Personally I'd say the Lynx doesn't deserve to be on this list either. Yes it failed, but when you release products and fail to you know, advertise them, that can happen.
There was Lynx advertising! What, you don't remember it?
A prototypical Late '80s Cool Kid (you know, sunglasses, denim jacket, neon Ocean Pacific shorts etc.) gets a hall pass from his teacher and goes to the boy's room. Once there, he passes a link cable under the wall to the adjacent stall, and the boys play an exciting round of Epyx's California Games. The realism is so amazing that by the time they're done playing, they are literally soaked with ocean water!!!
It was a brilliant marketing campaign that combined all the things that kids love: school, teachers, toilets, and getting drenched with water near a school toilet! I can't imagine how Nintendo was able to steal away the portable market with such unknown game IP as "Super Mario" and "Tetris".
While it may not have been Worldwide successful, I certainly don't think its one of the top 10 lamest console ever; just one of the lamest of the truly widely known consoles.
I would actually say that's true about the entirety of this Top Ten list. I was expecting to see some truly obscure and truly lame hardware on here, like Tiger Game.Com or Atari XEGS, but it was not to be.
Jacobsen apparently did not hire a lawyer, and what is disturbing is that he should NOT have had to hire a lawyer in order to get relief from bullying by Katzer and his corporation that was already interfering with Jacobsen's personal and professional life.
The other side had lawyers. The other side WAS lawyers. Hiring a lawyer of your own is common sense, especially when you're the one bringing suit.
If Jacobsen could afford an attorney, he should have. If he could not, he should have sought help from one willing to work on contingency. Or his local Legal Aid Society. Or the EFF. It's a shame that his error cost him $30K, but I don't see any way this is the fault of "the trial lawyer lobby" and not his own.
Do you realize it is illegal in most states for an ordinary citizen to read try to help another citizen by answering questions about what a law even means - for attempting to understand on our own the laws the govern our lives?
First, I don't believe any such laws exist as you state. Second, those laws that do exist forbidding "answering questions about what a law even means"--a.k.a, practicing law without a license--are designed to protect both the recipients and issuers of legal advice. I can still answer any questions you might ask about the law, but if you use my answers in court and lose, you have no recourse to sue me for giving "bad" advice. If you want good advice, talk to someone who is educated and accredited in the subject area. An attorney.
Maybe that means courts that we can just make in and the judge will be responsible for determining if and how he has been wronged.
It's not a judge's job to listen to someone's story and figure out what laws, if any, may have been broken. That's a waste of the court's time.
Do you have any idea of the abuse that such a system would be subjected to? The nonstop, neverending fishing expeditions? The parade of whiners and crybabies with their longwinded stories of entitlement? It would be a daytime talk show, only worse, and your tax dollars would be spent on it.
There has to be a filter in place to ensure that only worthwhile cases ever make it into the courtroom, yes. IMO, the current system works pretty well. If it's not in a lawyer's economic self-interest to represent you, you may not have a very good case to begin with.
I think the US must stop having elections driven by locals and have a federally mandated independant voting "authority" that answers only to the judicial branch.
The benefit of having locally-controlled elections is that municipalities are not forced to use voting mechanisms which are inappopriate for the task. Like, as you have complained about, spending money on an electronic voting machine for a town of 80 people. I'm not sure how your proposition to move control to the federal level would improve anything.
I'm also not sure how a federal voting authority could constitutionally answer only to the judicial branch and not to "the politicians". Should a federal law be passed establishing a single standard for all elections, it would necessarily fall upon Congress to determine what that standard is. The courts could advise, but they cannot write legislation.
If we're going to look at the past to predict the future, let's look at these facts:
No console with a launch price higher than $300 (at the time of launch) has ever been a success.
No console with a launch price higher than $400 (adjusted for inflation to 2006 dollars) has been a success since prior to The Crash of 1982.
