With Just-in-Time compilation, legacy x86 programs could be painlessly run on ARM/PPC by translating them dynamically at run time, similar to how CIL and Java work.
Do you really believe that? If so, how does one get to this fantasy land you live in? This may be true sometime in the future, but that day is not today.
I happen to own a PowerBook G4. I like it very much. I love nice little purpose-designed chips based on POWER like the Gekko in the GameCube and it's successor in the Wii. But until we're at a point where you can effortlessly and flawlessly run everything from fifteen year old accounting packages to the latest thing to come off the shelf WITHOUT some PHB type knowing any funny business is going on behind the scenes, x86 is here to stay.
Plus, RISC has its own problems. It's not the second coming. It's nice, but not for everyone.
I've got a 5-speed manual transmission on mine. When it's perfectly maintained I've gotten 35-40 in city driving and I actually got near 50 on the Interstate coming down from the mountains in Tennessee. I actually had to pull out my receipts to verify it because I didn't believe it at first.
And yeah, I love my Echo. Fiance hates it, though. She much prefers big vehicles and doesn't like manuals. Only problem I've had with it is my AC compressor is currently frozen, so no AC for the time being (which could be why I get better gas mileage...)
Oh, I should add that I think you have some fundamental logic/semantic problems going on.
That's an interesting statement considering the arguments I've seen from you.
Rocking is a type of motion.
But the boat is not moving from the point of view of a true six degree of freedom motion tracker. It's rotating. If you're placed on the surface of the boat, however, you are moving as you'll be alternately lifted and lowered by the motion of the boat. Though from the point of view of the boat, you're not moving.
Would you say that someone who is running is not moving?
If they're running then their position is changing, meaning a tracker would show linear motion. If they're running in place, though, the tracker would show no change in position.
Pretty basic stuff, which you don't seem to grasp. I think they cover this at a pretty young age in school.
Ad hominem now?
So, back to "orientation" versus "position." Orientation is a subset of position. It is a type of position. So no, talking about changes in orientation does not preclude changes in position - because when you talk about orientation, you are talking about a type of position.
Not at all. Orientation is completely independent of position. I can freely change an object's position without modifying it's orientation and vice versa. Hence my earlier comments about 4x4 homogeneous transforms and quaternion/position pairs.
But a change in orientation is also a change in position.
Because you say so? Any regularly accepted definition of 'orientation' and 'position' makes them mutually exclusive. Hence why you need two values to represent them (usually a rotation and a vector).
The molecules that make up the object have moved to a new position.
So now you've moved beyond arguing ad nauseum to ad absurdum? You're trying to move the goalposts, so to speak. An object's position is not defined based on the positions of its molecules, especially since--except at absolute zero--those molecules are ALWAYS in motion. Hence an object would always be moving in your definition, making this entire argument even more ridiculous than it has already become.
As (an even more absurd) counter-argument I could offer up that molecules themselves are just convenient projections of vibrations of the string that make up reality and therefore any perceived motion is itself an illusion, since it simply represents a change in the vibrational frequency of some string and not any real motion in 3-space. But I don't think that's necessary. I think you've proven you've got nothing to rely upon but yourself, and based on the examples I've seen today you using an argument from authority is laughable.
Because I get real world 40MPG out of my Toyota Echo when it's properly maintained but when I looked at a Prius it's EPA rating was for 70MPG. Something not right about that. Especially since--as others have pointed out--hybrids use incredibly toxic batteries to achieve the same results as a well built pure-ICE vehicle.
Are they stupid mathematicians or computer scientists?
Since most are PhD candidates, I'd hope not.
And why would a computer scientist know about motion from their studies, anyway?
Primarily from the study of computer graphics. Linear algebra also features prominently in most CS curricula. Anyone interested in doing physical simulations also needs to have a way to represent a position and orientation of an object, and a homogenous transform is usually an ideal way to do it. (Though my coworkers and I would argue a quaternion and position vector would be more efficient, but I digress...)
Most computer components don't move, apart from cooling fans and hard drive platters. but then again, in electronics, a rotating hard drive platter is known as a "moving part" rather than a solid-state component.
I don't think you understand what "computer science" is. You're talking about electrical/computer engineering.
Right. A rotating element changes its place. Therefore it is moving. Q.E Fucking D!
