You can say that the story was directed at a single man, but then why is it in the Bible?
Why not? It was supposedly a story that tells of the conversation that transpired in order to make a point. Now, I'm not suggesting that he was trying to suggest that it only applied to him, just that it doesn't mean it applies to everyone.
Within the context, we see he's a rich man who follows the commandments, but is not willing to give up his earthly possessions in exchange for a hope of eternal life. The same may apply to other (or all) of the rich, but I don't think it means that EVERYONE needs to give everything away (perhaps just those that would be held back by their wealth).
Hey, have you considered becoming a follower? It sounds like you already know most of what it's about.
There is potentially a huge gap between having a good understanding of a religion and actually having any faith in it.
If *THAT* is the party that seemed off to you, you didn't read the details on their site...
First, I want to say that there are tons of indie films with budgets in this ballpark (or even lower) that have been successful, and some of them are quite good. Hollywood movies don't try to be reasonable in budget. They try to be big and showy, and that costs money.
The amount is actually going to be $135,000... apparently they thought 90 minutes was standard, rather than 190 minutes.
However, those aren't the numbers that are off. What is off is what the terms are for this deal. What you get for your $1, assuming the movie is completed, is they will e-mail you a picture of the 1 frame of the film that gets designated to you. All those people who happen to fall on a "fade to black" are going to be pretty excited by that pure black picture they get...
99% of the profit is going to go back to the group that made it.
1% is being given away lottery style to whoever happened to have randomly invested in a frame that is going to be selected by these guys. That 1 person gets 1% of the film profits.
Sounds like a good shtick to me. Why bother taking out loans when you can get people volunteer donations for only 1% of the profit?
As I recall, those directions were given toward a specific person, a rich man and seems to be trying to show that it was known (or suspected) that the rich man would reject the idea (implying that the money was more important). I don't think that it was intended to imply that everyone needs to give away all their money, and I'm not even sure I'd take it to mean that it should apply to all rich men. However, I think it's fair to say that it is implying that one should not put money above god.
If I recall correctly, in one of the letters in the New Testament, the writer admonished the church for giving away all their belongings (under the assumption that the second coming was coming soon, so they wouldn't need them).
It seems that protestants have taken up the message that financial prosperity is a blessing from god, and they like to gloss over this particular story anyway. For the past century, a myth has popped up regarding a badly designed gate in ancient Jerusalem called the Eye of the Needle, that Camels had to "remove their burdens" and "get down on their knees" to pass through. It seems to be a story to help them sleep at night.
That you should hate your father and your mother.
I believe some translations (and sane interpretations given the context of other teachings) read this as hating them in comparison. Like the money, it's about not putting even one's family as more important than their faith. I'm not saying that I support that sentiment, but yet it is still less sensationalist than it sounds.
That you should not abide in laws and rules, but rather focus on love.
The Gospels definitely take issue with religious legalism, and losing one's way by following the letter of laws rather than the heart of them. However, "not abide by rules and laws" isn't what I'd consider a fair characterization. It was also stated, "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s", which seems to imply that it is good to recognize the authority of the state as well.
That you shouldn't lord over each other. Pretty much the whole of the gospel message has been thoroughly rejected and rationalized away by the "church".
I'm in total agreement with you here. In general, I do agree with your sentiment that the lots of followers tend to be oblivious to what their religion actually teaches, at least when viewing their actions.
Anyway, I'm not a follower... but I grew up in the Bible Belt, so I picked up things...
As a paying customer of Geico, I am paying the salaries of Geico employees! I demand to see where my money is going. It is my right.
My taxes help pay for military intelligence. By this token, there should not be any military secrets at all. Top Secret access should be opened to all tax paying citizens, because we paid for them.
Seriously, regulating telecoms does not equal controlling the web.
The reason we want net neutrality is so that network carriers do not control the web, just offer their service without unreasonably interfering in the way a customer uses the network. Reasonable limits could be throttling heavy users WHEN there is high demand in order to more reasonably share network traffic, or when a user is using the network in a criminal way.
For example, without neutral networks, we could have a far-fetched hypothetical situation where an ISP limits the availability or performance of services from competitors, and gives preferential treatment to their own services.
