These things are "shortaged" at launch primarily because they're afraid of matching supply and demand principles. A shortage is what happens when demand outstrips supply but prices don't rise. The nature of manufacturing a new product is that you can't make a million of them instantly. You build say 100k a day. I guarentee you two weeks ago there were finished Wiis sitting there waiting for enough friends to make launch numbers. In a perfectly free world market, that first lonely Wii would have been sold immediately, to the highest bidder. But you can't set the price for all Wiis like that. You'd only sell 1! And there's regulations that prevent you from offering two people different prices for the same thing.
What you could do to keep demand in check is sell the first group for high dollars, and as those willing to pay 750 dollars for a Wii dissapear, lower the price, wait for those people to buy, and repeat until your price is as low as you're willing to go on it. This isn't done for a couple reasons. 1) Being the first to do this would drive your customers to competitors 2) Consumers would cry out how unfair the price was a week ago, and early adopters who didn't anticipate a sudden drop in value would vocally feel screwed. 3) Pricing on the high side risks NOT selling out.
That third risk is probably the most dangerous for a platform that needs support from 3rd parties. To sell as many games as possible, you want as many installed users as possible. Rather than risk choking demand for the platform and watching software sales plummet, they err on the side of caution, and leave nickels on the ground for retailers to pick up by managing their inventory. Ideally, you mass enough consoles to launch fairly to a region, so distribution and supply of games is simpler and your advertising campagn is a simple "buy on november 17th" or whatever, and then everyone who wants one goes out and gets one, because you produced exactly that number and no more. If fake shortage news like deliberately undersupplying preorders drives up total sales, then you do it for the health of the platform.
So basically, theres a shortage because they don't expect to make as big a profit on selling systems as they do selling games, so finding ways to sell as many as possible is their goal. Determining what is and isn't a shortage can be difficult, but ebay is usually a good indicator.
I guess some people have a fascination with serial input busses, but for the rest of us, Zelda on launch is like candy for breakfast.
You're right though: a lot of the other titles are widely ported mass market games. But many of them seem to be somewhat modified -- the Wii version of Madden allows you to use the motion sensor to control the gameplay. Ubisoft is making a racing game using the remote. They put out a plastic steering wheel and you put the remote in it, at which point it can detect you turning it one way or the other. Tom Clany's double agent is well anticipated, but many people I think would rather get it now on another platform than wait a month for the Wii version. There's also Trauma Center, a Wii exclusive and definately not a game that surrounds itself with the familiar; it's a surgery simulation game.
Actually, most of the changes revolved around removing the logo, since it's current owner is not releasing it under DFSG friendly policy. I guess Mozilla's corporate council woke up to what was happening and decided to tell em they can't cherry pick Firefox branding. Debian hasn't been using the firefox icon for a quite some time. Ultimately I think it hurts Firefox's brand a bit, and debian's user friendlyness as well. What Debian distributes is basically firefox. Their changes are typically either security backports to versions Mozilla doesn't support, the aforementioned logo patch, and I think they also take out the automatic check for updates, since they already provide a system wide tool for doing this (dkpg/apt-get), in a manner that doesn't rely on limited user accounts installing software. If I were Mozilla, these changes alone wouldn't be so bad, and I'd grant Debian an exception (and I believe I read that Mozilla's council was willing to do exactly that under some conditions), except for one problem:
Debian isn't satisfied with an exception. Perhaps rightfully so. Several people have taken the liberty to capitalize on Debian's Free nature and modified and distributed Debian. To willfully package and distribute firefox as an exception would be placing a landmine for these people to step on inadvertantly. Digging through each and every package to verify that it is indeed safe to modify and redistribute is a task so large as to discourage people from ever attempting it legally. And given that Debian's existance owes to the fact that someone else gave them software freely redistributable and modifiable, it would be hypocritical not to reciprocate. So Debian naturally demands that they be able to offer the same rights that have been extended to them.
This demand finds itself at odds with Mozilla's branding efforts. Mozilla worries about a number of possible modifications being negative and associated with firefox. Not in the "aids terrorists" way, but in the "adds spyware and makes people hate firefox" way. Even the community edition version is highly resistant to changes. But that doesn't mean Debian has to agree to help promote Firefox. Hence Debian's move to IceWeasel--a complete rebranding of firefox, one I hope who's aim is to minimize the changeset from firefox to only exactly what is required to allow free redistribution without landmines.
