Can't they just hold the release until they get this feature correct?
Sure they could. But the project leaders have apparently decided that they would rather get the other improvements that have made it into the build into the users' hands sooner than later.
"Release early, release often" is generally a good mantra for software development.
Contracts aren't that simple. Just because you agreed to the terms in a contract doesn't make those terms enforceable.
No, but agreeing to the terms in a contract means you've got an uphill battle ahead of you if you later decide those terms are unfair and go to court to have the terms revised.
In a nutshell, contracts don't have to be PERFECTLY equitable; it's enough for them simply to NOT be grossly INequitable. I don't know if the standard breakage allowance clauses in record contracts would qualify. Surely such clauses have been challenged in court before?
It's not we're seeing a situation now where hardcore gamers hate the name and everyone else who's heard it loves it. Opinions are all over the demographic map.
Look at the games they've been releasing. Is "Pikmen" a good game? I liked it. yet it's not selling nearly as well as "Tetris" or "Brain Age" or "Nintendogs" - the latter are games that you don't have to think about
They're also titles that tell you immediately what the game is about. "Pikmin", on the other hand, is more abstract. It requires the potential buyer to learn more about the game than just its name before they're equipped to make a decision. (It apparently isn't all that memorable, either, if an advocate of it like yourself fails to get the spelling correct.)
The name "Wii" is like Pikmin. It's not visceral, it requires explanation. That makes it a bad name, and it's going to have a noticable effect on sales.
Because contrary to the memorable quote, all publicity is NOT good publicity. Some is bad publicity.
The name of the console can mean the difference between having the consumer be a Nintendo PLAYER and a Nintendo EVANGELIST. I'm still excited about the ex-Revolution's potential, and I'm more likely than not to buy one once they become available -- but I refuse to subject myself to the ridicule and awkwardness of trying to convince my friends of the virtues of a product named "Wee". I can't bring myself to say it.
Once you get the knack of how to make a good-looking counterfit, you can pretend that you're from anywhere in the country.
How is this any worse than the current system of each of the fifty states having its own ID cards? If I run a rental car agency in Florida, and someone walks in with a license saying it was issued by Alaska, I probably have no way to know if it's authentic. I have probably never SEEN an authentic Alaskan driver's license. And yet there's a strong incentive for me to accept the license as valid, even if a counterfeiter invented the design of the card wholesale.
That's one benefit of having a national card instead of scores of regional ones -- standardization.
Yes, but their marketing blurb clearly expresses an intent for the name to be intuitive and natural in all languages around the world, which it fails at quite spectacularly.
In any case, I would like to know what famous Star Trek actor, Slashdotter, and game enthusiast "Wiil Wiiton" thinks of the name.
One method of reducing risk is to place redundant vowels in some of your words. In case the first one gets loost somehow, you still have the second one.
So, you're saying motorcycles are safe provided their riders never make mistakes and provided that all other drivers on the road start behaving sensibly. Well, neither is gonna happen, which means that motorcycles remain risky.
By those same criteria, operating a standard 4-wheeled motor vehicle is risky too. And so is walking along a sidewalk next to a street, for that matter.
Cars cost more and have worse average fuel efficiency than they did 20 years ago. But they're also a lot safer. If you want to sacrifice a bit of that safety in exchange for better value, a motorcycle (or some sort of motorcycle-ish microcar) might be a good choice for you.
Maybe because the Cell is designed to be used for more things than just the PlayStation?
Correct answer, incorrect question.
Question is: why did Sony choose to put a Cell processor--an architecture that's substantially different from what they used before, and that contains features superfluous to the goals of a gaming console--in their upcoming gaming consoles?
Optional bonus question: why did Slashdot title this story "PS3 CELL PROCESSOR Security Architecture" when the information is applicable to Cell Processors, but not very much so to the PS3?
However, the better solution in that case would have been termination for people who shared passwords
There are two scenarios where this would happen: 1) the password sharing has not compromised any security, in which case you've just lost a potentially valuable team member over something where no harm was done, or 2) the password sharing HAS compromised security, in which case the damage has already been done and the policy is worthless as a preventative.
I don't really see how either of those is any better.
The original author claimed MS could have raised prices.
That is part of the O.A.'s argument. It is the part that I agree with.
The other part is the assertion that it was a mistake for Microsoft NOT to have raised prices. I don't know that to be the case. Regardless of MSRP, the Xbox 360 WAS the "hot" product of the 2005 holiday shopping season. I'd assume Microsoft's leadership is pretty pleased with that, even if some middlemen did take home some profit that theoretically could have been theirs.
I would suggest that you tell them to suck it up. If anybody is going to need to learn how to handle out-of-order execution, it's Computer Engineers, no?
True, but on the other hand, they won't trust you when you subsequently try to tell them "GOTO Considered Harmful".
The difference is that Weird Al clearly made a parody while this logo doesn't have anything funny about it.
Being funny is not a requisite condition of parody. The term is broad enough that it covers many different forms of appropriating style or content, for a variety of purposes.
Yes but usually these revisions don't come until years later.
