This is more like "artificial scarcity." Sony might be acting foolishly, but certainly not fraudulently, unless they are secretly paying people to go buy the units in order to ensure they sell out.
It's not artificial at all, it is about the rate that Cell chips can be supplied and Blurays built. Also consider that unlike Microsoft, Sony does not intend to throw billions down the drain on their console business, and therefore has not written a lot of blank checks to scale up the early production. The early production costs the most and is most prone to defective returns. Better to build fewer units at first and spend more money on quality control.
What Sony needed to do is end the questions about whether the PS3 actually works like it is supposed to, and whether the launch titles are actually ready. Meanwhile at last count the PS2 was still outselling XBox 360. Now that the PS3 is out and launch titles (Fall of Man) are being reviewed, time is on Sony's side.
Never met an LCD I didn't hate. After looking hard and long I just set up my brand new Sony 34XS955 CRT which took nearly a month to get from NY:NY to BC Canada. An epic battle with at least 3 shipping companies involved and a screw up every few days. About $2000 can total. It's just wonderful and no motion crap that all the LCDs do. Plays games... well 34" of widesreen at 720p is a pretty cool Doom3 and Quake4 experience;). Yup it'll do 1080i but the 720p seems to work well for games.
Agreed, a CRT is still the fastest response you can get, however LCDs have improved a whole lot recently and the price has fallen like a rock. The model I linked has 8 ms response, 10 bits/pixel and does 1080p. That is enough for me to say goodbye to the bulk and weight of a CRT forever.
Please locate your disposable income on the bell curve for all Americans. As the other poster noted, you are an outlier.
Not really, unless you want to call everybody who plans to purchase a HD TV this year an outlier. That would be how many million outliers?
By the time the early adopter market gets even close to mined out, Sony will have ramped production and started the price cuts, just like every other console cycle.
Most analysts (people who know what they're actually talking about, supposedly) aren't confident the PS3 will sell to anyone but the hardcore market.
Pray tell me, which analysts are these and how do you known they actually know what they are talking about? Reports from Japan indicate it is already selling to a mixed demographic. I am confident in my own prediction: Sony will sell every PS3 it can build for the next long time. Look at this site, there are lots more like it. Each new shipment is going to sell out in minutes before it even hits the shelves.
EVERY console made by a Japanese company sells out at launch in Japan. The fucking VisualBoy sold out in Japan.
Not bitter at all are we? Notice to Microsoft astroturfers on Slashdot: the 360 had its run, in its year head start it failed to make the numbers it needed to displace Sony. Now the 360 is the also ran, technology wise. Please, no more whining about it.
Based on the euphoric reaction to PS3's flagship launch title Resistance: Fall of Man Sony has nailed this, the PS3 is a guaranteed long term hit. In spite of all the FUD (I wonder who sponsored that) the machine performs to spec and production qualities are top notch. Oh yes, I'm a PS3 fan. After all it is a Linux machine, not to mention a superb piece of engineering.
I personally won't bat an eye about dropping $600 on this box. After all, I'm picking up a $2,500 flat screen tv to go with it. Sony is obviously going to be selling every box it can make for a long time. Now the race to dominate the high end console market comes down to one thing: Sony's manufacturing ramp-up.
What, charging the price that the market will bear? If you don't like it, do what I did and install Linux
On the one hand, it is good that Microsoft is jacking up the price so much that the retail market for lower priced PC's running Linux is sure to increase. On the other, Microsoft is busy erecting barriers to entry for Linux as fast as it can, legal or otherwise. The more barriers, the more Microsoft can charge before hitting the point where defection to Linux outbalances the higher margin from jacking up the price. It is very hard to see how more barriers benefit anybody besides Microsoft.
So is vote rigging. That does not mean that everybody has to accept abuse of either the patent system or the electoral system.
This latest attempt to extend market control using patent based innuendo to partition the Linux market is abuse by a monopolist, pure and simple. You can roll over and play dead if you wish to, but some of us have no intention of doing so.
"A lot more" out of a SLR, I think it depends. The bigger sensor (and correspondingly bigger, heavier, more expensive lenses) are the only really inherent advantage SLRs have over compacts in image quality. When does that matter? When light is scarce - which is fairly common, whether due to dim light, long focal length, fast action, or lack of a tripod. In good light, though, I don't think SLRs have much advantage in image quality.
