Apparently you missed the "not having to live in your parent's closet" part. Connectivity is more expensive here because the population density is lower. Personally, I'll take that tradeoff any day. Over there, if you're in a city with crazy fast access, you also can't afford a place to live because there are just too many people. It makes it cheap to run wires profitably, but everything else about it sucks.
As for the "that's how networking equipment fucking works", well, how can I put this... You're fucking wrong. There are a lot of reasons for asymmetric rates. If you're talking about cable or DSL, it's one conductor... You can timeslice it however you like, but there is no good reason to do it in such a way that results in equal time in both directions, especially since 99.99% of your customers only care about downstream. As for connections like fiber, where you have equal media in both directions, you still have to have equipment to switch that data at each end. At the customer's end you've got a dedicated box. At the CO, you've got a big switch. You've got a finite amount of backplane bandwidth in that switch for how much money you want to spend. You can allocate it however you'd like. In other words, it doesn't "fucking work" symmetrically. It "fucking works" however you configure it, and presumably you configure it for maximum utilization. Just because you're used to full-duplex ethernet (which isn't always how ethernet works either) doesn't mean that networking is intrinsically symmetric.
(Disclaimer: I write low level networking firmware and drivers for a living.)
Wasn't it just last week where there was the article about how adult DVD sales revenues are really less than one tenth what AVN has been reporting all this time?
Unlike in the '80s, porn on physical media is now obsolete. It doesn't matter which format the adult industry chooses, because the porn consumer only uses one medium: the internet.
They could develop whatever new class of service they liked. The only difference between now and under the integration ban would be that they would be at the mercy of their customers to adopt the new service rather than being able to push it on them. Yes, this is a significant downside to the cable provider, but it's a positive for the consumer, and a reasonable tradeoff considering it means that anybody can develop new set-top services, rather than just the cable company.
Realistically, under the integration ban, 80% of the customers would continue to get their set top box from the cable company, so this wouldn't be that terrible for them.
It's common for movie studios to come up with fees that they charge themselves to make the bottom line whatever they want it to be. If they owe somebody a percentage of the bottom line, they are very good at making that number be as low as possible. The thing is that when you charge yourself a fee, you still get all the money. It's a ridiculous scam, and it seems to me like people in Hollywood are either too worried about the glamour, or are busy suing each other over it.
I don't know the specifics of this dispute, but I'd bet money that it boils down to "my contract says I get x% of this pool of money, and you are lying about the size of that pool of money".
I use both Windows and Linux simultaneously on adjacent monitors. They seem to be the same stability wise. (The browser version that is... The uptime on the linux box was 200+ days before the extended power outage this weekend, and the windows box needs to be rebooted at least weekly.)
One possible problem with the versioning system - if some new breakthrough in compression were discovered an allowed, say a 5x increase in compression ratios, ergo a 5x increase in channel density - the cable company wouldn't be able to implement this across their entire network (like some have done now by replacing all analog STB's with digital) , right? They'd have to still support the old '2007-era' technology for some regulatory-specified period of time, no?
Nope, only the communications protocol would have to be versioned. A new codec could be supported by sending the customer a new cablecard, or even by upgrading the firmware in the existing card, neither of which require the card to be able to transmit.
You've done an excellent job of stating exactly what the cable companies want you to believe. If you buy their line, they can maintain control of the set top box.
In the real world, if you want to implement new protocols or features, you don't need to obsolete all the existing devices, you simply version your protocol so that existing devices continue to work with the old features while new devices gain access to the new features.
What you describe is simply having a cable box in a card form factor, and is no better than where we are today. The whole point is moving the feature implementation out of the cable company controlled device to create new markets for hardware and services, and to spur third party innovation outside of the provider's monopoly umbrella. You can't do this if all of the features move inside the cablecard.
Even a fully regulated hardware path doesn't solve the problem. Sure, it'll help if you're talking about 'unauthorized' use instead of 'illegal' use, but legal use is indistinguishable from many types of illegal use, and you have the legal right to do some things with content regardless of whether the publisher has authorized you to do it or not.
An internet connection wouldn't be 'required'. The communications could be over the cable provider's coax without an internet connection. The point is that there is no reason that the communications has to initiate from within the cablecard.
My satellite dish STB dials up a modem in the middle of the night, should I ever order a PPV movie. I can't do anything on demand though.
