One thing you mentioned though is that the only reason they bought another game is because they were buying the extra controller.
Another poster mentioned that even if they buy 5 games this generation, thats five more than last generation.
I think one of the problems with referring to the Wii install-base as one large group is that it is much more fragmented, wether by age or some other criteria, than the other consoles this generation.
ong term? - During the 20th century mankind's GHG emmissions dwarfed those from volcanos and I suspect our areosols [wikipedia.org] (soot,etc) over the same period have done more to keep a lid on warming than the ash from volcanos.
Maybe... but I still remember being in Hawaii and being informed that the volcanoes there would qualify as the #1 environmental polluter if it had been a factory.
Apparently the fact that it was a "natural system" let it off the hook, but you still didn't want to be downwind of the Vog (Volcano Fog).
It's too bad there won't be another Xbox console. Watching the Xbox train wreck has been an amazing and disgusting sight.
Spoken as someone whose either never used Windows 2.0 and Word 2.0, or has forgotten about them.
MS will come out with a next generation XBox as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. I am positive they are already working on it now.
The first gen XBox made a name for themselves, and lots of people flocked to buy the 360 since it was:
- first to market. - cheaper than a PS3. - had some games people wanted (and with live!, it built an ecosystem like IM where the more who bought them, the more value it had).
The next gen XBox will have all that, and MS will also have been learning from its mistakes, and their engineers (and marketers) will be in full swing to try and make the "third time the charm" when the MS box crushes everyone else (Nintendo and Sony in this equation).
The channels that would be affected are: Comedy Central, CMT: Pure Country, Logo, Palladia, MTV, MTV 2, MTV Hits, MTV Jams, MTV Tr3s, Nickelodeon, Noggin, Nick 2, Nicktoons, Spike, The N, TV Land, VH1, VH1 Classic, and VH1 Soul.
For a minute I was worried, but considering how often I watch any of those channels, I doubt I would notice.
On a related note: TWCNYC has now managed to mess up an appointment yet again, making sure my on-going intermittent cable problems last into the new year.
Thanks TWC for pointing out that a lot of shows are available for streaming. Let me go further and point out that a lot of shows are available for download directly from Amazon and iTunes, negating the need for a Cable provider at all.
Thanks to their stellar service the past month and a half, my New Years resolution is to move off TWC entirely within the next month.
The other though is the initial cost. It takes a "leap of faith" to get an LED light bulb in the first place, and when the initial cost is so high, its difficult to justify trying more than one or two bulbs to see if they work. If you happen to run into underrated bulbs (or the ones you get are rated correctly, but are unusable in your situation), you are less likely to look at LED bulbs again until the cost drops significantly.
Unless the cost drops significantly, you'd want ot at least "get your moneys worth" out of the first test bulbs, but with an average life of 5-10 years that becomes a lot of time putting up with something you don't really want (that keeps reminding you every time you flip a switch).
True. Nintendo doesn't care since they make a profit, and more power to them.
I'm just wondering how you include that in computations of the install base?
While its certainly true that they count as "consoles sold and potential customers" the fact that quite a few Wiis are sold and rarely used (and may only get one or two games), might mean that the install base is a false indicator for a third party developer.
What I'd like to know is the real install base of the three consoles. You know, not every Xbox360 sold is actually going to a new customer due to a so-called RROD phenomenon. Is there any good data to clear that up?
Likewise I know quite a few Wii's that grandparents got "for when the grandchildren come over" and rarely (if ever) get used.
Easy fix. Oregon residents connect their "device" which refunds the "gas tax" and charges them the "road tax", all out of towners are stuck paying the road tax, the device must be discharged during vehicle inspection, to prevent people skipping out by just paying the gas tax because its cheaper. Eventually you will get caught and pay double (unless you discharge it at a "black discharge" station).
It takes more than a chance - it takes evolutionary pressure. If something's already perfectly adapted to its environment without a brain, then it's unlikely to evolve one. A brain might even reduce the fitness of an organism (by diverting energy that could be better used for other survival/reproduction mechanisms).
Thank you for explaining the current political process to me.
I believe that you are right, we should start voting the thieves out of office, but we need to STOP replacing them with other thieves. Then maybe the politicians would start breeding smarter... Alternatively instead of voting them out of office we must start hunting them.
They think that this configuration is what the consumers want, and they may be right, but Nvidia has no route to get there.
