true, but it can also be an unfair comparison to compare a holiday buying month like december to november or january. it is safest to look at both (monthly by the lifetime of the product, and monthly by calendar) and keep those issues in mind when trying to draw conclusions, in my opinion.
It occurs to me that you might have been referring to my note about you using cumulative instead of monthly totals.
The reason i feel it is important to look at interval totals and not the cumulative total (in this situation) is that the original post you were responding to was making an assertion about sell rate.
It's possible for a product to have a fantastic launch month and then taper to nothing while another product has consistent decent sales. Then 2 months later, the cumulative total would show the first product has sold more units, but the monthly data would show that the second product had a higher monthly sale rate.
just as a point of information, your parenthetical totals are cumulative totals, not the monthly(or weekly for japan) totals. It would be possible for the ps3 to be outselling the rate of the ps2 now, but be behind in the cumulative total.
In the North American chart, the ps3 did outsell the ps2 when comparing their respective second months. If you adjust to account for the fact that their release dates are off of each other by a month (so you are comparing december to december instead of to november), then the ps3 outsold the ps2 in november and january.
So the grandparent isn't necessarily completely out of line. He probably meant comparing like calendar months instead of comparing months since release.
Interestingly, the ps3 is selling at a faster rate than the 360 did when it was released (in both geos).
Yeah. How dare they not offer the online component of the PS3 as a free download for the other consoles and home computers too! Really, complaining that you have to buy a ps3 to get the features included in the ps3 is absurd.
* Clothes, wallpaper, and other items will cost money
You dont have to buy them. There are items that come free. You only have to buy stuff if you want additional options. Also, you can use your own audio, video, and pictures.
In this case, you can do those things, but do not have to. With the Wii and Xbox 360, you cannot do these things at all. So, you have more choices in this system. Where's the problem? If you aren't interested, don't buy any of the stuff and you still have a 3-d chat lounge and matchup service, which, i believe, is still more than you get in the other consoles. (i know the other consoles have match making services, but i do not know of a 3-d chat environment in them. i dont have any of the consoles though so i could be mistaken about that)
Also, you still get to play online for free, and that's more than you get with the 360.
* Since there will be freeloaders who avoid buying virtual goods, there's also streaming video advertisements galore to offset the cost of running the servers.
I dont really care about streaming video advertisements in the public areas of this virtual world. To me, it's like billboards on the street. I mostly ignore them. If something really stupid is on one, i'll note it for ridicule, but they arent on my radar when i purchase stuff. As long as they aren't in the games i paid for, i'm ok with it, considering it is free.
"Free" is one word for it, I guess...
sounds like a pretty good word for it to me.
it certainly sounds better than "$50 and no avatars, private home area, and public chat area"
Nobody is gonna buy the console just so they can have an awesome virtual house. It's just a bonus for people who do pick one up.
"One of the industry's more advanced systems will be Ford's Sync, which connects digital music players to the car's voice-control communications system and reads aloud cell-phone text messages and has 20 preset text-message responses... The flash memory-based system, controlled through voice commands and buttons on the steering wheel, is based on a Microsoft Corp. operating system for cars."
Microsoft's voice recognition did so well in a quiet room, they decided to give it a real test and see how it performs in a noisy car.
I can see it now :
driver : Check voice mail computer : turning on radio, volume set to 10 driver : AAAAAAGH! (ears bleed, car hits telephone pole) computer : delete select all
I can't wait for someone i know to get one so i can call him and leave a voice mail that issues commands to his car when he listens to it.
Only Texas could produce a trainwreck of that magnitude.
everywhere has trainwrecks of that magnitude. The difference for Texas is that we have so many hot women, our trainwrecks have a shot at appearing in Playboy. Remember also that nobody heard of her before Hefner (a Californian, or Chicagoan if you want to go by birth place) decided to make her famous. If that had not happened she would have been just another batshit insane stripper in houston that nobody knew existed.
But he is not correct. If I find that Microsoft is infringing on my one and only patent in every shipping copy of Windows XP, and Microsoft finds that some software of which I sold 200 copies infringes on 100 of their patents, once damages are compared, I still win.
