Pfft. If I were a real Star Wars card carrying geek, I could have not only told you who got whacked, but the names of the actors who played the Admirals/Captains in question.
For example, my sister is friends with a guy who has a whole room dedicated to Star Wars in his basement. She was giving him crap for knowing the names of all the Ewoks you see in ROTJ, when she said, "well at least you don't know the names of all the actors who played all the Ewoks. He started to look very sheepish and a little red in the face.
The people who have spent thousands is an extremely small drop compared to the rest of the population.
But turning off your core market isn't going to magically get you the rest of your potential market. The non-gamer is as likely to think the Wii is a stupid name as someone who's owned every Nintendo system since the NES.
Like the old saying, "If you want to be poor sell to the rich, if you want to be rich sell to the poor"
Except for when the opposite is true, which is most of the time. Apple has consistently made money by selling products with high margins, rather than throwing together cheap boxes from the supplier-of-the-week. Sure, Dell is much bigger than Apple, but dozens of other PC manufacturers with the same business model have either lost hundereds of millions (HP) or are exiting the business completely (IBM and Gateway).
It's worked well with the DS. Animal Crossing, Nintendogs, and Brain Training have really driven sales among people outside the normal demographics.
But not at the expense of those normal demographics.
Besides, the people who want to play Smash Bros, Zelda, and whatever else are going to buy the system no matter what it's called.
Not if they decide to stick with their non-shitily named Gamecube and reserve their new purchases for the 360 or PS3.
Anyone refusing to buy it because of the name was just looking for an easy excuse to justify not buying it.
Or because they don't buy products with monumentally stupid names. Whoever is in charge of Nintendo's marketing should be sent to a Chuck E Cheese for the rest of their working life.
Why should anyone donate their personal money to a private, for profit, trillion dollar industry as if power companies were some kind of charity? What are they going to do with these donations as they come in, until they have enough money to start upgrading their plants? This is even more asinine than public financing for stadiums for billion dollar professional sports teams, because at least the city can use the arena for other purposes.
If the industry wants to do "carbon credits", they can pay us money. If Xcel figures that upgrading their power plants will cost $200 million, but $150 million to subsidize hybrid vehicles will reduce pollution to the same degree, then they can cover the difference between a traditional vehicle and a hybrid for the consumer until they hit that $150 mil.
Just hope that power producers invest in clean technology on their own. This doesn't work because there's no financial incentive; polluting companies will undercut the prices of clean companies, and the clean companies will go out of business.
Regulation.
Regulate: tell all the power companies that they must adhere to certain emission cleanliness standards. This works to a point, but basically ensures that no companies will work to beat the standard (see point 1).
Point 1 wont work because it is incredibly stupid. People are uptight in this country about paying taxes for services that benefit them directly, and you think they'll start writing out checks to private industry because power companies are too lazy to take action on their own?
You're giving your money away to the automotive industry anyway, why not give it where it will dow the most good.
Buying their products is not "giving" them money. The problem with the U.S. auto industry is that they made the exact same mistakes they made during the energy crisis in the 70's. They fought higher mileage and emission standards, thinking they could ride the SUV bonnanza forever, only to get blindsided by Katrina and gas costing over three bucks a gallon. If GM had devloped a line of vehicles like the Prius or brought hybrid engines to their existing lines (like Honda did with the Accord and the CR-V) they could have been making money hand over fist this last year instead of drowning in bankruptcy court. But instead, they're still hawking Tahoes and Escalades.
Okay, name me some of Kerry's flaws that aren't shared by Bush to a greater degree. Position on gun control.
Only to an infintesimal degree. Bush has said he would resign the assualt weapons ban, supported background checks at gun shows, spending federal money on trigger locks and all existing gun laws. The man supports gun control, end of story. The only difference between the two in the 2004 campaign is that Kerry would have pushed for a renewed ban on assault weapons as opposed to Bush saying he would only sign it if passed by Congress. If it comes down to "the lesser of two evils", then sure, vote for Bush. But harboring a deep dislike for Kerry over the issue of gun control while letting Bush slide is straight up hypocracy.
Spending habits, as bad as bush is.
Completely false. The "I voted for the war before I voted against it" line that got Kerry in so much flack was because he voted for the measure that would have gotten the money by recinding some of Bush's tax cuts, and then voted against the one that just piled more cash on the deficit mountain.
