One could say that but then one would be a total snob about games and demand that companies with far smaller budgets, time, and supplies are better at making games by definition because we can't play any new Little Big Planet games or a new Modern Warfare because it isn't a genre onto itself! This is why we label things as "genres" they are by definition similar, the fun is in playing them. I'm not insulting either set but traditionally indie games have to rely on "novelty" because they simply don't have the money to polish a so-so game into a mass hit. Now as the democratization of technology is occurring and Angry Birds is a serious hit game (which most computer nerds played back in the 80s as a tank or missile variant) we can accept both and live in harmony.
That being said: If you want to get into the video game industry go to school, learn to code, have a good imagination, and MOVE to Austin, Seattle, or Boston. Nobody is stopping you from being an intern at any game studio.
Hardware fragmentation? Honestly...Lets go down this road momentarily.
Apple currently sells 3 different phones at 3 different price points with 3 different levels of technology based largely on age. That is in a console world Sony selling the PS1, PS2, and PS3 at the same time to different people. They'll give you a free PS1 if you agree to pay for a Sony-backed gaming network like netflix in essence. You can then buy a PS2 and PS3 for their respective price points and pay the monthly fee for the gaming network. Sony will let you download the newest games but your PS1 is going to struggle to keep pace with the newest Modern Warfare or Killzone.
The only distinct business difference between Android and iOS/iPhone is that Google outsourced production so that several smartphone manufacturers sell a large variety of phones with varying hardware components while Apple sells roughly 3 variations. I'm not a developer but I'm assuming that both sets of developers are developing apps that work for the 4S and Galaxy II as their bar and not the lowest common denominator because my aging myTouch 3G Slide is about to run out on contract and will be upgraded to a Galaxy II or faster. The phone market is shifting incredibly fast and the outflow of 1.5-2 year old phones is just as fast as the inflow of new phones.
This law firm is facing a very serious charge. They're going to have to figure out how to spin this to avoid admitting the information google gave them wasn't used in prosecuting the Android mobile partners. Some people are going "But,but, they're HUUUUUGEEE!" and that is true and it may not mean a thing for people like us who use their services and then our opponent uses them because we're so small. The sheer size of Google and it's representative within the firm means it was inevitable that if they were to take on a client that opposed Google's operations that the information was easily available and inevitably looked at by somebody, it's too tempting. This is a major issue that while it may not end in disbarment it will end badly for some mid-level attorney that failed to check for conflicts.
It isn't random & they sell their services to many large app makers. So statistically it is representative of larg and stable apps that still crash. The % of crashes are low but iOS skews higher because as the article says, iOS has a longer update process for apps that means bugs sit longer than Android.
It is more a business practice issue than anything else.
Who is letting in outside IDs? It's one thing if a device brings it's own ID with it (i.e. phones/tablets/laptops) but this is specifically an easily accessible and unified Apple ID that can be stolen from any number of Apple devices linked to the account that may never see the inside of the office. It's not a matter of accidental compromise it's a matter of active compromise in this case.
iTunes is the face of Apple in almost EVERY respect. The reason people bought iPods was because iTunes made it convenient to manage everything (or atleast that's the reason Apple gave originally). Apple is riding on the iTunes train to represent them to non-iOS users and separating functionality to other apps would allow third-parties on windows devices to steal some of their thunder. Think of Windows Media Player, it does three things effectively and one thing truly poor, but it sticks to it's core functionality because while it has a store it isn't the breadwinner for Microsoft. Apple is a manufacturer first but iTunes is what drives a large chunk of those sales and reflects their desire to keep everything inclusive to avoid losing that allure
On topic though, who in their RIGHT MIND is EVER going to let an outside ID onto their secure servers? I could see a singular ID for the company to make purchases for apps through but for every random schmuck to get to bring their own into the server that can be compromised at any given time and accessed outside of the system just makes me wonder what kind of operation Apple is running. It almost makes me think it's time to divide the company on it's software and hardware axis and give each control over their respective domain because it seems like hardware is in the driver's seat with software wondering where it is going.