No, a rotating element changes its orientation, not it's place or position. Note that in the definition I gave the phrase 'place or position' is used to describe one thing, not two, for the sake of making the definition more accessible (since position is the more correct term, but 'place' is a more intuitive term for most people). ie: Place and position are synonyms. Plug one into a thesaurus and you'll find the other. ORIENTATION, however, has a seperate meaning from position. Hence why you'll find the phrase 'position and orientation' when discussion an object's pose.
Anyway, I went over all that (implicitly or not) in my previous comment when I provided the references you wanted, but happily ignored. Is it safe to assume your argument has now devolved to "Because I said so?" since that seems to be all I can draw from your last comment.
I've been unable to find out any real information about what sort of motion sensing capabilities this thing has, like what sort of chips it uses to detect tilt or displacement, so I'll just take Sony's word on it that it can detect motion as well as tilt. So the original post is probably wrong in this case, BUT is internally consistent if his thesis would have been correct, despite your claims otherwise.
You know, to be perfectly honest, I don't know. I really had no interest in acquiring one (my only interest in the system thus far was possibly scalping one in the days following launch, but that was a pipe dream), but I didn't ask. I do know that more than one 60GB model was sitting in one of our Malls' Gamestop a week before Christmas, but I don't know how long that lasted.
Considering I know one person with an HDMI port on their TV (and that's me), I can't see why so many people would be hung up on getting the 60GB PS3 over the 20GB one...
dunno, all your comments in history are about Wii,
It's been a busy week.
but based on "Staunch conservative thinker and capitalist pig.:)",
I really should change that. Conservative hasn't described me since my second year in college... But then again I hate being associated with the Libertarian Party...
maybe you said something pro-ID
Hybel vs Nevada = cry
or anti-choice.
Hmm define anti-choice?
or maybe you just used the phrase "could care less"
That I've been guilty of.
it's BS anyway since I don't use foe modifiers...
Heh, I'm not worrying about it. If everyone "liked" me I'd be paranoid. Just normally when I earn a foe I've at least done something to be proud of, so I was curious, that's all...
Do you have any cites for this "common parlance" in which "rocking" does not involve movement? Or in which rotation doesn't involve movement? I don't know of anyone who would subscribe to this "common" parlance. They'd have to be pretty damn stupid to say that something which is rocking or rotating is not moving.
Well I guess I may be a little coloured by my exposure to mathematics, but none of my friends would refer to a rotating body as "moving", but they're mostly physicists and computer scientists, so therein may lie the problem in the difference between what I consider "common parlance" and what you consider "common parlance"...
So I'll offer up some references:
motion (m'shn) n.
1. The act or process of changing position or place.
"motion." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 26 Dec. 2006.
While in mathematics rotation is defined as:
The turning of an object or coordinate system by an angle about a fixed point.
Which taking into account the previous definition of 'motion' means the object has not moved, as it's rotating around a fixed point.
That's just fucking retarded.
I guess that's one way to describe math. I imagine Pythagoras said something similar before he had Hipassus drowned for discovering irrational numbers. His shouting of epithets and subsequent termination (with extreme prejudice) of his student, however, did not change the truth behind Hipassus's proof. Extrapolate that experience onto our current one.
Motion does not just involve a displacement of the co-ordinates of the center-of-gravity of an object, it involves any part of it moving, or it moving about a rotational axis.
Well if I were to put a perfect sphere on the table in front of you, have you study it, hide it, rotate it, and then show it to you again and ask you if it had moved you'd be unable to give me an honest answer. However if I physically moved (noticed the word used) the sphere three inches to the left, you most likely would be able to tell me it was moved.
Also, I said nothing about a center of gravity. In the case of the Sixaxis its origin will most likely be at the point that lies closest to the center of where it is gripped by both hands, which may or may not be its center of gravity.
Once again, fucking retarded, as changes of orientation are - by definition - movement.
How else does the videogame respond with movement when you change the rotation of the device?
I don't understand this question as phrased. Following my best attempt to understand, this is my answer: A programmer can map any input to any action in a game he or she so chooses. If somehow I could measure the rate of flatulence being expelled from a player I could easily map that to forward movement in a game. So mapping rotation to movement is not at all difficult. In face, Rayman Raving Rabbids does that in several minigames: mapping tilting the controller to moving a character on the screen.
expecting to get a Wii straight away when only deciding to get one *after* it has had a massive launch and become a hit is just childish.