Nvidia always has the option to sell out to Intel. They probably will if they feel the market slipping away.
They also have the option of selling out to AMD, VIA, or IBM.
AMD probably won't be interested, since they've already bought ATI, but VIA or IBM might be.
VIA would probably drool over the idea to pair with their x86 chip (and independent video card upgrades, if they can keep people buying them), IBM might want it to pair with their chip offerings for the next generation of Console, after all, every console THIS generation has an IBM CPU inside of it, why should every console NEXT generation have an IBM CPU and GPU inside of it?
And AMD/ATI arent the only ones getting on board the OpenCL bandwagon, Apple developed it, and Intel along with Nvidia are also going to support it. So OpenCL will allow us to run our apps on the hardware of our choice.
Amazingly, with all this cheer and mention of OpenCL you don't even bother to thank Apple for making it happen. I use Linux and OS X for daily consumption, and this is the time when one should be glad Apple innovates for all.
Well, he didn't explicitly thank Apple, but he DID acknowledge that they created the standard.
The "evil" corporation Worlds.com is trying to destroy the "white wizards of the realm" Blizzard.
Your job is to "get them" first.
Any picture (digital or hard-copy) of a Worlds.com Executive or Lawyer showing them in a compromising situation, or taken post mortem, entitles the taker to an exclusive free in-game item!!!!
We're looking forward to seeing the imaginative and inventive things you find and come up with!
I'm not sure how much forethought there was on their part.
Remember, Quake came out in 1996 (and Doom/Wolfenstein before it).
I think one of the cruxes of their patent is that it is the users has an Avatar, that its taking place in a 3D environment, and that the location information is being passed from a client to a server.
I was initially thinking of early 80's online games (Islands of Kesmai and British Legends on Compuserve for instance), but British Legends (based on MUD) didn't have avatars, and Island of Kesmai was tile based with programs that took the terminal output and just "prettied" it up. Non of the actual processing happened on the local computer (it was also not 3D). GCP seems similar.
Considering the Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake pre-existing as prior art, there is a certain amount of obviousness to the patent. My guess is that they were just the first ones to think about patenting the obvious, and the Patent Office had no experience with this sort of technology at the time?
I agree. I love turn based games and was a bit hesitant to pick up Fallout 3 (since I liked the originals so much), but the V.A.T.S. system has made for a nice mix of Real Time and Turn Based.
I think its a perfect comparison, but remember that the Mozilla team tried working with the Netscape code for about a year before they just decided to scrap it all and start from scratch.
It might almost make more sense to do that, but the problem is that I think it needs either/both a dedicated core group of developers and a corporate entity backing the process.
Why is it that people, even younger people (whatever the cut off for that is), feel like they must always act at the behest of their cell phones?
This is really the crux of the matter and I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it, so thank you.
Maybe the answer is the inevitable one, that the "younger people" feel more of a need for the communication of their peers than their parents (or other "older" generations)? Maybe the reason they grab the cell phone is the same reason generations of parents asked their children around the table if they were "listening to what I'm saying?" In reality the younger generation really doesn't feel involved in the conversation. Since they are not really involved in the conversation, they jump to answer when one of their peers "knocks at the door" with an SMS. Just a thought, but I'll admit I haven't watched groups of same age individuals to see if the conventions hold true even then.
If they do though, it could also be for different reasons (a group of people who are milling around keep cycling through different pairs of conversations. It could be that the ones involved in SMSing are breaking off from the group discussion, or not really involved in it, and just don't really think about it.
And that's the biggest thing about cell phones. With landline phones, it was considered improper to ignore a phone call because it could be something important. But with cell phones, since we carry them everywhere we go, we have to learn to let go and not let it control us.
That's just history. The more things change, the more they stay the same. First we all had land-lines that "had to be answered", then people had a second line that "had to be answered in case of emergencies" but the primary line could be "ignored during a movie night". Then we had pagers that "had to be answered", then they had to be answered while we were "on shift", or only from certain "key people". Then we had cell phones that "had to be answered", then we had CallerID, and Silent Mode (for meetings, sleeping, blessed sanity).:) Now we have to deal with SMS messaging. The only real wrinkle with SMS versus the others is that there seems to be more spam on it (since its the bastard step-child of Cell Phones and Email), but the current generation will eventually learn to prioritize, the same as their forefathers did before them... just give them a few years and a job.