Some the patents being handed out for the most mundane concepts in computing are out of hand. Just as another said, if Apple had tried to patent overlapping windows most likely they would have either not been awarded the patent or would have been thrown out in court. On top of it all if the patent had held up for the initial 14 years Apple would have crushed the speed of computing under the weight of their proprietary systems. We should be praying everyday that Apple didn't win that fight and they don't win future fights. This is the issue when a manufacturer wants to get in bed with software and hold all the cars.
100 million is piddlings to Apple but I suspect that part of this is driven by the lawyers at Apple being their own shot callers now and the artistic aspects of Apple being fed by their egos. It's not going to crush the company any time soon but it will put a dent in them if they keep picking fights with companies big enough to tango. War chest or not Samsung has the income and the power to roll with Apple and I doubt that the lawyers for Apple truly care about the consequences as they see the massive dollar signs.
9 cases of infringement that involved software that was changed in the next update so that while Apple MAY have won court costs they didn't win any profit from the defendant. Winning infringement cases usually means the end of a product in the physical world but since this is design attacks on software they can simply rectify the issue in the next software push and thus negate the whole issue.
of real politik and live in their own fundamentalist worlds of high society and truth in politics but do we really need to debate the free market every time a corrupt republican tries to stop government from doing its job? It's like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. The modern US conservative is essentially a pro-business social conservative who will undermine the government at every turn because that is their belief structure along with the huge economic support they get from massive corporations. It isn't as if this is something deep and well thought out it's simple corruption and bias support of pro-business agendas.
I feel like every time one of these articles comes up or really any sort of government related article comes up people want to get into the tenets of capitalism and democracy while ignoring the reality because for some odd reason a vocal minority of slashdotters are infatuated with being randian peons. It's not to say some of the ideas spouted about removal of public funds and such aren't valid in a discussion but they're unrealistic and the overuse of the slippery slope argument is so extreme I feel every time I read something it inevitably ends up at some sort of extreme philosophical end that nobody would let occur in reality.
So in short: I appreciate some of the interesting philosophical discussions abounding in here but sometimes we need to accept the real politik and realize this guy and his party are bought and sold by their pro-business interests.
Workers don't have power in capitalism nor do consumers. In certain arenas of spending consumers have a portion of power but it's usually at the lowest levels of societal need (i.e. food, clothing, basic necessities). Otherwise consumers have a variety of choices but little actual power. This is principally why boycotts don't work. As for workers: according to Smith (the man behind capitalism), workers have no power and thus rely on the government to mediate for them. It's written in his famous book "Wealth of Nations." Laissez-Faire Capitalism as most people blindly jump into on this board in support of was developed by a French economist who's name eludes me but in principal is was meant as a concept that supported french wealth-aristocrats as they were the only ones left after the royalty was killed off. The Americans adopted it because of their ideological bent of protestantism and the fact that the wealth-aristocracy in this country was just as strong. Nobility were tied to the land and government so while they weren't much better they had a principal desire in the well-being of the country. Wealth-aristocracy have no such ties and are measured on their wealth as power so everything they do is for that.
Small business owners are wholly different from medium or large business owners. Those with net income less than 250,000 (I use this number because it seems to be the magic cut-off for being wealthy) is a great deal different than those who have a net income greater than that. True we as a society all can't be small business owners but Apple isn't a small business, even selling their products is no longer a small business. Their business is measured in the billions with a net profit over that. They aren't stretching to make sure they can put food on the table, if anything they have become driven by the power of money and ideas to use true slave labor (which for the record is wholly different from being a "wage slave") to build products for cheap. People are committing suicide due to the strain of the work in China and to have never experienced such a work place because we live in a first world country we should be happy.
Apple stopped taking "risks" several years ago, they have such a massive war chest of funds essentially anything they do successful or otherwise will be able to be covered or in the case of the new iPhone and iPad simply be sold as a heavy discount if they did fail to prove fruitful. Tech companies in particular are using the low cost of PCB and circuitry to wring as much profit out of people as possible. A 60" LCD TV sells for less than $1000 USD, arguably the most expensive features of phones and integrated products like this has been their LCD screens but as prices are dropping their product prices aren't. So ultimately they're squeezing more profits out of people as the value increases due to their lack of ethics.