My fiance keeps looking at her coworkers in shock when they whine about the fact that she has a Wii and none of them do. If they'd done like me and spent an hour out in the cold one morning back in October to reserve one, they'd have one, too. But instead they'd rather sit around and cry about how it's not fair that we got one and they didn't. They're acting like Nintendo just decided to release a console in the middle of November and only the chosen few were enlightened with the knowledge it was coming....
Woah, I just noticed you've got me foe'd, that's interesting... Wonder how I earned that...
If you are sitting on tyhe deck of a rocking boat, wouldn't the average person conclude that they are moving?
And you'd be right. You are moving relative to the water (but not relative to the boat) however in common parlance, the boat is not "moving", it's rocking. Hence the word you used. Hence the difference between rotation and "movement" the original posted pointed out.
No, I'm not. Motion means motion - there's no room for semantic wriggle-room there.
Well I'd argue that its not undergoing motion since its position isn't changing as it's rotating about its local axes, so if we represent it's pose by a 4x4 homogeneous transform, the 3x3 orientation part would change but it's 3 coordinates in XYZ space would remain constant. Hence it would be rotating but not moving.
I believe the "crying wolf" was on the part of the original poster - who deliberately used inaccurate terminology to stir up slashdot anti-Sony sentiment.
Well, as I said, from my point of view the terminology is much more correct than yours.:) Personally I don't know anything about the sixaxis, but if it only detects changes in orientation it's not a motion sensor per se.
Sunday morning (Christmas Eve) about 10AM we met my Dad at Best Buy because he wanted to buy the family a DVR. After wandering around for over an hour (and buying a DVD-R instead, d'oh) we passed a table in the front of the store where a manager type was standing over some boxes. He looked at us and said "Anyone want a PS3?"
I realized he had four PS3s on the table. I said "No, thanks." and kept walking. Chuckling to my fiance about it.
I remembered that a friend of the family was looking for one, so I started a long chain of calls to get in contact with them. Her son arrived a little over an hour later to pick one up.
To see four PS3s sitting on the table.
In the front of the store.
With a guy asking everyone who passed if they wanted one.
Hmmm, dare one suggest that your friends see the Wii as a 'novelty'...
You're really desperate, aren't you?:)
My friends view the Wii the same as they view really good board games (Axis and Allies, Settlers) or tabletop RPGs or what have you: An incredible way to spend an evening together once or twice a week. It's a social activity that we all really enjoy the hell out of. Novelty factor applies to my buddy's K'nex Christmas Tree that well all help him set up each year for Christmas, not something we will do every week for the foreseeable future.
The Wii is a lot like one of those giant joke cowboy hats - everyone wants to try it on desperately and dance around like an idiot for a few minutes and then...
I guess if you change "try it on desperately" to "acquire one of their own desperately" along with "have bought their own controllers/accessories/games to play on my system since they can't find one yet", change "dance around like an idiot" for... well, okay, that one's kinda accurate for some of the games... and change "a few minutes" to "ten or more hours a week" and then add a bit on the end about how they're upset I won't take my Christmas presents before Christmas because they got me stuff for the Wii and can't play it until I open it... And something about my one friend salivating like a man who's half starved on a desert island over 'Super Swing Golf' like it's prime rib then yeah, I think that statement is correct.
At the end of the day you just sound bitter that you don't have anyone to on play on a Wii with.
Remember all the 'I will switch when all my games run on Linux' folks out there? They can now dual boot their shiny PS3 into Linux. Want to play a great game? Boot into PS3 console mode and play away. Need a larger hard drive? Any good SATA laptop drive will fit and work, and with a bit of cobbling you can hook up a 750GB SATA drive, for the true hobbiest.
'kay... that's about.001% of the market... maybe...
Sony Online for PS3 is free
And sucks...
Sony has donated code that has been accepted into the main 2.6.20 and above Linux kernels! That means that all PPC Linux builds from now on will work natively on the PS3.
Again, what, 0.001% of the market?