I know that the web becoming more of a high-bandwidth place tossing around videos is pretty far-fetched. I know that it would be pretty crazy for ISP's to start competing with video on demand and telephone providers. I know that it would be ludicrous to expect some cable monopoly, such as Comcast, to manage to come along and snatch up some media outlet, say NBC, around the same time that they push for bandwidth caps and tiered pricing. Certainly they would never do something like make those limits apply to other media outlets, but not apply those limits to their own content.
Furthermore, nobody could imagine that they could manage to produce astroturf movements to gain sympathy from the average Joe so that not only can they get away with it, people will be begging the big bad government to stop interfering with their plans.
It would never even get this far, so we don't even have to worry about the unthinkable future possibilities, such as ISPs giving network priority and affect the actual network performance of their own content, compared to their competitors. We won't have to worry about ISPs extorting money from websites in order to give them enhanced performance (at the expense of the non-paying sites). We don't have to worry about them rerouting traffic, or trying to limit criticism by controlling the web.
Really, they couldn't even get halfway there without a lot of protest, right?
It's not like they were allowed to become a monopoly through the help of our government anyway.
I think the policy should be that employers (public or private) should only be allowed to review phone records used an employer issued phone if the policy is that it can't be used for personal use.
If they explicitly allow (or encourage) use of these company resources for personal use, then they should be restricted from viewing personal use.
Encouraging and allowing personal use, and then being able to view it is dangerous, can be easily abused, and is like setting up traps for people. In the end, everyone will probably say or do something stupid on their phones in their personal use, so if you want to rake any random person over the coals you can likely find *something* that is at least somewhat objectionable on any random phone search.
Good point. I don't understand why people make the distinction between them being government employees or not. I don't think it should matter. Both employees in the public and private sector really should be able to expect the same level (or lack) of privacy from their employer.
Is it wasteful? That's a matter of opinion. If you live in a normal sized city, then you probably think so. If you are one of the few people who are heavily reliant on a rural post office, then you probably do not.
You get less efficiency for the money when providing utilities, health services, and schools to very rural areas too, but I wouldn't call it wasteful.
So, because you didn't like the script or story to the movie, you are going to stick your head in your ass and ignore the fact that it was a movie that is widely regarded as being a great success as far as making an effective 3D presentation and for generating acceptance and enthusiasm for 3D in general?
Even if the film was rubbish, it had a pretty big impact on the industry (for better or worse) and certainly did not fail in eye candy, 3d, or effects departments.
However, there are also little facts like FedEx and UPS aren't required to run offices in every city, regardless of them being extremely small population areas where they are losing money.
I'm not saying that USPS couldn't be run any better, but they are expected (and mandated) to meet certain requirements that the private shipping companies don't have to.
I don't know how you can study the last 3000 years of history, and conclude government is not evil. More citizens have been killed by their OWN government, than by foreign invasion, even inside Democracies.
This might come as a bit of a shocker to you, but governments are run by humans.
Some humans are kind and benevolent. Some are ruthless, tyrannical, and evil. Some have good intentions but still manage to botch things along the way.
Of course governments have been responsible for some terrible things, but it's only when they are in the position to. The same thing has been true for individuals, warlords, cult leaders, churches, corporations, etc.
The good or evil that they produce has nothing intrinsically to do with the fact that they are governments.
The more centralized the power is, the more effective, and the less accountability for that power, the more potential for corruption (regardless of the type or organization it stems from).
It's not that governments are more evil than any other institution, it's that they frequently tend to be the most influential institution, and have the potential for doing the most harm when they are.
The important thing with governments are to ensure that there is accountability, the right to dissent, vigilance in maintaining one's rights, and preventing too much power from pooling in one place.
Governments don't kill people, their leaders and agents do, but only if they are allowed too. Without governments, murder would not go away... in fact, I suspect it would get worse.
Because if Oracle had contracts with a private corporation to give them the best deals, and that private corporation found out that Oracle wasn't holding up to their end of the bargain, they would never sue, right?
It's only because they were dealing with the big evil government that they had to actually stick to their contractual obligations.
And if the government was found to be overcharged without doing anything about it, citizens would never object, right?
The government has the reputation for never being efficient or controlling costs. Whenever the government tries to become more efficient and more cost effective, we need to encourage that! (Assuming it doesn't mean taking away our rights)
I've never seen ads targeted towards consumers for Linux, yet I've seen tons for Mac computers and for Windows.
