Nintendo could build spend money on 100 new factories and pump out 100 million Wii's in one month to satisfy demand. But what happens when the month is over? Nintendo is left with 100 factories with 1000's of works sitting around picking their noses.
I wouldn't expect Nintendo to double the size of their production force to deal with the current demand. But I do wonder why they didn't start planning at this time last year to raise production capacity by 10% or so -- a relatively low-risk increase which probably STILL would have led to this year's consumer frenzy, but with increased gross sales and greater customer satisfaction.
If a design/model change happened to the Wii, it'd have to firesale it's entire stock to make way for the new stuff.
I think there's something to this. Look at how Nintendo began selling the DS Lite 18 months after introducting the original DS, and the Gameboy Advance SP 2 years after the original Gameboy Advance. Wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that Nintendo has been working on a revised version of the Wii hardware (different colors maybe?) and has been avoiding overproducting Mark I consoles to prepare for a forthcoming re-launch.
I would agree with this, but only because highly accurate solid-state modeling of tube characteristics is a very complex problem. The degree of fidelity possible with gear that can be sold to prosumers at a reasonable price point is kind of tube-like, but not quite; an audio version of the 'uncanny valley'.
However, I'm also convinced that the placebo effect is very strong. It's "common knowledge" that tubes sound better, so many gear heads will reflexively choose the product that has cool glowing tubes to look at over the one that doesn't -- regardless of how the two products actually sound.
John Nash's biography (Beautiful Mind) claims he was homosexual. But later, some claimed it wasn't the case and book is wrong. So which is correct ???
I hate to borrow a phrase from religious fundies, but maybe the correct thing for Wikipedia to do is "teach the controversy".
The entry for John Nash should not read "He was homosexual" or "He was NOT homosexual", but rather "Nash's biography claims he was homosexual [cite provided], but this has been disputed by some [cite provided]."
Or even better, if consensus on the veracity of an item cannot be reached, simply DON'T PUBLISH IT.
this guy took a laptop from Nigeria to bring to the UK? That seems to defeat the point (from how it's stated in the article, it doesn't seem that it was from the buy one/give one program)
Not being in North America, the author is not eligible to participate in the Buy One, Get One program.
And while I'm sure Nicholas Negroponte would prefer that OLPC hardware being re-exported from third-world to first-world countries be an exceptional scenario rather than a common one, it's not necessarily a bad thing. If he obtained the laptop with the full knowledge and blessing of the program administrators -- rather than stealing it, or buying it off some kid for US$10 -- I see nothing wrong with it.
There is a nice switch on the back for turning the EVDO modem on or off. Just turn it off and nothing will be backed up.
Until the next time you turn it back on, at least.
And if we're recommending paying for features but then never using them, I also recommend buying a Ferrari and using it to nothing but drive around the Wal-Mart parking lot in first gear.
"once the plaintiff stored the CD's in a unlocked cabinet they were no longer authorized copies"...
Did the plaintiff [sic] send out postcards to friends and strangers saying "These are the CDs I have, feel free to stop by the cabinet and burn yourself a copy of whatever you like"?
Makes you wonder why they haven't gone after libraries for "making available" yet...
You mean other than that when library rules are followed, no copying (beyond trivial cases such as copying bits into a DAC buffer) of the material occurs?
Or that in the U.S., copyright law contains specific exemptions for libraries? See 17 U.S.C. Sec. 108...
1) The defendant isn't authorized to distribute copyrighted recordings
True.
2) The defendant was in possession of unauthorized copies of those copyrighted recordings which are unauthorized by the mere fact that they are compressed mp3 copies
That is not what the RIAA has argued. Taking the grammar of their sentence literally, they are claiming that the defendant's copies were unauthorized because they were compressed MP3 copies and because they were put in the 'shared folder'.
Re:Will they ever listen?
on
The Cult of Kindle
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
And as the reviewer points out, $400 is a load of money for what is essentially a blank, fragile, battery-powered book.
To be fair, it's also a cell phone that you can't make or receive calls with.