Sony took a huge risk in pricing their new console so far outside of the historical comfort zone for price, and I don't think the outlook for them is good at all. I only wonder what derisive name will ultimately be attached to their failure: P$3? PS3DO? PS3O-GEO?
Fabulous new mobile phone, lots of bells and whistles = people happily pay $500
Personally, I would never pay more than about $300 for a mobile phone, and that's only if it's an all-in-one wonder like a Treo with built-in PDA/internet/bluetooth/flashlight/screwdriver/etc. If the hardware costs more than that, I expect the carrier to subsidize it as consideration for my decision to enter a service contract with them.
Fabulous new video iPod, lots of nice features = people giddily pay $500
The current top-of-the-line iPod model (5G 80GB) sells for only $350.
Fabulous new game console, nex-gen features = people freak out, say $500 is way way too much.
There's no point in comparing a game console to a mobile phone or an MP3 player, though. That's an apples-to-figs-to-coconuts comparison.
For a meaningful, Braeburn-to-Red-Delicious-type comparison, one has to evaluate the PS3 in the context of other game consoles. No game console with a entry price above $300 has ever been a success--EVER.
Slashdot being a news (for nerds) site, I would expect that the usage patterns are such that a huge majority of the content accessed by users is very recent -- say, perhaps, 90% of the database hits are for stories and comments that were posted in the last week.
So why, pray, is this usage pattern not accounted for in the database design?
Not so much. A single monophonic melody, perhaps, but we're still yet a long way away from computers being able to transcribe complex, polyphonic, multitimbral music into its component pitches.
The PS2 may have been $399 in some regions 5 years ago, but today you can buy one for $130 in the United States. If you're trying to decide which console to buy in 2006, you do so based on their prices as of 2006.
Re:Not even capable of what the original XBOX can
on
Wii Confirmed at 480p
·
· Score: 1
In terms of the video game space there is no difference in programing 1080i and 1080p. While 1080i might only have 540 lines actually displayed they have to render the whole frame in 1080 frame to keep it in sync.
In terms of programming, no, there is no difference. You're writing to the same size framebuffer in video memory regardless of how many lines of it are actually converted to a video signal during that frame.
In terms of console power? The throughput from the framebuffer to the video-out needs to be twice as high for progressive as for interlaced (assuming equal refresh rates).
Well unless they offer a free upgrade to people that already bought the system, then this is likely to just piss people off - it would piss me off!
Can we think of any other companies that sell shiny white hardware, whose users get pissed off by the frequent release of upgraded models which are better than the ones they just bought, but inevitably covet and finally purchases the upgrades anyway?
"One-third of Americans will use voting machines next week that have never before served in a general election."
Given that it's a midterm election with only a handful of close races, I doubt that one-third of (eligible) Americans will be voting AT ALL next week, much less using new and potentially unreliable machines.
my gaming PC has a 600 Watt PSU. IIRC, with my hardware, it should be peaking at about about 250 Watts while running games.
If you're only expecting to pull 250W while doing strenuous computation like playing games, it's a waste of money to have a 600W PSU. You could do exactly as well with a comparable PSU rated for 300W.
You built your gaming rig; Sony is building millions of them. If they're using such heavy-duty power supplies, it's either because: 1. they're intentionally buying the most expensive components they can find for extra 1337ness; 2. they got a really good deal on 380W PSUs; or 3. they expect that the power needs of the console will approach 380W at some point.
The GBA's "3D" support wasn't all that 3D, anyway. More like 2.5D. It was actually pretty close to the SNES "Mode 7" capabilities, which used scaling and skewing of 2D bitmaps to give a feeling of 3D-ness.
And I can find a pretty nice lo-def TV that I already own for $000, and it comes pre-installed.
I won't deny that HD source video can and usually does look noticeably better than standard def, but I will deny that the average person cares enough about that improvement to spend several hundred dollars on an aesthetic upgrade.
Moreso, have you seen the zillions of nes rom hacks? How will the Virtual Console rival with that?
