Ages ago in a sceince lesson we were asked to analyse the idea of pulling rollers on the M25 motorway to capture the energy of vehicles that ran over them, well I sort of spotted the flaw in the plan being that the car would all get sucky MPG and polute more.
1. Don't you mean KPG? Last I checked, the M25 was in Britain.:-P
2. The loophole in the problem is: Dampeners. Anywhere you install dampeners (e.g. bridges), you are already dissipating excess energy. Reconfiguring the dampening systems to rechannel the energy would be an effective way to "generate" power rather than losing it to heat and useless motive power.
This is similar in principle to the recovery systems present in many modern generators. The primary cycle may only capture ~40% of the available energy, but another 10-15% can still be recovered through alternative conversion methods.
Yet another example is regenerative braking. Rather than dissipating the excess energy as heat, a load is placed on the motors to recharge the battery.
Neither of these are *perfect* systems, but they do provide a method of putting otherwise wasted energy to good use.
If you don't like it you could try-- oh, I dunno --not buying it? No one is twisting your arm to purchase a $500 cell phone/iPod. If you want it enough to where the battery won't stop you from purchasing the product, then you deserve to deal with the repercussions of your decision.
If you haven't purchased an iPhone because of the battery, then you're making a choice as an informed consumer. If it's really a deal-breaker for you, take your business somewhere else. That is your right as a consumer. Remember caveat emptor, exercise your rights as a consumer, and DON'T support a completely baseless lawsuit filed by a nut who can't even ask the store clerk a question.
I swear, the only thing worse than all the hype about the iPhone is all the anti-hype it has created.:-/
<voice-impression> <Teal-C>Indeed. Though is it not overly verbose for regular communications, Mr. Mensch?</Teal-C> </voice-impression>
:-P
Re:Emotions are not mutually exclusive from work
on
Emoticons in the Workplace
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Here's what I just typed out: An... amusing take.:-)
Now let's see that again: An... amusing take.
And again: An... amusing take.:-/
Once more: An... amusing take.:-(
Interesting how it goes from light, to dry, to wry, to negative, isn't it?;-)
FWIW, I was thinking more along the lines of:
"One of the key issues to understand about Chernobyl is that the media greatly exaggerated the death rate. Make no mistake, there *were* thousands of people who contracted thyroid cancer, but the vast majority were treated and are still alive today. According to the international research body setup to study the effects of Chernobyl, the actual death toll was (thankfully) closer to only a few dozen individuals.:-)"
a cop-out that the lazy people use to avoid sharpening their writing
"Proper" writing often requires a great deal more of proof-reading and rewrites than most people are willing to put into a quick post to a forum or an email to a friend. Thus emoticons are less of a "cop out" and more of a useful shortcut in communicating.
a way to soften the tone of the communication by people who are too afraid of offending someone
Why should I want to offend someone who I'm trying to have a pleasant conversation with? Part of intelligent discourse is to address sensitive issues. If you don't keep your tone soft, you may run into a hard wall when emotional investments in the topic are brought to light.
Take Chernobyl as an example. Discussing the actual number of deaths is an emotionally charged issue. Simply stating that the actual death count was vastly exaggerated by the media and that only a few dozen people died will get you a response to the effect of "you heartless bastard!" before you can even get to the issue of the thousands of victims who had to be treated for thyroid cancer. "Softing" one's speech to the point of clinical analysis combined with with a "warm" understanding of other's feelings can help you get farther in a discussion of the issue than immediately offending them, unintentionally or otherwise.
While some don't see the point of such emotionally-charged discourse, I've found that there are often solid reasons at the heart of such emotion. These reasons can often help in shaping a clear, balanced opinion rather than immediately taking sides.
You ever play Space Spartans? How about K.C.'s Crazy Chase? Avenger on the Colecovision? Robot Tank? Utopia? Pickaxe Pete? Anything Vectrex?
If you answered "no" to any of those, then there's still plenty for you to learn/buy.
It's not like anything has changed.
Believe it or not, there are new homebrews coming out all the time. These homebrews benefit from 20 years of progress in video game theory, development, and general understanding of the hardware. As a result, some of them are simply incredible to behold. If they were sold on the system back when it was popular, they would have been "killer" titles for the market.
Here are a few places that sell some of the best titles on the market:
The whole point of email in the first place is quick, simple communication.