I wonder how much more affordable the Kindle could have been if they had cut the EV-DO radio and network stack from the hardware design, and didn't have to incorporate the cost of a lifetime service agreement with Sprint into the price of the unit?
People don't seem to have any problem plugging their MP3 players into a USB port every once in a while to synchronize new content; so who decided that it customers would not tolerate doing the same thing with an e-Book reader?
4) Koji Kondo. Composed the original Mario and Zelda themes. Very respected in the industry, but has yet to fully adjust to more current standards of using high-quality samples.
You say that last part as if it's a bad thing.
Part of the charm of video game music for me has always been the innovativeness with which the composers took extremely primitive and limited tone generators and invented entire new genres of music.
Music in games like "Sonic the Hedgehog" or "Streets of Rage" sounds like it was made specifically to play to the strengths of the Genesis's FM synthesis chip -- because it was! You can spot a C64 or Amiga game without even seeing it, thanks to the distinctive sound of the SID and Paula sound chips, respectively.
I feel that game music nearly died when CD drives came on the market in the early-mid 1990s and gave game producers the ability to abandon chiptunes and wavetable synthesis in favor full-fidelity Red Book Audio. Why have a staff composer writing original music when you can just license a popular song from Aerosmith or White Zombie?
The current state of affairs, where so much of game music is derivative rip-offs of John Williams' derivative rip-offs of Stravinksy's orchestral work, doesn't give me much more enjoyment.
As I understand it copyrights can only be transferred by contract where there is explicit language transferring the copyright. Sco was arguing for an "implied" transfer which as far as I know isn't allowed in copyright law. Therefore everybody's testimony is irrelevant absent an agreement which explicitly transfered the copyrights to Sco.
IANAL and I haven't been scrutinizing this case closely as it's happened, but my understanding is that the "UNIX source code and copyrights" being disputed were actually never Novell's property in the first place, which would have invalidated the sale of such assets to SCO regardless of whether they were explicitly included in the sales contract.
1) Most of the people who are teaching subjects, have their primary education in "education."
I don't see anything wrong with this. (Apart from your punctuation, that is.)
The most important thing for a programmer to know is not Java or C or SQL or HTML syntax, but to know how to write good code regardless of language. Similary, the most important thing for a teacher to know is how to teach, regardless of subject matter.
A person who has passed a high school Science class and completed a degree in Education should be entirely capable of teaching high school Science. At a post-secondary level? Yeah, the requirements to be a teacher should be somewhat higher. And they are.
That's really not much of an issue though since you can always wrap the binary codec in an x86 emulator or disassemble and reassemble for your architecture.
In general that's a reasonable approach, but are you sure you'd want to introduce that kind of complexity to code which requires timing-sensitive performance like an audio or video performance?
What you end up with is a room that no one else can use and except in dire situations, no one is using at ALL.
No kidding!
Build enough conference rooms that they're slightly underbooked under normal circumstances -- so space is available for impromptu get-togethers -- and when a real crisis occurs, designate one or more Crisis Managers who have authority to commandeer any conference room for the duration of the crisis, regardless of who may have reserved the rooms.
If these bands are selling so well, why is the industry doing so poorly.
You'll find your answer in the cutout bin of your local used CD store.
For every mega-successful act signed to a label, whose catalog will continue to sell well, for ten, twenty, thirty years, the label has 10 bands who will never hit mainstream, but will be profitable in the short run and maybe earn a gold record or three.
But for every one of THOSE bands, the label signed 50 bands that nobody's ever heard of and nobody ever will, that the label will never earn back their investment from. For all the talk about the RIAA companies telling consumers what they should like, they have a pretty miserable hit-miss ratio.
their attach rate is the lowest again, just like the Gamecube.
Unless you're a third-party software developer trying to figure out your market strategy, "attach rate" is a pretty useless metric to consider.
And even if you are one of those developers, gross software sales should be at least as important to you as attach rates, since a game bought by 5% of 20 million users could be more profitable than a game bought by 10% of 9 million users.