No, you don't. Long before you (maybe) win your patent suit, you are bankrupted and your patent is sold off to pay your creditors. Someone might actually get a payout from Microsoft, but your company is dissolved and you don't get anything.
In fact, there's only one game with guns he can still tolerate. 'Grand Theft Auto is the exception. Because Grand Theft Auto is like us.'"
In related news, Jack Thompson has filed suit against Rockstar Games and the ESRB for destabilizing the middle east and causing the insurgency in Iraq.
"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."
This is the exception that allows you to make personal copies of legally purchased music.
Yeah. I forgot about 602(b) including that first sentence. I was tired and did a fairly poor job on that post.
The other comment's point about "copying" is a little better, except that once you have a legal copy within the US, making further reproductions for personal use (IE, turning the ethernet bits into a copy on hard drive, and then into CD, iPod, and Wax Cylinder recording copies) might be defended under "fair use". (Whether it is fair use might need to go before a jury, as a question-of-fact.)
Well, 17 USC 1008 should protect individuals making reproductions for personal use, provided they are using consumer grade devices.
That's a good point. When I wrote that, it was late and i didnt consider if my post's parent's reference to the import portion of copyright law was even appropriate.
Even as reproduction, it is still a legal copy since you are allow to make personal copies of legally purchased music.
(i know you werent arguing against the legality of the mp3s; just the applicability of the import section of the copyright code)
b) just says that if the copy was made illegally at the point of origin, it is considered illegal when imported into the United States. (i.e. chinese bootlegs)
a) clearly states an exception for importation for personal use. If it is legal in the country of origin and you are importing it for personal use, it is legal.
In this case, the mp3s are legal under Russian law, so importing them for personal use is not illegal. I think the point of contention is whether they are being imported into the U.S., or distributed for sale in the U.S.
In my opinion, since the sale occurs on a server in russia, it is sold in russia and then imported. that would make it legal for them to sell and legal for you to buy.
And before anyone attacks me...I've never bought anything from allofmp3.com and have no interest in doing so. I like to own the cd.
As for the 150 years thing, it's because they had no thermometers 150 years ago, so their records only go back 150 years.
The modern mercury thermometer was invented just under 300 years ago. I guess that isn't the reason for the "150 years thing", eh?
And in this case, the 30 years figure is because observations of this kind done with satellites has only been possible for 30 years, and any prior event would be impossible to measure.
Well, considering how trivially easy it was to prove your first assertion incorrect, I'm certainly not going to trust that you know what you are talking about here.
Why not buy an iMac, hook up your LCD and have a dual headed system? (granted, you would have to buy a mini-dvi to vga connector, but they're only $20)
He didn't forget those links. They just aren't relevant.
Nothing in either of those links has anything to do with exercising freedom of speech in the United States or Iran. To claim the United States has a free speech record as bad as Iran based on those links would be like accusing someone of murder based on the fact that they stole a car once (obligatory slashdot car analogy).
Is there a reason you bring it up other than to prop up emotional rhetoric with an irrelevant appeal to emotion?
Well, they did receive a lot of bad press from fans and other artists. The point is that in a society that is supposed to cherish free speech americuh is pretty backward.
what are you talking about?
The Dixie Chicks exercised their freedom of speech without any repercussions from the government. Their fans and the other artists also exercised their freedom of speech without interference. Everyone involved expressed themselves as much or as little as they chose to without any interference or influence from the government.
In what way is that not freedom of speech? In what way is that backward?
Microsoft doesnt really care about owning the market for portable music players. What they care about is owing the format that content producers use to distribute their product. They tried plays for sure and it failed. That is why they rolled their own player.
The goal here is to turn the digital music and video standards into a new monopoly for microsoft. Once that happens, they can tax every song, video, and player sold.
Not necessarily. Stores are also a business, and if the minority product's vendor can subsidize its losses in one division with excessive profits in another, the store might be persueded to add extra emphesis to a non-leading product that its vendor hopes will one day become one.
So basically what you are saying is that microsoft could leverage their existing os and office monopolies to create favourable deals for promoting the zune and gaining marketshare in the portable player market. I wonder if the U.S. legal system will work this time around, or if we'll have to rely on the EU courts again.