It does that because your satellite dish is strictly a one way device. When you are connected to the service provider by a cable, that doesn't have to be true.
The point is that if the implementation requires the communication to be initiated by the cablecard, you will have just as much lock-in as if there was no integration ban. There is no technical reason that the communications can't be initiated by the set top box software instead of by the cablecard itself.
The set-top box could still connect out, either over the internet, with a modem, or over the cable network itself, using an open API.
The CableCARD itself doesn't need to communicate bi-directionally though.
You can order Pay-Per-View over many cable company's websites without a bidirectional cable box... Instead of a user filling out a web form, you could have STB software make a network service request. No CableCARD involved either way.
With flashblock installed, I have never had a FF2 crash. I currently have 20+ tabs open in two windows. I've actually got a few flash things running, but most of them are blocked.
Try it. You may be pleasantly surprised. You'll have less crashing *and* less CPU wasting flash ads running in the background.
That document decribes why you don't even need CableCARD 2.0. It calls the cable companies out on their false need for their own software to run the VOD services. Set-top-boxes need two way communication. CableCARDs don't.
Two way cable cards are not required for any DRM feature. All the cable card needs to do is decrypt incoming feeds. It only ever needs to be a one way device. All of the other protocol and switching negotiations can be done by a processor/transmitter outside the cable card. This, of course, would require open service APIs to the Cable Co.'s network, so it may never happen. The only reason we need two-way cable cards is to put the entirety of existing cable boxes inside the cable card, thus preserving the exact same level of control that the cable companies have without the integration ban.
If the cards were unidirectional, and the cable companies had to provide open specs for requesting content from their networks, this would also allow for pay-per-view and on-demand content to be ordered without a bidirectional card.
The whole point of the card is supposedly to protect the content while allowing third-party set top box innovation, so any claim that data originating on the customer's end of the connection also needs to be protected by the card is completely bogus. The integration ban should stand, and it should specify unidirectional cable cards.
Doing what, writing english essays?:) The qualifications for getting into college are mostly having a high GPA, and performing well on the SAT.
Who said anything about it being a qualification? If you are resourceful enough to get into college (which is just as much about playing the game, as it is about knowing stuff), you are resourceful enough to find a job that pays more than the legal minimum.
I'm not aware of too many good paying jobs that consider that a qualification.
Then stop posting your uninformed opinions on slashdot, go out in the real world for a few days and look around. Hell, even when I worked at McDonald's I wasn't making minimum wage.
If the market can't support it, maybe there's something wrong with the market, not the people.
Here you go with putting words in my mouth. Your either/or statement implies that I said something was wrong with the people. I'm not going to defend that, because I don't think it's true.
Putting the priorities of an abstract economic model above the needs of actual suffering people is misguided.
Once again, you are arguing opinions that I don't hold. If you want to argue with the theoretical demons of the right - the supposed heartless, rich, white people who want to exploit the poor - then please go elsewhere. I do not think we should ignore the problem of adults being unable to find a job that pays a living wage. I simply don't think that raising the minimum wage is the way to do that. Many economists don't either, as the consequences of reducing the availability of entry level jobs actually increases unemployment in the long term (the earlier you get your first job, the less likely you are to spend significant amounts of time unemployed later in life) more than enough to offset any benefits of increased wages for the fraction of minimum wage workers who are trying to support themselves or a family. So, I'm not putting the priorities of an economic model above those of actual people. In reality, I'm paying attention to what we can learn form the economic model to form an opinion on how best to help everybody. The minimum wage hike is a political issue because it is easy to describe in ten words or less, and because people put getting elected ahead of actually doing some good on their list of priorities.
The server roles wizard is about as easy as it gets, so blaming that for the problem is 1) just a guess on your part
I do this stuff all the time, and personally I find that for many tasks the roles wizard is obtuse. I prefer to set things up without it.
2) not in conflict with my original point that a Server OS is for professional admins, not Mr. Home NetworkGuy.
I guess I wouldn't argue with that... My comment was more of a pointless rant, really.
If this guy had trouble getting to a folder that he could right click and share, it should be obvious that he is in no way qualified to administer a server.
Insert "Windows" in there, and I'll go along, otherwise I think that's absurd. If you're not familiar with windows servers, why would you think to right click, much less to do that to set up file services? It doesn't work like that on any other OS. Additionally, everybody needs to start somewhere.