Same for DDR and Guitar Hero, which are apparently incredibly rare games for no apparent reason that I can see.
Demand for those titles is so high because they offer novel experiences. For most of the past 35 years, the video gaming interface has been all joysticks and pushbuttons. There's a whole market segment that was never interested in that type of gaming, and the recent trend towards new control models has been turning those people into gamers.
Supply for those titles is so low because they don't fit well into the distribution channels that exist. Every $70 game-plus-controller-bundle box on a warehouse or retailer's shelf is taking up space that could be used instead for $800 worth of consoles, or $1500 worth of games packaged in traditional clamshell packaging. The guys along the supply chain miss out on potential revenue with each box sold.
it seems that an office suite that is updated every year or so should require fewer man-hours to make than any game.
Fewer man-hours of new development per major release, perhaps, but software companies seem to measure the value of a software product in terms of the number of cumulative development hours since version 0.1alpha.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were some lines of code in Microsoft Office 2007 that date back to Word 1.0 in 1983.
Those monopolies only exist because they have the government's blessing.
And they only have the government's blessing because it would be a logistical and economic nightmare if all the streets had to be dug up or another set of utility poles erected every time another company decided they wanted to provide residential telecom services.
Slashdot Mirror
I think my brain needs to be multi-core to comprehend that paragraph.
Nintendo could build spend money on 100 new factories and pump out 100 million Wii's in one month to satisfy demand. But what happens when the month is over? Nintendo is left with 100 factories with 1000's of works sitting around picking their noses.
I wouldn't expect Nintendo to double the size of their production force to deal with the current demand. But I do wonder why they didn't start planning at this time last year to raise production capacity by 10% or so -- a relatively low-risk increase which probably STILL would have led to this year's consumer frenzy, but with increased gross sales and greater customer satisfaction.
If a design/model change happened to the Wii, it'd have to firesale it's entire stock to make way for the new stuff.
I think there's something to this. Look at how Nintendo began selling the DS Lite 18 months after introducting the original DS, and the Gameboy Advance SP 2 years after the original Gameboy Advance. Wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that Nintendo has been working on a revised version of the Wii hardware (different colors maybe?) and has been avoiding overproducting Mark I consoles to prepare for a forthcoming re-launch.
The "Virtual Tube" DSP amps do not sound the same
I would agree with this, but only because highly accurate solid-state modeling of tube characteristics is a very complex problem. The degree of fidelity possible with gear that can be sold to prosumers at a reasonable price point is kind of tube-like, but not quite; an audio version of the 'uncanny valley'.
However, I'm also convinced that the placebo effect is very strong. It's "common knowledge" that tubes sound better, so many gear heads will reflexively choose the product that has cool glowing tubes to look at over the one that doesn't -- regardless of how the two products actually sound.
John Nash's biography (Beautiful Mind) claims he was homosexual. But later, some claimed it wasn't the case and book is wrong. So which is correct ???
I hate to borrow a phrase from religious fundies, but maybe the correct thing for Wikipedia to do is "teach the controversy".
The entry for John Nash should not read "He was homosexual" or "He was NOT homosexual", but rather "Nash's biography claims he was homosexual [cite provided], but this has been disputed by some [cite provided]."
Or even better, if consensus on the veracity of an item cannot be reached, simply DON'T PUBLISH IT.
this guy took a laptop from Nigeria to bring to the UK? That seems to defeat the point (from how it's stated in the article, it doesn't seem that it was from the buy one/give one program)
Not being in North America, the author is not eligible to participate in the Buy One, Get One program.
And while I'm sure Nicholas Negroponte would prefer that OLPC hardware being re-exported from third-world to first-world countries be an exceptional scenario rather than a common one, it's not necessarily a bad thing. If he obtained the laptop with the full knowledge and blessing of the program administrators -- rather than stealing it, or buying it off some kid for US$10 -- I see nothing wrong with it.
when it's so popular and ubiquitous the originating company loses their trademark.
