gen player to play my old DVDs?
If I bother to buy a next-gen player, I want as many movies in that new format as I can. Movies in next-gen formats are going to take time to get here, and the quality difference from DVDs -> HD-DVD/Blu-ray isn't as great (certainly not as much as VHS -> DVD), so I have less incentive to bother buying it. If I don't have an HD TV, the quality difference is nil.
So, the cost of replacing my current collection is not worth the additional quality, and therefore buying a player is pointless.
On this specific issue, I would expect the Democrats to take an anti-wiretapping stance, if only because the Republicans are in favor of it.
However, everyone should also remember that the FISA court was greatly expanded by Clinton (and opposed by Republicans at the time). The Clipper chip was also promoted under his watch.
Agencies like the NSA and FBI have goals that reach beyond a single presidential or congressional term. They only need to wait for a president/congress that will give them the authority to increase their power. By the time the next term comes around, people will often forget about it, so it will never become an election issue. Or people will only remember the most grevious issues, while a handful of other expansions get ignored.
It is similar to a situation where a policeman stops you and tells you to run that stop sign so they can give you a ticket or they will arrest you, on some charge like failure to cooperate with an officer.
I believe this specific case would fall under entrapment, and you probably sue for damages far beyond just getting the ticket written off. IANAL, of course.
There's no reason this can't be combined with more traditional safety devices. It's just one more layer. In any case, a safe gun user knows not to fully trust any safety device, and to treat every gun like it's loaded.
As for jamming or remote firing, the signal, as I understad it, is very short range (inches, at most). You should be able to add EMI shielding with little extra weight or cost.
HL is practically a movie already. It's told from a first-person viewpoint, which is rare in main-stream cinema, but there are more indepenedent productions that have done it. However, any Hollywood production would almost certainly change it to the traditional third-person viewpoint.
Now, what about the cast? How about:
Gordan Freemen: Tom Cruise (religious hyjinks and actual acting ability aside, I think he has the best look for the part).
Barney: ???
Soldier Commander: Tommy Lee Jones (New part, taking on the role of hunting down Freemen. Somewhat similar to his role in The Fugitive).
The insurgents will likely build a better system overall, because they will adapt it faster to changing situations.
The US military enjoys a large advantage in military hardware and training. In a straight-up fight, the insurgents would be anihilated as quickly as Sadam's military forces were. The key to a guerilla force is to make sure you don't get involved in a straight-up fight.
Because of this munitions and training advantage, the US military doesn't necessarily rely on their high-tech communications toys. Sure, being able to see real-time deployments of everyone in your area would be nice, but a simple radio will do the job if it comes down to it. OTOH, insurgents rely on their system for all their communications. If it is compromised, large sections of their orginization could be wiped out.
Therefore, each move the US makes to compromise the system will quickly cause the insurgents to adapt. This would soon lead to a far more robust system than the lumbering bureaucracy of the US DoD has.
In time, American forces will work out ways to use all these toys on the battlefield. For now, the insurgents are more likely to have a more robust and effective system.
No more or less then there is pent-up demand for HD-DVD. We still don't know which way the market will eventually settle on. The market could just as easily say phooey to them both and stick with good ol' DVDs.
If the market for Blu-ray goes sour, Sony will be in big trouble, since they're betting a lot on its success. If the market for HD-DVD goes sour, neither Nintendo or Microsoft will care, since the 360 is just hanging around HD-DVD for the fun of it, and Nintendo isn't useing either technology.
The whole transition to HDTV has already been underway for years
Which is really the problem. HDTV is still high-end stuff for people with a lot of money to blow. It still has a long way to go before it reaches mass-market penetration, and I don't see the next round of consoles helping too much.
The improvement in quality with Blu-Ray over DVD is *far* greater than the improvement of DVD over LaserDisc
Very weak argument, here. Few people compare DVD quality to LaserDisc. The comparison was always to VHS, which has obviously inferior quality to DVDs. The DVD to HD-DVD/Blu-ray won't be nearly as obvious.
IIRC, the thing that proved DVD as a successful home format was The Matrix. Only big home theater buffs bought Betamax or LaserDisc. I suspect that if HD-DVD/Blu-ray doesn't get a major breakthrough title like The Matrix, we're going to be using DVDs for a long time to come.
