Nintendo has been very adament about using the seatbelts provided with the controller, but the seatbelts break anyways and take out thousand dollar TVs with them. I'm not sure why you're laughing.
I don't know why the other guy is laughing, but I'M laughing at the dopes with broken thousand-dollar TV's because they somehow thought that the motor skills they developed as toddlers were no longer applicable.
If you do not maintain a grip on an object in your hand, it will not stay in your hand. The wrist lanyard was never intended to be a primary restraint.
(yeah that's right you also have that idiot system in which you call a bunch off illiterate people from the streets, that know nothing about justice, and get them decide if someone is innocent or guilty).
Trial by a jury of peers is a core tenet of Common Law and has a history dating back to the Magna Carta. It's practiced, to one degree or another, in many of the most prosperous, most free, and most democratic nations in the world.
Tell me: what judicial system do you prefer, and how are the citizens in it protected against governmental abuses?
Does that mean I can sue my crack dealer if I get caught?
If you didn't know that crack was illegal when you bought and smoked it, I'd be surpised.
On the other hand, did the average person understand that using Kazaa as intended, with its default settings, could cause him or her to commit violations of copyright law?
It's a valid argument to raise in a civil courtroom. Whether it's a compelling enough argument to lead to a win, well... let's wait and see.
I also don't support using the courts to try to decide who is a victim and who isn't.
What, then, do you think the courts are supposed to be used FOR...?
And did you really need to construct FOUR strawman arguments that may never have actually been argued in a courtroom? Wouldn't one have been enough to support your fallacy?
Plus, don't underestimate the the value of Steve Jobs and countless Apple ads saying the word "Nintendo" on multiple occasions. Nintendo need the added mindshare.
One, I don't think Nintendo really needs that much additional mindshare. Even non-gamers are talking about the Wii, and they've sold something like a million of them worldwide in the past month.
Two, I don't think Apple has that much additional mindshare to offer to Nintendo. True, the iPod may give them approximately 2/3 of the portable MP3 player market, but an Apple home game console would not be part of that market. And in markets other than the iPod's, Apple's share is marginal: 5% of PCs, optimistically.
Nintendo tried to partner with Atari to bring the NES to America in the 1980s, but that fell through. They tried to partner with Sony to bring their games to CD in the 1990s, but that fell through too. Then they partnered with Philips instead, and the CDi was a massive failure.
I think we need to recognize that when Nintendo chooses to go it alone, it probably has very good reasons for doing so.
Verizon is the evil one; they've got one prepaid plan that has a daily access fee no matter what you do.
Assuming that daily fee is $1/day, then you're paying about $30/mo even with no minutes actually used.
For that much, you can get a low-end post-paid cellular plan from most reasonable carriers (i.e., not Verizon), which will include at least a few hundred minutes of airtime.
Re:The rest of the launch lineup can go to hell...
on
Two Weeks with the Wii
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If you look at the gamecube as far as profits, it was a stunning success.
If you compare the Gamecube profits to the deficits operated at by Sony and Microsoft's gaming divisions, yes, it was a stunning success.
If you compare the Gamecube profits to the profits earned by the N64, or SNES, or any Gameboy model, then the 'Cube could very well be a disappointment.
somefile.php executed regardless and emitted an HTML comment which closed my open comment in the first line above, leaving my closing comment exposed in the rendered document. Sigh.
As well it should have. Why should the begin-comment token in one language (HTML) prevent the execution of directives in another language (PHP)?
So there's a woman who garners special attention because she's "model gorgeous", and a man who garners sympathy because his coworkers are yarn saleswomen who, one would assume, are not model gorgeous.
This really doesn't seem to do anything to dispel the stereotype that sysadmins have difficulty relating to the fairer sex, does it?
Google does not place much importance on the metadata already contained in HTML document headers for search ranking, because it cannot be trusted.
But the Search Engine Optimization Expert that our Marketing Director hired told her that META tags were crucial to good search engine placement! I spent a week tagging every page on our site with the exact meta values that the SEO Expert told us to use!!
You can't tell me that the SEO 'Expert' was just making stuff up knowing that there was no way to disprove his recommendations. If that's true, then maybe he was lying when he said that Google cares a lot about extraneous whitespace, too...!
So in order to suffer the downscaling, you need a really crappy HDTV which doesn't support 1080p AND 720p.
Which covers almost all the CRT-based HDTV-ready displays sold in the past eight years, which typically only support 1080i, 480p, and NTSC 480i input signals.
That's been changing in the past year or so, as most sets with ATSC tuners can also upscale a 720p input signal to a 1080i display signal, but the fact remains that a LOT of the early adopters of HDTV will not be able to enjoy HD signals from a PS3 without upgrading to a new monitor.