Slashdot Mirror
Thats interesting.
One thing you mentioned though is that the only reason they bought another game is because they were buying the extra controller.
Another poster mentioned that even if they buy 5 games this generation, thats five more than last generation.
I think one of the problems with referring to the Wii install-base as one large group is that it is much more fragmented, wether by age or some other criteria, than the other consoles this generation.
Maybe ... but I still remember being in Hawaii and being informed that the volcanoes there would qualify as the #1 environmental polluter if it had been a factory.
Apparently the fact that it was a "natural system" let it off the hook, but you still didn't want to be downwind of the Vog (Volcano Fog).
Just out of curiosity, what game did they have such a good time playing?
Ah yes, good old CI$.
What was it, 8$ or 6$ an hour?
Those were the good old days. :)
Spoken as someone whose either never used Windows 2.0 and Word 2.0, or has forgotten about them.
MS will come out with a next generation XBox as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. I am positive they are already working on it now.
The first gen XBox made a name for themselves, and lots of people flocked to buy the 360 since it was:
- first to market.
- cheaper than a PS3.
- had some games people wanted (and with live!, it built an ecosystem like IM where the more who bought them, the more value it had).
The next gen XBox will have all that, and MS will also have been learning from its mistakes, and their engineers (and marketers) will be in full swing to try and make the "third time the charm" when the MS box crushes everyone else (Nintendo and Sony in this equation).
From TFA:
For a minute I was worried, but considering how often I watch any of those channels, I doubt I would notice.
On a related note: TWCNYC has now managed to mess up an appointment yet again, making sure my on-going intermittent cable problems last into the new year.
Thanks TWC for pointing out that a lot of shows are available for streaming. Let me go further and point out that a lot of shows are available for download directly from Amazon and iTunes, negating the need for a Cable provider at all.
Thanks to their stellar service the past month and a half, my New Years resolution is to move off TWC entirely within the next month.
You'll usually notice a small "*" next to the "10 year lifetime".
Follow that and you'll see it says "at an average of 8 hours a day usage".
So, if you use it all the time, it should give you 10/3 = ~3.6 years of usage.
Replacing the bulb twice in eight years is about what I would expect. :)
I agree. Thats the one of the biggest problems.
The other though is the initial cost. It takes a "leap of faith" to get an LED light bulb in the first place, and when the initial cost is so high, its difficult to justify trying more than one or two bulbs to see if they work. If you happen to run into underrated bulbs (or the ones you get are rated correctly, but are unusable in your situation), you are less likely to look at LED bulbs again until the cost drops significantly.
Unless the cost drops significantly, you'd want ot at least "get your moneys worth" out of the first test bulbs, but with an average life of 5-10 years that becomes a lot of time putting up with something you don't really want (that keeps reminding you every time you flip a switch).
True. Nintendo doesn't care since they make a profit, and more power to them.
I'm just wondering how you include that in computations of the install base?
While its certainly true that they count as "consoles sold and potential customers" the fact that quite a few Wiis are sold and rarely used (and may only get one or two games), might mean that the install base is a false indicator for a third party developer.
Likewise I know quite a few Wii's that grandparents got "for when the grandchildren come over" and rarely (if ever) get used.
Easy fix. Oregon residents connect their "device" which refunds the "gas tax" and charges them the "road tax", all out of towners are stuck paying the road tax, the device must be discharged during vehicle inspection, to prevent people skipping out by just paying the gas tax because its cheaper. Eventually you will get caught and pay double (unless you discharge it at a "black discharge" station).
Thank you for explaining the current political process to me.
I believe that you are right, we should start voting the thieves out of office, but we need to STOP replacing them with other thieves. Then maybe the politicians would start breeding smarter ... Alternatively instead of voting them out of office we must start hunting them.
Oh, but they were oh so fun when you actually could pull them off and could play through the "movie".
I used to be able to beat Space Ace on 1 play (novice level only), but it was some of the most fun I remember having in an Arcade.
They also have Blu-Ray versions of the games available now for purchase (as well as DVD) available here: http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search-alias=dvd&field-keywords=Space%20Ace (link brings up DVD, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD versions)
They also have the option of selling out to AMD, VIA, or IBM.
AMD probably won't be interested, since they've already bought ATI, but VIA or IBM might be.