Even if it's true, why would it be a problem? The energy coming to my house can come from any number of sources. It could be a "dirty" source, like oil or coal, or it could be a realtively "clean" source, like solar, wind, hydroelectric, nuclear, or those microwave transmision plants from "Sim City". If my house is powered largely from the dirty sources, then we have a problem with biodiesel production-I'll be sucking away more oil (or coal, or whatever) than is saved by using biodiesel. OTOH, if I'm powered from a cleaner source, then biodiesel just happens to be a convient way to store energy while I'm away from the house.
So fix what's going on upstream and energy-losing fuels aren't really a problem.
Yes. The veto can be overridden with a 2/3 majority back in congress, but other than that, the President has the final say on any bills that pass. The current US President has yet to veto anything, IIRC.
Political ramifications of a veto, like many things in Washington, are a farce. If a bill comes across the President's desk that gives a tax break to the Devil himself for "all his good work over the years", I should hope he vetos it. But some would blindly tally that in the "veto" column for use in later election campaigns.
I haven't seen Uwe Boll's movies, or even played the games they're based on. I have played Doom, though not seen the movie.
IMHO, there are only two requirements for a Doom movie:
It should make grown adults pee their pants in fear
It should have a chainsaw
The rest is negotiable. These two things leave a lot of room for any good horror writer to work with. With the right writer, it might even have a deep, engaging story to make it worthwhile aside from the scary parts, but I'm not going to demand that.
Uwe Boll's complaint is that these games are just hack-and-slash with no real story. Which is fine for games since their gameplay makes a story optional, but that's not true for movies. The thing is, if these games have only the barest shell of a story, then you've given a good writer a lot of potential area to work with. Call up Stephen King and say "we need a pee-your-pants horror screenplay that involves a chainsaw" and I'm sure he'll come up with something.
There's different levels of cannon in Star Wars. Games are on the lowest rung. They pretty much have to, because they'll often show outcomes that are significantly different from more official sources (such as possibly building 30 death stars in Rebellion). Galaxies in particular is, umm, not exactly cannon. The light-side ending to KotOR is official, IIRC.
The books are just below the movies as offcial sources. They're all supposed to create a single story line that refers to earlier books. The movies still trump them (I believe there's details about the clone wars in earlier books that contridicts movies I-III), but they're definately more official than games.
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I also love the rampent eliteism in that sentance, which ends with an incorrect capitalization of 'vi'.
That's my thought, too. What could they possibly be buying that makes them bring in $100M in revenue and still be unprofitable?
Remember that the three companies engineering and sell their consoles on very different models. Microsoft slapped the orginal X-Box together with whatever off-the-shelf PC hardware they could get from the lowest bidders. Microsoft did a little better job at engineering the 360, but it's still off-the-shelf PC stuff, for the most part. They sell both systems at a loss, but they also have massive cash reserves to protect themselves. So Microsoft's model is low fixed cost, low manufacturing cost, sell at a loss, absorb the loss until the other players in the market are squished.
Sony is a big R&D company. They can manufacture most of the components for the PlayStation line themselves, so their manufacturing costs are low. They pour a lot into the intial R&D and, until the PS3, sold the unit at a profit. The PS1 looked like it was going to be initially sold at a loss in North America, but then RAM prices dropped, allowing them to sell at a profit by launch time. They had to recoup that big R&D loss, but as long as they sold a lot of units, they'd be OK. PS3 is something of a departure, in that it's sold at a loss and is tied to the company's overall Blue-Ray strategy. Sony can't afford for the PS3 to be flop, or even for it to just sell "pretty well". It has to be a smash hit or they'll never get their R&D cost back. So Sony's model is high fixed cost, low manufacturing cost (reletively), sell at a loss, make it up on licensing games.
Nintendo spends comparitively little on R&D. Like Microsoft, they rely on third-parties to manufacture most of the components, but those components are usually specifically developed or modified for the console. They spend a lot of time keeping the manufacturing cost down (for example, the DS doesn't have a z80 processor like the Advanced does for playing old GameBoy games, which lowers manufacturing cost without loosing too many customers). So their model is low fixed cost, low manufacturing cost, sell at a profit, rake in more cash by licensing games.
I have little doubt that Nintendo recouped their R&D cost for the GC before the $99 price drop. The system simply isn't that sophsticated. The Wii might be different, though, since it has such a wildly different controler design.
I can provide a link showing that they definately aren't loosing money on the GC. While you may or may not like to buy Nintendo's consoles, it's abundantly clear which company you'd want to buy stock in.