But you only mentioned one of the advantages of DSLR. Another is sheer speed. The day I got my 20D I took my little girl to a children's museum with two other families, both sporting the very latest point and shoot gear. Guess who came away with hundreds of great baby pictures, versus who was constantly frustrated by dozens of pictures of baby's backs?
I also need to mention that the solid click-whack of the mirror doing its thing is just plain satisfying.
Out of the most popular Free licenses, GPL probably is the most restrictive - many others don't have the restriction you mention.
The GPL really only has one restriction worthy of the name: that software placed under the GPL must remain free, in accordance with the wishes of the programmer who first placed the software under the GPL. It is precisely this alignment with programmer's wishes that makes GPL so popular.
MS will sue all the other distros than Novell's for patent infringement, driving everyone to SuSE.
In their dreams. A mass exodus from Suse starting now is the far more likely result. Too bad about Suse, to get bought by the proverbial nest of pointy hair bosses. Too bad about Novell, they nearly got it but now have signed their own death warrant.
The only defense is RedHat and IBM... The other defense is anarchy.
And on the third hand? Be careful to avoid the logical fallacy of bifurcation.
As for psychopaths - yes, they may be superficially charming, but they are not generally good planners; in fact they are notorious for being impulsive and reckless, unable to think ahead.
Can't think ahead huh? I guess you don't know a lot about Ted Bundy.
More often than not, these constituent parts are Open Source software systems and typically not designed to be used as components. These parts are then made to interoperate through wrappers and glue code. We think this trend is a harbinger of things to come. What do you think?
It is a harbinger all right. It is a harbinger of loads of work to come, straightening out that rotten stinking spaghetti. Hint: all you need to do to establish your reputation as a top open source coder is to dig into one of those piles of poo and fix it. Oh, and don't bother asking anyone for permission, just do it. That is the way it works.
Why not start with anything a Ximian coder has touched, since all that code needs to be forked anyway now that Ximian has jumped into bed with the enemy. Suggestion: throw away the bonobo and orbit interfaces, they are just bloatware. Reroll using dbus. Throw away Gnome VFS. Reroll using our real VFS. Lather, rinse, repeat.
fuck Miguel and friends. They only care for pushing their own agenda
True. I have known Miguel for some years. I can now sum Miguel up with a single word: Judas. Thanks to Miguel, both Novell and Suse are now the walking dead. I sincerely regret both, but of course I regret the demise of Suse more. However, this will not be a mortal blow to Linux, quite the contrary. There is only one way for Novell to escape the consequences of their actions: repudiate the patent pact. Otherwise, Novell is the new SCO, with all that that implies.
By the time you have a x.0 release, people have already tried it out and decided whether they like the product or whether it's crap.
It is a moot point because I using Firefox 2.0 and it is not crap. But really, if you expect the.0 release of any product, open source or otherwise, to be stable then you are an idiot.
Open source products, in general, have terrible or non-existent QA and that needs to change before it's more than a hobby and server OS.
It is already more than a hobby and server OS, so you must be wrong about that terrible or non-existent QA. Oh right, there are thousands of volunteers doing QA. The thing is, in open source serious QA normally starts with.0 releases.
Nobody wore a cow suit. However my first day on the job did happen to be a Halloween party. I do not recall any cow suits at that time either, but there were a number of mythical animals present.
Slashdot Mirror
That's one huge cooling fan!
.8 watt idle, 2 watts active. That is nothing compared to the cell chip and gpu.
A larger fan rotates slower and is therefore more quiet. Engadget says After plenty of gameplay the console is cool -- or at worst warm -- to the touch on every surface. In a side by side test with the Xbox 360, the console is comparably virtually silent, and the Blu-ray drive is significantly quieter than the 360's DVD drive.
Why did they use a Seagate drive, when Seagate is known for sucking more power than just about anybody else?
Really? This Seagate 60GB drive eats
The ATI RSX has its video memory on the module, but not in-core.
Just as Sony said months ago, the framebuffer memory will be moved on-die in a later rev.
According to posts on various Japanese sites... the unit gets hot. Very hot.
That hearsay does not jibe with engadget's rather credible sounding report above.
This is more like "artificial scarcity." Sony might be acting foolishly, but certainly not fraudulently, unless they are secretly paying people to go buy the units in order to ensure they sell out.