If your idea of an free open community being so great would apply to 99.9% of users, then Linux would beat out Windows in the market 10 to 1. But guess what? People are very very happy to pay to use something that works, whether or not they can tinker under the hood. Yes you pay $50/year for an XBox Live account. I pay $15/mo for WoW, what's your point? I finally had a chance to check out Live at a friend's house last week and I have to say I'm shocked. I've never seen something from Microsoft work so well and so intuitively. If it wasn't for the colour scheme having more than two colours, I'd think I was using something Apple made.
I think your view of the average consumer is a wee bit coloured by the glasses you're wearing. The type of user you're describing is Sony's nightmare. They're losing $300+ on each console. The last thing they want you using this thing for is a PC. They NEED you to buy 20 games and 40 blue ray discs so they can actually turn a profit.
I can't find a single reason this statement makes sense except that it means the 360 isn't the newest thing out there... Not to say I told you so.. but the 360 is succeeding right now. In a year, maybe not so much. But by then Microsoft will have firmly seated itself in the console market. Something nobody thought possible, or at least many people didn't, not too long ago. Except me, and maybe a few others.
I have only one word in response: Dreamcast
Though at the end of the day I really think Microsoft is going to win out over Sony in this generation... Just saying history has shown before that an extremely popular console with a year or more of lead time over the competition can still be doomed to failure...
I'll try to remember that to get people to stop asking me to bring my Wii to their Christmas party... "Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Troll says that the Novelty wears off pretty quickly, so I don't think I should bring it over."
My friends just asked to have the New Year's party at my house so they can play with my Wii. On the one hand I'm happy, on the other hand I feel strangely used.... Play with my Wii... I think Nintendo's marketing gurus are a lot smarter than the rest of us, in hindsight...
Slashdot Mirror
Well my Best Buy has some, even though it doesn't say they do on the website, so don't ask me...
So you've added Slashdot comments to your vast repitoire? Sony and SCO could probably really use you as a PR rep now.
Where's the outrage from American taxpayers who fund continued development and distribution of this "game"?
Well as an American taxpayer I have to say I thought the game kicked ass. Glad to see my money go towards benefiting me directly for once.
Seriously. There was plenty in there for the fairer sex. Why do they need their own separate program?
With Just-in-Time compilation, legacy x86 programs could be painlessly run on ARM/PPC by translating them dynamically at run time, similar to how CIL and Java work.
Do you really believe that? If so, how does one get to this fantasy land you live in? This may be true sometime in the future, but that day is not today.
I happen to own a PowerBook G4. I like it very much. I love nice little purpose-designed chips based on POWER like the Gekko in the GameCube and it's successor in the Wii. But until we're at a point where you can effortlessly and flawlessly run everything from fifteen year old accounting packages to the latest thing to come off the shelf WITHOUT some PHB type knowing any funny business is going on behind the scenes, x86 is here to stay.
Plus, RISC has its own problems. It's not the second coming. It's nice, but not for everyone.
That sounds horribly complicated.
What's so complicated about:
That will allow the client to automatically tell the router how to configure itself.
It's complicated because Network Address Translation is evil and wrong.
:)
Eh, works great for me.
We need IPv6.
Then you pay for it.
I've got a 5-speed manual transmission on mine. When it's perfectly maintained I've gotten 35-40 in city driving and I actually got near 50 on the Interstate coming down from the mountains in Tennessee. I actually had to pull out my receipts to verify it because I didn't believe it at first.
And yeah, I love my Echo. Fiance hates it, though. She much prefers big vehicles and doesn't like manuals. Only problem I've had with it is my AC compressor is currently frozen, so no AC for the time being (which could be why I get better gas mileage...)
Oh, I should add that I think you have some fundamental logic/semantic problems going on.
That's an interesting statement considering the arguments I've seen from you.
Rocking is a type of motion.
But the boat is not moving from the point of view of a true six degree of freedom motion tracker. It's rotating. If you're placed on the surface of the boat, however, you are moving as you'll be alternately lifted and lowered by the motion of the boat. Though from the point of view of the boat, you're not moving.
Would you say that someone who is running is not moving?
If they're running then their position is changing, meaning a tracker would show linear motion. If they're running in place, though, the tracker would show no change in position.
Pretty basic stuff, which you don't seem to grasp. I think they cover this at a pretty young age in school.
Ad hominem now?
So, back to "orientation" versus "position." Orientation is a subset of position. It is a type of position. So no, talking about changes in orientation does not preclude changes in position - because when you talk about orientation, you are talking about a type of position.