Like, have people on Slashdot never heard of this fancy gadget called "scissors"?
A pair of scissors is simply two knives attached on a fulcrum. Unless you're talking about plastic "safety scissors" unsuitable for any use but giving to kindergartners to cut construction paper with, scissors are going to be nearly as hazardous as a single-bladed knife.
I would also like to know how you manage to cut away a nine-inch strip of plastic from one of these clamshells using five-inch shears, without exposing your knuckles to fresh jagged edges, o scissor-knowing genius.
It is so powerful, that it can make change and introduce new products and formats (like CD)
Isn't it telling that you had to go back a whole TWENTY-FIVE years to come up with a new format that succeeded after being backed by the record industry?
The impetus for MP3's came from the consumers, not the industry. The RIAA sees how irrelevant they are becoming, and it pisses them off.
The inability to distinguish notes is quite a big deal to the substantial number of people with sight discibilities.
If a Coke machine can be designed to tell the difference between a $1 and a $10, then a pocket-sized bill scanner can be designed to do the same thing.
The government could build these and distribute them free of charge to any sightless person who requested one for far less money than overhauling the entire bill production system.
I don't know how widespread they are, but over the past couple years virtually all of the ATMs I've used have been adding headphone jacks to the console, to allow audio navigation of the soft menus. My eyesight is fine, but I'm tempted to bring a set of earbuds one of these days just to see what the experience is like.
The fact that a properly taken care of powerbook will only last 4 years, or the fact that you are happy with this.
After 4 years, the new state of the art in mobile computing will be such that you won't WANT to use that old notebook computer anymore, even if it works as well as the day you bought it.
My mothers old washing machine lasted 26 years before giving up.
And for maybe half of that time, I'd bet she was wasting more energy (and therefore money) running the old machine instead of buying and using a newer, more efficient model.
I think having the battery build in is a clasic quality issue ment to force people to upgrade their ipods every few years
It's also a form-factor issue. You couldn't build an MP3 player the size and shape of an iPod nano that used standard-size replaceable batteries, not even AAAs. The existeance rechargeable battery pack the size of four sticks of gum is what makes that product design possible.
Let me put it this way -- perhaps the SUITS at broadcast organizations can't find a case for HD. But I will tell you this -- the engineers, editors, etc. are VERY MUCH ready for HD, and know it is happening, and there's no looking back.
Businesses that make decisions based on what the techies drool over, instead of what the beancounters recommend, often don't find much success. We've already had one dot-com bubble burst, and we may be heading towards another.
Let's think about that for a moment -- what would have happened if the computer industry had decided to stay with, say, the standards that were in place for computing in the 1950s, through today.
It's not so far-fetched. Chances are, the computer you typed your comment on uses some variant of the x86 instruction set, which was introduced a full THIRTY years ago with the Intel 8086. Which itself was an enhanced version of the 8080, which was a souped-up 8008, which was a turbocharged 4004...
Technology likes to improve incrementally over time. It does not like to be abruptly and discontinuously altered. The migration from TV to HDTV thus far has been one such case. Actually it has been several, all at once: switch from 480 scanlines to 720 or more; switch from CRTs to LCD or other flat screens; switch from interlaced to progressive; switch from 4:3 to 16:9; and so on. It's far too harsh a change for most consumers to deal with.
I would think that consumers would be demanding a much quicker adoption of HD!
Show me a major network that refuses to broadcast in HD and I will show you a network that will be irrelevant in 5 years.
Yes, that's what would be best for consumer choice. For all the smaller, niche-ier networks that have no compelling reason case for going HD to disappear.
I assume you meant "major broadcast network" but chose to interpret your statement to include cable networks anyway. Of all the cable channels out there, hundreds of them, only maybe a dozen currently have any HD offerings at all. Mostly movie channels. Are you suggesting that five years from now, people will hardly watch anything on TV but broadcast stations and movies? I dissent.
While there is minimal configuration for the Wii-mote's sensitivity, there is no way to make the Wii-mote's pointer line up pixel-perfectly.
The Wii Remote does not have a viewfinder or targeting reticule built into it. There's therefore not even any suitable reference point for determining of the pointer placement IS pixel-perfect or not.
All in all, it seems like this reviewer's reasons for disappointment are largely specific to this reviewer.
True, but that doesn't completely invalidate the review.
If you're the same type of gamer as the reviewer is, this writeup may very well suggest that playing Wii would to you be a frustrating and disappointing experience. The reader, thus more informed, can make smarter purchase decisions.
Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo has been very adament about using the seatbelts provided with the controller, but the seatbelts break anyways and take out thousand dollar TVs with them. I'm not sure why you're laughing.
I don't know why the other guy is laughing, but I'M laughing at the dopes with broken thousand-dollar TV's because they somehow thought that the motor skills they developed as toddlers were no longer applicable.