From what little I know it's a bit of both. South Korea has all the manufacturing it can handle with the Zaibatsu's so a good chunk is going into China now. Even if final assembly though was the in US it would offer jobs here and produce a lift in that area by circulating money in this country rather than China. Simple business 101 from a demand-side view.
Arguably yes, but fundamentally no. The problem is that when corporations as a concept were drawn up overseas travel was weeks into months, now it's days and the size of shipments verge on hundreds of stores worth of merchandise. In other words the argument that a private company owes nothing to its home base is a bit off-kilter though that is the American individualism rearing it's imbecilic head to prove yet again Americans will spite their face by cutting off their nose.
and somehow typing on a computer made in a similar condition makes me hypocritical, right? Honestly the logic you're employing means I should go out and found a company to make computer parts so when I express my interest for fair trade or domestic production I can do it knowing I have done so on a non-hypocritical machine. Stop, think, respond. Till then I want you to think about how global the economy is and how first world countries are losing the game because chosen production countries are being picked for their slave labor-like approaches.
Blow the doors off a PS3 with a 50 dollar processor, video card, motherboard, and ram? I don't think so...maybe be faster and slightly better, sure. But to argue that PCs are pulling away from consoles is just untrue because as PC games grow they eat up more power, so while games from 2 years ago do look better than the PS3/Xbox 360 they aren't cutting edge which is where the difference lies.
Also, most gamers are more than just soaking up hours in front of the Xbox 360 if they aren't college students or single white males under the age of 30. So lets not stress how they wouldn't own a TV otherwise.
Why does this "Americans are lazy" anecdote get taken for truth when the realities of economics and class have a greater affect on who goes into STEM programs. Engineers in the US at the undergraduate level make slightly more than their fellow undergrads. At the graduate level they pull away but only until the PhD where they tend to level back out. So once you factor in economic benefit being an engineer isn't truly advantageous. Far more money in being a doctor or a financier.
As for the major Tier-1 Universities being packed with asian national students. That has more to do with the vast foreign sums they'll pay for a first class education that our suffering middle class can't afford compounded by Tier-1/2 selectivity. But this is the kicker for me, the asian students you see in those classes are the most elite.01% of their society. If I were to gather up our MIT grads and pair them against the asian nationals we have coming in they would compete perfectly well. So why don't we stop trying to be egotistical against our own society and realize a society at our level of advancement isn't going to keep churning out tons of engineers.
Most people own TVs independently of the console vs. PC. I tend to not include the cost of monitors either. For the record though: over-30 inches and you're in the 400+ USD range so it isn't the cheapest answer. It's more complicated than that though, as I said, the TV is usually independent of the console vs. PC discussion.
As for purchasing multiple consoles, what little evidence we have on it seems to suggest people buy either the PS3 or the Xbox 360 and then a small portion buy a Wii as well. Switching in a new Video card/CPU/Motherboard every few years blows the cost savings on your TV as well. The cost just to switch between AMD choices is creeping up on 600 every 2-3 years or 200-300 a year. Intel is even greater. PC gaming isn't cheaper than console gaming flat out. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Skyrim will still sell more on the consoles than on the PC, same for BF3. It isn't an issue of looking at dated hardware vs. PC's because they don't really compete in the same field. Cross-platform laziness is what you're referring to. Nobody wants to put in double the work for the money that they can make by simply releasing the same rough version across 3 different machines. On top of all that since the last time consoles were released the video card companies got into an arms race that has since massively slowed down (remember when we were getting leap-frogging updates every 2 months?) In each case the PC is superior but the game design for the games is singular where the console is plural. We're comparing pineapples to hand grenades, I pointed out the console's advantages from a business perspective and have thus far proven true. If Skyrim and BF3 sold less on consoles than on the PC I would be surprised but since it didn't it is essentially a console port to PC.