Which is obviously why the standard compiler for the GBA (and probably DS) is GCC. Because they're deathly afraid of anything even related to "Open Source", as evidenced by 20 year old lawsuits. Who can imagine that anything's changed in such a short time frame?
Of course, these companies also have an obligation to continue paying their employees and creditors. They can't ignore ratings and be in business long--their advertisors would stop coming, and they'd quickly find themselves bankrupt. How many of these soon-to-be-enlightened people are willing to pay a monthly fee akin to HBO for a news channel? If five dollars a month is too much to expect people to pay for a news station absent advertising and other adultering influences, then I have to question how you arrive at the conclusion that the "end result would be incredibly positive and definitely a huge net gain." At the very least, its a statement that doesn't hold up on its own.
What you're essentially arguing for is a way to force people to pay for something they don't use. I hate to sound libertarian, but you're asking somebody to fund a venture which cant sustain itself for a lack of public interest. PBS fits that bill to a degree, but as has been shown repeatedly, its difficult to seperate state interests from state funded news media. If you're looking for unbiased views on news, CSPAN is as close to a no POV station as it gets -- there's rarely any commentary at all, its usually just floor proceedings. They perform a valuable function -- recording and archiving public government functions, but by and large it does not inform the public. Its available to nearly anyone with cable, but without any filter, nobody has the time to piece together enough information to form a reasonably constructed opinion. One thing I do wish would happen is for them to get a camera in the
This is what shows like the Daily Show are doing well, I think. Filtering isn't in itself a bad thing. Regional news is validly more important than international news such as India's new Prime Minister. That's fine. I just wish we didn't have eight personality shows in a row discussing the same five events from last week. It's fine to get into details, but too often cable news degenerates into repetition rather than refinement. The Daily Show does a fine job of covering recent events, and digging into the past to place (a sometimes depressing hypocritical) perspective on it. They do however, have a clear and visibile bias.
Actually, I know who Zell Miller is because I actually watched Hardball, and it was fairly humorous. I wonder how many clips from the Daily Show are courtesy the CNN, MSNBC and Fox, versus 'the eternal watching eye' style CSPAN cable feeds.
If anything should be highlighted from Cable news, its how very little topics are covered. There's something like 4 or 5 cable news networks, and they all play the same Natalie Holloway or whatever flavor of the month is, interviewing the same clueless sherrif or attorney they spoke with yesterday at the same time. Meanwhile, international news of merit, such as the coup in Thailand, gets barely any airtime. Partly, the US audience is to blame--which gets higher ratings: political instability, or missing white girl of the month?
Will Rogers, a famous comedian while he was alive, also ran a wire service that many newspapers picked up on, wrote a popular weekly column, and did a weekly 30 minute radio show, all primarily focused on current events, aka news. It may be that journalism proper killed their own format by adopting non-partisan attitudes and an incredibly serious tone. When reading the news is likened to eating your vegstables, its no wonder nobody watches the news. The Daily Show is like applesauce, easily digested and still fairly healthy.
As a TA, I'm all for creative solutions. If you can write up code drastically different than the rubric had in mind that still meets criteria, full credit. However, in the field of Engineering, many of these solutions are better described as "wrong" than "new" or "insightful." Which does make my job somewhat easier, I do admit =).
People can buy Brand new desktop computers for as little as 300 dollars. Companies can afford more computing power for less than ever. The internet has the concentrated media networks scrambling for ways to cope with the flood of new distribution methods and authoring tools that slowly edge them out. Can we really sit here and criticize another industry for clinging to a system beneficial to themselves more than society as a whole, while carving out some sense of entitlment of our own?
It's not up to Ubuntu whether they get to ship the icon or not. It's Mozilla. They have a incredibly strict "quality" control system that until recently, looked the other way at Debian (and Ubuntu). I slightly understand what Mozilla wants, a mark of quality surrounding their browser, but its assinine to insist that unless you follow their controls your product does not meet their quality standard. Yes, nobody wants firefox associated with spam popups, but its not like Debian and other community distros aren't trying to make Firefox quality.