I'm also surprised by the jump, since the cell phone market has been doing so poorly lately. I think that part of it was more that the stock was already artificially low due to the options back-dating stuff, and the iPhone was an excuse for a correction.
The big question mark to me is how the tendency of Apple to provide seamless integration in their devices will play against the tendency of Cingular to control what runs on their devices to maintain pay-per-use models. I'm sure that Cingular is going to want the iPhone locked down to prevent people from using VoIP and avoiding airtime charges. If the phone is locked down it will either be a lot less useful or a lot more expensive to use. Will you be able to use iTunes music as ringtones, or will Cingular want to maintain the ringtone revenues? What about mp3s? e-mail apps that don't depend on Yahoo! as a third party? Storage expansion in the device? GPS based mapping apps that are common on smartphones now? Even basic stuff, like whether the battery is removable... There is just too much we don't know.
Just because (most) kids aren't in danger of becoming homeless doesn't mean they're not entitled to a decent wage.
I agree 100%, but "decent" should be defined as what the market can support.
Forcing employers to pay a living wage to people who don't need it, and would be willing to work without it, is simply a way to reduce the number of jobs available to people in that age range and nothing more. There are better ways to help people who need a living wage and don't earn one than to give a raise to everybody.
Kids often work because they want to go to college, but their parents are unwilling or unable to afford it.
Financial hardship should not be a reason to avoid school. This is a problem that should be addressed in a different context. Regardless, if you are qualified to be accepted into college, you are probably already making more than minimum wage.
And what do you mean you couldn't get the file server to work? That's as simple as SHARING A FOLDER and giving it appropriate security settings.
The default server role screens that come up lead you away from the easy way to accomplish many tasks. They also changed basic things about how the windows UI and the windows Server UI work in 2003 to make it sufficiently confusing for people who have basic experience with the older windows server products. The "Manage your Server" interface from 2000 is still there, for example, but "My Computer" is hidden by default, and the control panel is different, so it isn't easy to find the old way.
Personally, I much prefer configuring a Debian Linux server to a W2k3 server. Sure, it's not all graphical, but it's straightforward with basic knowledge, and hasn't changed for years. Plus it takes about 2 minutes to get to the point where I'm back in a comfy office chair doing the setup compared to the good 30 minutes standing in front of a rack for w2k3 before you can get a remote desktop.
Neither way is sufficient for a home user. If Microsoft doesn't fix their confusing settings UIs, I doubt they'll sell many of these home server things. The wizards had best be much easier than the ones in W2k3 also, because they're confusing as hell if you don't know what you're doing now.
And by the way, had you actually paid $999 for the legit license (which, I'm guessing, you didn't) you could've called Microsoft and gotten help. I don't know what's worse, complaining about pirated software not working right (assuming you didn't buy the license), or giving up on $999 software after, apparently, hardly giving it a shot
Incidentally, when you buy Server 2003, it's usually pre-installed on a server, and it comes with no free tech support whatsoever. I agree though. If you just dropped some cash on a non-refundable product, you wouldn't toss it in the bin, you'd figure it out. He probably pirated it.
You also need to take into account that the error could be something like failing to deal with a broken component. They may not have known something was broken, and things don't always break in a predictable way. It's still a software bug for not properly handling an error condition, but some error conditions are unlikely to be predicted.
How can 7 USD/h pay for the rent and living? In third world countries perhaps...
A large portion of the US workforce has no rent or living expenses... Pure disposable income. We're talking about a number of workers larger than half the number of people on minimum wage. They're called dependents on their parent's income tax forms, and they go to school in the morning and live with Mom and/or Dad at night.
We should not have to pay children a living wage unless the demand for labor is high enough to drive the wages that high on its own.
So, the PS3 launch sucks because they are actually supplying 150k units per week instead of having an artificial shortage?
Whatever.
If they haven't sold ten million by Christmas 2007, then it was a failed launch. Until then the jury is out. For now, there aren't any compelling titles for the PS3 compared to the Wii, so of course one is sold out and the other isn't.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a good reason that "analysts" starts with "anal".