The title of the article is "Zune doesn't shake iPod's market lead - MICROSOFT MP3 PLAYER HAS DECENT 1ST MONTH". That's a far cry from "Zune Sales Continue to Weaken".
From the article : "In contrast, there are already questions about how sustainable Microsoft's Zune sales will be. NPD's own weekly data had Microsoft falling from the No. 2 vendor of MP3 players in its first week to No. 5 in its second week."
Sounds like their sales are weakening to me.
Hell, the article summary isn't even correct. Slashdot spin version: "Apple remained unchanged at 62.2%". Actual article text: "Apple's share of the hard drive market fell to 82.7 percent from 86.8 percent a year ago, its share of the overall market came in at 62.2 percent, essentially even with the 63 percent it posted a year ago."
As your own quote says, Apple's overall share was essentially unchanged. That's exactly what the summary said. What the article also says is that the Nano (up 37%) and shuffle (doubled) market shares increased. The reduction in Apple hard drive market share could easily be explained by the market shifting more towards flash based players. The article's and the summary's assertion that the zune has had no impact on the ipod seems pretty reasonable to me.
The slashdot summary was even generous in its comment about the brown zune, which has actually sold as poorly as the white zune.
Instead of trying to spin existing articles, I personally think that it's time for Slashdot editors to just start making shit up.
You do know that people submit the stories and the editors just post them, right?
This attempt at spin is pretty sad. Why not just make up an article that says, "Bill Gates went on a shooting spree today, killing 100 orphan children, before turning the weapon on himself".
If that constitutes "shill spin" on slashdot's part, your response should easily qualify as microsoft shill spin.
Slashdot Mirror
true, but it can also be an unfair comparison to compare a holiday buying month like december to november or january. it is safest to look at both (monthly by the lifetime of the product, and monthly by calendar) and keep those issues in mind when trying to draw conclusions, in my opinion.
It occurs to me that you might have been referring to my note about you using cumulative instead of monthly totals.
The reason i feel it is important to look at interval totals and not the cumulative total (in this situation) is that the original post you were responding to was making an assertion about sell rate.
It's possible for a product to have a fantastic launch month and then taper to nothing while another product has consistent decent sales. Then 2 months later, the cumulative total would show the first product has sold more units, but the monthly data would show that the second product had a higher monthly sale rate.
just as a point of information, your parenthetical totals are cumulative totals, not the monthly(or weekly for japan) totals. It would be possible for the ps3 to be outselling the rate of the ps2 now, but be behind in the cumulative total.
In the North American chart, the ps3 did outsell the ps2 when comparing their respective second months.
If you adjust to account for the fact that their release dates are off of each other by a month (so you are comparing december to december instead of to november), then the ps3 outsold the ps2 in november and january.
So the grandparent isn't necessarily completely out of line. He probably meant comparing like calendar months instead of comparing months since release.
Interestingly, the ps3 is selling at a faster rate than the 360 did when it was released (in both geos).
Free
* With the purchase of a PS3
Yeah. How dare they not offer the online component of the PS3 as a free download for the other consoles and home computers too!
Really, complaining that you have to buy a ps3 to get the features included in the ps3 is absurd.
* Clothes, wallpaper, and other items will cost money
You dont have to buy them. There are items that come free. You only have to buy stuff if you want additional options. Also, you can use your own audio, video, and pictures.
In this case, you can do those things, but do not have to. With the Wii and Xbox 360, you cannot do these things at all. So, you have more choices in this system. Where's the problem?
If you aren't interested, don't buy any of the stuff and you still have a 3-d chat lounge and matchup service, which, i believe, is still more than you get in the other consoles. (i know the other consoles have match making services, but i do not know of a 3-d chat environment in them. i dont have any of the consoles though so i could be mistaken about that)
Also, you still get to play online for free, and that's more than you get with the 360.
* Since there will be freeloaders who avoid buying virtual goods, there's also streaming video advertisements galore to offset the cost of running the servers.
I dont really care about streaming video advertisements in the public areas of this virtual world. To me, it's like billboards on the street. I mostly ignore them. If something really stupid is on one, i'll note it for ridicule, but they arent on my radar when i purchase stuff.
As long as they aren't in the games i paid for, i'm ok with it, considering it is free.