I wonder if its really nessecary for Open Source software to have branding. Shouldn't we just focus on writing quality software and let the world figure out on its own that its superiour (on the occassions that it is)? But if you really must force the firefox brand on a distro, perhaps you should start by authoring a GR to fix the inconsistancy with Debian's own brand. Because lord knows there haven't been enough GRs recently.
Is driving companies that aren't as efficient as their competitors out of business evil? And am I an evil person if I shop via price comparison? Because they both have the same effect.
"Gosh, dern, there, Mister Studio Boss, shucks, we're just a simple uber-ultra-mega-chain from Arkansas, don't know nothing 'bout birthin' no downloads. Shure, we brung ya to the dance, bought ya dinner, drinks, and flowers, but it's OK if ya want to leave with that there Miss Apple. We understand, she shore is purty!"
Of course, one could interpret them returning all that stock as an admission that itunes is a cheaper delivery system that they can't compete with. Or maybe an angry ex-girlfriend throwing all the crap you left at her place (physical DVDs) on your lawn. I'm not sure why walmart should be stuck with the cost of overproduction, if they had a contractual agreement that allowed them to return stock they won't expect to sell.
If there's enough of you guys, you'd think there'd be a server variable to toggle the rule on and off, and servers that advertise themselves as disabling this feature. Fuck, there's already tons of stupid ass mod servers, what's one more type?
On the subject of conspiracy theories, Diebold is the least interesting. More normal. Former elections staff being hired as consultants, luxurious conferences, other perks. Far more interesting is a certain senator who used to run election systems company ES&S. Their biggest claim to fame is being the only officially accepted vendor in Nebraska, where something like 90 percent of polling stations are from ES&S. After he stepped down as President and (I think) CEO, he ran for senator.
I guess the big bruhaha was that he failed to disclose that he still had a number of shares in the holding company that owns, among other things, ES&S. No evidence of tampering has ever been uncovered, but I don't recall anyone claiming to have ever looked for it either.
If I recall, this is the sort of lock type that was famous a few years back for being susecpetible to a bic pen. None of the keys I saw at the hundreds of such machines looked terribly distinct. I suppose its possible they're minutely different but somehow, I doubt it.
Talk about an easy way to predict a commercial. Not to mention an easy way to build a database of known commercials. I was worried the complexities of modern telvision advertisements would ward off most spam detection, but with something that accomplishable, this might start off another wave of advert detection in video;)
I must be confused, I'm pretty sure tons of PC games get released simultaneously with the Xbox (if not before). Really, about the only things I see on store shelves for PC of any merit are first person shooters and MMORPGs. Any "PC gaming ISNT dying" article would have to square with the miniscule shelf space given to PC games in stores.
Except companies almost never sell stock directly to the public. They might issue options to employees, or even stock to executives, but by and large companies don't finance their operations that way. They generally use bonds to cover their debts.
Call me nutters, but a one year lease isn't the same as a month-to-month agreement. Pretty much landlords should expect lower costs in dealing with you; if you move out halfway through, that risk is hedged in the lease. I don't know if your friend applied at the same time as you, but the time of month and time of year can also affect apartment incentives. Of course, maybe the landlord anticipated needing to kick him out for nonpayment or behaviors unacceptable to his neighbors and felt a month-to-month would get that done faster (depends on the time it takes to evict someone).
But security deposits in the size of first month's rent are perhaps the most common; it always seems to pay off to have a few months income laying around for stupid shit like security deposits, car and medical troubles, and losing your job. Stored in somewhere liquid, with a nice return, preferrably. I suppose though, someone with a huge credit card debt / bad credit is unlikely to have all that settled away =(
I understand your desire to avoid the credit card companies; they're fiends who's methods are honed to appeal most to our irrational aspects. But is the lack of a access to money should you need it a good thing? I mean, from a simple economic standpoint, as long as what you spend the money on outperforms the interest which accrues from the loan, the credit system appears beneficial. After you consider the ways in which the US government stacks the deck in favor of borrowers with tax credits for mortgages and such, it seems almost silly to neglect people wanting to offer you money.
On the one hand, I dislike MS and feel sorry for Nero and all. On the other hand, I can't see why MS should be barred from doing this, but Linux distros not barred from providing k3b by default.