Granted, Windows is the big gorilla, but all things considered, the fact that Linux has about 20% of the number of users as the Mac is pretty impressive, considering the level of advertising and brand name recognition they both have. Linux has survived and kept a small niche user base and maintained a certain level of respect.
All things considered, I don't think it's done too shabby.
How silly of me to ignore profit when mentioning profit.
You ignored profit when you said "To say it was a failure compared to the XBox, while the XBox was a success with the same number of sales is pretty silly", and yes it was silly to say that and then a moment later point out yourself why that statement was wrong.
Yet the part that YOU quoted from me mentioned profit, and then responded that I was ignoring profit.
Look, the fact of the matter is that my original comment was addressing the much earlier comment which mentioned sales and profits specifically, so I addressed sales and profits specifically. I was addressing what appears to be the common perception that Nintendo was on the ropes last generation from the battle with Sony and Microsoft, and then made a miraculous recovery with the Wii.
I'm not the one that is playing with metrics by inventing the hope and expectations metric, or the wish to recapture their former glory metric.
We could invent other arbitrary metrics as well. There are certainly other ways it did worse than the competition beat it, including graphics horsepower (xbox), internet connectivity (xbox for sure, but even ps2 pulls ahead here), 3rd party support, capability as a media center by allowing for CD or DVD playback, etc.
However, none of that was really the point.
That's nice; if people thought the GC sold far less than Xbox, they were simply wrong.
That's a significant part of what I was trying to say. People underestimated how well the GC did in comparison to the Xbox. Plus, they completely forget about the handheld market.
Look, I don't think that we really disagree that much here. Our main difference seems to be that you insist on saying it was definitely a failure, while while I saw it as more of a lackluster and disappointing performance on behalf of the system but would hesitate to call it a failure, and feel that the general perception of how they did was actually worse than how they really did. Then, if you consider the handheld market, they actually did quite well.
So, it's not about how many you sell, how much profit you make selling them, but about whether you wish you had done better? In capitalism, EVERYONE always wishes they had done better, even if they are #1.
It's about that and much more. You've already brought up yourself why unit sales as the sole metric of success is foolish, because it ignores profit (I worked for a company like that; it wasn't pretty). You certainly can't say the two were equally successful from that standpoint, can you? So let's abandon the flawed premise that equal sales equals equal success, okay?:
How silly of me to ignore profit when mentioning profit.
As for the rest of it...
It sounds like you are saying that with Nintendo, they had "strategic goals", and therefor they were a failure because they didn't meet those goals, while Microsoft only had "hopes", so the fact that they made less profit and roughly equal sales means they were still more successful.
So, if Nintendo had "hopes" instead of "goals", then they wouldn't have been a failure? If only they had though of that ahead of time.
Who cares if they only tied a company new to the scene? They were getting beaten badly for a 2nd generation in a row by another company that was a newcomer to the scene. Just 2 console generations before that, they themselves were the newcomer to the scene which they then dominated. I think they realize that market leaders can change quickly in that industry.
It's the equivalent of offering to end two guy's dick-waving contest by busting out a ruler; you might be a neutral observer, but you're still measuring dicks.
First of all, I never said I was neutral. I consider myself fair, but not neutral. However, by this logic, anytime any comparison is made with any metric, someone is "measuring dicks"? Does that mean that you have been measuring the dick of expectations vs the dick of goals?
That's not what it's all about anyway. The whole point of my contribution to this discussion was merely to say that Nintendo got about the same market share in the home console market as Microsoft, so it is a misconception of most people is that it did far worse than Microsoft (which was mostly only true in North America).
It was also disputing the perception that they held on mostly by never selling at a loss, when in reality they were getting sales in the handheld market that were better than anyone was getting in the console market at the time.
That's really it, that despite having (what I freely admit) was disappointing sales in the last generation of consoles, they really weren't doing as badly as most people seem to have perceived.
In an absolute sense (of fanboy dick-waving contests), for sure. As far as relative to their expectations, that's more debatable, because they were different. In one sense, Nintendo made money ergo GC was a success, but they surely had higher hopes than to limp along and stay in the game. Microsoft, on the other hand, was simply trying to buy their way into the game and from that standpoint Xbox was a smashing success even though it lost them billions of dollars. I doubt they expected it to go otherwise.
So despite having similar unit sales, I don't think it's inaccurate to say that the Gamecube was a failure and the Xbox a success.