Which Nintendo will not allow to happen.
Do you remember their "There's no such thing as 'a Nintendo'" ads from the late 1980s?
There is a nice switch on the back for turning the EVDO modem on or off. Just turn it off and nothing will be backed up.
Until the next time you turn it back on, at least.
And if we're recommending paying for features but then never using them, I also recommend buying a Ferrari and using it to nothing but drive around the Wal-Mart parking lot in first gear.
"once the plaintiff stored the CD's in a unlocked cabinet they were no longer authorized copies"...
Did the plaintiff [sic] send out postcards to friends and strangers saying "These are the CDs I have, feel free to stop by the cabinet and burn yourself a copy of whatever you like"?
Makes you wonder why they haven't gone after libraries for "making available" yet...
You mean other than that when library rules are followed, no copying (beyond trivial cases such as copying bits into a DAC buffer) of the material occurs?
Or that in the U.S., copyright law contains specific exemptions for libraries? See 17 U.S.C. Sec. 108...
1) The defendant isn't authorized to distribute copyrighted recordings
True.
2) The defendant was in possession of unauthorized copies of those copyrighted recordings which are unauthorized by the mere fact that they are compressed mp3 copies
That is not what the RIAA has argued. Taking the grammar of their sentence literally, they are claiming that the defendant's copies were unauthorized because they were compressed MP3 copies and because they were put in the 'shared folder'.
And as the reviewer points out, $400 is a load of money for what is essentially a blank, fragile, battery-powered book.
To be fair, it's also a cell phone that you can't make or receive calls with.
I wonder how much more affordable the Kindle could have been if they had cut the EV-DO radio and network stack from the hardware design, and didn't have to incorporate the cost of a lifetime service agreement with Sprint into the price of the unit?
People don't seem to have any problem plugging their MP3 players into a USB port every once in a while to synchronize new content; so who decided that it customers would not tolerate doing the same thing with an e-Book reader?
4) Koji Kondo. Composed the original Mario and Zelda themes. Very respected in the industry, but has yet to fully adjust to more current standards of using high-quality samples.
You say that last part as if it's a bad thing.
Part of the charm of video game music for me has always been the innovativeness with which the composers took extremely primitive and limited tone generators and invented entire new genres of music.
Music in games like "Sonic the Hedgehog" or "Streets of Rage" sounds like it was made specifically to play to the strengths of the Genesis's FM synthesis chip -- because it was! You can spot a C64 or Amiga game without even seeing it, thanks to the distinctive sound of the SID and Paula sound chips, respectively.
I feel that game music nearly died when CD drives came on the market in the early-mid 1990s and gave game producers the ability to abandon chiptunes and wavetable synthesis in favor full-fidelity Red Book Audio. Why have a staff composer writing original music when you can just license a popular song from Aerosmith or White Zombie?
The current state of affairs, where so much of game music is derivative rip-offs of John Williams' derivative rip-offs of Stravinksy's orchestral work, doesn't give me much more enjoyment.
As I understand it copyrights can only be transferred by contract where there is explicit language transferring the copyright. Sco was arguing for an "implied" transfer which as far as I know isn't allowed in copyright law. Therefore everybody's testimony is irrelevant absent an agreement which explicitly transfered the copyrights to Sco.
IANAL and I haven't been scrutinizing this case closely as it's happened, but my understanding is that the "UNIX source code and copyrights" being disputed were actually never Novell's property in the first place, which would have invalidated the sale of such assets to SCO regardless of whether they were explicitly included in the sales contract.
Just put up a sign saying "Toll Road for Trucks: XX $" and watch how truckers do a quick reverse and disappear forever.
Such a sign would be especially effective at discouraging British truck drivers who don't routinely keep American currency on hand.
So far the reviews for the Kindle are all pretty positive
Among people who were willing to spend $400 for a device that offers few objective benefits over a free public library membership, maybe.
The rest of us are quite happy reading the ink-and-paper volumes that have been the standard for millenia.
1) Most of the people who are teaching subjects, have their primary education in "education."