Apparently you missed the "not having to live in your parent's closet" part. Connectivity is more expensive here because the population density is lower. Personally, I'll take that tradeoff any day. Over there, if you're in a city with crazy fast access, you also can't afford a place to live because there are just too many people. It makes it cheap to run wires profitably, but everything else about it sucks.
As for the "that's how networking equipment fucking works", well, how can I put this... You're fucking wrong. There are a lot of reasons for asymmetric rates. If you're talking about cable or DSL, it's one conductor... You can timeslice it however you like, but there is no good reason to do it in such a way that results in equal time in both directions, especially since 99.99% of your customers only care about downstream. As for connections like fiber, where you have equal media in both directions, you still have to have equipment to switch that data at each end. At the customer's end you've got a dedicated box. At the CO, you've got a big switch. You've got a finite amount of backplane bandwidth in that switch for how much money you want to spend. You can allocate it however you'd like. In other words, it doesn't "fucking work" symmetrically. It "fucking works" however you configure it, and presumably you configure it for maximum utilization. Just because you're used to full-duplex ethernet (which isn't always how ethernet works either) doesn't mean that networking is intrinsically symmetric.
(Disclaimer: I write low level networking firmware and drivers for a living.)
Yup, here it is:
t imates_.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/04/media_overes
$200mil a year is chump change in the DVD business. The equivalent of two successful hollywood movies.
Wasn't it just last week where there was the article about how adult DVD sales revenues are really less than one tenth what AVN has been reporting all this time?
Unlike in the '80s, porn on physical media is now obsolete. It doesn't matter which format the adult industry chooses, because the porn consumer only uses one medium: the internet.
They could develop whatever new class of service they liked. The only difference between now and under the integration ban would be that they would be at the mercy of their customers to adopt the new service rather than being able to push it on them. Yes, this is a significant downside to the cable provider, but it's a positive for the consumer, and a reasonable tradeoff considering it means that anybody can develop new set-top services, rather than just the cable company.
Realistically, under the integration ban, 80% of the customers would continue to get their set top box from the cable company, so this wouldn't be that terrible for them.
It's common for movie studios to come up with fees that they charge themselves to make the bottom line whatever they want it to be. If they owe somebody a percentage of the bottom line, they are very good at making that number be as low as possible. The thing is that when you charge yourself a fee, you still get all the money. It's a ridiculous scam, and it seems to me like people in Hollywood are either too worried about the glamour, or are busy suing each other over it.
I don't know the specifics of this dispute, but I'd bet money that it boils down to "my contract says I get x% of this pool of money, and you are lying about the size of that pool of money".
I use both Windows and Linux simultaneously on adjacent monitors. They seem to be the same stability wise. (The browser version that is... The uptime on the linux box was 200+ days before the extended power outage this weekend, and the windows box needs to be rebooted at least weekly.)
One possible problem with the versioning system - if some new breakthrough in compression were discovered an allowed, say a 5x increase in compression ratios, ergo a 5x increase in channel density - the cable company wouldn't be able to implement this across their entire network (like some have done now by replacing all analog STB's with digital) , right? They'd have to still support the old '2007-era' technology for some regulatory-specified period of time, no?
Nope, only the communications protocol would have to be versioned. A new codec could be supported by sending the customer a new cablecard, or even by upgrading the firmware in the existing card, neither of which require the card to be able to transmit.
You've done an excellent job of stating exactly what the cable companies want you to believe. If you buy their line, they can maintain control of the set top box.
In the real world, if you want to implement new protocols or features, you don't need to obsolete all the existing devices, you simply version your protocol so that existing devices continue to work with the old features while new devices gain access to the new features.
What you describe is simply having a cable box in a card form factor, and is no better than where we are today. The whole point is moving the feature implementation out of the cable company controlled device to create new markets for hardware and services, and to spur third party innovation outside of the provider's monopoly umbrella. You can't do this if all of the features move inside the cablecard.
Even a fully regulated hardware path doesn't solve the problem. Sure, it'll help if you're talking about 'unauthorized' use instead of 'illegal' use, but legal use is indistinguishable from many types of illegal use, and you have the legal right to do some things with content regardless of whether the publisher has authorized you to do it or not.
An internet connection wouldn't be 'required'. The communications could be over the cable provider's coax without an internet connection. The point is that there is no reason that the communications has to initiate from within the cablecard.
My satellite dish STB dials up a modem in the middle of the night, should I ever order a PPV movie. I can't do anything on demand though.