The 360 was launched in 2005, and they're talking about a new hardware revision to come in 2007. That doesn't qualify?
Nintendo does exactly one revision of their home consoles
The initial release of the 8-bit Famicom in Japan was so plagued with hardware problems that Nintendo actually had to recall them for repairs. The second Famicom model fared much better. Then, another revision came with the front-loading NES released in the United States and elsewhere. Later, another revision was the top-loading NES. That's four revisions by my count, and I probably even missed some.
You've just doubled the testing required for new X360 software. That is a big deal.
Not really. I mean, I doubt the 360 dev kits use the exact same hardware as production 360's do, down to the revision numbers on each individual chip, and yet code written on the former runs flawlessly on the latter 9999 times out of 10000.
Not from what I've read about it. It would merely mandate that a webpage displaying artful nudity would have to be tagged as containing nudity.
Like TV or video game ratings, it won't prevent enlightened adults from accessing any type of content. It will, on the other hand, give nutballs who don't want their children to know that the human body exists a way to take censorship into their own hands, and maybe stop petitioning the government to get involved on their behalf.
750 (hard drive manufacturer GB) = 698.49 (real GB or GiB, depending on how anal you are).
I guess I'm anal enough that I take offense to your inference that hard drive manufacturers do not use "real" gigabyte figures.
The proper Metric System definition of the giga- prefix is 10^9, not 2^30. It's the OS and software vendors, the ones that calculate file sizes in 1024s but label than kilo/mega/gigabytes, that are not giving the real figures.
Therefore those guys induced the whole media into spreading the ''Chernobyl: 4000 people will die globally'' during 7 months
How much of that is the authors' fault, and how much is the media's fault for vectoring a statement found in the abstract, without first studying the full report to confirm that it was accurate?
Slashdot Mirror
Can't they just hold the release until they get this feature correct?
Sure they could. But the project leaders have apparently decided that they would rather get the other improvements that have made it into the build into the users' hands sooner than later.
"Release early, release often" is generally a good mantra for software development.
Contracts aren't that simple. Just because you agreed to the terms in a contract doesn't make those terms enforceable.
No, but agreeing to the terms in a contract means you've got an uphill battle ahead of you if you later decide those terms are unfair and go to court to have the terms revised.
In a nutshell, contracts don't have to be PERFECTLY equitable; it's enough for them simply to NOT be grossly INequitable. I don't know if the standard breakage allowance clauses in record contracts would qualify. Surely such clauses have been challenged in court before?
Nice story about Al Gore but it's not relevant to an encyclopedia.
Nor is it factual, at least as far as I can tell. I could find no sources corroborating the events as described in parent poster's story.
Which makes it an interesting anecdote to include in an argument concerning factual reporting and journalistic biases.
"Hard core gamers: Do we matter anymore?"
It's not we're seeing a situation now where hardcore gamers hate the name and everyone else who's heard it loves it. Opinions are all over the demographic map.
Look at the games they've been releasing. Is "Pikmen" a good game? I liked it. yet it's not selling nearly as well as "Tetris" or "Brain Age" or "Nintendogs" - the latter are games that you don't have to think about
They're also titles that tell you immediately what the game is about. "Pikmin", on the other hand, is more abstract. It requires the potential buyer to learn more about the game than just its name before they're equipped to make a decision. (It apparently isn't all that memorable, either, if an advocate of it like yourself fails to get the spelling correct.)
The name "Wii" is like Pikmin. It's not visceral, it requires explanation. That makes it a bad name, and it's going to have a noticable effect on sales.
So, remind me again... why is this name bad?
Because contrary to the memorable quote, all publicity is NOT good publicity. Some is bad publicity.
The name of the console can mean the difference between having the consumer be a Nintendo PLAYER and a Nintendo EVANGELIST. I'm still excited about the ex-Revolution's potential, and I'm more likely than not to buy one once they become available -- but I refuse to subject myself to the ridicule and awkwardness of trying to convince my friends of the virtues of a product named "Wee". I can't bring myself to say it.
Once you get the knack of how to make a good-looking counterfit, you can pretend that you're from anywhere in the country.
How is this any worse than the current system of each of the fifty states having its own ID cards? If I run a rental car agency in Florida, and someone walks in with a license saying it was issued by Alaska, I probably have no way to know if it's authentic. I have probably never SEEN an authentic Alaskan driver's license. And yet there's a strong incentive for me to accept the license as valid, even if a counterfeiter invented the design of the card wholesale.
That's one benefit of having a national card instead of scores of regional ones -- standardization.
As you may know, the DS transmits its screen contents over some RF signal. Someone found the signal with his TV tuner.
I'm pretty sure you just made that up.
The DS transmits its screen contents from the mainboard to the LCDs via thin ribbons of metal called "wires".
And for those shoppers, a nice, short, monosyllabic and still unambiguous name will help with the shopping experience.
If those are the important factors, they would have been much better off naming their new console the Nintendo DUH.
Nintendo is a Japanese company.
Yes, but their marketing blurb clearly expresses an intent for the name to be intuitive and natural in all languages around the world, which it fails at quite spectacularly.