While I agree with your sentiment, I can't agree with your analysis. Email is often used for longer communications where styling is required. For example, I may need to send information about several database tables. Lining up the text/description or data works best with a rich-text table. Especially when there's not quite enough information to attach a Word or Excel document instead. Similarly, a picture is worth 1000 words. When I get a bug report, all the really important details are usually left out. But if they send me a screenshot I can usually tell exactly where they are, what they're doing, and exactly how to replicate it. Being able to match the text with the embedded screenshot is all that much more powerful. (Especially if there are a series of screenshots.)
So these things do have their uses. Besides, I'm just happy that executives stopped sending me one line messages as attached Word documents. That always *ahem* made my day.:-P
I once had one of my (less astute) bosses come to me and ask me about email styling. Specifically, he wanted to know if the guy was YELLING at him in the email. The problem? The email was written in 18pt, Dark Brown, Comic Sans font. Obviously the (fairly important) guy used it as his standard email style. Of course, the more amusing part was that this boss "joked" that I had too much time on my hands because I knew Comic Sans on sight...
Though I have to say that the only thing more annoying than seeing Comic Sans in an email is seeing one of those hideous background templates. No, I don't want to see your email decked out in roses. No, I don't want to read your email in blue text on black background. No, I don't want your 4pt font that matches your "professional" faded background. Black on white, 10-12pt font works fine, thankyouverymuch.
Smiling, at its most basic form, is a signal that something is not a danger, and acts as a tool for bonding.
I don't know about bonding, but I've found myself using emoticons on Slashdot more and more often. The problem I found was that too many people were reading an ultra-serious-- or even accusatory! --tone into posts that were intended to be light-hearted and friendly. Sprinkling the post with:-),:-P, or:-/ here and there can help get the correct tone across, even if it looks kind of lame.:-/
Of course, there will always be those who either miss the purpose of the emoticons or willfully ignore their purpose in communicating tone, but I have found that it clears up the majority of misunderstandings before they occur.
For those of you in the East or Midwest who can't make it to Vegas for the CGE, I highly recommend hitting the Midwest Gaming Classic Show each year. Over the years it has grown into a bit of a mini-CGE with all the same features of classic vendors, arcade games, a museum with some very interesting pieces, talks given by both industry giants and classic-gaming community leaders, and all kinds of interesting people to talk to about ancient hardware, games, and the business of days gone by.
Unfortunately, the MGC already passed by this year. However, the next show will be in March, so mark your calendars for March 29th and 30th, 2008 in Oconomowoc, WI!
The 360 and the PS3 are predicated on HDTV gaming. Which requires a ~10 fold increase in console processing power. That's a significant leap to make and have superior graphics to the previous generation of consoles.
Roddenberry wasn't stupid. He knew that the first season wasn't working. That's why they shook up the second season before finally falling into place with the third season. If you recall, the Borg were introduced in the second season. They were actually part of an overall story-arc (S1:The Neutral Zone & S2:Q-Who?) that was supposed to be completed as the season finale. The only problem was that production ran out of money, so we got the cliposode "Shades of Grey" instead.
All in all, it was probably a good thing that the Borg assault was delayed. While "Best of Both Worlds" caused a few minor continuity problems with "The Neutral Zone" season 1 finale, it greatly benefited from Michael Piller's temporary departure at the end of Season 3. Knowing that BoBW would be the last episode he would ever pen, Piller created an impossible situation for other writers to get out of. It was partially brought about by his frustration with Star Trek production at the time, but the effect was pronounced. BoBW is still remembered as one of the best cliffhangers of all time.
Of course, the story doesn't end there. During the summer months, Roddenberry managed to patch things up with Piller and brought him back on board. As a result, Piller was forced to find a solution to his own impossible plot! Whoops.:-P
Another thing to keep in mind was that The Next Generation was originally launched on a tight schedule, reusing a lot of the work that had gone into the previous Star Trek: Phase II plans. (Phase II was the unproduced Star Trek show that became the Motion Picture.) As a result, all the characters had personalities that were not their own. Troi sat in for Illia, Riker sat in for Decker, Data sat in for Xon (they killed him in the first few minutes of the movie due to Nimoy signing back on), Crusher sat in for Doctor Chapel and McCoy, and Picard was Captain Pike revived. Worf was thrown in to show the resolution of the Klingon issues, Tasha Yar was a strong female character (originally auditioned for by Sirtis while Crosby auditioned for Troi!), and Wesley was intended to be a reflection of Gene as a child.