The top 4 selling games for the Xbox 360 outsold all but 1 PC title ever. Wii sold 7 titles more than any PC title ever. PS2 sold 1 and PS3 has sold none more than any PC title ever. (For Reference the best selling PC game of All-time I could find was Sims 3 at 16M copies ) I'm being fair here but the market seems to have spoken that just in current consoles they have PC sales beat hand down. PC gaming is really a mixture of AAA game houses like Blizzard, EA, and Ubisoft and much smaller start-ups. It has few middle-sized designers producing for it because they can't afford to invest without a substantial guarantee of return. Consoles offer that. It's why I point out development cost, when you're getting down to indie games where you need less than 25-50 people to develop one of reasonable quality PCs really shine, but they have a huge gap in size and that's where consoles are bread and butter winners because a good ship for a Wii game is a million units while a good ship for a PC game is 100,000. It's a different set of logistics all together.
As for pricing, 60 bucks is being squeezed out of console players because the distribution system is controlled by a handful of players. Since department stores and discount stores are largely out of it (barring Wal-Mart) gamers get their games in physical locations from less than 3-4 outlets in a given location. They've monopolized the system and have justified the increase in price for profit. PC games are even more limited physically but tend to have a greater expanse online and with the intro of Steam and other competing systems it keeps the price in check.
As for the main point: Unified architecture means a designer has a target. If a game runs smoothly on a PC with ultra-high-end equipment that's wonderful, how does it play on a 4 year old rig with an AMD Dual-core Athlon II and a x800 video card? They don't have to prepare for multiple dynamics within a video card or CPU or even operating system variances. They simply have to write a game that will be using a PowerPC chip and an ATI or Nvidia custom video chip with a certain amount of Ram. It's the real advantage consoles have and its why every time they fiddle around with a power upgrade option it causes an uproar because usually it's expensive and it means leaving a relatively large portion of users behind. Think of the Sega CD or 32X. They were both perfect examples of upgrading the existing system with new technology and ultimately both failed because they were held back by older architecture and price. The speed we're seeing now though shouldn't be an issue to offer backwards compatibility through emulation for everything though so the need to be "upgradable" is really a limited concept.
Simple reasons for why PCs can't compete with consoles (and I am a firm PC gamer):
Price - The cost of manufacturing the mainboards of all three of the consoles is somewhere around 150-250 USD, thus they only need a power supply and a DVD drive to function beyond that. A PC requires a motherboard, CPU, video card, and independent memory not to mention a hard drive. All of that even at the cheapest level is around 200 USD and still lacks an OS.
OS - Consoles run a scaled down consistent OS that usually shuts down when the game runs or minimalizes to a point that only a shell is on. The PC will keep multiple programs open and running in the background eating into performance. This is where the console looks great compared to PCs because they can't truly get bogged down at the OS level.
Development costs: AAA titles are about the same but less than top-tier titles cost less on the console and can sell far more by just being available. The PC goes from AAA to AAA in the market, with little room for lesser than's. So development has shifted towards consoles where the money is and the profit flows in.
All and all both articles show that the console market is maturing and until smartphones become so powerful that a baseline is set for them to compete it looks like consoles will be with us for at least another 1-3 generations.
Not that I know of, BUT (and I have to have it capitalized for this) those cases that have been documented are extremely rare and don't affect the vote tally just the person's safety after the fact. I've never heard of a mechanical tally machine having petroleum jelly or a dye put on it but I have heard of stories where poll workers would report to factory owners on who voted for what. Any sort of substance put on an enamel lever would easily be identifiable and could be rubbed off.
Look at 90% of the most successful websites in the western world's internet. Most of them follow Google's simplistic stylization. Even Apple arguably with their modernistic approach showed up around the same time Google's simplistic take showed up. It's an attempt to draw back the over-stylization the 1990s and 80s wrought.
. ..This is one of those "why add X when you're still using Y with it!" arguments that misses the point that Y is now something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and is used for a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT REASON. The quick results come from the machines and allow the voting process to move faster and with fewer issues (i.e. hanging chads). The paper trail they were referring to is an easily reviewed and printed series of choices on a ravel of paper that is much lighter than the card stock used for voting in other areas. In other words the paper trail they want is more akin to simple review and read while your paper trail is one of a million paper card stock cards with variously confusing ballots printed on them which have to be reviewed and then questioned by both candidates/parties as they see fit.