It's not artificial at all, it is about the rate that Cell chips can be supplied and Blurays built. Also consider that unlike Microsoft, Sony does not intend to throw billions down the drain on their console business, and therefore has not written a lot of blank checks to scale up the early production. The early production costs the most and is most prone to defective returns. Better to build fewer units at first and spend more money on quality control.
What Sony needed to do is end the questions about whether the PS3 actually works like it is supposed to, and whether the launch titles are actually ready. Meanwhile at last count the PS2 was still outselling XBox 360. Now that the PS3 is out and launch titles (Fall of Man) are being reviewed, time is on Sony's side.
Never met an LCD I didn't hate. After looking hard and long I just set up my brand new Sony 34XS955 CRT which took nearly a month to get from NY:NY to BC Canada. An epic battle with at least 3 shipping companies involved and a screw up every few days. About $2000 can total. It's just wonderful and no motion crap that all the LCDs do. Plays games ... well 34" of widesreen at 720p is a pretty cool Doom3 and Quake4 experience ;). Yup it'll do 1080i but the 720p seems to work well for games.
Agreed, a CRT is still the fastest response you can get, however LCDs have improved a whole lot recently and the price has fallen like a rock. The model I linked has 8 ms response, 10 bits/pixel and does 1080p. That is enough for me to say goodbye to the bulk and weight of a CRT forever.
Please locate your disposable income on the bell curve for all Americans. As the other poster noted, you are an outlier.
Not really, unless you want to call everybody who plans to purchase a HD TV this year an outlier. That would be how many million outliers?
By the time the early adopter market gets even close to mined out, Sony will have ramped production and started the price cuts, just like every other console cycle.
Most analysts (people who know what they're actually talking about, supposedly) aren't confident the PS3 will sell to anyone but the hardcore market.
Pray tell me, which analysts are these and how do you known they actually know what they are talking about? Reports from Japan indicate it is already selling to a mixed demographic. I am confident in my own prediction: Sony will sell every PS3 it can build for the next long time. Look at this site, there are lots more like it. Each new shipment is going to sell out in minutes before it even hits the shelves.
I agree 100% with the parent post. The PS3 would have sold out 80k units in Japan even if the PS3 was priced at $1000 at launch.
Oh, that is obvious. But explain to me why the GP was swearing?
EVERY console made by a Japanese company sells out at launch in Japan. The fucking VisualBoy sold out in Japan.
Not bitter at all are we? Notice to Microsoft astroturfers on Slashdot: the 360 had its run, in its year head start it failed to make the numbers it needed to displace Sony. Now the 360 is the also ran, technology wise. Please, no more whining about it.
Based on the euphoric reaction to PS3's flagship launch title Resistance: Fall of Man Sony has nailed this, the PS3 is a guaranteed long term hit. In spite of all the FUD (I wonder who sponsored that) the machine performs to spec and production qualities are top notch. Oh yes, I'm a PS3 fan. After all it is a Linux machine, not to mention a superb piece of engineering.
I personally won't bat an eye about dropping $600 on this box. After all, I'm picking up a $2,500 flat screen tv to go with it. Sony is obviously going to be selling every box it can make for a long time. Now the race to dominate the high end console market comes down to one thing: Sony's manufacturing ramp-up.
What, charging the price that the market will bear? If you don't like it, do what I did and install Linux
On the one hand, it is good that Microsoft is jacking up the price so much that the retail market for lower priced PC's running Linux is sure to increase. On the other, Microsoft is busy erecting barriers to entry for Linux as fast as it can, legal or otherwise. The more barriers, the more Microsoft can charge before hitting the point where defection to Linux outbalances the higher margin from jacking up the price. It is very hard to see how more barriers benefit anybody besides Microsoft.
Software patents are reality.
So is vote rigging. That does not mean that everybody has to accept abuse of either the patent system or the electoral system.
This latest attempt to extend market control using patent based innuendo to partition the Linux market is abuse by a monopolist, pure and simple. You can roll over and play dead if you wish to, but some of us have no intention of doing so.
"A lot more" out of a SLR, I think it depends. The bigger sensor (and correspondingly bigger, heavier, more expensive lenses) are the only really inherent advantage SLRs have over compacts in image quality. When does that matter? When light is scarce - which is fairly common, whether due to dim light, long focal length, fast action, or lack of a tripod. In good light, though, I don't think SLRs have much advantage in image quality.