It took a bit of time and effort for all the characters to finally fall into place. But such is the way of things when productions are pushed into being on a tight schedule. Gene departed this world during the fifth season of TNG. Which explains why TNG started to run out of momentum in Season 6.
It's interesting that you bring up Sega, since the Dreamcast is close to being a good example of what you suggest. It was cheaper and less powerful than the PS2, but it got killed by the PS2.
In all reality, Sega killed the Dreamcast, not Sony. Sega was in dire financial straights around the time that the Dreamcast was released. Despite being a very popular system and a strong competitor in the market, it failed because Sega turned the lights off. Sega was forced to restructure, so the low-margins of a console were the first thing to go. Instead, they realigned around Nintendo's GameCube and have been making pretty decent money as a software house ever since.
The prevailing rumor that you hear about the Dreamcast is that it was killed by piracy. While it's true that it was incredibly easy to pirate Dreamcast games (once the CDROM boot codes were discovered, anyway), piracy had no material impact on the console during its lifetime. Piracy more or less killed the post-death market, but that was to be somewhat expected due to the perceived disruption caused by the EOL on the console.
It's hard to predict how your imaginary console would fare, without the imaginary games to go with it. My prediction is that such a system would generate little interest from the 3rd party developers
The Dreamcast had exceptionally good 3rd party support, though. That's why I used Sega as an example. My point was that another competitor would have softened the impact of the Wii Remote on the market. Instead, Nintendo was able to separate themselves from the pack by a full $150 difference. Combined with their blue ocean strategy, Nintendo was able to take the trophy straight out of the gate.
Remember, Sony added motion sensing to the PS3 shortly after it was realized that the Wii's Controller was a key selling point. This feature has yet to have a material impact on either Sony's or Nintendo's market.
Now if Nintendo had failed to deliver a compelling product (e.g. a Gamecube 2.0), then the XBox would have taken the trophy. But the trends of the market generally assume that all the competitors are balls-to-the-wall competing for your dollar. Soft competitors who don't have what it takes simply don't make it to the market. (e.g. Phantom, Indrema, Panasonic M2)
Depends. If you think that Darmok and/or Inner Light were great Star Trek episodes, then yes. Berman is to be held responsible (Especially for such atrocities as, "I can remember being in the womb. Really!") If you think that Picard was a wuss and wasn't fit to command, then you're just an elitist Original Series snob.:-P
Highly illogical. Star Trek has been headed by Rick Berman since the latter years of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In that time, Berman did everything possible to destroy the show. Logic dictates that a producer will actual talent could not perform worse than Berman.
Of further note, well-known scifi producer J. Michael Straczynski pitched a similar "reboot" of the Star Trek mythos, suggesting that a good portion of talented scifi producers are of the same line of thought: Berman has done irreparable damage to the franchise already.
Bones: "I don't see any pointy ears on your head boy, but you sound like a Vulcan!"
Yet, the trends didn't necessarily point out just who would replace Sony (if anyone).
The trends clearly showed that the PS3 and XBox 360 were too technologically advanced to be the winners of this generation. That left Nintendo and a possible newcomer. Since no newcomer arrived, Nintendo got to take the crown.
It's an interesting thought experiment to think what might have happened if, say, Sega introduced a new console with a competitive price but more traditional controls. Would the Wii still be selling like hotcakes, or would it be playing a more modest role in the market?
The stiffest competition in history was between the Genesis and SNES. The two were similar enough technologically that their respective superiorities didn't much matter. They were both affordable consoles with strong game libraries. I have a sneaky suspicion that if such a competitor were available, Nintendo's magic Wii Remote would not have been as successful of a draw as it ended up being.
The thing is, even AFTER E3 '06, analysts and industry leaders were still backing PS3 as #1 and Xbox as #2. The problem is, everyone in the industry was gauging the success of the new consoles on past history and no one gave even passing acknowledgement to the excitement in the Ninty fanbase.
This guy pegged it. (See the section titled "Generation 6") Amazingly enough, he did it by following the trends of the past. The exact thing that the press didn't do. The press foolishly followed the "Playstation will always dominate" line of thinking, which is not much of an economic prediction.
EA had the second-largest market share on Wii as of March with 19 percent, thanks mainly to Tiger Woods PGA Tour.