"Free" is one word for it, I guess...
sounds like a pretty good word for it to me.
it certainly sounds better than "$50 and no avatars, private home area, and public chat area"
Nobody is gonna buy the console just so they can have an awesome virtual house. It's just a bonus for people who do pick one up.
"One of the industry's more advanced systems will be Ford's Sync, which connects digital music players to the car's voice-control communications system and reads aloud cell-phone text messages and has 20 preset text-message responses... The flash memory-based system, controlled through voice commands and buttons on the steering wheel, is based on a Microsoft Corp. operating system for cars."
Microsoft's voice recognition did so well in a quiet room, they decided to give it a real test and see how it performs in a noisy car.
I can see it now :
driver : Check voice mail
computer : turning on radio, volume set to 10
driver : AAAAAAGH! (ears bleed, car hits telephone pole)
computer : delete select all
I can't wait for someone i know to get one so i can call him and leave a voice mail that issues commands to his car when he listens to it.
That makes sense considering that the basic structure, characters, and most of the elements of the story arcs for DS9 were literally stolen from B5.
Only Texas could produce a trainwreck of that magnitude.
everywhere has trainwrecks of that magnitude. The difference for Texas is that we have so many hot women, our trainwrecks have a shot at appearing in Playboy.
Remember also that nobody heard of her before Hefner (a Californian, or Chicagoan if you want to go by birth place) decided to make her famous. If that had not happened she would have been just another batshit insane stripper in houston that nobody knew existed.
Yeah. Only the janitorial staff has access to those.
(it's a joke. i know the janitors don't really have access to the safe and the server room)
not an AK... most of them will be using hunting rifles.
One step closer to Night of the Lepus. My plans to cause the least likely horror movie to become a reality are almost complete.
But he is not correct. If I find that Microsoft is infringing on my one and only patent in every shipping copy of Windows XP, and Microsoft finds that some software of which I sold 200 copies infringes on 100 of their patents, once damages are compared, I still win.
No, you don't. Long before you (maybe) win your patent suit, you are bankrupted and your patent is sold off to pay your creditors. Someone might actually get a payout from Microsoft, but your company is dissolved and you don't get anything.
In fact, there's only one game with guns he can still tolerate. 'Grand Theft Auto is the exception. Because Grand Theft Auto is like us.'"
In related news, Jack Thompson has filed suit against Rockstar Games and the ESRB for destabilizing the middle east and causing the insurgency in Iraq.
The Tesla is built on a Lotus Elise. The Esprit was discontinued in 2004.
USC Title 17,1008 :
"No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings."
This is the exception that allows you to make personal copies of legally purchased music.
Yeah. I forgot about 602(b) including that first sentence. I was tired and did a fairly poor job on that post.
The other comment's point about "copying" is a little better, except that once you have a legal copy within the US, making further reproductions for personal use (IE, turning the ethernet bits into a copy on hard drive, and then into CD, iPod, and Wax Cylinder recording copies) might be defended under "fair use". (Whether it is fair use might need to go before a jury, as a question-of-fact.)
Well, 17 USC 1008 should protect individuals making reproductions for personal use, provided they are using consumer grade devices.
That's a good point. When I wrote that, it was late and i didnt consider if my post's parent's reference to the import portion of copyright law was even appropriate.
Even as reproduction, it is still a legal copy since you are allow to make personal copies of legally purchased music.
(i know you werent arguing against the legality of the mp3s; just the applicability of the import section of the copyright code)
(i am not a lawyer either but...)
b) just says that if the copy was made illegally at the point of origin, it is considered illegal when imported into the United States. (i.e. chinese bootlegs)
a) clearly states an exception for importation for personal use. If it is legal in the country of origin and you are importing it for personal use, it is legal.
In this case, the mp3s are legal under Russian law, so importing them for personal use is not illegal. I think the point of contention is whether they are being imported into the U.S., or distributed for sale in the U.S.
In my opinion, since the sale occurs on a server in russia, it is sold in russia and then imported. that would make it legal for them to sell and legal for you to buy.
And before anyone attacks me...I've never bought anything from allofmp3.com and have no interest in doing so. I like to own the cd.
As for the 150 years thing, it's because they had no thermometers 150 years ago, so their records only go back 150 years.