Say what? Maybe the party is, but I find many democratic candidates to be downright socialists.
Then either Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez have immigrated to the United States, registered as Democrats and are now running for office in your district, or your idea of "socialism" doesn't have anything to do with reality.
iPod does both of these things. However, it is far more fragile than a Nomad Jukebox.
How so. Both my 4th gen and my Mini have survived a dozen drops to concrete from my clumbsy ass. The Nano's have survived being run over by cars and dropped out car windows at 55 mph. iPod's are far from fragile.
utting a kid in a sequel because you think you need a kid is no different from putting jar-jar binks in episode 1 because you think you need a moronic character that appeals (somehow) to children. Lucas thoughtfully did both in episode 1, of course...
Which is totally unecessary, of course, and is a point Lucas's defenders always miss. Ep 1 did not need Jar Jar to bring the kiddies to the movie, that was already a given. It is perfectly possible to make a movie that appeals to kids without scaring the crap out of them, AND not piss off/nausiate adults at the same time. Willow or Narnia would be good examples of this.
I don't think he choked any Generals. Admirals and Captains yes, but the only Imperial General that I can recall is Veers in the AT-AT on Hoth, and he did his job well enough not to be choke slammed.
I can't wait to watch Slashdotters support Han and bash the Preemptive War Doctrine all at once. Let the fun begin.
Why, since the two have nothing to do with eachother. If Han was a PNAC neocon, he'd be hunting down and killing anyone that looked like a bounty hunter before they could open their mouths.
Lawrence Lessig had a great article in Wired a while back, pointing out the fact that all the big content industries bitching about piracy today were in fact founded on piracy themselves. Aside from the nice weather, Hollywood rose in California to get away from Thomas Edison's film patents. The recording and radio industries were founded on taking advantage of then-copyright loopholes to screw musicians out of payment for their works.
The reason the big content industries hate p2p isn't because it may be illegal or immoral, but because they aren't making money from it.
Sentinels. The issue of regular humans attempting to contorl the behaviour of superheroes has been covered dozens of times over the past 40 years, very prominently in one of the most popluar comic series of all time, the X-Men.
Yup. They "hate and fear" mutants for having powers that normal people don't have, so they build a big army of war robots, which normal people wont have. They have to become what they hate.
No, it's blindingly obvious. How can I be free to have non-poisoned water to drink and children without massive birth defects if the new chemical plant up the river is free to dump all their waste in it?
Of course. You can't abstain from buying it, you can't produce it yourself, and you can't start your own company to try to compete. No choice at all there.
Not without massive compromizes to your own freedom, you can't. If you had a factory in the 1800's, you could either pay exorborant fees to the railroad barons to ship your products or feel free not to operate that business. If you had a business in the 60's, you could either go with AT&T's service or stick with mail and watch your compeditors take all the customers you wanted to have. If you have any kind of business today that needs to be able to exchange documents with clients, you have to have Office installed or turn away the majority of your potential costumers.
However if you define freedom as the ability to do what you want without infringing upon others rights, then your statement is absurd at best.
No, that's the absurdity of your entire argument. Keeping people from infringing on eachothers rights takes laws, regulations and agencies to enforce them.
What kind of network are you running samba on? My Macs can connect via samba to both my linux and 2k boxes just fine over my lan, and I've connected just fine over campus networks. It just gets bitchy when the server disconnects, which usually happens when the Mac goes into sleep mode.
Ah, yes, aiming your product for those indivuduals who have spent thousands of dollars, or even tens of thousands on games and game systems in their lifetimes is quite silly. The smart thing is to hope that someone walking by who has never spent a dime on games will suddenly shell out hundreds of dollars for the "Wii". That's the ticket.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll just hand in my geek card then :(
Pfft. If I were a real Star Wars card carrying geek, I could have not only told you who got whacked, but the names of the actors who played the Admirals/Captains in question.
For example, my sister is friends with a guy who has a whole room dedicated to Star Wars in his basement. She was giving him crap for knowing the names of all the Ewoks you see in ROTJ, when she said, "well at least you don't know the names of all the actors who played all the Ewoks. He started to look very sheepish and a little red in the face.
The people who have spent thousands is an extremely small drop compared to the rest of the population.
But turning off your core market isn't going to magically get you the rest of your potential market. The non-gamer is as likely to think the Wii is a stupid name as someone who's owned every Nintendo system since the NES.