VIA would probably drool over the idea to pair with their x86 chip (and independent video card upgrades, if they can keep people buying them), IBM might want it to pair with their chip offerings for the next generation of Console, after all, every console THIS generation has an IBM CPU inside of it, why should every console NEXT generation have an IBM CPU and GPU inside of it?
Well, he didn't explicitly thank Apple, but he DID acknowledge that they created the standard.
Attention WoW players.
A new ARG has been announced by Blizzard.
The "evil" corporation Worlds.com is trying to destroy the "white wizards of the realm" Blizzard.
Your job is to "get them" first.
Any picture (digital or hard-copy) of a Worlds.com Executive or Lawyer showing them in a compromising situation, or taken post mortem, entitles the taker to an exclusive free in-game item!!!!
We're looking forward to seeing the imaginative and inventive things you find and come up with!
For the hoard!!!!
[/humor]
> drink balm and drop it
You can't do that as a ghost.
Dang.
I'm not sure how much forethought there was on their part.
Remember, Quake came out in 1996 (and Doom/Wolfenstein before it).
I think one of the cruxes of their patent is that it is the users has an Avatar, that its taking place in a 3D environment, and that the location information is being passed from a client to a server.
I was initially thinking of early 80's online games (Islands of Kesmai and British Legends on Compuserve for instance), but British Legends (based on MUD) didn't have avatars, and Island of Kesmai was tile based with programs that took the terminal output and just "prettied" it up. Non of the actual processing happened on the local computer (it was also not 3D). GCP seems similar.
Considering the Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake pre-existing as prior art, there is a certain amount of obviousness to the patent. My guess is that they were just the first ones to think about patenting the obvious, and the Patent Office had no experience with this sort of technology at the time?
Exactly.
Actually, from scanning the abstracts, Quake could be considered prior art, dating from 1996.
I agree. I love turn based games and was a bit hesitant to pick up Fallout 3 (since I liked the originals so much), but the V.A.T.S. system has made for a nice mix of Real Time and Turn Based.
I think its a perfect comparison, but remember that the Mozilla team tried working with the Netscape code for about a year before they just decided to scrap it all and start from scratch.
It might almost make more sense to do that, but the problem is that I think it needs either/both a dedicated core group of developers and a corporate entity backing the process.
Well ... My girlfriend is a Canadian Astronaut who's on the ISS.
Would you believe she's a Canadian Astronaut?
How about a disgruntled Montrealer?
A cute blond in a Blue-Jays jersey?
(looks over shoulder, sees wife wielding frying pan)
Gotta go.
Hey, your cell phone provider needs to cut costs in this economy, and the savings he gets by cutting those 160 bits is savings he can pass on to you.
Seeing as how he's saving 160 bits, at a rate of four two bits per dollar, that means they owe each user $40 per month. ;)
This is really the crux of the matter and I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it, so thank you.
Maybe the answer is the inevitable one, that the "younger people" feel more of a need for the communication of their peers than their parents (or other "older" generations)? Maybe the reason they grab the cell phone is the same reason generations of parents asked their children around the table if they were "listening to what I'm saying?" In reality the younger generation really doesn't feel involved in the conversation. Since they are not really involved in the conversation, they jump to answer when one of their peers "knocks at the door" with an SMS. Just a thought, but I'll admit I haven't watched groups of same age individuals to see if the conventions hold true even then.
If they do though, it could also be for different reasons (a group of people who are milling around keep cycling through different pairs of conversations. It could be that the ones involved in SMSing are breaking off from the group discussion, or not really involved in it, and just don't really think about it.
That's just history. The more things change, the more they stay the same. :) ... just give them a few years and a job.
First we all had land-lines that "had to be answered", then people had a second line that "had to be answered in case of emergencies" but the primary line could be "ignored during a movie night".
Then we had pagers that "had to be answered", then they had to be answered while we were "on shift", or only from certain "key people".
Then we had cell phones that "had to be answered", then we had CallerID, and Silent Mode (for meetings, sleeping, blessed sanity).
Now we have to deal with SMS messaging. The only real wrinkle with SMS versus the others is that there seems to be more spam on it (since its the bastard step-child of Cell Phones and Email), but the current generation will eventually learn to prioritize, the same as their forefathers did before them
Interesting.
Perhaps we can split it up? Figure out all the parts, and then have a bunch of "talent" record it as an audio drama. :)