Eve tends to accept scams as all part of the game. So in this particular case, the developers would only give items/money back if the scam did something against the game rules (which isn't the case here).
So you're an ignorant fool now for asking for scientific verification before claiming something is better?
Maybe double-blind testing will come back and say the next-gen formats are noticably better. I just haven't read about any such tests yet, and until I do, I refuse to take quality claims at face value.
What I really want is to throw all my movies on a hard drive. Then I'll throw the discs into storage and play the movies directly to my TV from my server. I can do that right now with DVDs. The DRM in next-gen formats actively hinders that (though I'm sure it'll be broken with little to no decrease in quality).
I'll spare comments on the quality increases, since I've already stated my opinions in another reply above.
VHS to DVD was a 3X improvement at BEST... DVD to hi-def (1080) is a 6X improvement.
What's that based on? Just the resolution (as another reply noted)? Resolution is a raw number that doesn't necessarily correspond to how much better you perceive the increase in quality.
VHS -> DVD is a huge increase, even over brand-new first-generation VHS tapes. VHS images are noticably fuzzy around edges, for instance. DVDs fix that (excepting the occasional encoding problem) and they don't get worse with age and copies. Plus there is a huge cost in manufacturing difference between the two, which makes it possible for independent productions like Red vs Blue to mass-market movie sales.
What the next-gen formats offer is only an improvement in image quality, which may not be perceptible even with an expensive HDTV. If you can run a double-blind tests between DVDs and next-gen formats using a variety of TV equiptment, then you can tell me that there is a reason to be excited about the improvements in quality. Talking only about the resolution numbers is meaningless if your eye can't tell the differences.
Plain and simple FUD. HD-DVD and Blu-ray players will play all your current DVDs just fine. Implying that you have to go rebuy your collection is unbelivably stupid.
Why would I buy a next-gen player to play my old DVDs?
If I bother to buy a next-gen player, I want as many movies in that new format as I can. Movies in next-gen formats are going to take time to get here, and the quality difference from DVDs -> HD-DVD/Blu-ray isn't as great (certainly not as much as VHS -> DVD), so I have less incentive to bother buying it. If I don't have an HD TV, the quality difference is nil.
So, the cost of replacing my current collection is not worth the additional quality, and therefore buying a player is pointless.
On this specific issue, I would expect the Democrats to take an anti-wiretapping stance, if only because the Republicans are in favor of it.
However, everyone should also remember that the FISA court was greatly expanded by Clinton (and opposed by Republicans at the time). The Clipper chip was also promoted under his watch.
Agencies like the NSA and FBI have goals that reach beyond a single presidential or congressional term. They only need to wait for a president/congress that will give them the authority to increase their power. By the time the next term comes around, people will often forget about it, so it will never become an election issue. Or people will only remember the most grevious issues, while a handful of other expansions get ignored.
It is similar to a situation where a policeman stops you and tells you to run that stop sign so they can give you a ticket or they will arrest you, on some charge like failure to cooperate with an officer.
I believe this specific case would fall under entrapment, and you probably sue for damages far beyond just getting the ticket written off. IANAL, of course.
Do they thrown in a russian nuke in a motorcycle side seat with those glass knives?
If by 'witty' you mean "copy-and-pasted first paragraph of the article", then yes, the submitter is witty.
You don't actually think the average(or above) needle on a record player can actually produce anything higher than 22Khz do you?
You don't actually think a human over five years old can hear that high, do you?
There's no reason this can't be combined with more traditional safety devices. It's just one more layer. In any case, a safe gun user knows not to fully trust any safety device, and to treat every gun like it's loaded.
As for jamming or remote firing, the signal, as I understad it, is very short range (inches, at most). You should be able to add EMI shielding with little extra weight or cost.
HL is practically a movie already. It's told from a first-person viewpoint, which is rare in main-stream cinema, but there are more indepenedent productions that have done it. However, any Hollywood production would almost certainly change it to the traditional third-person viewpoint.
Now, what about the cast? How about:
The insurgents will likely build a better system overall, because they will adapt it faster to changing situations.
The US military enjoys a large advantage in military hardware and training. In a straight-up fight, the insurgents would be anihilated as quickly as Sadam's military forces were. The key to a guerilla force is to make sure you don't get involved in a straight-up fight.