I don't see anything wrong with this. (Apart from your punctuation, that is.)
The most important thing for a programmer to know is not Java or C or SQL or HTML syntax, but to know how to write good code regardless of language. Similary, the most important thing for a teacher to know is how to teach, regardless of subject matter.
A person who has passed a high school Science class and completed a degree in Education should be entirely capable of teaching high school Science. At a post-secondary level? Yeah, the requirements to be a teacher should be somewhat higher. And they are.
That's really not much of an issue though since you can always wrap the binary codec in an x86 emulator or disassemble and reassemble for your architecture.
In general that's a reasonable approach, but are you sure you'd want to introduce that kind of complexity to code which requires timing-sensitive performance like an audio or video performance?
Sadly, to get the real story, you need to read external sources such as:
* http://www.wikipediareview.com/
* http://www.wikitruth.info/
And to get the real story about THOSE sites, you need sources like:
* http://www.wikipediareviewtruth.com/
* http://www.wikitruthreview.com/
* http://www.wikipediareviewtruthreview.info/
* http://www.whocaresaboutyourpissingcontestsijustwanttolooksomethingupquickly.com/
What you end up with is a room that no one else can use and except in dire situations, no one is using at ALL.
No kidding!
Build enough conference rooms that they're slightly underbooked under normal circumstances -- so space is available for impromptu get-togethers -- and when a real crisis occurs, designate one or more Crisis Managers who have authority to commandeer any conference room for the duration of the crisis, regardless of who may have reserved the rooms.
If these bands are selling so well, why is the industry doing so poorly.
You'll find your answer in the cutout bin of your local used CD store.
For every mega-successful act signed to a label, whose catalog will continue to sell well, for ten, twenty, thirty years, the label has 10 bands who will never hit mainstream, but will be profitable in the short run and maybe earn a gold record or three.
But for every one of THOSE bands, the label signed 50 bands that nobody's ever heard of and nobody ever will, that the label will never earn back their investment from. For all the talk about the RIAA companies telling consumers what they should like, they have a pretty miserable hit-miss ratio.
their attach rate is the lowest again, just like the Gamecube.
Unless you're a third-party software developer trying to figure out your market strategy, "attach rate" is a pretty useless metric to consider.
And even if you are one of those developers, gross software sales should be at least as important to you as attach rates, since a game bought by 5% of 20 million users could be more profitable than a game bought by 10% of 9 million users.
Same for DDR and Guitar Hero, which are apparently incredibly rare games for no apparent reason that I can see.
Demand for those titles is so high because they offer novel experiences. For most of the past 35 years, the video gaming interface has been all joysticks and pushbuttons. There's a whole market segment that was never interested in that type of gaming, and the recent trend towards new control models has been turning those people into gamers.
Supply for those titles is so low because they don't fit well into the distribution channels that exist. Every $70 game-plus-controller-bundle box on a warehouse or retailer's shelf is taking up space that could be used instead for $800 worth of consoles, or $1500 worth of games packaged in traditional clamshell packaging. The guys along the supply chain miss out on potential revenue with each box sold.
I'll wait a couple of months after Xmas and buy a Wii when they're cheaper
Yeah, that's what I said to myself LAST year. Maybe it'll work out better for us this time.
you should buy a Wii and buy it now, since it's still readily available and presumably won't be in a couple of weeks.
Correct, except for the part about the Wii being "still readily available". The Wii is in short supply now, as it has been for the entire past year.
it seems that an office suite that is updated every year or so should require fewer man-hours to make than any game.
Fewer man-hours of new development per major release, perhaps, but software companies seem to measure the value of a software product in terms of the number of cumulative development hours since version 0.1alpha.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were some lines of code in Microsoft Office 2007 that date back to Word 1.0 in 1983.
Those monopolies only exist because they have the government's blessing.
And they only have the government's blessing because it would be a logistical and economic nightmare if all the streets had to be dug up or another set of utility poles erected every time another company decided they wanted to provide residential telecom services.