If you do not maintain a grip on an object in your hand, it will not stay in your hand. The wrist lanyard was never intended to be a primary restraint.
(yeah that's right you also have that idiot system in which you call a bunch off illiterate people from the streets, that know nothing about justice, and get them decide if someone is innocent or guilty).
Trial by a jury of peers is a core tenet of Common Law and has a history dating back to the Magna Carta. It's practiced, to one degree or another, in many of the most prosperous, most free, and most democratic nations in the world.
Tell me: what judicial system do you prefer, and how are the citizens in it protected against governmental abuses?
Does that mean I can sue my crack dealer if I get caught?
If you didn't know that crack was illegal when you bought and smoked it, I'd be surpised.
On the other hand, did the average person understand that using Kazaa as intended, with its default settings, could cause him or her to commit violations of copyright law?
It's a valid argument to raise in a civil courtroom. Whether it's a compelling enough argument to lead to a win, well... let's wait and see.
I also don't support using the courts to try to decide who is a victim and who isn't.
What, then, do you think the courts are supposed to be used FOR...?
And did you really need to construct FOUR strawman arguments that may never have actually been argued in a courtroom? Wouldn't one have been enough to support your fallacy?
Plus, don't underestimate the the value of Steve Jobs and countless Apple ads saying the word "Nintendo" on multiple occasions. Nintendo need the added mindshare.
One, I don't think Nintendo really needs that much additional mindshare. Even non-gamers are talking about the Wii, and they've sold something like a million of them worldwide in the past month.
Two, I don't think Apple has that much additional mindshare to offer to Nintendo. True, the iPod may give them approximately 2/3 of the portable MP3 player market, but an Apple home game console would not be part of that market. And in markets other than the iPod's, Apple's share is marginal: 5% of PCs, optimistically.
Nintendo tried to partner with Atari to bring the NES to America in the 1980s, but that fell through. They tried to partner with Sony to bring their games to CD in the 1990s, but that fell through too. Then they partnered with Philips instead, and the CDi was a massive failure.
I think we need to recognize that when Nintendo chooses to go it alone, it probably has very good reasons for doing so.
Verizon is the evil one; they've got one prepaid plan that has a daily access fee no matter what you do.
Assuming that daily fee is $1/day, then you're paying about $30/mo even with no minutes actually used.
For that much, you can get a low-end post-paid cellular plan from most reasonable carriers (i.e., not Verizon), which will include at least a few hundred minutes of airtime.
If you look at the gamecube as far as profits, it was a stunning success.
If you compare the Gamecube profits to the deficits operated at by Sony and Microsoft's gaming divisions, yes, it was a stunning success.
If you compare the Gamecube profits to the profits earned by the N64, or SNES, or any Gameboy model, then the 'Cube could very well be a disappointment.
Both perspectives are valid.
So "lesser graphics capabilities than its competitors" counts twice -- both as bad, and as ug(g)ly?
Consumers have been fed up with ads evr since Cable TV was promising to make television "ad free".
Obviously they aren't really "fed up", because they've continued to be consumers for the past 40 years.
As well it should have. Why should the begin-comment token in one language (HTML) prevent the execution of directives in another language (PHP)?
So there's a woman who garners special attention because she's "model gorgeous", and a man who garners sympathy because his coworkers are yarn saleswomen who, one would assume, are not model gorgeous.
This really doesn't seem to do anything to dispel the stereotype that sysadmins have difficulty relating to the fairer sex, does it?
Google does not place much importance on the metadata already contained in HTML document headers for search ranking, because it cannot be trusted.
But the Search Engine Optimization Expert that our Marketing Director hired told her that META tags were crucial to good search engine placement! I spent a week tagging every page on our site with the exact meta values that the SEO Expert told us to use!!
You can't tell me that the SEO 'Expert' was just making stuff up knowing that there was no way to disprove his recommendations. If that's true, then maybe he was lying when he said that Google cares a lot about extraneous whitespace, too...!
This will probably be the first time a large number of customers begins to "get it" in regards to having DRM force-fed down our throats.
Soooo... They didn't "get it" with the iPod?
Correct. They did not get DRM force-fed down their throats with the iPod.
It's not like buying from the iTunes Store (which requires DRM) is mandatory for using the iPod (which does not).
The two models of the PS3 are $500 and $600.
No, actually, they are $UNAVAILABLE and $SOLD OUT.
So in order to suffer the downscaling, you need a really crappy HDTV which doesn't support 1080p AND 720p.
Which covers almost all the CRT-based HDTV-ready displays sold in the past eight years, which typically only support 1080i, 480p, and NTSC 480i input signals.