How odd. I would have thought that Madden was the EA leading title. While the graphics aren't as nice as the 360 and PS3 versions, players often report how cool it is to play the game with actual football movements rather than overly complex controller commands. I know a lot of non-sports gamers actually picked up the game just for the innovative controls. (I have to admit that I was also tempted. But I'm too much of a miserly scrooge to spend the money.:P)
Then again, one of the things I really wanted when I got a Wii was a true Mario Golf type of game. Perhaps the serious golfers all played the Wii Sports version and fell in love with the idea? A relative of mine told his wife on no uncertain terms that they were getting a Wii, after he played a few holes on the Wii Sports Golf course. So I suppose it's possible that the Golfers like the idea even more than the football fans. (That's a shocking thought.)
And how many people would pay $50 for PacMan if it came out today?
No one. That's the point. The economies that make game production more efficient allow them to continue to produce the same output for a lower cost per product unit, more output at around the same cost per product unit, or excessive amounts of output at a higher cost per product unit. The sweetspot is generally producing more output at around the same cost per product unit.
the problem is, how many gamers do you know that will settle for Pac-man graphics?
Surprisingly, there are enough people purchasing Pacman collections and whatnot to suggest that people would still be willing to pay fair-market price for such a game. Cell-phone versions of the game, Virtual Console downloads, and XBox 360 versions still fetch a fair price despite the ease with which the game can be recreated.
Contrast that with how many debates you've heard about how much Half-Life 2's shadows suck compared to Doom 3, or how dated the graphics are on a 6 month old game.
Such arguments have always happened and always will happen. (Yet F-Zero X still sold well when it was released, despite simplistic graphics!) That's not the point. The point is to find a price that the market will bear for a product and exploit that. Right now, anything from Pacman to Twilight Princess is fair game. It remains to be proven if consumers will be happy to pay premium prices for premium content like Gears of War or Resistance: Fall of Man. GoW has been doing very well, but it's just one game on a relatively game-starved console.
It's amazing that game prices haven't doubled (in nominal terms).
No, it isn't. Because while the number of persons required to make a game have gone up, the advent of large studios has allowed them to make more efficient use of their time, the cost per person has either remained stable or gone down, and the number of units of product sold has skyrocketed. These factors conspire to provide increasing profits for a relatively fixed cost per product unit.
Is there any actual validity to your comment or is it just blatant trolling?
I do believe that the grandparent was invoking an old tradition that has been lost through time, known as a "joke". The purpose of this "joke" is to exaggerate a grain of truth to epic proportions, then deliver the information at an inopportune time. Apparently, this leads to a condition known as "laughter" resulting in the receiving subject breaking into fits of choking noises.
The study of this "joke" is known as "humor". "Humor" should be avoided at all costs, least you also develop this "laughter" condition. You have been warned!
Slashdot Mirror
1. Don't you mean KPG? Last I checked, the M25 was in Britain.
2. The loophole in the problem is: Dampeners. Anywhere you install dampeners (e.g. bridges), you are already dissipating excess energy. Reconfiguring the dampening systems to rechannel the energy would be an effective way to "generate" power rather than losing it to heat and useless motive power.
This is similar in principle to the recovery systems present in many modern generators. The primary cycle may only capture ~40% of the available energy, but another 10-15% can still be recovered through alternative conversion methods.
Yet another example is regenerative braking. Rather than dissipating the excess energy as heat, a load is placed on the motors to recharge the battery.
Neither of these are *perfect* systems, but they do provide a method of putting otherwise wasted energy to good use.
If you don't like it you could try-- oh, I dunno --not buying it? No one is twisting your arm to purchase a $500 cell phone/iPod. If you want it enough to where the battery won't stop you from purchasing the product, then you deserve to deal with the repercussions of your decision.
:-/
If you haven't purchased an iPhone because of the battery, then you're making a choice as an informed consumer. If it's really a deal-breaker for you, take your business somewhere else. That is your right as a consumer. Remember caveat emptor, exercise your rights as a consumer, and DON'T support a completely baseless lawsuit filed by a nut who can't even ask the store clerk a question.
I swear, the only thing worse than all the hype about the iPhone is all the anti-hype it has created.
Nintendo Wii, FTW! Nintendo Wii pre-release games, FTW! Nintendo DS, FT--
--wait. What was your point again?
ei
<voice-impression>
<Teal-C>Indeed. Though is it not overly verbose for regular communications, Mr. Mensch?</Teal-C>
</voice-impression>
Here's what I just typed out: :-)
:-/
:-(
;-)
:-)"
An... amusing take.