It does that because your satellite dish is strictly a one way device. When you are connected to the service provider by a cable, that doesn't have to be true.
The point is that if the implementation requires the communication to be initiated by the cablecard, you will have just as much lock-in as if there was no integration ban. There is no technical reason that the communications can't be initiated by the set top box software instead of by the cablecard itself.
The set-top box could still connect out, either over the internet, with a modem, or over the cable network itself, using an open API.
The CableCARD itself doesn't need to communicate bi-directionally though.
You can order Pay-Per-View over many cable company's websites without a bidirectional cable box... Instead of a user filling out a web form, you could have STB software make a network service request. No CableCARD involved either way.
With flashblock installed, I have never had a FF2 crash. I currently have 20+ tabs open in two windows. I've actually got a few flash things running, but most of them are blocked.
Try it. You may be pleasantly surprised. You'll have less crashing *and* less CPU wasting flash ads running in the background.
Read that again.
"if you are qualified to be accepted into college, you are probably already making more than minimum wage"
in no way implies that the employer considered it a job qualification.
No "X != Y", but they are not mutually exclusive either.
That document decribes why you don't even need CableCARD 2.0. It calls the cable companies out on their false need for their own software to run the VOD services. Set-top-boxes need two way communication. CableCARDs don't.
Two way cable cards are not required for any DRM feature. All the cable card needs to do is decrypt incoming feeds. It only ever needs to be a one way device. All of the other protocol and switching negotiations can be done by a processor/transmitter outside the cable card. This, of course, would require open service APIs to the Cable Co.'s network, so it may never happen. The only reason we need two-way cable cards is to put the entirety of existing cable boxes inside the cable card, thus preserving the exact same level of control that the cable companies have without the integration ban.
If the cards were unidirectional, and the cable companies had to provide open specs for requesting content from their networks, this would also allow for pay-per-view and on-demand content to be ordered without a bidirectional card.
The whole point of the card is supposedly to protect the content while allowing third-party set top box innovation, so any claim that data originating on the customer's end of the connection also needs to be protected by the card is completely bogus. The integration ban should stand, and it should specify unidirectional cable cards.
Doing what, writing english essays? :) The qualifications for getting into college are mostly having a high GPA, and performing well on the SAT.
Who said anything about it being a qualification? If you are resourceful enough to get into college (which is just as much about playing the game, as it is about knowing stuff), you are resourceful enough to find a job that pays more than the legal minimum.
I'm not aware of too many good paying jobs that consider that a qualification.
Then stop posting your uninformed opinions on slashdot, go out in the real world for a few days and look around. Hell, even when I worked at McDonald's I wasn't making minimum wage.
If the market can't support it, maybe there's something wrong with the market, not the people.
Here you go with putting words in my mouth. Your either/or statement implies that I said something was wrong with the people. I'm not going to defend that, because I don't think it's true.
Putting the priorities of an abstract economic model above the needs of actual suffering people is misguided.
Once again, you are arguing opinions that I don't hold. If you want to argue with the theoretical demons of the right - the supposed heartless, rich, white people who want to exploit the poor - then please go elsewhere. I do not think we should ignore the problem of adults being unable to find a job that pays a living wage. I simply don't think that raising the minimum wage is the way to do that. Many economists don't either, as the consequences of reducing the availability of entry level jobs actually increases unemployment in the long term (the earlier you get your first job, the less likely you are to spend significant amounts of time unemployed later in life) more than enough to offset any benefits of increased wages for the fraction of minimum wage workers who are trying to support themselves or a family. So, I'm not putting the priorities of an economic model above those of actual people. In reality, I'm paying attention to what we can learn form the economic model to form an opinion on how best to help everybody. The minimum wage hike is a political issue because it is easy to describe in ten words or less, and because people put getting elected ahead of actually doing some good on their list of priorities.
The server roles wizard is about as easy as it gets, so blaming that for the problem is 1) just a guess on your part
I do this stuff all the time, and personally I find that for many tasks the roles wizard is obtuse. I prefer to set things up without it.
2) not in conflict with my original point that a Server OS is for professional admins, not Mr. Home NetworkGuy.
I guess I wouldn't argue with that... My comment was more of a pointless rant, really.
If this guy had trouble getting to a folder that he could right click and share, it should be obvious that he is in no way qualified to administer a server.