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These things are "shortaged" at launch primarily because they're afraid of matching supply and demand principles. A shortage is what happens when demand outstrips supply but prices don't rise. The nature of manufacturing a new product is that you can't make a million of them instantly. You build say 100k a day. I guarentee you two weeks ago there were finished Wiis sitting there waiting for enough friends to make launch numbers. In a perfectly free world market, that first lonely Wii would have been sold immediately, to the highest bidder. But you can't set the price for all Wiis like that. You'd only sell 1! And there's regulations that prevent you from offering two people different prices for the same thing.
What you could do to keep demand in check is sell the first group for high dollars, and as those willing to pay 750 dollars for a Wii dissapear, lower the price, wait for those people to buy, and repeat until your price is as low as you're willing to go on it. This isn't done for a couple reasons. 1) Being the first to do this would drive your customers to competitors 2) Consumers would cry out how unfair the price was a week ago, and early adopters who didn't anticipate a sudden drop in value would vocally feel screwed. 3) Pricing on the high side risks NOT selling out.
That third risk is probably the most dangerous for a platform that needs support from 3rd parties. To sell as many games as possible, you want as many installed users as possible. Rather than risk choking demand for the platform and watching software sales plummet, they err on the side of caution, and leave nickels on the ground for retailers to pick up by managing their inventory. Ideally, you mass enough consoles to launch fairly to a region, so distribution and supply of games is simpler and your advertising campagn is a simple "buy on november 17th" or whatever, and then everyone who wants one goes out and gets one, because you produced exactly that number and no more. If fake shortage news like deliberately undersupplying preorders drives up total sales, then you do it for the health of the platform.
So basically, theres a shortage because they don't expect to make as big a profit on selling systems as they do selling games, so finding ways to sell as many as possible is their goal. Determining what is and isn't a shortage can be difficult, but ebay is usually a good indicator.
I guess some people have a fascination with serial input busses, but for the rest of us, Zelda on launch is like candy for breakfast.
You're right though: a lot of the other titles are widely ported mass market games. But many of them seem to be somewhat modified -- the Wii version of Madden allows you to use the motion sensor to control the gameplay. Ubisoft is making a racing game using the remote. They put out a plastic steering wheel and you put the remote in it, at which point it can detect you turning it one way or the other. Tom Clany's double agent is well anticipated, but many people I think would rather get it now on another platform than wait a month for the Wii version. There's also Trauma Center, a Wii exclusive and definately not a game that surrounds itself with the familiar; it's a surgery simulation game.
Actually, most of the changes revolved around removing the logo, since it's current owner is not releasing it under DFSG friendly policy. I guess Mozilla's corporate council woke up to what was happening and decided to tell em they can't cherry pick Firefox branding. Debian hasn't been using the firefox icon for a quite some time. Ultimately I think it hurts Firefox's brand a bit, and debian's user friendlyness as well. What Debian distributes is basically firefox. Their changes are typically either security backports to versions Mozilla doesn't support, the aforementioned logo patch, and I think they also take out the automatic check for updates, since they already provide a system wide tool for doing this (dkpg/apt-get), in a manner that doesn't rely on limited user accounts installing software. If I were Mozilla, these changes alone wouldn't be so bad, and I'd grant Debian an exception (and I believe I read that Mozilla's council was willing to do exactly that under some conditions), except for one problem:
Debian isn't satisfied with an exception. Perhaps rightfully so. Several people have taken the liberty to capitalize on Debian's Free nature and modified and distributed Debian. To willfully package and distribute firefox as an exception would be placing a landmine for these people to step on inadvertantly. Digging through each and every package to verify that it is indeed safe to modify and redistribute is a task so large as to discourage people from ever attempting it legally. And given that Debian's existance owes to the fact that someone else gave them software freely redistributable and modifiable, it would be hypocritical not to reciprocate. So Debian naturally demands that they be able to offer the same rights that have been extended to them.
This demand finds itself at odds with Mozilla's branding efforts. Mozilla worries about a number of possible modifications being negative and associated with firefox. Not in the "aids terrorists" way, but in the "adds spyware and makes people hate firefox" way. Even the community edition version is highly resistant to changes. But that doesn't mean Debian has to agree to help promote Firefox. Hence Debian's move to IceWeasel--a complete rebranding of firefox, one I hope who's aim is to minimize the changeset from firefox to only exactly what is required to allow free redistribution without landmines.
But as recent tests showed, they need better technology for their Ghosts guiding in the nukes.