Not at all. Orientation is completely independent of position. I can freely change an object's position without modifying it's orientation and vice versa. Hence my earlier comments about 4x4 homogeneous transforms and quaternion/position pairs.
But a change in orientation is also a change in position.
Because you say so? Any regularly accepted definition of 'orientation' and 'position' makes them mutually exclusive. Hence why you need two values to represent them (usually a rotation and a vector).
The molecules that make up the object have moved to a new position.
So now you've moved beyond arguing ad nauseum to ad absurdum? You're trying to move the goalposts, so to speak. An object's position is not defined based on the positions of its molecules, especially since--except at absolute zero--those molecules are ALWAYS in motion. Hence an object would always be moving in your definition, making this entire argument even more ridiculous than it has already become.
As (an even more absurd) counter-argument I could offer up that molecules themselves are just convenient projections of vibrations of the string that make up reality and therefore any perceived motion is itself an illusion, since it simply represents a change in the vibrational frequency of some string and not any real motion in 3-space. But I don't think that's necessary. I think you've proven you've got nothing to rely upon but yourself, and based on the examples I've seen today you using an argument from authority is laughable.
Because I get real world 40MPG out of my Toyota Echo when it's properly maintained but when I looked at a Prius it's EPA rating was for 70MPG. Something not right about that. Especially since--as others have pointed out--hybrids use incredibly toxic batteries to achieve the same results as a well built pure-ICE vehicle.
Are they stupid mathematicians or computer scientists?
Since most are PhD candidates, I'd hope not.
And why would a computer scientist know about motion from their studies, anyway?
Primarily from the study of computer graphics. Linear algebra also features prominently in most CS curricula. Anyone interested in doing physical simulations also needs to have a way to represent a position and orientation of an object, and a homogenous transform is usually an ideal way to do it. (Though my coworkers and I would argue a quaternion and position vector would be more efficient, but I digress...)
Most computer components don't move, apart from cooling fans and hard drive platters. but then again, in electronics, a rotating hard drive platter is known as a "moving part" rather than a solid-state component.
I don't think you understand what "computer science" is. You're talking about electrical/computer engineering.
Right. A rotating element changes its place. Therefore it is moving. Q.E Fucking D!
No, a rotating element changes its orientation, not it's place or position. Note that in the definition I gave the phrase 'place or position' is used to describe one thing, not two, for the sake of making the definition more accessible (since position is the more correct term, but 'place' is a more intuitive term for most people). ie: Place and position are synonyms. Plug one into a thesaurus and you'll find the other. ORIENTATION, however, has a seperate meaning from position. Hence why you'll find the phrase 'position and orientation' when discussion an object's pose.
Anyway, I went over all that (implicitly or not) in my previous comment when I provided the references you wanted, but happily ignored. Is it safe to assume your argument has now devolved to "Because I said so?" since that seems to be all I can draw from your last comment.
I've been unable to find out any real information about what sort of motion sensing capabilities this thing has, like what sort of chips it uses to detect tilt or displacement, so I'll just take Sony's word on it that it can detect motion as well as tilt. So the original post is probably wrong in this case, BUT is internally consistent if his thesis would have been correct, despite your claims otherwise.
You know, to be perfectly honest, I don't know. I really had no interest in acquiring one (my only interest in the system thus far was possibly scalping one in the days following launch, but that was a pipe dream), but I didn't ask. I do know that more than one 60GB model was sitting in one of our Malls' Gamestop a week before Christmas, but I don't know how long that lasted.
Considering I know one person with an HDMI port on their TV (and that's me), I can't see why so many people would be hung up on getting the 60GB PS3 over the 20GB one...
dunno, all your comments in history are about Wii,
:)",
It's been a busy week.
but based on "Staunch conservative thinker and capitalist pig.
I really should change that. Conservative hasn't described me since my second year in college... But then again I hate being associated with the Libertarian Party...
maybe you said something pro-ID
Hybel vs Nevada = cry
or anti-choice.
Hmm define anti-choice?
or maybe you just used the phrase "could care less"
That I've been guilty of.
it's BS anyway since I don't use foe modifiers...
Heh, I'm not worrying about it. If everyone "liked" me I'd be paranoid. Just normally when I earn a foe I've at least done something to be proud of, so I was curious, that's all...