"Fanboy dick-waving contest"? I call them like I see them, good and bad, in all the camps.
It's not about being a fanboy. I owned all 3 systems last generation.
To say it was a failure compared to the XBox, while the XBox was a success with the same number of sales is pretty silly. It didn't live up to some nebulous hopes or expectations?
So, it's not about how many you sell, how much profit you make selling them, but about whether you wish you had done better? In capitalism, EVERYONE always wishes they had done better, even if they are #1.
In all honesty, the GameCube just got trounced the previous generation, and I don't recall anyone outside the big 'N' really expecting them to take the crown from Sony.
Microsoft, on the other hand, I believe did have high hopes of not just entering the market, but hitting it big. They invested in making the system that had the superior hardware in just about every way I can think of, but yet managed to be tied for a distant second. Yet you think that this would be counted as more successful?
I'd say that Microsoft and Nintendo both had equally lackluster or disappointing console sales, but I'd still hesitate to call either of them a "failure". They each performed respectively better in their consoles than Sega did for 2 generations combined, though both were a little bit below the previous gen's N64.
My perspective was that even when all evidence points to faith being wrong, there are those that will still trust their faith and assume that the facts are wrong.
We have evidence to suggest that the world is greater than 6,000 years old, so the science must be wrong.
We have evidence to suggest that the world was not created in 7 days, so the science must be wrong.
We have evidence to suggest that some of the Bible's stories have been ripped off from other cultures, so the historians must be wrong.
We have evidence to support evolution, so the Biologists must be wrong.
In the past the church also refused to believe that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe.
Should I go on?
Granted the faithful do believe in things that cannot be proven, but they certainly have their share of denial.
Most people seem to see the GameCube era as being profitable for Nintendo only because they didn't sell their system at a loss, but otherwise see it as being mostly a failure.
This is a very Americentric view. While the GameCube may have lagged behind in sales in the USA, worldwide it was pretty close to XBox sales (22 million vs 24 million), yet nobody seems to cite the XBox as a failure. Both, however, lagged significantly behind the PS2, which continues to sell and has reached over 140 million. (However, lack of compatibility in the modern PS3s and rumored frequent hardware failures of older PS2s may play a role here).
However, it also seems to be completely ignoring the juggernaut of the GameBoy Advance, which until the release of the DS, was selling better than the PS2. The GBA ended up reaching over 80 million sales.
The DS, which started at the tail end of the GameCube era (2 years before the Wii) has managed to sell more than 128 million units, which is getting close to the level of the 140+ million that the PS2 has reached.
Yet, people keep on buying into the myth that Nintendo only held on last generation because they don't sell hardware at a loss. Sony killed wiped the floor with both MS and Nintendo in the console front last generation, but Nintendo has been killing in the handheld market for more than a decade now, and doing quite well for themselves in the console market now.
So while you concede they have done well, I think you greatly underestimate how well.
My choice of saying "modern politics" was not intended to imply such tendancies did not exist in the past, but rather that it seems to me that it's become increasingly prevelant.
For example, it seems to me that with the rising influence of the Christian Right, the Republican Party seems to be picking up the habit of the religious of just denying or attempting to discredit any information that makes them uncomfortable.
I'm not trying to imply that there isn't any "bad science" out there (I know it exists too), but so does denial.
religious apologists aside.* By definition, faith is belief in something without evidence.
I think it would be more accurate to say it is belief in something despite evidence to the contrary.
More to the point, if evidence exists that is contrary to your belief, then the evidence obviously must be flawed. From that perspective, I think that modern politics is essentially a religion as well.
I wasn't really trying to assume anything. I was just posing the question about what a white hole was, and if it would have the properties that the name suggested. My part of the discussion was meant to be quite hypothetical and largely in jest.
Perhaps "shortest path" was a bad way of phrasing it, but I think we meant the same thing. What I meant was in the sense that it continued going in the same direction in a straight line (the shortest distance between two points). Of course that "line" (or shortest distance between 2 points) is only straight from the perspective that the light travels, and could appear non-straight to an outside observer due to the curvature of space.
Slashdot Mirror
You can say that the story was directed at a single man, but then why is it in the Bible?
Why not? It was supposedly a story that tells of the conversation that transpired in order to make a point. Now, I'm not suggesting that he was trying to suggest that it only applied to him, just that it doesn't mean it applies to everyone.