Which is obviously why the standard compiler for the GBA (and probably DS) is GCC. Because they're deathly afraid of anything even related to "Open Source", as evidenced by 20 year old lawsuits. Who can imagine that anything's changed in such a short time frame?
Of course, these companies also have an obligation to continue paying their employees and creditors. They can't ignore ratings and be in business long--their advertisors would stop coming, and they'd quickly find themselves bankrupt. How many of these soon-to-be-enlightened people are willing to pay a monthly fee akin to HBO for a news channel? If five dollars a month is too much to expect people to pay for a news station absent advertising and other adultering influences, then I have to question how you arrive at the conclusion that the "end result would be incredibly positive and definitely a huge net gain." At the very least, its a statement that doesn't hold up on its own.
What you're essentially arguing for is a way to force people to pay for something they don't use. I hate to sound libertarian, but you're asking somebody to fund a venture which cant sustain itself for a lack of public interest. PBS fits that bill to a degree, but as has been shown repeatedly, its difficult to seperate state interests from state funded news media. If you're looking for unbiased views on news, CSPAN is as close to a no POV station as it gets -- there's rarely any commentary at all, its usually just floor proceedings. They perform a valuable function -- recording and archiving public government functions, but by and large it does not inform the public. Its available to nearly anyone with cable, but without any filter, nobody has the time to piece together enough information to form a reasonably constructed opinion. One thing I do wish would happen is for them to get a camera in the
This is what shows like the Daily Show are doing well, I think. Filtering isn't in itself a bad thing. Regional news is validly more important than international news such as India's new Prime Minister. That's fine. I just wish we didn't have eight personality shows in a row discussing the same five events from last week. It's fine to get into details, but too often cable news degenerates into repetition rather than refinement. The Daily Show does a fine job of covering recent events, and digging into the past to place (a sometimes depressing hypocritical) perspective on it. They do however, have a clear and visibile bias.
Actually, I know who Zell Miller is because I actually watched Hardball, and it was fairly humorous. I wonder how many clips from the Daily Show are courtesy the CNN, MSNBC and Fox, versus 'the eternal watching eye' style CSPAN cable feeds.
If anything should be highlighted from Cable news, its how very little topics are covered. There's something like 4 or 5 cable news networks, and they all play the same Natalie Holloway or whatever flavor of the month is, interviewing the same clueless sherrif or attorney they spoke with yesterday at the same time. Meanwhile, international news of merit, such as the coup in Thailand, gets barely any airtime. Partly, the US audience is to blame--which gets higher ratings: political instability, or missing white girl of the month?
Will Rogers, a famous comedian while he was alive, also ran a wire service that many newspapers picked up on, wrote a popular weekly column, and did a weekly 30 minute radio show, all primarily focused on current events, aka news. It may be that journalism proper killed their own format by adopting non-partisan attitudes and an incredibly serious tone. When reading the news is likened to eating your vegstables, its no wonder nobody watches the news. The Daily Show is like applesauce, easily digested and still fairly healthy.
Indeed. I can't wait to see how Unreal Tournament 2007 resolves the cliffhanger ending of 2004!
As a TA, I'm all for creative solutions. If you can write up code drastically different than the rubric had in mind that still meets criteria, full credit. However, in the field of Engineering, many of these solutions are better described as "wrong" than "new" or "insightful." Which does make my job somewhat easier, I do admit =).
People can buy Brand new desktop computers for as little as 300 dollars. Companies can afford more computing power for less than ever. The internet has the concentrated media networks scrambling for ways to cope with the flood of new distribution methods and authoring tools that slowly edge them out. Can we really sit here and criticize another industry for clinging to a system beneficial to themselves more than society as a whole, while carving out some sense of entitlment of our own?
It's not up to Ubuntu whether they get to ship the icon or not. It's Mozilla. They have a incredibly strict "quality" control system that until recently, looked the other way at Debian (and Ubuntu). I slightly understand what Mozilla wants, a mark of quality surrounding their browser, but its assinine to insist that unless you follow their controls your product does not meet their quality standard. Yes, nobody wants firefox associated with spam popups, but its not like Debian and other community distros aren't trying to make Firefox quality.