Why would it want to? I don't think there's all that many gamers out there clamoring to play rom hack masterpieces like "SUPER NAKED BROS." or "MEGAFAG II".
I was wondering how Google was going to avoid the major lawsuit liablity that youtube has become. Google will just buy off the lawsuits
I fail to see how this is illegal or immoral. (Or fattening.)
YouTube had a lot of lawsuit liability because they were a party to redistribution of copyrighted content without consent of the copyright holders. They made a licensing deal with several of the copyright holders. Now they have substantially less liability -- they have "gone legit".
Assuming that the core concept of Intellectual Property is legitimate (which one can never assume on Slashdot, so let's just pretend it is for the sake of argument), what's wrong with that? Isn't that how the system is supposed to work?
The DVD market is huge, and if Sony could produce a cheap player that would target the Walmarts, Sony would be set.
The Walmarts already have cheap DVD players. They cost under $50.
How many people are going to look at a "cheap" Blu-Ray player, costing ten times as much, and conclude that it's a good value and they need to take one home?
I don't have an Oxford American Dictionary, but my OED, Webster, WordNet, and Random House all disagree with that.
I would you suggest that you measure the validity of a word not by how many different dictionaries it appears in, but rather by how obvious it makes the concept it attempts to express.
"Stupider" is a perfectly cromulent word. You'd have to be stupider than a tree to be unable to understand its meaning of "more stupid".
Slashdot Mirror
Personally I'd say the Lynx doesn't deserve to be on this list either. Yes it failed, but when you release products and fail to you know, advertise them, that can happen.
There was Lynx advertising! What, you don't remember it?
A prototypical Late '80s Cool Kid (you know, sunglasses, denim jacket, neon Ocean Pacific shorts etc.) gets a hall pass from his teacher and goes to the boy's room. Once there, he passes a link cable under the wall to the adjacent stall, and the boys play an exciting round of Epyx's California Games. The realism is so amazing that by the time they're done playing, they are literally soaked with ocean water!!!
It was a brilliant marketing campaign that combined all the things that kids love: school, teachers, toilets, and getting drenched with water near a school toilet! I can't imagine how Nintendo was able to steal away the portable market with such unknown game IP as "Super Mario" and "Tetris".
I thought the pedant's meeting wasn't until tommorow?
You mean "pedants' meeting."
While it may not have been Worldwide successful, I certainly don't think its one of the top 10 lamest console ever; just one of the lamest of the truly widely known consoles.
I would actually say that's true about the entirety of this Top Ten list. I was expecting to see some truly obscure and truly lame hardware on here, like Tiger Game.Com or Atari XEGS, but it was not to be.
Jacobsen apparently did not hire a lawyer, and what is disturbing is that he should NOT have had to hire a lawyer in order to get relief from bullying by Katzer and his corporation that was already interfering with Jacobsen's personal and professional life.
The other side had lawyers. The other side WAS lawyers. Hiring a lawyer of your own is common sense, especially when you're the one bringing suit.
If Jacobsen could afford an attorney, he should have. If he could not, he should have sought help from one willing to work on contingency. Or his local Legal Aid Society. Or the EFF. It's a shame that his error cost him $30K, but I don't see any way this is the fault of "the trial lawyer lobby" and not his own.
Do you realize it is illegal in most states for an ordinary citizen to read try to help another citizen by answering questions about what a law even means - for attempting to understand on our own the laws the govern our lives?
First, I don't believe any such laws exist as you state. Second, those laws that do exist forbidding "answering questions about what a law even means"--a.k.a, practicing law without a license--are designed to protect both the recipients and issuers of legal advice. I can still answer any questions you might ask about the law, but if you use my answers in court and lose, you have no recourse to sue me for giving "bad" advice. If you want good advice, talk to someone who is educated
and accredited in the subject area. An attorney.
Maybe that means courts that we can just make in and the judge will be responsible for determining if and how he has been wronged.