Within the context, we see he's a rich man who follows the commandments, but is not willing to give up his earthly possessions in exchange for a hope of eternal life. The same may apply to other (or all) of the rich, but I don't think it means that EVERYONE needs to give everything away (perhaps just those that would be held back by their wealth).
Hey, have you considered becoming a follower? It sounds like you already know most of what it's about.
There is potentially a huge gap between having a good understanding of a religion and actually having any faith in it.
If *THAT* is the party that seemed off to you, you didn't read the details on their site...
First, I want to say that there are tons of indie films with budgets in this ballpark (or even lower) that have been successful, and some of them are quite good. Hollywood movies don't try to be reasonable in budget. They try to be big and showy, and that costs money.
The amount is actually going to be $135,000... apparently they thought 90 minutes was standard, rather than 190 minutes.
However, those aren't the numbers that are off. What is off is what the terms are for this deal. What you get for your $1, assuming the movie is completed, is they will e-mail you a picture of the 1 frame of the film that gets designated to you. All those people who happen to fall on a "fade to black" are going to be pretty excited by that pure black picture they get...
99% of the profit is going to go back to the group that made it.
1% is being given away lottery style to whoever happened to have randomly invested in a frame that is going to be selected by these guys. That 1 person gets 1% of the film profits.
Sounds like a good shtick to me. Why bother taking out loans when you can get people volunteer donations for only 1% of the profit?
I can't resist saying, IANAC (Christian), but...
That you should give away all your money.
As I recall, those directions were given toward a specific person, a rich man and seems to be trying to show that it was known (or suspected) that the rich man would reject the idea (implying that the money was more important). I don't think that it was intended to imply that everyone needs to give away all their money, and I'm not even sure I'd take it to mean that it should apply to all rich men. However, I think it's fair to say that it is implying that one should not put money above god.
If I recall correctly, in one of the letters in the New Testament, the writer admonished the church for giving away all their belongings (under the assumption that the second coming was coming soon, so they wouldn't need them).
It seems that protestants have taken up the message that financial prosperity is a blessing from god, and they like to gloss over this particular story anyway. For the past century, a myth has popped up regarding a badly designed gate in ancient Jerusalem called the Eye of the Needle, that Camels had to "remove their burdens" and "get down on their knees" to pass through. It seems to be a story to help them sleep at night.
That you should hate your father and your mother.
I believe some translations (and sane interpretations given the context of other teachings) read this as hating them in comparison. Like the money, it's about not putting even one's family as more important than their faith. I'm not saying that I support that sentiment, but yet it is still less sensationalist than it sounds.
That you should not abide in laws and rules, but rather focus on love.
The Gospels definitely take issue with religious legalism, and losing one's way by following the letter of laws rather than the heart of them. However, "not abide by rules and laws" isn't what I'd consider a fair characterization. It was also stated, "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s", which seems to imply that it is good to recognize the authority of the state as well.
That you shouldn't lord over each other. Pretty much the whole of the gospel message has been thoroughly rejected and rationalized away by the "church".
I'm in total agreement with you here. In general, I do agree with your sentiment that the lots of followers tend to be oblivious to what their religion actually teaches, at least when viewing their actions.
Anyway, I'm not a follower... but I grew up in the Bible Belt, so I picked up things...
As a paying customer of Geico, I am paying the salaries of Geico employees! I demand to see where my money is going. It is my right.
My taxes help pay for military intelligence. By this token, there should not be any military secrets at all. Top Secret access should be opened to all tax paying citizens, because we paid for them.
Seriously, regulating telecoms does not equal controlling the web.
The reason we want net neutrality is so that network carriers do not control the web, just offer their service without unreasonably interfering in the way a customer uses the network. Reasonable limits could be throttling heavy users WHEN there is high demand in order to more reasonably share network traffic, or when a user is using the network in a criminal way.
For example, without neutral networks, we could have a far-fetched hypothetical situation where an ISP limits the availability or performance of services from competitors, and gives preferential treatment to their own services.
I know that the web becoming more of a high-bandwidth place tossing around videos is pretty far-fetched. I know that it would be pretty crazy for ISP's to start competing with video on demand and telephone providers. I know that it would be ludicrous to expect some cable monopoly, such as Comcast, to manage to come along and snatch up some media outlet, say NBC, around the same time that they push for bandwidth caps and tiered pricing. Certainly they would never do something like make those limits apply to other media outlets, but not apply those limits to their own content.