Do you have any cites for this "common parlance" in which "rocking" does not involve movement? Or in which rotation doesn't involve movement? I don't know of anyone who would subscribe to this "common" parlance. They'd have to be pretty damn stupid to say that something which is rocking or rotating is not moving.
Well I guess I may be a little coloured by my exposure to mathematics, but none of my friends would refer to a rotating body as "moving", but they're mostly physicists and computer scientists, so therein may lie the problem in the difference between what I consider "common parlance" and what you consider "common parlance"...
So I'll offer up some references:
motion (m'shn)
n.
1. The act or process of changing position or place.
"motion." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 26 Dec. 2006.
While in mathematics rotation is defined as:
The turning of an object or coordinate system by an angle about a fixed point.
Weisstein, Eric W. "Rotation." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Rotation.html
Which taking into account the previous definition of 'motion' means the object has not moved, as it's rotating around a fixed point.
That's just fucking retarded.
I guess that's one way to describe math. I imagine Pythagoras said something similar before he had Hipassus drowned for discovering irrational numbers. His shouting of epithets and subsequent termination (with extreme prejudice) of his student, however, did not change the truth behind Hipassus's proof. Extrapolate that experience onto our current one.
Motion does not just involve a displacement of the co-ordinates of the center-of-gravity of an object, it involves any part of it moving, or it moving about a rotational axis.
Well if I were to put a perfect sphere on the table in front of you, have you study it, hide it, rotate it, and then show it to you again and ask you if it had moved you'd be unable to give me an honest answer. However if I physically moved (noticed the word used) the sphere three inches to the left, you most likely would be able to tell me it was moved.
Also, I said nothing about a center of gravity. In the case of the Sixaxis its origin will most likely be at the point that lies closest to the center of where it is gripped by both hands, which may or may not be its center of gravity.
Once again, fucking retarded, as changes of orientation are - by definition - movement.
To loosely quote a favorite philosopher of mine, "Who's definition, joker? Yours or mine?"
How else does the videogame respond with movement when you change the rotation of the device?
I don't understand this question as phrased. Following my best attempt to understand, this is my answer: A programmer can map any input to any action in a game he or she so chooses. If somehow I could measure the rate of flatulence being expelled from a player I could easily map that to forward movement in a game. So mapping rotation to movement is not at all difficult. In face, Rayman Raving Rabbids does that in several minigames: mapping tilting the controller to moving a character on the screen.
expecting to get a Wii straight away when only deciding to get one *after* it has had a massive launch and become a hit is just childish.
...
My fiance keeps looking at her coworkers in shock when they whine about the fact that she has a Wii and none of them do. If they'd done like me and spent an hour out in the cold one morning back in October to reserve one, they'd have one, too. But instead they'd rather sit around and cry about how it's not fair that we got one and they didn't. They're acting like Nintendo just decided to release a console in the middle of November and only the chosen few were enlightened with the knowledge it was coming.
Woah, I just noticed you've got me foe'd, that's interesting... Wonder how I earned that...
The PS3 is probably the most awesome console ever invented and I can't wait to get my hands on one!
:)
I'm glad I wasn't drinking my soda when I read that.
If you are sitting on tyhe deck of a rocking boat, wouldn't the average person conclude that they are moving?
:) Personally I don't know anything about the sixaxis, but if it only detects changes in orientation it's not a motion sensor per se.
And you'd be right. You are moving relative to the water (but not relative to the boat) however in common parlance, the boat is not "moving", it's rocking. Hence the word you used. Hence the difference between rotation and "movement" the original posted pointed out.
No, I'm not. Motion means motion - there's no room for semantic wriggle-room there.
Well I'd argue that its not undergoing motion since its position isn't changing as it's rotating about its local axes, so if we represent it's pose by a 4x4 homogeneous transform, the 3x3 orientation part would change but it's 3 coordinates in XYZ space would remain constant. Hence it would be rotating but not moving.
I believe the "crying wolf" was on the part of the original poster - who deliberately used inaccurate terminology to stir up slashdot anti-Sony sentiment.
Well, as I said, from my point of view the terminology is much more correct than yours.
Sunday morning (Christmas Eve) about 10AM we met my Dad at Best Buy because he wanted to buy the family a DVR. After wandering around for over an hour (and buying a DVD-R instead, d'oh) we passed a table in the front of the store where a manager type was standing over some boxes. He looked at us and said "Anyone want a PS3?"