It's not a judge's job to listen to someone's story and figure out what laws, if any, may have been broken. That's a waste of the court's time.
Do you have any idea of the abuse that such a system would be subjected to? The nonstop, neverending fishing expeditions? The parade of whiners and crybabies with their longwinded stories of entitlement? It would be a daytime talk show, only worse, and your tax dollars would be spent on it.
There has to be a filter in place to ensure that only worthwhile cases ever make it into the courtroom, yes. IMO, the current system works pretty well. If it's not in a lawyer's economic self-interest to represent you, you may not have a very good case to begin with.
I think the US must stop having elections driven by locals and have a federally mandated independant voting "authority" that answers only to the judicial branch.
The benefit of having locally-controlled elections is that municipalities are not forced to use voting mechanisms which are inappopriate for the task. Like, as you have complained about, spending money on an electronic voting machine for a town of 80 people. I'm not sure how your proposition to move control to the federal level would improve anything.
I'm also not sure how a federal voting authority could constitutionally answer only to the judicial branch and not to "the politicians". Should a federal law be passed establishing a single standard for all elections, it would necessarily fall upon Congress to determine what that standard is. The courts could advise, but they cannot write legislation.
If we're going to look at the past to predict the future, let's look at these facts:
No console with a launch price higher than $300 (at the time of launch) has ever been a success.
No console with a launch price higher than $400 (adjusted for inflation to 2006 dollars) has been a success since prior to The Crash of 1982.
Sony took a huge risk in pricing their new console so far outside of the historical comfort zone for price, and I don't think the outlook for them is good at all. I only wonder what derisive name will ultimately be attached to their failure:
P$3?
PS3DO?
PS3O-GEO?
Fabulous new mobile phone, lots of bells and whistles = people happily pay $500
. If the hardware costs more than that, I expect the carrier to subsidize it as consideration for my decision to enter a service contract with them.
Personally, I would never pay more than about $300 for a mobile phone, and that's only if it's an all-in-one wonder like a Treo with built-in PDA/internet/bluetooth/flashlight/screwdriver/etc
Fabulous new video iPod, lots of nice features = people giddily pay $500
The current top-of-the-line iPod model (5G 80GB) sells for only $350.
Fabulous new game console, nex-gen features = people freak out, say $500 is way way too much.
There's no point in comparing a game console to a mobile phone or an MP3 player, though. That's an apples-to-figs-to-coconuts comparison.
For a meaningful, Braeburn-to-Red-Delicious-type comparison, one has to evaluate the PS3 in the context of other game consoles. No game console with a entry price above $300 has ever been a success--EVER.
Slashdot being a news (for nerds) site, I would expect that the usage patterns are such that a huge majority of the content accessed by users is very recent -- say, perhaps, 90% of the database hits are for stories and comments that were posted in the last week.
So why, pray, is this usage pattern not accounted for in the database design?
a real signal can be fouriered into played notes
Not so much. A single monophonic melody, perhaps, but we're still yet a long way away from computers being able to transcribe complex, polyphonic, multitimbral music into its component pitches.
"Zune says there is no choice; you get a Zune device, you hook it up to the Zune service"
-J. Allard
KNEEL BEFORE ZUNE!
The PS2 may have been $399 in some regions 5 years ago, but today you can buy one for $130 in the United States. If you're trying to decide which console to buy in 2006, you do so based on their prices as of 2006.
In terms of the video game space there is no difference in programing 1080i and 1080p. While 1080i might only have 540 lines actually displayed they have to render the whole frame in 1080 frame to keep it in sync.
In terms of programming, no, there is no difference. You're writing to the same size framebuffer in video memory regardless of how many lines of it are actually converted to a video signal during that frame.
In terms of console power? The throughput from the framebuffer to the video-out needs to be twice as high for progressive as for interlaced (assuming equal refresh rates).
29.97 frames per second, not 30.