Slashdot Mirror
One could say that but then one would be a total snob about games and demand that companies with far smaller budgets, time, and supplies are better at making games by definition because we can't play any new Little Big Planet games or a new Modern Warfare because it isn't a genre onto itself! This is why we label things as "genres" they are by definition similar, the fun is in playing them. I'm not insulting either set but traditionally indie games have to rely on "novelty" because they simply don't have the money to polish a so-so game into a mass hit. Now as the democratization of technology is occurring and Angry Birds is a serious hit game (which most computer nerds played back in the 80s as a tank or missile variant) we can accept both and live in harmony.
That being said: If you want to get into the video game industry go to school, learn to code, have a good imagination, and MOVE to Austin, Seattle, or Boston. Nobody is stopping you from being an intern at any game studio.
Hardware fragmentation? Honestly...Lets go down this road momentarily.
Apple currently sells 3 different phones at 3 different price points with 3 different levels of technology based largely on age. That is in a console world Sony selling the PS1, PS2, and PS3 at the same time to different people. They'll give you a free PS1 if you agree to pay for a Sony-backed gaming network like netflix in essence. You can then buy a PS2 and PS3 for their respective price points and pay the monthly fee for the gaming network. Sony will let you download the newest games but your PS1 is going to struggle to keep pace with the newest Modern Warfare or Killzone.
The only distinct business difference between Android and iOS/iPhone is that Google outsourced production so that several smartphone manufacturers sell a large variety of phones with varying hardware components while Apple sells roughly 3 variations. I'm not a developer but I'm assuming that both sets of developers are developing apps that work for the 4S and Galaxy II as their bar and not the lowest common denominator because my aging myTouch 3G Slide is about to run out on contract and will be upgraded to a Galaxy II or faster. The phone market is shifting incredibly fast and the outflow of 1.5-2 year old phones is just as fast as the inflow of new phones.
This law firm is facing a very serious charge. They're going to have to figure out how to spin this to avoid admitting the information google gave them wasn't used in prosecuting the Android mobile partners. Some people are going "But,but, they're HUUUUUGEEE!" and that is true and it may not mean a thing for people like us who use their services and then our opponent uses them because we're so small. The sheer size of Google and it's representative within the firm means it was inevitable that if they were to take on a client that opposed Google's operations that the information was easily available and inevitably looked at by somebody, it's too tempting. This is a major issue that while it may not end in disbarment it will end badly for some mid-level attorney that failed to check for conflicts.
It isn't random & they sell their services to many large app makers. So statistically it is representative of larg and stable apps that still crash. The % of crashes are low but iOS skews higher because as the article says, iOS has a longer update process for apps that means bugs sit longer than Android.
It is more a business practice issue than anything else.
Who is letting in outside IDs? It's one thing if a device brings it's own ID with it (i.e. phones/tablets/laptops) but this is specifically an easily accessible and unified Apple ID that can be stolen from any number of Apple devices linked to the account that may never see the inside of the office. It's not a matter of accidental compromise it's a matter of active compromise in this case.
iTunes is the face of Apple in almost EVERY respect. The reason people bought iPods was because iTunes made it convenient to manage everything (or atleast that's the reason Apple gave originally). Apple is riding on the iTunes train to represent them to non-iOS users and separating functionality to other apps would allow third-parties on windows devices to steal some of their thunder. Think of Windows Media Player, it does three things effectively and one thing truly poor, but it sticks to it's core functionality because while it has a store it isn't the breadwinner for Microsoft. Apple is a manufacturer first but iTunes is what drives a large chunk of those sales and reflects their desire to keep everything inclusive to avoid losing that allure
On topic though, who in their RIGHT MIND is EVER going to let an outside ID onto their secure servers? I could see a singular ID for the company to make purchases for apps through but for every random schmuck to get to bring their own into the server that can be compromised at any given time and accessed outside of the system just makes me wonder what kind of operation Apple is running. It almost makes me think it's time to divide the company on it's software and hardware axis and give each control over their respective domain because it seems like hardware is in the driver's seat with software wondering where it is going.