Furthermore, nobody could imagine that they could manage to produce astroturf movements to gain sympathy from the average Joe so that not only can they get away with it, people will be begging the big bad government to stop interfering with their plans.
It would never even get this far, so we don't even have to worry about the unthinkable future possibilities, such as ISPs giving network priority and affect the actual network performance of their own content, compared to their competitors. We won't have to worry about ISPs extorting money from websites in order to give them enhanced performance (at the expense of the non-paying sites). We don't have to worry about them rerouting traffic, or trying to limit criticism by controlling the web.
Really, they couldn't even get halfway there without a lot of protest, right?
It's not like they were allowed to become a monopoly through the help of our government anyway.
I think the policy should be that employers (public or private) should only be allowed to review phone records used an employer issued phone if the policy is that it can't be used for personal use.
If they explicitly allow (or encourage) use of these company resources for personal use, then they should be restricted from viewing personal use.
Encouraging and allowing personal use, and then being able to view it is dangerous, can be easily abused, and is like setting up traps for people. In the end, everyone will probably say or do something stupid on their phones in their personal use, so if you want to rake any random person over the coals you can likely find *something* that is at least somewhat objectionable on any random phone search.
Good point. I don't understand why people make the distinction between them being government employees or not. I don't think it should matter. Both employees in the public and private sector really should be able to expect the same level (or lack) of privacy from their employer.
If we let them watch Uwe Boll movies on their TVs, I bet even the Monkeys will agree that they suck.
Is it wasteful? That's a matter of opinion. If you live in a normal sized city, then you probably think so. If you are one of the few people who are heavily reliant on a rural post office, then you probably do not.
You get less efficiency for the money when providing utilities, health services, and schools to very rural areas too, but I wouldn't call it wasteful.
So, because you didn't like the script or story to the movie, you are going to stick your head in your ass and ignore the fact that it was a movie that is widely regarded as being a great success as far as making an effective 3D presentation and for generating acceptance and enthusiasm for 3D in general?
Even if the film was rubbish, it had a pretty big impact on the industry (for better or worse) and certainly did not fail in eye candy, 3d, or effects departments.
However, there are also little facts like FedEx and UPS aren't required to run offices in every city, regardless of them being extremely small population areas where they are losing money.
I'm not saying that USPS couldn't be run any better, but they are expected (and mandated) to meet certain requirements that the private shipping companies don't have to.
I don't know how you can study the last 3000 years of history, and conclude government is not evil. More citizens have been killed by their OWN government, than by foreign invasion, even inside Democracies.
This might come as a bit of a shocker to you, but governments are run by humans.
Some humans are kind and benevolent. Some are ruthless, tyrannical, and evil. Some have good intentions but still manage to botch things along the way.
Of course governments have been responsible for some terrible things, but it's only when they are in the position to. The same thing has been true for individuals, warlords, cult leaders, churches, corporations, etc.
The good or evil that they produce has nothing intrinsically to do with the fact that they are governments.
The more centralized the power is, the more effective, and the less accountability for that power, the more potential for corruption (regardless of the type or organization it stems from).
It's not that governments are more evil than any other institution, it's that they frequently tend to be the most influential institution, and have the potential for doing the most harm when they are.
The important thing with governments are to ensure that there is accountability, the right to dissent, vigilance in maintaining one's rights, and preventing too much power from pooling in one place.
Governments don't kill people, their leaders and agents do, but only if they are allowed too. Without governments, murder would not go away... in fact, I suspect it would get worse.
First they came for the Geologists, and I did not speak out -- Because I was not a Geologists...
Because if Oracle had contracts with a private corporation to give them the best deals, and that private corporation found out that Oracle wasn't holding up to their end of the bargain, they would never sue, right?
It's only because they were dealing with the big evil government that they had to actually stick to their contractual obligations.
And if the government was found to be overcharged without doing anything about it, citizens would never object, right?
The government has the reputation for never being efficient or controlling costs. Whenever the government tries to become more efficient and more cost effective, we need to encourage that! (Assuming it doesn't mean taking away our rights)
I've never seen ads targeted towards consumers for Linux, yet I've seen tons for Mac computers and for Windows.