But you only mentioned one of the advantages of DSLR. Another is sheer speed. The day I got my 20D I took my little girl to a children's museum with two other families, both sporting the very latest point and shoot gear. Guess who came away with hundreds of great baby pictures, versus who was constantly frustrated by dozens of pictures of baby's backs?
I also need to mention that the solid click-whack of the mirror doing its thing is just plain satisfying.
nice to see so many people jumping to conclusions
I counted the use of the word "patent" 16 times in Microsoft's press release. Draw your own conclusion.
This won't be embedded in a lot of things because of that.
;-)
Just like Linux isn't embedded in a lot of things?
Keep in mind that proprietary Java programs may be developed and run under a GPL'd Java system.
Out of the most popular Free licenses, GPL probably is the most restrictive - many others don't have the restriction you mention.
The GPL really only has one restriction worthy of the name: that software placed under the GPL must remain free, in accordance with the wishes of the programmer who first placed the software under the GPL. It is precisely this alignment with programmer's wishes that makes GPL so popular.
As much as I like to bash Microsoft, this whole "Microsoft is the next SCO" is bullshit.
You are right, because nobody said that. What many have said is: "Novell is the new SCO".
MS will sue all the other distros than Novell's for patent infringement, driving everyone to SuSE.
In their dreams. A mass exodus from Suse starting now is the far more likely result. Too bad about Suse, to get bought by the proverbial nest of pointy hair bosses. Too bad about Novell, they nearly got it but now have signed their own death warrant.
The only defense is RedHat and IBM... The other defense is anarchy.
And on the third hand? Be careful to avoid the logical fallacy of bifurcation.
By killing him, we sink to his level.
Nowhere near it. What kind of drugs are you smoking?
As for psychopaths - yes, they may be superficially charming, but they are not generally good planners; in fact they are notorious for being impulsive and reckless, unable to think ahead.
Can't think ahead huh? I guess you don't know a lot about Ted Bundy.
Will killing him bring back the 148 dead Shiites?
It might help some other some other psychopathic tyrant focus on the possible consequences of their actions to themselves.
More often than not, these constituent parts are Open Source software systems and typically not designed to be used as components. These parts are then made to interoperate through wrappers and glue code. We think this trend is a harbinger of things to come. What do you think?
It is a harbinger all right. It is a harbinger of loads of work to come, straightening out that rotten stinking spaghetti. Hint: all you need to do to establish your reputation as a top open source coder is to dig into one of those piles of poo and fix it. Oh, and don't bother asking anyone for permission, just do it. That is the way it works.
Why not start with anything a Ximian coder has touched, since all that code needs to be forked anyway now that Ximian has jumped into bed with the enemy. Suggestion: throw away the bonobo and orbit interfaces, they are just bloatware. Reroll using dbus. Throw away Gnome VFS. Reroll using our real VFS. Lather, rinse, repeat.
fuck Miguel and friends. They only care for pushing their own agenda
True. I have known Miguel for some years. I can now sum Miguel up with a single word: Judas. Thanks to Miguel, both Novell and Suse are now the walking dead. I sincerely regret both, but of course I regret the demise of Suse more. However, this will not be a mortal blow to Linux, quite the contrary. There is only one way for Novell to escape the consequences of their actions: repudiate the patent pact. Otherwise, Novell is the new SCO, with all that that implies.
By the time you have a x.0 release, people have already tried it out and decided whether they like the product or whether it's crap.
.0 release of any product, open source or otherwise, to be stable then you are an idiot.
It is a moot point because I using Firefox 2.0 and it is not crap. But really, if you expect the
Open source products, in general, have terrible or non-existent QA and that needs to change before it's more than a hobby and server OS.
.0 releases.
It is already more than a hobby and server OS, so you must be wrong about that terrible or non-existent QA. Oh right, there are thousands of volunteers doing QA. The thing is, in open source serious QA normally starts with
it might be a good idea to stick with 1.5 until the debut of 3.0
Wait for 3.0? What about 2.1? Feh, what kind of FUD is this.
Nobody wore a cow suit. However my first day on the job did happen to be a Halloween party. I do not recall any cow suits at that time either, but there were a number of mythical animals present.