Some the patents being handed out for the most mundane concepts in computing are out of hand. Just as another said, if Apple had tried to patent overlapping windows most likely they would have either not been awarded the patent or would have been thrown out in court. On top of it all if the patent had held up for the initial 14 years Apple would have crushed the speed of computing under the weight of their proprietary systems. We should be praying everyday that Apple didn't win that fight and they don't win future fights. This is the issue when a manufacturer wants to get in bed with software and hold all the cars.
100 million is piddlings to Apple but I suspect that part of this is driven by the lawyers at Apple being their own shot callers now and the artistic aspects of Apple being fed by their egos. It's not going to crush the company any time soon but it will put a dent in them if they keep picking fights with companies big enough to tango. War chest or not Samsung has the income and the power to roll with Apple and I doubt that the lawyers for Apple truly care about the consequences as they see the massive dollar signs.
9 cases of infringement that involved software that was changed in the next update so that while Apple MAY have won court costs they didn't win any profit from the defendant. Winning infringement cases usually means the end of a product in the physical world but since this is design attacks on software they can simply rectify the issue in the next software push and thus negate the whole issue.
of real politik and live in their own fundamentalist worlds of high society and truth in politics but do we really need to debate the free market every time a corrupt republican tries to stop government from doing its job? It's like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. The modern US conservative is essentially a pro-business social conservative who will undermine the government at every turn because that is their belief structure along with the huge economic support they get from massive corporations. It isn't as if this is something deep and well thought out it's simple corruption and bias support of pro-business agendas.
I feel like every time one of these articles comes up or really any sort of government related article comes up people want to get into the tenets of capitalism and democracy while ignoring the reality because for some odd reason a vocal minority of slashdotters are infatuated with being randian peons. It's not to say some of the ideas spouted about removal of public funds and such aren't valid in a discussion but they're unrealistic and the overuse of the slippery slope argument is so extreme I feel every time I read something it inevitably ends up at some sort of extreme philosophical end that nobody would let occur in reality.
So in short: I appreciate some of the interesting philosophical discussions abounding in here but sometimes we need to accept the real politik and realize this guy and his party are bought and sold by their pro-business interests.
Workers don't have power in capitalism nor do consumers. In certain arenas of spending consumers have a portion of power but it's usually at the lowest levels of societal need (i.e. food, clothing, basic necessities). Otherwise consumers have a variety of choices but little actual power. This is principally why boycotts don't work. As for workers: according to Smith (the man behind capitalism), workers have no power and thus rely on the government to mediate for them. It's written in his famous book "Wealth of Nations." Laissez-Faire Capitalism as most people blindly jump into on this board in support of was developed by a French economist who's name eludes me but in principal is was meant as a concept that supported french wealth-aristocrats as they were the only ones left after the royalty was killed off. The Americans adopted it because of their ideological bent of protestantism and the fact that the wealth-aristocracy in this country was just as strong. Nobility were tied to the land and government so while they weren't much better they had a principal desire in the well-being of the country. Wealth-aristocracy have no such ties and are measured on their wealth as power so everything they do is for that.
Small business owners are wholly different from medium or large business owners. Those with net income less than 250,000 (I use this number because it seems to be the magic cut-off for being wealthy) is a great deal different than those who have a net income greater than that. True we as a society all can't be small business owners but Apple isn't a small business, even selling their products is no longer a small business. Their business is measured in the billions with a net profit over that. They aren't stretching to make sure they can put food on the table, if anything they have become driven by the power of money and ideas to use true slave labor (which for the record is wholly different from being a "wage slave") to build products for cheap. People are committing suicide due to the strain of the work in China and to have never experienced such a work place because we live in a first world country we should be happy.
Apple stopped taking "risks" several years ago, they have such a massive war chest of funds essentially anything they do successful or otherwise will be able to be covered or in the case of the new iPhone and iPad simply be sold as a heavy discount if they did fail to prove fruitful. Tech companies in particular are using the low cost of PCB and circuitry to wring as much profit out of people as possible. A 60" LCD TV sells for less than $1000 USD, arguably the most expensive features of phones and integrated products like this has been their LCD screens but as prices are dropping their product prices aren't. So ultimately they're squeezing more profits out of people as the value increases due to their lack of ethics.