Granted, Windows is the big gorilla, but all things considered, the fact that Linux has about 20% of the number of users as the Mac is pretty impressive, considering the level of advertising and brand name recognition they both have. Linux has survived and kept a small niche user base and maintained a certain level of respect.
All things considered, I don't think it's done too shabby.
How silly of me to ignore profit when mentioning profit.
You ignored profit when you said "To say it was a failure compared to the XBox, while the XBox was a success with the same number of sales is pretty silly", and yes it was silly to say that and then a moment later point out yourself why that statement was wrong.
Yet the part that YOU quoted from me mentioned profit, and then responded that I was ignoring profit.
Look, the fact of the matter is that my original comment was addressing the much earlier comment which mentioned sales and profits specifically, so I addressed sales and profits specifically. I was addressing what appears to be the common perception that Nintendo was on the ropes last generation from the battle with Sony and Microsoft, and then made a miraculous recovery with the Wii.
I'm not the one that is playing with metrics by inventing the hope and expectations metric, or the wish to recapture their former glory metric.
We could invent other arbitrary metrics as well. There are certainly other ways it did worse than the competition beat it, including graphics horsepower (xbox), internet connectivity (xbox for sure, but even ps2 pulls ahead here), 3rd party support, capability as a media center by allowing for CD or DVD playback, etc.
However, none of that was really the point.
That's nice; if people thought the GC sold far less than Xbox, they were simply wrong.
That's a significant part of what I was trying to say. People underestimated how well the GC did in comparison to the Xbox. Plus, they completely forget about the handheld market.
Look, I don't think that we really disagree that much here. Our main difference seems to be that you insist on saying it was definitely a failure, while while I saw it as more of a lackluster and disappointing performance on behalf of the system but would hesitate to call it a failure, and feel that the general perception of how they did was actually worse than how they really did. Then, if you consider the handheld market, they actually did quite well.
So... Why are we fighting?
So, it's not about how many you sell, how much profit you make selling them, but about whether you wish you had done better? In capitalism, EVERYONE always wishes they had done better, even if they are #1.
It's about that and much more. You've already brought up yourself why unit sales as the sole metric of success is foolish, because it ignores profit (I worked for a company like that; it wasn't pretty). You certainly can't say the two were equally successful from that standpoint, can you? So let's abandon the flawed premise that equal sales equals equal success, okay? :
How silly of me to ignore profit when mentioning profit.
As for the rest of it...
It sounds like you are saying that with Nintendo, they had "strategic goals", and therefor they were a failure because they didn't meet those goals, while Microsoft only had "hopes", so the fact that they made less profit and roughly equal sales means they were still more successful.
So, if Nintendo had "hopes" instead of "goals", then they wouldn't have been a failure? If only they had though of that ahead of time.
Who cares if they only tied a company new to the scene? They were getting beaten badly for a 2nd generation in a row by another company that was a newcomer to the scene. Just 2 console generations before that, they themselves were the newcomer to the scene which they then dominated. I think they realize that market leaders can change quickly in that industry.
It's the equivalent of offering to end two guy's dick-waving contest by busting out a ruler; you might be a neutral observer, but you're still measuring dicks.
First of all, I never said I was neutral. I consider myself fair, but not neutral. However, by this logic, anytime any comparison is made with any metric, someone is "measuring dicks"? Does that mean that you have been measuring the dick of expectations vs the dick of goals?
That's not what it's all about anyway. The whole point of my contribution to this discussion was merely to say that Nintendo got about the same market share in the home console market as Microsoft, so it is a misconception of most people is that it did far worse than Microsoft (which was mostly only true in North America).
It was also disputing the perception that they held on mostly by never selling at a loss, when in reality they were getting sales in the handheld market that were better than anyone was getting in the console market at the time.
That's really it, that despite having (what I freely admit) was disappointing sales in the last generation of consoles, they really weren't doing as badly as most people seem to have perceived.
In an absolute sense (of fanboy dick-waving contests), for sure. As far as relative to their expectations, that's more debatable, because they were different. In one sense, Nintendo made money ergo GC was a success, but they surely had higher hopes than to limp along and stay in the game. Microsoft, on the other hand, was simply trying to buy their way into the game and from that standpoint Xbox was a smashing success even though it lost them billions of dollars. I doubt they expected it to go otherwise.
So despite having similar unit sales, I don't think it's inaccurate to say that the Gamecube was a failure and the Xbox a success.