I wonder if its really nessecary for Open Source software to have branding. Shouldn't we just focus on writing quality software and let the world figure out on its own that its superiour (on the occassions that it is)? But if you really must force the firefox brand on a distro, perhaps you should start by authoring a GR to fix the inconsistancy with Debian's own brand. Because lord knows there haven't been enough GRs recently.
"De MySQL server ligt te slapen..."
You stand corrected, sir.
Is driving companies that aren't as efficient as their competitors out of business evil? And am I an evil person if I shop via price comparison? Because they both have the same effect.
"Gosh, dern, there, Mister Studio Boss, shucks, we're just a simple uber-ultra-mega-chain from Arkansas, don't know nothing 'bout birthin' no downloads. Shure, we brung ya to the dance, bought ya dinner, drinks, and flowers, but it's OK if ya want to leave with that there Miss Apple. We understand, she shore is purty!"
Of course, one could interpret them returning all that stock as an admission that itunes is a cheaper delivery system that they can't compete with. Or maybe an angry ex-girlfriend throwing all the crap you left at her place (physical DVDs) on your lawn. I'm not sure why walmart should be stuck with the cost of overproduction, if they had a contractual agreement that allowed them to return stock they won't expect to sell.
If there's enough of you guys, you'd think there'd be a server variable to toggle the rule on and off, and servers that advertise themselves as disabling this feature. Fuck, there's already tons of stupid ass mod servers, what's one more type?
On the subject of conspiracy theories, Diebold is the least interesting. More normal. Former elections staff being hired as consultants, luxurious conferences, other perks. Far more interesting is a certain senator who used to run election systems company ES&S. Their biggest claim to fame is being the only officially accepted vendor in Nebraska, where something like 90 percent of polling stations are from ES&S. After he stepped down as President and (I think) CEO, he ran for senator.
I guess the big bruhaha was that he failed to disclose that he still had a number of shares in the holding company that owns, among other things, ES&S. No evidence of tampering has ever been uncovered, but I don't recall anyone claiming to have ever looked for it either.
If I recall, this is the sort of lock type that was famous a few years back for being susecpetible to a bic pen. None of the keys I saw at the hundreds of such machines looked terribly distinct. I suppose its possible they're minutely different but somehow, I doubt it.
Talk about an easy way to predict a commercial. Not to mention an easy way to build a database of known commercials. I was worried the complexities of modern telvision advertisements would ward off most spam detection, but with something that accomplishable, this might start off another wave of advert detection in video ;)
I'd imagaine it's much easier to design a symmetrical die than it is to cook up something asymmetrical like a 3 core die.
I must be confused, I'm pretty sure tons of PC games get released simultaneously with the Xbox (if not before). Really, about the only things I see on store shelves for PC of any merit are first person shooters and MMORPGs. Any "PC gaming ISNT dying" article would have to square with the miniscule shelf space given to PC games in stores.
Except companies almost never sell stock directly to the public. They might issue options to employees, or even stock to executives, but by and large companies don't finance their operations that way. They generally use bonds to cover their debts.
Call me nutters, but a one year lease isn't the same as a month-to-month agreement. Pretty much landlords should expect lower costs in dealing with you; if you move out halfway through, that risk is hedged in the lease. I don't know if your friend applied at the same time as you, but the time of month and time of year can also affect apartment incentives. Of course, maybe the landlord anticipated needing to kick him out for nonpayment or behaviors unacceptable to his neighbors and felt a month-to-month would get that done faster (depends on the time it takes to evict someone).
But security deposits in the size of first month's rent are perhaps the most common; it always seems to pay off to have a few months income laying around for stupid shit like security deposits, car and medical troubles, and losing your job. Stored in somewhere liquid, with a nice return, preferrably. I suppose though, someone with a huge credit card debt / bad credit is unlikely to have all that settled away =(
I understand your desire to avoid the credit card companies; they're fiends who's methods are honed to appeal most to our irrational aspects. But is the lack of a access to money should you need it a good thing? I mean, from a simple economic standpoint, as long as what you spend the money on outperforms the interest which accrues from the loan, the credit system appears beneficial. After you consider the ways in which the US government stacks the deck in favor of borrowers with tax credits for mortgages and such, it seems almost silly to neglect people wanting to offer you money.
On the one hand, I dislike MS and feel sorry for Nero and all. On the other hand, I can't see why MS should be barred from doing this, but Linux distros not barred from providing k3b by default.