Now let's see that again:
An... amusing take.
And again:
An... amusing take.
Once more:
An... amusing take.
Interesting how it goes from light, to dry, to wry, to negative, isn't it?
FWIW, I was thinking more along the lines of:
"One of the key issues to understand about Chernobyl is that the media greatly exaggerated the death rate. Make no mistake, there *were* thousands of people who contracted thyroid cancer, but the vast majority were treated and are still alive today. According to the international research body setup to study the effects of Chernobyl, the actual death toll was (thankfully) closer to only a few dozen individuals.
"Proper" writing often requires a great deal more of proof-reading and rewrites than most people are willing to put into a quick post to a forum or an email to a friend. Thus emoticons are less of a "cop out" and more of a useful shortcut in communicating.
Why should I want to offend someone who I'm trying to have a pleasant conversation with? Part of intelligent discourse is to address sensitive issues. If you don't keep your tone soft, you may run into a hard wall when emotional investments in the topic are brought to light.
Take Chernobyl as an example. Discussing the actual number of deaths is an emotionally charged issue. Simply stating that the actual death count was vastly exaggerated by the media and that only a few dozen people died will get you a response to the effect of "you heartless bastard!" before you can even get to the issue of the thousands of victims who had to be treated for thyroid cancer. "Softing" one's speech to the point of clinical analysis combined with with a "warm" understanding of other's feelings can help you get farther in a discussion of the issue than immediately offending them, unintentionally or otherwise.
While some don't see the point of such emotionally-charged discourse, I've found that there are often solid reasons at the heart of such emotion. These reasons can often help in shaping a clear, balanced opinion rather than immediately taking sides.
If you answered "no" to any of those, then there's still plenty for you to learn/buy.
Believe it or not, there are new homebrews coming out all the time. These homebrews benefit from 20 years of progress in video game theory, development, and general understanding of the hardware. As a result, some of them are simply incredible to behold. If they were sold on the system back when it was popular, they would have been "killer" titles for the market.
Here are a few places that sell some of the best titles on the market:
* AtariAge - 2600, 5200, 7800 & Coleco
* Pack Rat Video Games - Odyssey^2
* Classic Game Creations - Vectrex, Colecovision, & O^2
Check 'em out. I guarantee that you'll be impressed.
While I agree with your sentiment, I can't agree with your analysis. Email is often used for longer communications where styling is required. For example, I may need to send information about several database tables. Lining up the text/description or data works best with a rich-text table. Especially when there's not quite enough information to attach a Word or Excel document instead. Similarly, a picture is worth 1000 words. When I get a bug report, all the really important details are usually left out. But if they send me a screenshot I can usually tell exactly where they are, what they're doing, and exactly how to replicate it. Being able to match the text with the embedded screenshot is all that much more powerful. (Especially if there are a series of screenshots.)
So these things do have their uses. Besides, I'm just happy that executives stopped sending me one line messages as attached Word documents. That always *ahem* made my day.
I once had one of my (less astute) bosses come to me and ask me about email styling. Specifically, he wanted to know if the guy was YELLING at him in the email. The problem? The email was written in 18pt, Dark Brown, Comic Sans font. Obviously the (fairly important) guy used it as his standard email style. Of course, the more amusing part was that this boss "joked" that I had too much time on my hands because I knew Comic Sans on sight...
Though I have to say that the only thing more annoying than seeing Comic Sans in an email is seeing one of those hideous background templates. No, I don't want to see your email decked out in roses. No, I don't want to read your email in blue text on black background. No, I don't want your 4pt font that matches your "professional" faded background. Black on white, 10-12pt font works fine, thankyouverymuch.
I don't know about bonding, but I've found myself using emoticons on Slashdot more and more often. The problem I found was that too many people were reading an ultra-serious-- or even accusatory! --tone into posts that were intended to be light-hearted and friendly. Sprinkling the post with
Of course, there will always be those who either miss the purpose of the emoticons or willfully ignore their purpose in communicating tone, but I have found that it clears up the majority of misunderstandings before they occur.
For those of you in the East or Midwest who can't make it to Vegas for the CGE, I highly recommend hitting the Midwest Gaming Classic Show each year. Over the years it has grown into a bit of a mini-CGE with all the same features of classic vendors, arcade games, a museum with some very interesting pieces, talks given by both industry giants and classic-gaming community leaders, and all kinds of interesting people to talk to about ancient hardware, games, and the business of days gone by.