"Fanboy dick-waving contest"? I call them like I see them, good and bad, in all the camps.
It's not about being a fanboy. I owned all 3 systems last generation.
To say it was a failure compared to the XBox, while the XBox was a success with the same number of sales is pretty silly. It didn't live up to some nebulous hopes or expectations?
So, it's not about how many you sell, how much profit you make selling them, but about whether you wish you had done better? In capitalism, EVERYONE always wishes they had done better, even if they are #1.
In all honesty, the GameCube just got trounced the previous generation, and I don't recall anyone outside the big 'N' really expecting them to take the crown from Sony.
Microsoft, on the other hand, I believe did have high hopes of not just entering the market, but hitting it big. They invested in making the system that had the superior hardware in just about every way I can think of, but yet managed to be tied for a distant second. Yet you think that this would be counted as more successful?
I'd say that Microsoft and Nintendo both had equally lackluster or disappointing console sales, but I'd still hesitate to call either of them a "failure". They each performed respectively better in their consoles than Sega did for 2 generations combined, though both were a little bit below the previous gen's N64.
My perspective was that even when all evidence points to faith being wrong, there are those that will still trust their faith and assume that the facts are wrong.
We have evidence to suggest that the world is greater than 6,000 years old, so the science must be wrong.
We have evidence to suggest that the world was not created in 7 days, so the science must be wrong.
We have evidence to suggest that some of the Bible's stories have been ripped off from other cultures, so the historians must be wrong.
We have evidence to support evolution, so the Biologists must be wrong.
In the past the church also refused to believe that the Earth wasn't the center of the universe.
Should I go on?
Granted the faithful do believe in things that cannot be proven, but they certainly have their share of denial.
Most people seem to see the GameCube era as being profitable for Nintendo only because they didn't sell their system at a loss, but otherwise see it as being mostly a failure.
This is a very Americentric view. While the GameCube may have lagged behind in sales in the USA, worldwide it was pretty close to XBox sales (22 million vs 24 million), yet nobody seems to cite the XBox as a failure. Both, however, lagged significantly behind the PS2, which continues to sell and has reached over 140 million. (However, lack of compatibility in the modern PS3s and rumored frequent hardware failures of older PS2s may play a role here).
However, it also seems to be completely ignoring the juggernaut of the GameBoy Advance, which until the release of the DS, was selling better than the PS2. The GBA ended up reaching over 80 million sales.
The DS, which started at the tail end of the GameCube era (2 years before the Wii) has managed to sell more than 128 million units, which is getting close to the level of the 140+ million that the PS2 has reached.
Yet, people keep on buying into the myth that Nintendo only held on last generation because they don't sell hardware at a loss. Sony killed wiped the floor with both MS and Nintendo in the console front last generation, but Nintendo has been killing in the handheld market for more than a decade now, and doing quite well for themselves in the console market now.
So while you concede they have done well, I think you greatly underestimate how well.
I've always wondered my driving was so reckless... and why I felt compelled to throw turtle shells out my window.
My choice of saying "modern politics" was not intended to imply such tendancies did not exist in the past, but rather that it seems to me that it's become increasingly prevelant.
For example, it seems to me that with the rising influence of the Christian Right, the Republican Party seems to be picking up the habit of the religious of just denying or attempting to discredit any information that makes them uncomfortable.
I'm not trying to imply that there isn't any "bad science" out there (I know it exists too), but so does denial.
Maybe that's just my perception of things though.
religious apologists aside.* By definition, faith is belief in something without evidence.
I think it would be more accurate to say it is belief in something despite evidence to the contrary.
More to the point, if evidence exists that is contrary to your belief, then the evidence obviously must be flawed. From that perspective, I think that modern politics is essentially a religion as well.
Your response makes me wonder what you must think "prenatal care" refers to...
I wasn't really trying to assume anything. I was just posing the question about what a white hole was, and if it would have the properties that the name suggested. My part of the discussion was meant to be quite hypothetical and largely in jest.
Perhaps "shortest path" was a bad way of phrasing it, but I think we meant the same thing. What I meant was in the sense that it continued going in the same direction in a straight line (the shortest distance between two points). Of course that "line" (or shortest distance between 2 points) is only straight from the perspective that the light travels, and could appear non-straight to an outside observer due to the curvature of space.