Like the old saying, "If you want to be poor sell to the rich, if you want to be rich sell to the poor"
Except for when the opposite is true, which is most of the time. Apple has consistently made money by selling products with high margins, rather than throwing together cheap boxes from the supplier-of-the-week. Sure, Dell is much bigger than Apple, but dozens of other PC manufacturers with the same business model have either lost hundereds of millions (HP) or are exiting the business completely (IBM and Gateway).
It's worked well with the DS. Animal Crossing, Nintendogs, and Brain Training have really driven sales among people outside the normal demographics.
But not at the expense of those normal demographics.
Besides, the people who want to play Smash Bros, Zelda, and whatever else are going to buy the system no matter what it's called.
Not if they decide to stick with their non-shitily named Gamecube and reserve their new purchases for the 360 or PS3.
Anyone refusing to buy it because of the name was just looking for an easy excuse to justify not buying it.
Or because they don't buy products with monumentally stupid names. Whoever is in charge of Nintendo's marketing should be sent to a Chuck E Cheese for the rest of their working life.
Why should anyone donate their personal money to a private, for profit, trillion dollar industry as if power companies were some kind of charity? What are they going to do with these donations as they come in, until they have enough money to start upgrading their plants? This is even more asinine than public financing for stadiums for billion dollar professional sports teams, because at least the city can use the arena for other purposes.
If the industry wants to do "carbon credits", they can pay us money. If Xcel figures that upgrading their power plants will cost $200 million, but $150 million to subsidize hybrid vehicles will reduce pollution to the same degree, then they can cover the difference between a traditional vehicle and a hybrid for the consumer until they hit that $150 mil.
Just hope that power producers invest in clean technology on their own. This doesn't work because there's no financial incentive; polluting companies will undercut the prices of clean companies, and the clean companies will go out of business.
Regulation.
Regulate: tell all the power companies that they must adhere to certain emission cleanliness standards. This works to a point, but basically ensures that no companies will work to beat the standard (see point 1).
Point 1 wont work because it is incredibly stupid. People are uptight in this country about paying taxes for services that benefit them directly, and you think they'll start writing out checks to private industry because power companies are too lazy to take action on their own?
You're giving your money away to the automotive industry anyway, why not give it where it will dow the most good.
Buying their products is not "giving" them money. The problem with the U.S. auto industry is that they made the exact same mistakes they made during the energy crisis in the 70's. They fought higher mileage and emission standards, thinking they could ride the SUV bonnanza forever, only to get blindsided by Katrina and gas costing over three bucks a gallon. If GM had devloped a line of vehicles like the Prius or brought hybrid engines to their existing lines (like Honda did with the Accord and the CR-V) they could have been making money hand over fist this last year instead of drowning in bankruptcy court. But instead, they're still hawking Tahoes and Escalades.
Okay, name me some of Kerry's flaws that aren't shared by Bush to a greater degree.
Position on gun control.
Only to an infintesimal degree. Bush has said he would resign the assualt weapons ban, supported background checks at gun shows, spending federal money on trigger locks and all existing gun laws. The man supports gun control, end of story. The only difference between the two in the 2004 campaign is that Kerry would have pushed for a renewed ban on assault weapons as opposed to Bush saying he would only sign it if passed by Congress. If it comes down to "the lesser of two evils", then sure, vote for Bush. But harboring a deep dislike for Kerry over the issue of gun control while letting Bush slide is straight up hypocracy.
Spending habits, as bad as bush is.
Completely false. The "I voted for the war before I voted against it" line that got Kerry in so much flack was because he voted for the measure that would have gotten the money by recinding some of Bush's tax cuts, and then voted against the one that just piled more cash on the deficit mountain.
Say what? Maybe the party is, but I find many democratic candidates to be downright socialists.
Then either Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez have immigrated to the United States, registered as Democrats and are now running for office in your district, or your idea of "socialism" doesn't have anything to do with reality.
Well, Cray got taken out by a redneck in a Camero, so his potential was cut a little short.
And you might have a point if Nomad's couldn't be scratched. However, they can, so you don't.
iPod does both of these things. However, it is far more fragile than a Nomad Jukebox.
How so. Both my 4th gen and my Mini have survived a dozen drops to concrete from my clumbsy ass. The Nano's have survived being run over by cars and dropped out car windows at 55 mph. iPod's are far from fragile.