Because of this munitions and training advantage, the US military doesn't necessarily rely on their high-tech communications toys. Sure, being able to see real-time deployments of everyone in your area would be nice, but a simple radio will do the job if it comes down to it. OTOH, insurgents rely on their system for all their communications. If it is compromised, large sections of their orginization could be wiped out.
Therefore, each move the US makes to compromise the system will quickly cause the insurgents to adapt. This would soon lead to a far more robust system than the lumbering bureaucracy of the US DoD has.
In time, American forces will work out ways to use all these toys on the battlefield. For now, the insurgents are more likely to have a more robust and effective system.
There is a HUGE pent-up demand for Blu-Ray.
No more or less then there is pent-up demand for HD-DVD. We still don't know which way the market will eventually settle on. The market could just as easily say phooey to them both and stick with good ol' DVDs.
If the market for Blu-ray goes sour, Sony will be in big trouble, since they're betting a lot on its success. If the market for HD-DVD goes sour, neither Nintendo or Microsoft will care, since the 360 is just hanging around HD-DVD for the fun of it, and Nintendo isn't useing either technology.
The whole transition to HDTV has already been underway for years
Which is really the problem. HDTV is still high-end stuff for people with a lot of money to blow. It still has a long way to go before it reaches mass-market penetration, and I don't see the next round of consoles helping too much.
The improvement in quality with Blu-Ray over DVD is *far* greater than the improvement of DVD over LaserDisc
Very weak argument, here. Few people compare DVD quality to LaserDisc. The comparison was always to VHS, which has obviously inferior quality to DVDs. The DVD to HD-DVD/Blu-ray won't be nearly as obvious.
IIRC, the thing that proved DVD as a successful home format was The Matrix. Only big home theater buffs bought Betamax or LaserDisc. I suspect that if HD-DVD/Blu-ray doesn't get a major breakthrough title like The Matrix, we're going to be using DVDs for a long time to come.
Hrm, wha? I thought FPSen were the only things they played on XBox.
Gundam Seed had the shot with Mu La Flaga's shattered helmet in the final episode taken out in later editions.
Isn't it funny how the masked guy in Destiny talks like Mu?
Even if it's true, why would it be a problem? The energy coming to my house can come from any number of sources. It could be a "dirty" source, like oil or coal, or it could be a realtively "clean" source, like solar, wind, hydroelectric, nuclear, or those microwave transmision plants from "Sim City". If my house is powered largely from the dirty sources, then we have a problem with biodiesel production-I'll be sucking away more oil (or coal, or whatever) than is saved by using biodiesel. OTOH, if I'm powered from a cleaner source, then biodiesel just happens to be a convient way to store energy while I'm away from the house.
So fix what's going on upstream and energy-losing fuels aren't really a problem.
Yes. The veto can be overridden with a 2/3 majority back in congress, but other than that, the President has the final say on any bills that pass. The current US President has yet to veto anything, IIRC.
Political ramifications of a veto, like many things in Washington, are a farce. If a bill comes across the President's desk that gives a tax break to the Devil himself for "all his good work over the years", I should hope he vetos it. But some would blindly tally that in the "veto" column for use in later election campaigns.
Bugger the Guristas. I'm coming in a suicide kessie.
I haven't seen Uwe Boll's movies, or even played the games they're based on. I have played Doom, though not seen the movie.
IMHO, there are only two requirements for a Doom movie:
The rest is negotiable. These two things leave a lot of room for any good horror writer to work with. With the right writer, it might even have a deep, engaging story to make it worthwhile aside from the scary parts, but I'm not going to demand that.
Uwe Boll's complaint is that these games are just hack-and-slash with no real story. Which is fine for games since their gameplay makes a story optional, but that's not true for movies. The thing is, if these games have only the barest shell of a story, then you've given a good writer a lot of potential area to work with. Call up Stephen King and say "we need a pee-your-pants horror screenplay that involves a chainsaw" and I'm sure he'll come up with something.
There's different levels of cannon in Star Wars. Games are on the lowest rung. They pretty much have to, because they'll often show outcomes that are significantly different from more official sources (such as possibly building 30 death stars in Rebellion). Galaxies in particular is, umm, not exactly cannon. The light-side ending to KotOR is official, IIRC.
The books are just below the movies as offcial sources. They're all supposed to create a single story line that refers to earlier books. The movies still trump them (I believe there's details about the clone wars in earlier books that contridicts movies I-III), but they're definately more official than games.