Unfortunately, the MGC already passed by this year. However, the next show will be in March, so mark your calendars for March 29th and 30th, 2008 in Oconomowoc, WI!
The 360 and the PS3 are predicated on HDTV gaming. Which requires a ~10 fold increase in console processing power. That's a significant leap to make and have superior graphics to the previous generation of consoles.
Roddenberry wasn't stupid. He knew that the first season wasn't working. That's why they shook up the second season before finally falling into place with the third season. If you recall, the Borg were introduced in the second season. They were actually part of an overall story-arc (S1:The Neutral Zone & S2:Q-Who?) that was supposed to be completed as the season finale. The only problem was that production ran out of money, so we got the cliposode "Shades of Grey" instead.
:-P
All in all, it was probably a good thing that the Borg assault was delayed. While "Best of Both Worlds" caused a few minor continuity problems with "The Neutral Zone" season 1 finale, it greatly benefited from Michael Piller's temporary departure at the end of Season 3. Knowing that BoBW would be the last episode he would ever pen, Piller created an impossible situation for other writers to get out of. It was partially brought about by his frustration with Star Trek production at the time, but the effect was pronounced. BoBW is still remembered as one of the best cliffhangers of all time.
Of course, the story doesn't end there. During the summer months, Roddenberry managed to patch things up with Piller and brought him back on board. As a result, Piller was forced to find a solution to his own impossible plot! Whoops.
Another thing to keep in mind was that The Next Generation was originally launched on a tight schedule, reusing a lot of the work that had gone into the previous Star Trek: Phase II plans. (Phase II was the unproduced Star Trek show that became the Motion Picture.) As a result, all the characters had personalities that were not their own. Troi sat in for Illia, Riker sat in for Decker, Data sat in for Xon (they killed him in the first few minutes of the movie due to Nimoy signing back on), Crusher sat in for Doctor Chapel and McCoy, and Picard was Captain Pike revived. Worf was thrown in to show the resolution of the Klingon issues, Tasha Yar was a strong female character (originally auditioned for by Sirtis while Crosby auditioned for Troi!), and Wesley was intended to be a reflection of Gene as a child.
It took a bit of time and effort for all the characters to finally fall into place. But such is the way of things when productions are pushed into being on a tight schedule. Gene departed this world during the fifth season of TNG. Which explains why TNG started to run out of momentum in Season 6.
In all reality, Sega killed the Dreamcast, not Sony. Sega was in dire financial straights around the time that the Dreamcast was released. Despite being a very popular system and a strong competitor in the market, it failed because Sega turned the lights off. Sega was forced to restructure, so the low-margins of a console were the first thing to go. Instead, they realigned around Nintendo's GameCube and have been making pretty decent money as a software house ever since.
The prevailing rumor that you hear about the Dreamcast is that it was killed by piracy. While it's true that it was incredibly easy to pirate Dreamcast games (once the CDROM boot codes were discovered, anyway), piracy had no material impact on the console during its lifetime. Piracy more or less killed the post-death market, but that was to be somewhat expected due to the perceived disruption caused by the EOL on the console.
The Dreamcast had exceptionally good 3rd party support, though. That's why I used Sega as an example. My point was that another competitor would have softened the impact of the Wii Remote on the market. Instead, Nintendo was able to separate themselves from the pack by a full $150 difference. Combined with their blue ocean strategy, Nintendo was able to take the trophy straight out of the gate.
Remember, Sony added motion sensing to the PS3 shortly after it was realized that the Wii's Controller was a key selling point. This feature has yet to have a material impact on either Sony's or Nintendo's market.
Now if Nintendo had failed to deliver a compelling product (e.g. a Gamecube 2.0), then the XBox would have taken the trophy. But the trends of the market generally assume that all the competitors are balls-to-the-wall competing for your dollar. Soft competitors who don't have what it takes simply don't make it to the market. (e.g. Phantom, Indrema, Panasonic M2)
I know. They fired his ass. Isn't it great? :D
Depends. If you think that Darmok and/or Inner Light were great Star Trek episodes, then yes. Berman is to be held responsible (Especially for such atrocities as, "I can remember being in the womb. Really!") If you think that Picard was a wuss and wasn't fit to command, then you're just an elitist Original Series snob. :-P
Highly illogical. Star Trek has been headed by Rick Berman since the latter years of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In that time, Berman did everything possible to destroy the show. Logic dictates that a producer will actual talent could not perform worse than Berman.