That's been changing in the past year or so, as most sets with ATSC tuners can also upscale a 720p input signal to a 1080i display signal, but the fact remains that a LOT of the early adopters of HDTV will not be able to enjoy HD signals from a PS3 without upgrading to a new monitor.
Like, have people on Slashdot never heard of this fancy gadget called "scissors"?
A pair of scissors is simply two knives attached on a fulcrum. Unless you're talking about plastic "safety scissors" unsuitable for any use but giving to kindergartners to cut construction paper with, scissors are going to be nearly as hazardous as a single-bladed knife.
I would also like to know how you manage to cut away a nine-inch strip of plastic from one of these clamshells using five-inch shears, without exposing your knuckles to fresh jagged edges, o scissor-knowing genius.
It is so powerful, that it can make change and introduce new products and formats (like CD)
Isn't it telling that you had to go back a whole TWENTY-FIVE years to come up with a new format that succeeded after being backed by the record industry?
The impetus for MP3's came from the consumers, not the industry. The RIAA sees how irrelevant they are becoming, and it pisses them off.
The inability to distinguish notes is quite a big deal to the substantial number of people with sight discibilities.
If a Coke machine can be designed to tell the difference between a $1 and a $10, then a pocket-sized bill scanner can be designed to do the same thing.
The government could build these and distribute them free of charge to any sightless person who requested one for far less money than overhauling the entire bill production system.
ATMs must be nigh on impossible to use too.
I don't know how widespread they are, but over the past couple years virtually all of the ATMs I've used have been adding headphone jacks to the console, to allow audio navigation of the soft menus. My eyesight is fine, but I'm tempted to bring a set of earbuds one of these days just to see what the experience is like.
The fact that a properly taken care of powerbook will only last 4 years, or the fact that you are happy with this.
After 4 years, the new state of the art in mobile computing will be such that you won't WANT to use that old notebook computer anymore, even if it works as well as the day you bought it.
My mothers old washing machine lasted 26 years before giving up.
And for maybe half of that time, I'd bet she was wasting more energy (and therefore money) running the old machine instead of buying and using a newer, more efficient model.
I think having the battery build in is a clasic quality issue ment to force people to upgrade their ipods every few years
It's also a form-factor issue. You couldn't build an MP3 player the size and shape of an iPod nano that used standard-size replaceable batteries, not even AAAs. The existeance rechargeable battery pack the size of four sticks of gum is what makes that product design possible.
Let me put it this way -- perhaps the SUITS at broadcast organizations can't find a case for HD. But I will tell you this -- the engineers, editors, etc. are VERY MUCH ready for HD, and know it is happening, and there's no looking back.
Businesses that make decisions based on what the techies drool over, instead of what the beancounters recommend, often don't find much success. We've already had one dot-com bubble burst, and we may be heading towards another.
Let's think about that for a moment -- what would have happened if the computer industry had decided to stay with, say, the standards that were in place for computing in the 1950s, through today.
It's not so far-fetched. Chances are, the computer you typed your comment on uses some variant of the x86 instruction set, which was introduced a full THIRTY years ago with the Intel 8086. Which itself was an enhanced version of the 8080, which was a souped-up 8008, which was a turbocharged 4004...
Technology likes to improve incrementally over time. It does not like to be abruptly and discontinuously altered. The migration from TV to HDTV thus far has been one such case. Actually it has been several, all at once: switch from 480 scanlines to 720 or more; switch from CRTs to LCD or other flat screens; switch from interlaced to progressive; switch from 4:3 to 16:9; and so on. It's far too harsh a change for most consumers to deal with.
I would think that consumers would be demanding a much quicker adoption of HD!
And you would be wrong.
Show me a major network that refuses to broadcast in HD and I will show you a network that will be irrelevant in 5 years.
Yes, that's what would be best for consumer choice. For all the smaller, niche-ier networks that have no compelling reason case for going HD to disappear.
I assume you meant "major broadcast network" but chose to interpret your statement to include cable networks anyway. Of all the cable channels out there, hundreds of them, only maybe a dozen currently have any HD offerings at all. Mostly movie channels. Are you suggesting that five years from now, people will hardly watch anything on TV but broadcast stations and movies? I dissent.
While there is minimal configuration for the Wii-mote's sensitivity, there is no way to make the Wii-mote's pointer line up pixel-perfectly.
The Wii Remote does not have a viewfinder or targeting reticule built into it. There's therefore not even any suitable reference point for determining of the pointer placement IS pixel-perfect or not.
All in all, it seems like this reviewer's reasons for disappointment are largely specific to this reviewer.
True, but that doesn't completely invalidate the review.
If you're the same type of gamer as the reviewer is, this writeup may very well suggest that playing Wii would to you be a frustrating and disappointing experience. The reader, thus more informed, can make smarter purchase decisions.