I realized he had four PS3s on the table. I said "No, thanks." and kept walking. Chuckling to my fiance about it.
I remembered that a friend of the family was looking for one, so I started a long chain of calls to get in contact with them. Her son arrived a little over an hour later to pick one up.
To see four PS3s sitting on the table.
In the front of the store.
With a guy asking everyone who passed if they wanted one.
On Christmas Eve.
This does not bode well.
That's still only $200 more. Or the same price if you can't find one and have to buy one on eBay.
Hmmm, dare one suggest that your friends see the Wii as a 'novelty'...
:)
You're really desperate, aren't you?
My friends view the Wii the same as they view really good board games (Axis and Allies, Settlers) or tabletop RPGs or what have you: An incredible way to spend an evening together once or twice a week. It's a social activity that we all really enjoy the hell out of. Novelty factor applies to my buddy's K'nex Christmas Tree that well all help him set up each year for Christmas, not something we will do every week for the foreseeable future.
The Wii is a lot like one of those giant joke cowboy hats - everyone wants to try it on desperately and dance around like an idiot for a few minutes and then...
I guess if you change "try it on desperately" to "acquire one of their own desperately" along with "have bought their own controllers/accessories/games to play on my system since they can't find one yet", change "dance around like an idiot" for... well, okay, that one's kinda accurate for some of the games... and change "a few minutes" to "ten or more hours a week" and then add a bit on the end about how they're upset I won't take my Christmas presents before Christmas because they got me stuff for the Wii and can't play it until I open it... And something about my one friend salivating like a man who's half starved on a desert island over 'Super Swing Golf' like it's prime rib then yeah, I think that statement is correct.
At the end of the day you just sound bitter that you don't have anyone to on play on a Wii with.
Remember all the 'I will switch when all my games run on Linux' folks out there? They can now dual boot their shiny PS3 into Linux. Want to play a great game? Boot into PS3 console mode and play away. Need a larger hard drive? Any good SATA laptop drive will fit and work, and with a bit of cobbling you can hook up a 750GB SATA drive, for the true hobbiest.
.001% of the market... maybe...
'kay... that's about
Sony Online for PS3 is free
And sucks...
Sony has donated code that has been accepted into the main 2.6.20 and above Linux kernels! That means that all PPC Linux builds from now on will work natively on the PS3.
Again, what, 0.001% of the market?
If your idea of an free open community being so great would apply to 99.9% of users, then Linux would beat out Windows in the market 10 to 1. But guess what? People are very very happy to pay to use something that works, whether or not they can tinker under the hood. Yes you pay $50/year for an XBox Live account. I pay $15/mo for WoW, what's your point? I finally had a chance to check out Live at a friend's house last week and I have to say I'm shocked. I've never seen something from Microsoft work so well and so intuitively. If it wasn't for the colour scheme having more than two colours, I'd think I was using something Apple made.
I think your view of the average consumer is a wee bit coloured by the glasses you're wearing. The type of user you're describing is Sony's nightmare. They're losing $300+ on each console. The last thing they want you using this thing for is a PC. They NEED you to buy 20 games and 40 blue ray discs so they can actually turn a profit.
I can't find a single reason this statement makes sense except that it means the 360 isn't the newest thing out there... Not to say I told you so.. but the 360 is succeeding right now. In a year, maybe not so much. But by then Microsoft will have firmly seated itself in the console market. Something nobody thought possible, or at least many people didn't, not too long ago. Except me, and maybe a few others.
I have only one word in response: Dreamcast
Though at the end of the day I really think Microsoft is going to win out over Sony in this generation... Just saying history has shown before that an extremely popular console with a year or more of lead time over the competition can still be doomed to failure...
No, Saturn bombed extra gloriously stateside... It did so-so in Japan, though.
I'll try to remember that to get people to stop asking me to bring my Wii to their Christmas party ... "Anonymous Coward Sony Fanboy Troll says that the Novelty wears off pretty quickly, so I don't think I should bring it over."
... Play with my Wii... I think Nintendo's marketing gurus are a lot smarter than the rest of us, in hindsight...
My friends just asked to have the New Year's party at my house so they can play with my Wii. On the one hand I'm happy, on the other hand I feel strangely used.