Of further note, well-known scifi producer J. Michael Straczynski pitched a similar "reboot" of the Star Trek mythos, suggesting that a good portion of talented scifi producers are of the same line of thought: Berman has done irreparable damage to the franchise already.
Bones: "I don't see any pointy ears on your head boy, but you sound like a Vulcan!"
The trends clearly showed that the PS3 and XBox 360 were too technologically advanced to be the winners of this generation. That left Nintendo and a possible newcomer. Since no newcomer arrived, Nintendo got to take the crown.
It's an interesting thought experiment to think what might have happened if, say, Sega introduced a new console with a competitive price but more traditional controls. Would the Wii still be selling like hotcakes, or would it be playing a more modest role in the market?
The stiffest competition in history was between the Genesis and SNES. The two were similar enough technologically that their respective superiorities didn't much matter. They were both affordable consoles with strong game libraries. I have a sneaky suspicion that if such a competitor were available, Nintendo's magic Wii Remote would not have been as successful of a draw as it ended up being.
This guy pegged it. (See the section titled "Generation 6") Amazingly enough, he did it by following the trends of the past. The exact thing that the press didn't do. The press foolishly followed the "Playstation will always dominate" line of thinking, which is not much of an economic prediction.
How odd. I would have thought that Madden was the EA leading title. While the graphics aren't as nice as the 360 and PS3 versions, players often report how cool it is to play the game with actual football movements rather than overly complex controller commands. I know a lot of non-sports gamers actually picked up the game just for the innovative controls. (I have to admit that I was also tempted. But I'm too much of a miserly scrooge to spend the money.
Then again, one of the things I really wanted when I got a Wii was a true Mario Golf type of game. Perhaps the serious golfers all played the Wii Sports version and fell in love with the idea? A relative of mine told his wife on no uncertain terms that they were getting a Wii, after he played a few holes on the Wii Sports Golf course. So I suppose it's possible that the Golfers like the idea even more than the football fans. (That's a shocking thought.)
It was large enough to knock over a nearby test stand and blow out the windshields of nearby cars. See the CNN video:
i ndex.html#cnnSTCVideo
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/26/spaceport.blast/
It was obviously a very powerful explosion, even if the fuel didn't detonate.
That's the general idea. 4-8 GB is more than enough for music and pictures. You might have to swap out movies, though. (~400MB/hr)
An 8GB iPod Nano costs about $250. The iPhone falls somewhere between the space of a Nano and the functionality of a Video iPod.
No one. That's the point. The economies that make game production more efficient allow them to continue to produce the same output for a lower cost per product unit, more output at around the same cost per product unit, or excessive amounts of output at a higher cost per product unit. The sweetspot is generally producing more output at around the same cost per product unit.
Surprisingly, there are enough people purchasing Pacman collections and whatnot to suggest that people would still be willing to pay fair-market price for such a game. Cell-phone versions of the game, Virtual Console downloads, and XBox 360 versions still fetch a fair price despite the ease with which the game can be recreated.
Such arguments have always happened and always will happen. (Yet F-Zero X still sold well when it was released, despite simplistic graphics!) That's not the point. The point is to find a price that the market will bear for a product and exploit that. Right now, anything from Pacman to Twilight Princess is fair game. It remains to be proven if consumers will be happy to pay premium prices for premium content like Gears of War or Resistance: Fall of Man. GoW has been doing very well, but it's just one game on a relatively game-starved console.
No, it isn't. Because while the number of persons required to make a game have gone up, the advent of large studios has allowed them to make more efficient use of their time, the cost per person has either remained stable or gone down, and the number of units of product sold has skyrocketed. These factors conspire to provide increasing profits for a relatively fixed cost per product unit.
I do believe that the grandparent was invoking an old tradition that has been lost through time, known as a "joke". The purpose of this "joke" is to exaggerate a grain of truth to epic proportions, then deliver the information at an inopportune time. Apparently, this leads to a condition known as "laughter" resulting in the receiving subject breaking into fits of choking noises.
The study of this "joke" is known as "humor". "Humor" should be avoided at all costs, least you also develop this "laughter" condition. You have been warned!