Insert "Windows" in there, and I'll go along, otherwise I think that's absurd. If you're not familiar with windows servers, why would you think to right click, much less to do that to set up file services? It doesn't work like that on any other OS. Additionally, everybody needs to start somewhere.
I'm also surprised by the jump, since the cell phone market has been doing so poorly lately. I think that part of it was more that the stock was already artificially low due to the options back-dating stuff, and the iPhone was an excuse for a correction.
The big question mark to me is how the tendency of Apple to provide seamless integration in their devices will play against the tendency of Cingular to control what runs on their devices to maintain pay-per-use models. I'm sure that Cingular is going to want the iPhone locked down to prevent people from using VoIP and avoiding airtime charges. If the phone is locked down it will either be a lot less useful or a lot more expensive to use. Will you be able to use iTunes music as ringtones, or will Cingular want to maintain the ringtone revenues? What about mp3s? e-mail apps that don't depend on Yahoo! as a third party? Storage expansion in the device? GPS based mapping apps that are common on smartphones now? Even basic stuff, like whether the battery is removable... There is just too much we don't know.
Just because (most) kids aren't in danger of becoming homeless doesn't mean they're not entitled to a decent wage.
I agree 100%, but "decent" should be defined as what the market can support.
Forcing employers to pay a living wage to people who don't need it, and would be willing to work without it, is simply a way to reduce the number of jobs available to people in that age range and nothing more. There are better ways to help people who need a living wage and don't earn one than to give a raise to everybody.
Kids often work because they want to go to college, but their parents are unwilling or unable to afford it.
Financial hardship should not be a reason to avoid school. This is a problem that should be addressed in a different context. Regardless, if you are qualified to be accepted into college, you are probably already making more than minimum wage.
And what do you mean you couldn't get the file server to work? That's as simple as SHARING A FOLDER and giving it appropriate security settings.
The default server role screens that come up lead you away from the easy way to accomplish many tasks. They also changed basic things about how the windows UI and the windows Server UI work in 2003 to make it sufficiently confusing for people who have basic experience with the older windows server products. The "Manage your Server" interface from 2000 is still there, for example, but "My Computer" is hidden by default, and the control panel is different, so it isn't easy to find the old way.
Personally, I much prefer configuring a Debian Linux server to a W2k3 server. Sure, it's not all graphical, but it's straightforward with basic knowledge, and hasn't changed for years. Plus it takes about 2 minutes to get to the point where I'm back in a comfy office chair doing the setup compared to the good 30 minutes standing in front of a rack for w2k3 before you can get a remote desktop.
Neither way is sufficient for a home user. If Microsoft doesn't fix their confusing settings UIs, I doubt they'll sell many of these home server things. The wizards had best be much easier than the ones in W2k3 also, because they're confusing as hell if you don't know what you're doing now.
And by the way, had you actually paid $999 for the legit license (which, I'm guessing, you didn't) you could've called Microsoft and gotten help. I don't know what's worse, complaining about pirated software not working right (assuming you didn't buy the license), or giving up on $999 software after, apparently, hardly giving it a shot
Incidentally, when you buy Server 2003, it's usually pre-installed on a server, and it comes with no free tech support whatsoever. I agree though. If you just dropped some cash on a non-refundable product, you wouldn't toss it in the bin, you'd figure it out. He probably pirated it.
You also need to take into account that the error could be something like failing to deal with a broken component. They may not have known something was broken, and things don't always break in a predictable way. It's still a software bug for not properly handling an error condition, but some error conditions are unlikely to be predicted.
How can 7 USD/h pay for the rent and living? In third world countries perhaps...
A large portion of the US workforce has no rent or living expenses... Pure disposable income. We're talking about a number of workers larger than half the number of people on minimum wage. They're called dependents on their parent's income tax forms, and they go to school in the morning and live with Mom and/or Dad at night.
We should not have to pay children a living wage unless the demand for labor is high enough to drive the wages that high on its own.
So, the PS3 launch sucks because they are actually supplying 150k units per week instead of having an artificial shortage?
Whatever.
If they haven't sold ten million by Christmas 2007, then it was a failed launch. Until then the jury is out. For now, there aren't any compelling titles for the PS3 compared to the Wii, so of course one is sold out and the other isn't.