I agree, television picture quality would be SO MUCH better if only we could recover those nine extra frames every five minutes.
Well unless they offer a free upgrade to people that already bought the system, then this is likely to just piss people off - it would piss me off!
Can we think of any other companies that sell shiny white hardware, whose users get pissed off by the frequent release of upgraded models which are better than the ones they just bought, but inevitably covet and finally purchases the upgrades anyway?
I always use ddMMMyyyy, where MMM are the first three letters of the month's name. So today would be 02NOV2006.
ISO standard yyyy-mm-dd is better because dates in that format can be sorted using string algorithms: 2006-10-15 is before 2006-11-02.
Plus it's region-aspecific. In English, the first month is January, hence JAN. But in Spanish, it's Enero -- so what does JAN stand for?
"One-third of Americans will use voting machines next week that have never before served in a general election."
Given that it's a midterm election with only a handful of close races, I doubt that one-third of (eligible) Americans will be voting AT ALL next week, much less using new and potentially unreliable machines.
my gaming PC has a 600 Watt PSU. IIRC, with my hardware, it should be peaking at about about 250 Watts while running games.
If you're only expecting to pull 250W while doing strenuous computation like playing games, it's a waste of money to have a 600W PSU. You could do exactly as well with a comparable PSU rated for 300W.
You built your gaming rig; Sony is building millions of them. If they're using such heavy-duty power supplies, it's either because:
1. they're intentionally buying the most expensive components they can find for extra 1337ness;
2. they got a really good deal on 380W PSUs; or
3. they expect that the power needs of the console will approach 380W at some point.
The most likely explanation is #3, if you ask me.
The GBA's "3D" support wasn't all that 3D, anyway. More like 2.5D. It was actually pretty close to the SNES "Mode 7" capabilities, which used scaling and skewing of 2D bitmaps to give a feeling of 3D-ness.
You can buy pretty nice HDTVs for $500 now
And I can find a pretty nice lo-def TV that I already own for $000, and it comes pre-installed.
I won't deny that HD source video can and usually does look noticeably better than standard def, but I will deny that the average person cares enough about that improvement to spend several hundred dollars on an aesthetic upgrade.
Moreso, have you seen the zillions of nes rom hacks? How will the Virtual Console rival with that?
Why would it want to? I don't think there's all that many gamers out there clamoring to play rom hack masterpieces like "SUPER NAKED BROS." or "MEGAFAG II".
I was wondering how Google was going to avoid the major lawsuit liablity that youtube has become. Google will just buy off the lawsuits
I fail to see how this is illegal or immoral. (Or fattening.)
YouTube had a lot of lawsuit liability because they were a party to redistribution of copyrighted content without consent of the copyright holders. They made a licensing deal with several of the copyright holders. Now they have substantially less liability -- they have "gone legit".
Assuming that the core concept of Intellectual Property is legitimate (which one can never assume on Slashdot, so let's just pretend it is for the sake of argument), what's wrong with that? Isn't that how the system is supposed to work?
What you're proposing is a second iteration of the Wii which is actually functionally different.
Like the Gameboy Color was a second iteration of the Gameboy which was actually functionally different?
Granted, Nintendo waited about nine years after the introduction of the classic GB before introducing an evolved model...
The DVD market is huge, and if Sony could produce a cheap player that would target the Walmarts, Sony would be set.
The Walmarts already have cheap DVD players. They cost under $50.
How many people are going to look at a "cheap" Blu-Ray player, costing ten times as much, and conclude that it's a good value and they need to take one home?
I don't have an Oxford American Dictionary, but my OED, Webster, WordNet, and Random House all disagree with that.
I would you suggest that you measure the validity of a word not by how many different dictionaries it appears in, but rather by how obvious it makes the concept it attempts to express.
"Stupider" is a perfectly cromulent word. You'd have to be stupider than a tree to be unable to understand its meaning of "more stupid".
Zonk to Publish Rumor as Fact on Games.Slashdot.Org.