From what little I know it's a bit of both. South Korea has all the manufacturing it can handle with the Zaibatsu's so a good chunk is going into China now. Even if final assembly though was the in US it would offer jobs here and produce a lift in that area by circulating money in this country rather than China. Simple business 101 from a demand-side view.
Arguably yes, but fundamentally no. The problem is that when corporations as a concept were drawn up overseas travel was weeks into months, now it's days and the size of shipments verge on hundreds of stores worth of merchandise. In other words the argument that a private company owes nothing to its home base is a bit off-kilter though that is the American individualism rearing it's imbecilic head to prove yet again Americans will spite their face by cutting off their nose.
and somehow typing on a computer made in a similar condition makes me hypocritical, right? Honestly the logic you're employing means I should go out and found a company to make computer parts so when I express my interest for fair trade or domestic production I can do it knowing I have done so on a non-hypocritical machine. Stop, think, respond. Till then I want you to think about how global the economy is and how first world countries are losing the game because chosen production countries are being picked for their slave labor-like approaches.
Blow the doors off a PS3 with a 50 dollar processor, video card, motherboard, and ram? I don't think so...maybe be faster and slightly better, sure. But to argue that PCs are pulling away from consoles is just untrue because as PC games grow they eat up more power, so while games from 2 years ago do look better than the PS3/Xbox 360 they aren't cutting edge which is where the difference lies.
Also, most gamers are more than just soaking up hours in front of the Xbox 360 if they aren't college students or single white males under the age of 30. So lets not stress how they wouldn't own a TV otherwise.
Why does this "Americans are lazy" anecdote get taken for truth when the realities of economics and class have a greater affect on who goes into STEM programs. Engineers in the US at the undergraduate level make slightly more than their fellow undergrads. At the graduate level they pull away but only until the PhD where they tend to level back out. So once you factor in economic benefit being an engineer isn't truly advantageous. Far more money in being a doctor or a financier.
As for the major Tier-1 Universities being packed with asian national students. That has more to do with the vast foreign sums they'll pay for a first class education that our suffering middle class can't afford compounded by Tier-1/2 selectivity. But this is the kicker for me, the asian students you see in those classes are the most elite .01% of their society. If I were to gather up our MIT grads and pair them against the asian nationals we have coming in they would compete perfectly well. So why don't we stop trying to be egotistical against our own society and realize a society at our level of advancement isn't going to keep churning out tons of engineers.
Most people own TVs independently of the console vs. PC. I tend to not include the cost of monitors either. For the record though: over-30 inches and you're in the 400+ USD range so it isn't the cheapest answer. It's more complicated than that though, as I said, the TV is usually independent of the console vs. PC discussion.
As for purchasing multiple consoles, what little evidence we have on it seems to suggest people buy either the PS3 or the Xbox 360 and then a small portion buy a Wii as well. Switching in a new Video card/CPU/Motherboard every few years blows the cost savings on your TV as well. The cost just to switch between AMD choices is creeping up on 600 every 2-3 years or 200-300 a year. Intel is even greater. PC gaming isn't cheaper than console gaming flat out. Sorry to burst your bubble.
It's called pump & dumping and it is a crime but you need to prove it.
Skyrim will still sell more on the consoles than on the PC, same for BF3. It isn't an issue of looking at dated hardware vs. PC's because they don't really compete in the same field. Cross-platform laziness is what you're referring to. Nobody wants to put in double the work for the money that they can make by simply releasing the same rough version across 3 different machines. On top of all that since the last time consoles were released the video card companies got into an arms race that has since massively slowed down (remember when we were getting leap-frogging updates every 2 months?) In each case the PC is superior but the game design for the games is singular where the console is plural. We're comparing pineapples to hand grenades, I pointed out the console's advantages from a business perspective and have thus far proven true. If Skyrim and BF3 sold less on consoles than on the PC I would be surprised but since it didn't it is essentially a console port to PC.