Which is totally unecessary, of course, and is a point Lucas's defenders always miss. Ep 1 did not need Jar Jar to bring the kiddies to the movie, that was already a given. It is perfectly possible to make a movie that appeals to kids without scaring the crap out of them, AND not piss off/nausiate adults at the same time. Willow or Narnia would be good examples of this.
Obi-Wan stayed behind on the ship to help with repairs.
And to rescue Padme's double when she got kidnapped by the Hutts(?). Happened in one of the video games based on the movie.
I don't think he choked any Generals. Admirals and Captains yes, but the only Imperial General that I can recall is Veers in the AT-AT on Hoth, and he did his job well enough not to be choke slammed.
But my wife wouldn't play along. In fact she hit me.
Then I hope you nailed her with a right cross to the jaw.
I can't wait to watch Slashdotters support Han and bash the Preemptive War Doctrine all at once. Let the fun begin.
Why, since the two have nothing to do with eachother. If Han was a PNAC neocon, he'd be hunting down and killing anyone that looked like a bounty hunter before they could open their mouths.
I like John Blunt's take on it better.
Without the ability to reverse engineer competing technologies and the ability to legally interface with these, everyone suffers.
Not when the buy a cd, they don't. And there's your interoperability, to boot.
Lawrence Lessig had a great article in Wired a while back, pointing out the fact that all the big content industries bitching about piracy today were in fact founded on piracy themselves. Aside from the nice weather, Hollywood rose in California to get away from Thomas Edison's film patents. The recording and radio industries were founded on taking advantage of then-copyright loopholes to screw musicians out of payment for their works.
The reason the big content industries hate p2p isn't because it may be illegal or immoral, but because they aren't making money from it.
Sentinels. The issue of regular humans attempting to contorl the behaviour of superheroes has been covered dozens of times over the past 40 years, very prominently in one of the most popluar comic series of all time, the X-Men.
Yup. They "hate and fear" mutants for having powers that normal people don't have, so they build a big army of war robots, which normal people wont have. They have to become what they hate.
Unfounded assertion.
No, it's blindingly obvious. How can I be free to have non-poisoned water to drink and children without massive birth defects if the new chemical plant up the river is free to dump all their waste in it?
Of course. You can't abstain from buying it, you can't produce it yourself, and you can't start your own company to try to compete. No choice at all there.
Not without massive compromizes to your own freedom, you can't. If you had a factory in the 1800's, you could either pay exorborant fees to the railroad barons to ship your products or feel free not to operate that business. If you had a business in the 60's, you could either go with AT&T's service or stick with mail and watch your compeditors take all the customers you wanted to have. If you have any kind of business today that needs to be able to exchange documents with clients, you have to have Office installed or turn away the majority of your potential costumers.
However if you define freedom as the ability to do what you want without infringing upon others rights, then your statement is absurd at best.
No, that's the absurdity of your entire argument. Keeping people from infringing on eachothers rights takes laws, regulations and agencies to enforce them.
And passed by a GOP Congress, thank you.
What you "the market requires legislation to be free!" don't seem to get is that coercion of any sort abridges freedom.
Not abriding the rights of coporations means abriding the rights of citizens and consumers.
If consumers want to support a monopoly that is their right.
A monopoly is a monopoly becuase consumers have no choice but to support it.
The sad irony of Libertarianism is that if it achieved it's goal, people would have less freedom and money than with government taxes and regulation.
What kind of network are you running samba on? My Macs can connect via samba to both my linux and 2k boxes just fine over my lan, and I've connected just fine over campus networks. It just gets bitchy when the server disconnects, which usually happens when the Mac goes into sleep mode.
Well I'm up way too late and I understood your origional comment just fine.
Lesson learned: sleep is overrated.
There is no such thing as bad publicity
Of course there is. GM was going to market the Chevy Nova in Mexico until someone pointed out that "no va" means "does not go" in Spanish.
You forget, Nintendo is not aiming for the gaming community. They are aiming for the non-gaming community in a big way.
To repeat myself:
Ah, yes, aiming your product for those indivuduals who have spent thousands of dollars, or even tens of thousands on games and game systems in their lifetimes is quite silly. The smart thing is to hope that someone walking by who has never spent a dime on games will suddenly shell out hundreds of dollars for the "Wii". That's the ticket.