In any case, I would like to know what famous Star Trek actor, Slashdotter, and game enthusiast "Wiil Wiiton" thinks of the name.
people don't like loosing their data.
One method of reducing risk is to place redundant vowels in some of your words. In case the first one gets loost somehow, you still have the second one.
The NeXT rep gave a smile and pointed to the red LED next to the microphone, hardwired to light up whenever the microphone was active.
A good feature, sure, but also one that can be pretty well neutralized with 1 cent worth of electrical tape.
So, you're saying motorcycles are safe provided their riders never make mistakes and provided that all other drivers on the road start behaving sensibly. Well, neither is gonna happen, which means that motorcycles remain risky.
By those same criteria, operating a standard 4-wheeled motor vehicle is risky too. And so is walking along a sidewalk next to a street, for that matter.
Cars cost more and have worse average fuel efficiency than they did 20 years ago. But they're also a lot safer. If you want to sacrifice a bit of that safety in exchange for better value, a motorcycle (or some sort of motorcycle-ish microcar) might be a good choice for you.
Of course we could all just use XML and YAML, we just have to rewrite every app to serialize and unserialize these grotesque formats.
.NET objects. We just have to rewrite every app to serialize and unserialize that grotesque format...
Or, we could all just use
WHY are you implementing it on a GAME CONSOLE?
Maybe because the Cell is designed to be used for more things than just the PlayStation?
Correct answer, incorrect question.
Question is: why did Sony choose to put a Cell processor--an architecture that's substantially different from what they used before, and that contains features superfluous to the goals of a gaming console--in their upcoming gaming consoles?
Optional bonus question: why did Slashdot title this story "PS3 CELL PROCESSOR Security Architecture" when the information is applicable to Cell Processors, but not very much so to the PS3?
However, the better solution in that case would have been termination for people who shared passwords
There are two scenarios where this would happen:
1) the password sharing has not compromised any security, in which case you've just lost a potentially valuable team member over something where no harm was done, or
2) the password sharing HAS compromised security, in which case the damage has already been done and the policy is worthless as a preventative.
I don't really see how either of those is any better.
And keep in mind, the 3D0 was SEVENTY BETTER than the 360, hexadecimally.
The original author claimed MS could have raised prices.
That is part of the O.A.'s argument. It is the part that I agree with.
The other part is the assertion that it was a mistake for Microsoft NOT to have raised prices. I don't know that to be the case. Regardless of MSRP, the Xbox 360 WAS the "hot" product of the 2005 holiday shopping season. I'd assume Microsoft's leadership is pretty pleased with that, even if some middlemen did take home some profit that theoretically could have been theirs.
They didn't say "price/performance ratio", they said "price-performance".
Which I would assume means price TIMES performance, or perhaps the dash should be taken literally as price MINUS performance.
I would suggest that you tell them to suck it up. If anybody is going to need to learn how to handle out-of-order execution, it's Computer Engineers, no?
True, but on the other hand, they won't trust you when you subsequently try to tell them "GOTO Considered Harmful".
The difference is that Weird Al clearly made a parody while this logo doesn't have anything funny about it.
Being funny is not a requisite condition of parody. The term is broad enough that it covers many different forms of appropriating style or content, for a variety of purposes.
Yes but usually these revisions don't come until years later.
The 360 was launched in 2005, and they're talking about a new hardware revision to come in 2007. That doesn't qualify?
Nintendo does exactly one revision of their home consoles
The initial release of the 8-bit Famicom in Japan was so plagued with hardware problems that Nintendo actually had to recall them for repairs. The second Famicom model fared much better. Then, another revision came with the front-loading NES released in the United States and elsewhere. Later, another revision was the top-loading NES. That's four revisions by my count, and I probably even missed some.
You've just doubled the testing required for new X360 software. That is a big deal.
Not really. I mean, I doubt the 360 dev kits use the exact same hardware as production 360's do, down to the revision numbers on each individual chip, and yet code written on the former runs flawlessly on the latter 9999 times out of 10000.
Surely this law would have to ban nudes in art.
Not from what I've read about it. It would merely mandate that a webpage displaying artful nudity would have to be tagged as containing nudity.
Like TV or video game ratings, it won't prevent enlightened adults from accessing any type of content. It will, on the other hand, give nutballs who don't want their children to know that the human body exists a way to take censorship into their own hands, and maybe stop petitioning the government to get involved on their behalf.
750 (hard drive manufacturer GB) = 698.49 (real GB or GiB, depending on how anal you are).
I guess I'm anal enough that I take offense to your inference that hard drive manufacturers do not use "real" gigabyte figures.
The proper Metric System definition of the giga- prefix is 10^9, not 2^30. It's the OS and software vendors, the ones that calculate file sizes in 1024s but label than kilo/mega/gigabytes, that are not giving the real figures.
Therefore those guys induced the whole media into spreading the ''Chernobyl: 4000 people will die globally'' during 7 months
How much of that is the authors' fault, and how much is the media's fault for vectoring a statement found in the abstract, without first studying the full report to confirm that it was accurate?