The top 4 selling games for the Xbox 360 outsold all but 1 PC title ever. Wii sold 7 titles more than any PC title ever. PS2 sold 1 and PS3 has sold none more than any PC title ever. (For Reference the best selling PC game of All-time I could find was Sims 3 at 16M copies ) I'm being fair here but the market seems to have spoken that just in current consoles they have PC sales beat hand down. PC gaming is really a mixture of AAA game houses like Blizzard, EA, and Ubisoft and much smaller start-ups. It has few middle-sized designers producing for it because they can't afford to invest without a substantial guarantee of return. Consoles offer that. It's why I point out development cost, when you're getting down to indie games where you need less than 25-50 people to develop one of reasonable quality PCs really shine, but they have a huge gap in size and that's where consoles are bread and butter winners because a good ship for a Wii game is a million units while a good ship for a PC game is 100,000. It's a different set of logistics all together.
As for pricing, 60 bucks is being squeezed out of console players because the distribution system is controlled by a handful of players. Since department stores and discount stores are largely out of it (barring Wal-Mart) gamers get their games in physical locations from less than 3-4 outlets in a given location. They've monopolized the system and have justified the increase in price for profit. PC games are even more limited physically but tend to have a greater expanse online and with the intro of Steam and other competing systems it keeps the price in check.
As for the main point: Unified architecture means a designer has a target. If a game runs smoothly on a PC with ultra-high-end equipment that's wonderful, how does it play on a 4 year old rig with an AMD Dual-core Athlon II and a x800 video card? They don't have to prepare for multiple dynamics within a video card or CPU or even operating system variances. They simply have to write a game that will be using a PowerPC chip and an ATI or Nvidia custom video chip with a certain amount of Ram. It's the real advantage consoles have and its why every time they fiddle around with a power upgrade option it causes an uproar because usually it's expensive and it means leaving a relatively large portion of users behind. Think of the Sega CD or 32X. They were both perfect examples of upgrading the existing system with new technology and ultimately both failed because they were held back by older architecture and price. The speed we're seeing now though shouldn't be an issue to offer backwards compatibility through emulation for everything though so the need to be "upgradable" is really a limited concept.
Simple reasons for why PCs can't compete with consoles (and I am a firm PC gamer):
Price - The cost of manufacturing the mainboards of all three of the consoles is somewhere around 150-250 USD, thus they only need a power supply and a DVD drive to function beyond that. A PC requires a motherboard, CPU, video card, and independent memory not to mention a hard drive. All of that even at the cheapest level is around 200 USD and still lacks an OS.
OS - Consoles run a scaled down consistent OS that usually shuts down when the game runs or minimalizes to a point that only a shell is on. The PC will keep multiple programs open and running in the background eating into performance. This is where the console looks great compared to PCs because they can't truly get bogged down at the OS level.
Development costs: AAA titles are about the same but less than top-tier titles cost less on the console and can sell far more by just being available. The PC goes from AAA to AAA in the market, with little room for lesser than's. So development has shifted towards consoles where the money is and the profit flows in.
All and all both articles show that the console market is maturing and until smartphones become so powerful that a baseline is set for them to compete it looks like consoles will be with us for at least another 1-3 generations.
Not that I know of, BUT (and I have to have it capitalized for this) those cases that have been documented are extremely rare and don't affect the vote tally just the person's safety after the fact. I've never heard of a mechanical tally machine having petroleum jelly or a dye put on it but I have heard of stories where poll workers would report to factory owners on who voted for what. Any sort of substance put on an enamel lever would easily be identifiable and could be rubbed off.
Look at 90% of the most successful websites in the western world's internet. Most of them follow Google's simplistic stylization. Even Apple arguably with their modernistic approach showed up around the same time Google's simplistic take showed up. It's an attempt to draw back the over-stylization the 1990s and 80s wrought.
. . .This is one of those "why add X when you're still using Y with it!" arguments that misses the point that Y is now something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and is used for a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT REASON. The quick results come from the machines and allow the voting process to move faster and with fewer issues (i.e. hanging chads). The paper trail they were referring to is an easily reviewed and printed series of choices on a ravel of paper that is much lighter than the card stock used for voting in other areas. In other words the paper trail they want is more akin to simple review and read while your paper trail is one of a million paper card stock cards with variously confusing ballots printed on them which have to be reviewed and then questioned by both candidates/parties as they see fit.
+1 conspiracy theory
+1 for making a random voting is a threat comment..
I can only hope you meant it in satire... :S