The modern mercury thermometer was invented just under 300 years ago. I guess that isn't the reason for the "150 years thing", eh?
And in this case, the 30 years figure is because observations of this kind done with satellites has only been possible for 30 years, and any prior event would be impossible to measure.
Well, considering how trivially easy it was to prove your first assertion incorrect, I'm certainly not going to trust that you know what you are talking about here.
Why not buy an iMac, hook up your LCD and have a dual headed system?
(granted, you would have to buy a mini-dvi to vga connector, but they're only $20)
He didn't forget those links. They just aren't relevant.
Nothing in either of those links has anything to do with exercising freedom of speech in the United States or Iran. To claim the United States has a free speech record as bad as Iran based on those links would be like accusing someone of murder based on the fact that they stole a car once (obligatory slashdot car analogy).
Is there a reason you bring it up other than to prop up emotional rhetoric with an irrelevant appeal to emotion?
Well, they did receive a lot of bad press from fans and other artists. The point is that in a society that is supposed to cherish free speech americuh is pretty backward.
what are you talking about?
The Dixie Chicks exercised their freedom of speech without any repercussions from the government. Their fans and the other artists also exercised their freedom of speech without interference. Everyone involved expressed themselves as much or as little as they chose to without any interference or influence from the government.
In what way is that not freedom of speech? In what way is that backward?
Microsoft doesnt really care about owning the market for portable music players. What they care about is owing the format that content producers use to distribute their product. They tried plays for sure and it failed. That is why they rolled their own player.
The goal here is to turn the digital music and video standards into a new monopoly for microsoft. Once that happens, they can tax every song, video, and player sold.
Not necessarily. Stores are also a business, and if the minority product's vendor can subsidize its losses in one division with excessive profits in another, the store might be persueded to add extra emphesis to a non-leading product that its vendor hopes will one day become one.
So basically what you are saying is that microsoft could leverage their existing os and office monopolies to create favourable deals for promoting the zune and gaining marketshare in the portable player market. I wonder if the U.S. legal system will work this time around, or if we'll have to rely on the EU courts again.
The title of the article is "Zune doesn't shake iPod's market lead - MICROSOFT MP3 PLAYER HAS DECENT 1ST MONTH". That's a far cry from "Zune Sales Continue to Weaken".
From the article :
"In contrast, there are already questions about how sustainable Microsoft's Zune sales will be. NPD's own weekly data had Microsoft falling from the No. 2 vendor of MP3 players in its first week to No. 5 in its second week."
Sounds like their sales are weakening to me.
Hell, the article summary isn't even correct. Slashdot spin version: "Apple remained unchanged at 62.2%". Actual article text: "Apple's share of the hard drive market fell to 82.7 percent from 86.8 percent a year ago, its share of the overall market came in at 62.2 percent, essentially even with the 63 percent it posted a year ago."
As your own quote says, Apple's overall share was essentially unchanged. That's exactly what the summary said.
What the article also says is that the Nano (up 37%) and shuffle (doubled) market shares increased. The reduction in Apple hard drive market share could easily be explained by the market shifting more towards flash based players. The article's and the summary's assertion that the zune has had no impact on the ipod seems pretty reasonable to me.
The slashdot summary was even generous in its comment about the brown zune, which has actually sold as poorly as the white zune.
Instead of trying to spin existing articles, I personally think that it's time for Slashdot editors to just start making shit up.
You do know that people submit the stories and the editors just post them, right?
This attempt at spin is pretty sad. Why not just make up an article that says, "Bill Gates went on a shooting spree today, killing 100 orphan children, before turning the weapon on himself".
If that constitutes "shill spin" on slashdot's part, your response should easily qualify as microsoft shill spin.
Yes, but Gina Torres is Laurence Fishburn's wife in real life.
I am going to start playing as a level 1 Kaylee...
I wouldnt mind playing with a Kaylee either...but i think i'd like one at least around 18 or 19.
I wouldnt mind playing with an Inara, or a River either.
I'm up for a few rounds with a Saffron too.
That show had more than its share of beautiful women playing fun characters.
(before anyone complains that i left out Zoe, i have a firm belief that it is best to leave Morpheus' wife alone.)